Non-governmental Forces Research Articles

Meeting Marginal Demands in New Welfare Governance? China’s Contracting of Welfare Services in the Sectors of Disability and HIV/AIDS

Abstract Since 2013, China has rolled out a policy to contract welfare services to non-governmental forces. This has stimulated a growing body of research on the change of China’s welfare governance. This article focuses on a topic that needs to be added, which is the variation of contracting across different service sectors and the operation of the policy in meeting the needs of marginal people. Based on policy analyses and in-depth interviews, we examine services contracting in the sectors of disability and Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS). We found a lack of services provision for the marginal groups in the general contracting of public service. Between the two sectors, we found variations in their definition of welfare services, institutional settings, and specific contracting practices. We argue that while contracting is often seen as a new welfare governance mechanism, it fails to revitalise social services and reproduces welfare inequalities across different groups in China.

Protection of Children in Difficulty in China during the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study investigated the resilience of the Chinese child protection system in responding to the special needs of children in difficulty under the specific circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study applied qualitative document analysis of child protection administrative documents, in-depth interviews with 13 child protection professionals, and an in-depth case study of 14 children living in difficulty, complemented by relevant information available in the media. The results indicate that there are good policies in China’s child protection services but the organizational and functional fragmentation complicates implementation, suggesting a need for the development of bottom-up practices. The essential conclusion supported by these results is that the child protection system should be regarded and developed as a systematic project combining the legal, policymaking, and professional systems of child welfare services as well as governmental and non-governmental forces. As the COVID-19 pandemic has raised awareness of the need to develop the field of child protection holistically as an integrated system in terms of social sustainability in China, an international literature-based comparison indicates that the pandemic has also raised similar political awareness in other countries.

RELASI BIROKRASI DAN POLITIK DALAM KONTEKS DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE

The development of Indonesia socio-political situation in the past two decades has encouraged the idea of the need for the government to share roles with non-governmental forces, such as the private sector and the public. Good governance is as a system that allows constructive synergies between the government, the private sector and civil society in the implementation of development. Even the World Bank specifically confirms the important role of good governance in achieving successful development. In this system. the state or government functions to create a conducive political and legal environment, the private sector encourages the creation of employment and community income, while the community itself accommodates social political interaction and participates in various economic, social and political activities. This paper will focus more on the study of efforts to revitalize the government bureaucracy in the midst of configuration changes towards efforts to realize good governance. Keywords: Bureaucracy, Good Governance, Development

The “Hybrid War” Phenomenon in the Coercive Component of Current World Politics

The growing role of the military factor in world politics calls for considering and philosophizing about an ever-broader spectrum of warfare forms and methods. In recent years, various interpretations of the “hybrid war” formula in this spectrum have been distinguished in our country and elsewhere, assuming the use of not only advanced technologies but also means and methods of armed struggle that go back centuries. A major role in conducting this warfare is given to special operations forces; they are actively being developed by many countries, including the Russian Federation. Hybrid wars are characterized by active information confrontation and struggle in cyberspace, and the actors can be both governmental and nongovernmental forces, including private military companies, within the system of world politics. This phenomenon must be considered when developing modern war theory.

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This paper analyses effectiveness and prospects of the Eastern Partnership in the context of its ten-year implementation and the results of the Brussels Summit in 2017. The article identified main problems that impede the use of its full potential for a deeper transformation of the EU’s eastern neighbourhood. These are: 1) internal challenges for the sustainable transformation of EaP countries; 2) Russia’s influence counterbalancing the EU’s Europeanisation influence in the region; 3) the weakness of the EU’s incentives to support domestic reforms in the partner countries. The basis of most of the problems that is hampering the reforms effectiveness is systemic corruption, selfish interests of the elites and ineffective state institutions of the partner countries. Many problems of the EaP partner states stem from the reluctance of the Russian Federation to respect their sovereignty and the attempt to preserve its “sphere of influence” in the post-Soviet space. However, the model of “integration without membership”, proposed by the EU within the EaP, does not have tools to stimulate truly deep reforms.The authors also formulated conclusions on the need for rethinking the Eastern Partnership. Firstly, the EU must recognise the political realities in the partner countries and, accordingly, adapt its expectations of reforms and policies towards governments and non-governmental forces. Secondly, a renewed approach to relations with partner countries should take into account their sensitivity to external pressure, namely “the pain points” that let them open to Russia’s influence, and to propose ways that would allow it to be minimised in the sense of building EU “soft power” and counteraction to the Kremlin’s “hard power”. Thirdly, the EU should think of what intermediate incentives it can offer its pro-European neighbours (Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine) in order to gradually make way for recognition of the status of potential candidates for membership if the internal transformations become irreversible.

Modern Industry and the Peasant Economy in China (中国近代工业与小农经济)

Since its early history, due to the various constraints in exchanging with other civilizations, China has relied mainly on domestic resources to satisfy the needs of its population for consumption and employment and to solve the challenges that confronted the state. Central to this solution is the combination of the agriculture of the peasant family with traditional industry and sidelines, a process that evolved over thousands of years of persistent experiments, in which the biggest challenge lay in the constant tension between population growth and the constraint of resources on the satisfaction of subsistence needs. The advent of Western influences in the late Qing period made available the products of mass-manufacturing by machines to Chinese peasants as raw materials of the family-based industry and sidelines, hence the addition of a new factor to the preexisting pattern of resource allocation. What emerged in modern China thus was an unprecedented “modern tripartite structure” that encompassed the new-style family economy, modern industrial economy, and traditional rural economy. Nevertheless, the loss of the country’s sovereign rights and the recurrence of war impeded the transformation of the traditional mode of production that entailed the intervention of the state; the same factors also explain the failure of spontaneous non-governmental forces in developing a national economy in which industry and agriculture grew in full coordination with each other. 由于国际交流环境的不利，中国自早期文明伊始，就只能主要依靠在领土范围内解决吃饭和就业等国计民生首要问题。这是靠小农家庭农业与工副业的结合，在数千年的不懈奋斗中完成的。农民家庭经济的最大问题是人口增加与谋生资源难以满足之间的压力。清末列强入侵后，农民紧紧抓住大机器产品作为家庭工副业的生产原料，为改进原有的资源配置增加了新因素。近代中国史无前例地出现了新式家庭经济、现代工业经济与传统农村经济的“近代三元结构”。但由于丧失国权、战乱频仍，需要国家之力介入的旧生产方式变革、工业与农业全方位协调发展的国民经济格局，未能由民间自发力量完成。(This article is in Chinese.)

A summary of the past two decades' research on non-governmental forces in modern China

Recent research on non-governmental forces in modern China, during its inception in the early 1990s, bore obvious influences from Western theories of civil society and the public sphere. By the late 1990s, this research began to pick up new momentum: the scope was expanded, findings were increased, essays and empirical studies came forth incessantly. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, research by Chinese scholars on the topic grew at an even greater rate. Aside from those academics who continued to borrow theories of civil society and public sphere, more scholars began employing the analytical framework of “society and state” to tackle the many issues within the non-governmental sectors of modern China.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Russia's March 2000 presidential election represents one step forward and two steps back for Russian democracy. For the first time in Russia's history, power within the Kremlin has changed hands through an electoral process. The election not only took place but was conducted as constitutionally prescribed, no small achievement for a country with Russia's authoritarian history. More than two-thirds of the eligible voters participated, and they appeared to make informed choices among a range of candidates who offered competing platforms, policies, and leadership styles. The election, however, was not contested on a level playing field. The winner, acting president Vladimir Putin, enjoyed tremendous advantages that tainted the process. Although weak in some arenas, the Russian state still enjoys too much power with respect to the electoral process, while nongovernmental forces--political parties, civic organizations, trade unions, and independent business groups--remain too weak to shape the outcomes of elections.

Nongovernmental Forces and World Politics: A Study of Business, Labor, and Political Groups. By Werner J. Feld. (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972. Pp. 306. $16.50.)

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Nongovernmental Forces and World Politics: A Study of Business, Labor, and Political Groups

Nongovernmental Forces and World Politics: A Study of Business, Labor, and Political Groups

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: The Migration of Workers in the United Kingdom and the European Community, W. R. Böhning U.S. Foreign Policy ad Peru, ed. by Daniel A. Sharp. Latin American Economic Integration and US. Policy, by Joseph Grunwald, Miguel S. Wionczek, and Martin Carnoy. Nongovernmental Forces and World Politics: A Study of Business, Labor, and Political Groups. Werner J. Feld. Praeger Special Studies in International Politics and Public Affairs The Coming Clash: The Impact of the International Corporation on the Nation State, by Hugh Stephenson Jean Monnet and the United States of Europe, by Merry and Serge Bromberger. Translated by Elaine P. Hajperin.

War Crimes By Irregular and Nongovernmental Forces

War Crimes By Irregular and Nongovernmental Forces