Internal Power Structures Research Articles

Comment on “Japan's Security Policy in East Asia”

We ll versed with the history and practice of Japan’s security policy, Auslin and Green (2007) have done an excellent job overviewing its history, examining its core doctrines, and giving their thoughts on its current adaptations. My comments take up their third section, the current adaptations of the key three doctrines (a fear of isolation, the calculation of the geopolitical strength of China, and accommodation to the prevailing international power structure) and attempts to add a few points that need to be taken up. First, the fear of isolation. Since Japan regained its independence in 1952, this pillar has been called the United Nations-centered diplomacy. The latest version of this is Japan asserting that she is underrepresented in multilateral institutions like the United Nations. It is widely understood that Japan has not been able to represent itself very effectively in many multilateral institutional settings, at least to the likings of many Japanese leaders. One can argue that this is largely because Japanese leaders are not used to such multilateral diplomacy. They seem to be more at ease with bilateralism, discussing tete-a-tete, or playing haragei (Inoguchi, 2007). Even in multilateral settings, bi-multilateralism is preferred. This means that multilateralism is composed of many bilateralisms in multilateral arenas. Thus, Japan requesting France to give strong support to Japan’s bid for permanent membership in the United Nations Security Council is an option Japan ought to pursue. But Japan making the same request to the European Union arouses an eerie feeling on the part of the European Union. Are Japanese possibly inept at multilateral diplomacy since within the European Union the representation issue of the United Nations is a difficult issue, and, hence, in principle, it does not touch on the United Nations issue at all? Or should they regard Japan’s request to the European Union as the latest indication of Japan’s upgrading of the European Union in Japan’s diplomatic practice? Second, the calculation of China’s geopolitical strength. The East Asian setting of Japan’s security policy is dissimilar to the West European-originated international relations situation (Sakai, 2007). There the distinction between the international and the imperial order is not very clear. The international order is the Westphalian order. The imperial order is something beyond the international order. It is where not only substance, but style, is deemed possibly much more important. It is true that Prime Minister Wen Jiabao did not bring about much substance, but it is also true that at this phase of Japanese‐ Chinese relations, style is no less important. That is why whereas Prime Minister Shinzo Abe broke the ice and achieved a breakthrough last autumn, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao melted the ice and made one more step forward this spring. What Koizumi did in paying

O Brasil e a dimensão econômico-social do governo Lula: resultados e perspectivas

Este artigo avalia a trajetória da economia brasileira desde os anos 1980 e as dimensões que alcança com o governo Lula. Assinala as estruturas de poder internas que se criaram neste período e que deslocaram o eixo da acumulação para o setor financeiro. Aponta que a hegemonia financeira entra em contradição com a nova fase de expansão do capitalismo mundial iniciada em 1994, o que leva ao contraste entre as taxas de crescimento brasileiras - muito baixas - e as da economia mundial que estão em aceleração. Aponta finalmente que um dos desafios do governo Lula para atender às expectativas sociais que se criaram sobre ele, é o romper com esta hegemonia para impulsionar o desenvolvimento e a inclusão.

Co-ordination media in cross-national networks of small and medium-sized enterprises

Not only large corporations but also SMEs increasingly organise into cross border networks, in order to benefit from the advantages of international division of labour. As regards the co-ordination of network activities it makes sense to distinguish between the role of social co-ordination media and the factual and temporal co-ordination of network activities. Social co-ordination media are geared to the generation of mutual reliability. Their mode of operating is closely linked to the internal power structures of the networks.

Organizational Receptivity to Institutional Pressure: The Adoption of Environmental Management Practices

When integrated with key organizational characteristics, institutional theory can yield new insights to understand differences between firms' strategies. We propose that a company's functional organization and internal power structure influence its facility managers' sensitivity to and interpretation of institutional pressures. Combining over 500 responses from an original survey with existing data sources, we show how different corporate departments affect how receptive facility managers are to various institutional pressures, and how facilities respond by implementing different environmental management practices depending on the source of these institutional pressures.

Unlocking the Hegemonic Power of ‘The People's Democratic Dictatorship’

This article explores the relationship between the Chinese state and civil society by juxtaposing the experiences of the Uygur ethnic group of Xinjiang province against the country's environmentally focused social organisations. It analyses the reasons behind the failure or success of each movement as defined by their ability to create a counter-hegemony, where subordinate groups challenge a system in which the interests of one section of society organise, in Gramscian terms, the majority of people's common sense. This article bases the creation of successful counter-hegemony on two premises: first is the suggestion that the key to developing an effective civil society is its contribution to the prevailing political agenda. The second premise is the implication that if a social movement is to succeed against a prevailing hegemonic power, it must in some capacity, align itself with the prevailing interests and then co-opt them to forward its own agenda, constructing ‘good sense’ from ‘common sense’. Both the Uygur and the green movements are reviewed in their capacity to align with the interests of the Chinese Communist Party-led state, of which three components are identified: (1) the party line; (2) national security; and (3) prevailing international power structures. In identifying these three factors that shape the interests of the state, they become focal points around which social groups can adapt and manipulate to create a counter-hegemony. Thus, these three features become prongs of a key that can unlock the hegemonic power of the Chinese state. The implication of this article is that there are certain avenues for creating successful counter-hegemonic civil society movements, even where the state is most repressive.

Power Structures and Capacity Aspects of Macro‐Poverty Analyses

This article discusses the role of domestic and international power structures in macro‐poverty impact analyses. It reviews current approaches to poverty measurement, to the analysis of linkages between macro policies and poverty, and to ex‐ante and ex‐post impact assessment. It then draws attention to the influence of country‐specific governance realities and international power structures on the role and influence of PSIAs. The importance of domestic policy priorities, processes and institutions points to the necessity of overcoming domestic capacity constraints on the use of PSIA tools. PSIAs could be improved by being performed in the country of analysis, by domestic individuals and institutions, with all the long‐term external suppport they need.

The Foreign Policy of the Voronin Administration

Moldova, which declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, is a young and very poor state with few diplomatic resources and with little in foreign policy compared with Romania, for example. (1) Moldova is a small state, consisting of a population of about 4.3 million. (2) Moldova also is a multiethnic society) with a population that is approximately 65 percent Romanian extraction, with the remainder consisting of Russians (about 13 percent) and Ukrainians (about 14 percent), numbering approximately 650,000 of Ukraninians. (4) There also are approximately 150,000 Gagauz, a Turkic--Christian group of people who live in the southern part of the country and have managed to acquire a certain degree of political autonomy. Moldova, which no longer shares a border with Russia (separated from Russia by Ukraine), is located in the former Soviet West and shares close historic and cultural ties with Romania, underscoring the existence of a special or privileged relationship between the two states. Most of current-day Moldova, previously known as Bessarabia, was once part of historical Greater Romania. (5) As a small state, Moldova finds itself in a weak and vulnerable position in the post-cold war international system. Moldova faces the problem of trying to preserve its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity while undergoing a difficult transition to democracy and a market economy. The victory of the Party of Moldovan Communists in 2001 marked a major change in the internal power structure of Moldova. The Communists gained control of a majority of seats in parliament in the elections of February 25, 2001. This occurred after parliament had been dissolved by President Petru Lucinschi, following the legislature's failure to elect a president on three separate occasions) On April 4, 2001, the single-chamber legislature elected the leader of the Moldovan Communist Party as president by a vote of seventy-one out of one hundred one. (7) The triumph of the Party of Moldovan Communists underscores the need to realize the importance of the relationship between the historical and cultural context of a country, especially the legacies of the approach, and to understand the foreign policy behavior of the Voronin administration. The historical legacy or path dependency of a country's past has an important effect on the foreign policy behavior of a state, as argued by the realist school of thought known as neoclassical realism. In short, the foreign policy of a country clearly has domestic roots. (8) An example of the influence of path dependency on Moldora occurred at the Fourth Congress of the Party of Moldovan Communists in April 2002, when President Voronin talked about the rebirth of socialism and the historic mission of the Communist Party of Moldova, the only country in Europe that returned the Communists to power. (9) As a further example of the grip of the Communist legacy on Moldova. President Voronin also expressed his great interest in the experience of the Communist parties of China, North Korea, Cuba, and Vietnam. (10) The return of the Communists to power in Moldora reflects the need to consider the importance of path dependency by previous rulers of the country, specifically by the Communists, to understand the nature and scope of Moldova's foreign policy. Voronin apparently believed that the collapse of Communism in Europe was only temporary and that the socialist system would be restored. Realism and Moldovan Foreign Policy Concepts Voronin's foreign policy also can be explained by classical realism and its variations, such as neoclassical realism and neorealism. Classical realism always has stressed the primary importance of the state as a rational, unitary actor, focusing on the pursuit of its foreign policy goals in the international system. The classical realist believes that the state is the most important actor in the international system; (11) however, classical realists have been criticized for not paying enough attention to the role of domestic factors to explain a state's foreign policy behavior. …

With her Feet on the Ground: Women, Religion and Development in Muslim Communities

There has been a resurgence of donor interest in women and religion, conceptualizing religion alternately as a developmental obstacle, primary developmental issue and developmental solution. Both donors and recipient organizations need to interrogate the discourses underlying this focus and to examine their potentially harmful long-term impact on women's struggles in contexts where identity politics are a key factor in determining women's options. Cassandra Balchin relates the experience of the international solidarity network Women Living Under Muslim Laws. She argues against reinforcing Orientalist othering of women in Muslim contexts and efforts by extreme right politico-religious groups to monopolize definitions of women's role in society, while diverting attention away from the realities of women's struggles in Muslim contexts, secular alternatives and the community, national and international power structures that constrain women's development.

Online games: scenario for community and manifestation of masculinity

This article focuses on the use made of online games by boys in the 11–15 age group. Boys often play online games in clans consisting both of friends from physical space and of children they have met in virtual space, with whom they often form Web friendships whilst playing together. The players establish communities, which try to form strong clans to combat other clans. At the same time an internal power structure emerges in the community. This article will present a gender analysis of the boys' praxis in these communities and their internal ranking.

La juridictionnalisation du droit international ou la révolution en trompe-l'œil.

While the growth in international legal disputes is spectacular, one should consider the nature of the phenomenon. Logically it reflects the needs of the States comprising the international society ; due process of law provides them with legal security and the guarantee of an impartial and definitive application of the law. The qualitative contribution it makes thus illustrates the link between the creation of jurisdictions applying international law and the concept of good governance. This transformation of law also reflects the decentralised nature of the international legal system. It creates competition between various controlling bodies with a clear risk of potential contradiction in case law. However, it also creates a highly stimulating situation and is a powerful factor in promoting an evolution in the law and in its application. The establishment of jurisdictions applying international law profoundly changes its very nature. It enhances the judicial function in that this becomes associated with the increasing rule of law in major political disputes and with fundamental questions that increasingly concern society on an international level. One cannot call it a revolution as neither has the international power structure been modified, in spite of the emergence of a world civil society, nor has the essential nature of international law been changed. However it confirms that a country under the Rule of Law is legalist in its approach to foreign policy.

Consensus and Conflict: The Socioeconomic Challenge Facing Sustainable Tourism Development in Southern Albania

This paper analyses consensus and conflict within community-based development and their implications for sustainable tourism development. Using evidence from an EU LIEN/PHARE programme for integrated rural development in rural southern Albania during 1995–98, it demonstrates the falsity of the cosy notion that local communities are cohesive entities with harmonious social relations, able to access national and international power structures provided only that they get the right support from foreign donors and NGOs. In the context of project experience, this paper explores the problems that have arisen and concludes with some recommendations, cognisant of the continuing Balkan crisis.

Current Historiographic Trends in the Study of the Twentieth-Century Congress

Once upon a time, historians and political scientists expended a great deal of effort in tracing the complex development of the United States Congress in the twentieth century—a time, especially from the 1930s onward, during which Congress faced a remarkable expansion in government activity as a surge of new concerns, foreign and domestic, and, as a result, an unprecedented load of business, all but overwhelmed the institution. During this same time, Congress’s role within the American political system has been Social Science transformed in the face of the rise of the imperial presidency, the Supreme Court’s insistence on changing rules of representation, and the consequent shift in the institution’s makeup and internal power structure. Finally, public perceptions of Congress, increasingly negative as they have become, have had some significant impact on the transformation of Congress within the American political system as well (Sundquist 1981; Harris 1993; Rieselbach 1994).

Real-time business analysis: How CI practitioners can assess internal competitor power structures

Identifying the real talent at a rival company can help predict the competitor's future directions, as well as its likelihood for long-term success. Grand-sounding titles can often be misleading as to who exercises actual influence regarding particular functions. Aside from occupying offices with considerable formal authority, truly powerful individuals in a corporate setting are those who acquire important resources, “absorb uncertainty” for the organization, have high visibility in terms of public relations efforts and external media coverage, and make the employer dependent upon themselves for the successful completion of certain key activities. Internet web sites and online databases and are a good place to begin researching who these individuals are. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Real‐time business analysis: How CI practitioners can assess internal competitor power structures

Identifying the real talent at a rival company can help predict the competitor's future directions, as well as its likelihood for long-term success. Grand-sounding titles can often be misleading as to who exercises actual influence regarding particular functions. Aside from occupying offices with considerable formal authority, truly powerful individuals in a corporate setting are those who acquire important resources, “absorb uncertainty” for the organization, have high visibility in terms of public relations efforts and external media coverage, and make the employer dependent upon themselves for the successful completion of certain key activities. Internet web sites and online databases and are a good place to begin researching who these individuals are. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

The Internet's Impact on Activism: The Case of Burma

The case of Burma raises intriguing questions about the effect of modern computer communications on nonviolent grass-roots movements and on the balance of power between citizens and elected officials, and between local, national, and international power structures. Geographically dispersed, but knitted by the Internet, the pro-democracy movement concerned with Burma (a small, and to many, obscure Southeast Asian nation), was able to raise Constitutional and national policy questions in the United States, when state government passed foreign policy legislation without consulting Washington. This decision violated international trade agreements between the U.S. federal government and foreign entities. Then, in April 1997, President Clinton signed federal legislation banning any new investment by U.S. companies in Burma.... These legislative decisions were made due to a grass-roots campaign run to a considerable degree on the Internet, and despite the presence of only a negligible Burmese constituency in the United States.... This article shows how the Internet has aided the cause of activists of various cultures in ways that would not have been possible in the era before the Internet's networking capabilities became cheaply and globally available.

Nahdlatul Ulama, Traditional Islam and Modernity in Indonesia. Edited by Greg Barton and Greg Fealy. Clayton, Australia: Monash Asia Institute, 1996. xvii, 293 pp.

This is the first English-language book on Nahdlatul Ulama Indonesia's largest Islamic organisation & also one of its least studied. This book seeks to explain key aspects of its behaviour & ideology & its relationship with the state & other internal power structures along with attitudes to change & modernisation & adds scholarship to area.

The Catholic Church in the Nicaraguan Revolution: A Gramscian Analysis

This essay employs a Gramscian framework to analyze the role of the Catholic Church in the Nicaraguan revolution. The differing positions of the hierarchy and base in the Church are explained in terms of the class conflict in Nicaraguan society and in terms of the Church's institutional necessities. The hierarchy's stance was both a reflection of the positions held by the Nicaraguan bourgeoisie and a result of the bishops' desire to preserve the Church's influence in society. As those at the base of the Church began to suffer increased oppression and poverty, they began to participate in the revolutionary struggle. Liberation theology encouraged and legitimated such action. While the base's support of the FSLN threatened the hierarchy's bourgeois political project and interest in self-preservation, its adoption of liberation theology threatened the reproduction of the Church's internal power structure. As such, conflict within the Church also developed

State Characteristics and Foreign Policy:

In the UNESCO crisis the industrialized countries were confronted with the Third World's claim for a New World Information and Communication Order. To this challenge they reacted in many ways, ranging from support of Third World demands to withdrawal from UNESCO. In order to explain this variety, the policies of the United States, the Soviet Union, France and West Germany at the height of the crisis in 1983/84 are compared. Three competing approaches of foreign policy analysis are tested: foreign policy as `interest-oriented behaviour', `behavioural style', or `emergent behaviour'. On the whole, `interest-oriented behaviour' proves to be the most adequate model because the conflict behaviours of the four countries can be systematically related to their different interests. Only US and West German behaviours differed to a much greater extent than their interests. In a basic first cut the variety of UNESCO policies is therefore explained by variables assumed to influence foreign policy interests: the media systems, and the societal values they represent, as well as the positions in the overall international power structure. In a second cut this explanation is refined by looking at factors which might account for differences in US and West German foreign policy styles. In this respect, the differences in behaviours seemed above all to reflect differences in the belief systems of the German and American foreign policy elites.

WHO TALKS TO WHOM: ÉLITENESS AMONG THE WORLD'S NATIONS

International standing is always relative. To T.A. Mits in Toronto, New York, or Moscow it's the clan in Parliament, the White House, or the Kremlin who are the aristocracy. And it is the study of who talks to whom among the world's nations that provides insights into which countries constitute the nobility of the international power structure. Those nations making critical decisions in the political arena and directing the course of history are those who are ‘more equal than others' at the United Nations or Geneva peace talks.

American strategy after bipolarity

Joseph Nye reviews American strategy at the beginning of the 1990S and argues that the more complex international power structure after the recent changes in East-West relations increases the needfor America to engage constructively in an interdependent world. This it can do from a position of strength; contrary to claims of its 'decline', America's strength is not weakening but has emerged more clearly from behind the distorting effect of the Second World War. Nye puts forward a powerful plea for American confidence and leadership in international relations.