Statist Approach Research Articles

Decolonization and Diaspora

Decolonization and Diaspora

Ages of financial instability

Starting from the mid-nineteenth century, this paper analyzes two periods of financial instability connected with financial globalization. The first culminates with the 1929 crisis, while the second characterizes the more recent experience starting from the 1970s. The period in between is divided into two subperiods. The first goes up to World War II and sees a retrenchment from globalization and the affirmation of a statist approach to national policy autonomy. The second subperiod, marked by the new international monetary order and limited globalization, although appearing as a relatively calm interlude, conceals the seeds of a renewed push toward financial fragility. The above periods are synthetically analyzed in terms of the development and mutual fertilization of theories, institutions, and vested public and private interests. The narrative is based on two interpretative keys: the Minskyan theory of financial fragility and changes in the public-private partnership, mainly with reference to the financial sector for which the role of the State as the guarantor of last resort necessarily ensues. The lesson is that a laissez-faire approach strengthens asymmetric powers and financial instability, rendering it extremely difficult and socially costly for the State to comply with its role of financial guarantor.

Ages of Financial Instability

Starting from the mid-nineteenth century, this paper analyzes two periods of financial instability connected with financial globalization. The first culminates with the 1929 crisis, while the second characterizes the more recent experience starting from the 1970s. The period in between is divided into two subperiods. The first goes up to World War II and sees a retrenchment from globalization and the affirmation of a statist approach to national policy autonomy in pursuing domestic goals, for which we take as examples the New Deal, financial regulation, and the new international cooperative approach finally leading to Bretton Woods. The second subperiod, marked by the new international monetary order and limited globalization, although appearing as a relatively calm interlude, conceals the seeds of a renewed push toward financial fragility. The above periods are synthetically analyzed in terms of the development and mutual fertilization of theories, institutions, and vested public and private interests. The narrative is based on two interpretative keys: the Minskyan theory of financial fragility and changes in the public-private partnership, mainly with reference to the financial sector for which the role of the State as guarantor of last resort necessarily ensues. The lesson that can be derived is that a laissez-faire approach to globalization strengthens asymmetric powers and necessarily leads to overglobalization, as well as to financial and economic instability, rendering it extremely difficult and socially costly for the State to comply with its role of financial guarantor.

How China attempts to drive a wedge in the U.S.-Australia alliance

ABSTRACT Wedging is an important strategy for China to disrupt potential countervailing response in its quest for regional hegemony. Yet, little has been known about how China pursues this strategy and the conditions for its success. This article contends that China has employed a combined statist and trans-state approach to wedge the U.S.-Australia alliance. Beijing has two main aims: promote an alignment of interest with Canberra at Washington’s expense and prevent Canberra from siding with Washington. It relies on three modes of influence (coercion, inducement and persuasion) to alter the costs and benefits of Canberra remaining aligned to Washington. The success of China’s wedge strategy is contingent on the use of policy compartmentalisation, the target’s regime type and the nature of its trans-state influence. China has achieved partial success in three issue areas: the South China Sea dispute, the U.S.-China 5G competition and the international isolation of Taiwan.

Contemporary Problems of Political Transformation in Modern Germany

The article states that the political party system formed on the constitutional basis of the Basic Law of Germany is one of the key pillars of democracy of the German state. The Western German-style political party system, based on a substantial legal framework, political culture, and traditions, has convincingly proved its democratic spirit and viability over several decades of the post-war period. The effectiveness of this system was ensured by the presence of the two large parties, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. The attractiveness of their policy priorities, broad political activity, and statist approaches made it possible to displace other, less influential, parties. The effectiveness and viability of the political party system of Germany are also proven by the course of the process of restoring the country’s state unity. The current period is characterised by systemic crisis phenomena, which have not spared German major parties. These processes are also taking place in other European countries, as previously stable parties transform over time into an idiosyncratic kind of political and technological institutions. For them, short-term success is a priority and is defined by the number of votes cast, rather than the focus on robust principles and visions of the future. However, it may be fair to claim that the whole previous experience testifies to the creativity of the political party system of post-war Germany, thus making the modern Federal Republic of Germany able to cope with contemporary problems and challenges. This is – and will be – buttressed by time and new approaches pursued by politicians, experts, and scholars as well as the previous practice of reaching compromises and social concord in the name of national interests. The political party system was and remains an important constituent of the entire state and political system of Germany. Keywords: political party system, Federal Republic of Germany, state system, Germany, Christian Democrats, Social Democrats.

Afterwork and Overtime: The Social Reproduction of Human Capital

Afterwork and Overtime: The Social Reproduction of Human Capital

The Statist Approach to the Philosophy of Immigration and the Problem of Statelessness

The issue of statelessness poses problems for the statist (or nationalist) approach to the philosophy of immigration. Despite the fact that the statist approach claims to constrain the state’s right to exclude with human rights considerations, the arguments statists offer for the right of states to determine their own immigration policies would also justify citizenship rules that would render some children stateless. Insofar as rendering a child stateless is best characterized as a violation of human rights and insofar as some states have direct responsibility for causing such harm, the problem of non-refugee stateless children points to greater constraints than most statists accept on states’ right to determine their own rules for membership. While statists can ultimately account for the right not to be rendered stateless, recognizing these additional human rights constraints ultimately weakens the core of the statist position.

Bringing the study of warfare into theories of nationalism

AbstractThis article argues that warfare has been marginalised in theories of nationalism but that in conjunction with nationalism is vital for understanding the rise of nation‐states, the formation of nations and the nature of the international system. It offers a critique of statist approaches, suggests mechanisms through which warfare may sacralise nations and explores different patterns of nation‐state formation as they affect the interstate system. In particular, it emphasises tensions between state and nation‐formation as activated by the fortunes of war and the destabilising effects of waves of imperial dissolution, which are accompanied by patterns of re‐imperialization. It suggests that it is simplistic both to claim that war has led to a transition from empires to nation‐states and that contemporary practices of war‐making have led to a postnational era.

Reviving the Dragon: Social Ideas and Social Policy Development in Modern China

Social policy development in China is closely related to the generation and diffusion of social knowledge through which political and social elites define social problems and elaborate policy solutions. Drawing on theoretical insights from the ideational institutionalism, this paper seeks to trace the origin and evolution of the social ideas in order to map common threads spanning different phases of modern Chinese history. It argues that the “social” idea has been essentially shaped by the continuous desire for national resurgence in response to China’s perceived existential crisis triggered by Western imperialism at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Starting from the late Qing dynasty, the majority of the Chinese intelligentsia advocated for the restraint of individual rights in the service of promoting a strong statehood able to pursue commonweal and restore national pride. Social policy and social rights appeared more as a means to achieve other elevated goals than as an end in itself. In this light, the contemporary People’s Republic of China represents political undertakings that initially addressed the “national question” using a socialist approach, and later switched to market economic reforms. In various phases, the social ideas have been constantly reframed to accommodate changing political and economic circumstances with profound implications for social welfare developments with a clear disposition in favor of the statist approach.

Review of Tom Wainwright’s Narconomics: How to Run a Drug Cartel

Tom Wainwright provides a compelling account about the economics behind the illicit drug trade in Latin America that reconciles free market solutions with state regulation. While Wainwright is generally correct in his free market prescriptions and criticisms of short-sighted government thrift, an explicitly statist approach focused on better governance, stronger state capacity, and robust state regulatory control over new markets would have strengthened and clarified his argument.

Countering Terror in South Asia: Beyong Statist Approaches

While social and communal factors influence motivations, less attention is often paid to the environment in which individuals are either radicalized or deradicalized and the role that families and communities might play in this regard. The question of communities tends to come into the equation of strategies to counter terrorism, violent extremism and radicalization under two different lenses: One secrutiny, based on a negative narrative, focuses on how the community creates conditions for its members to become radicalized. These often happen in places where members of religious communities where unforgiving versions of religion is being taught including places like prisons which are notorious hotbeds of radicalization through exchanges among prisoners; and even within families which help recruit brothers, wives etc. into so-called Jihad, such as is often the case in Central Asia. This paper will focus on certain misconceptions of Islam.

The Robustness of EU Financial Crimes Legislation: A Critical Review of the EU and UK Anti-Fraud and Money Laundering Scheme

In this paper we set out to chart the European Union’s (EU) genesis of fighting crime as partly one of establishing the EU as an “Area of Freedom, Security and Justice” (AFSJ) and partly one of facilitating the EU internal market creation and the establishment of a global market place. We provide an overview of the current complexities facing the EU in its current struggles for a reformation and against statist approaches by focusing on the law on financial crimes and its contemporary challanges. When viewed in an historical perspective the EU’s tactic in the fight against financial crimes appears to depart from the classic internal market-based formula of the removal of obstacles for market creation and thereby ventures into the EU criminal law domain with all of its inherent complexities, without an adequately matured legal framework to endorse its policies from within. Second, to the extent that the EU adopts the market theory template in the EU policy area of ‘Freedom, Security and Justice’, there are global elements to the EU’s sanction policies. These features confirm a hybridity in which legal sources are interacting within the AFSJ field. We aim to critically assess the current state of play of the regulation of financial crimes in the contemporary EU. Furthermore, the paper focuses on recent developments in the area of financial crimes by looking at the framework for EU anti-fraud legislation: OLAF, the proposed EU Public prosecutor, the function of Eurojust and the proposed Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the fight against fraud to the Union's financial interests by means of criminal law. Specifically, we discuss the way the Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive came about and if, as claimed by the EU itself, it equips the EU with the right legal toolkit for fighting money laundering and terror financing. We also set out to scrutinize the constitutional implications of an increased powers vested in the EU Agencies in this area as powerful players for EU enforcement and we discuss the question of accountability as well as the problem of a human rights deficit in this area. We end however on a happier note by looking at the judiciaries concern to maintain individual data protection and the EU Court of Justice as a guarantee of proportionality and reasonableness in European legislative action.

The Reversal of the Privatisation Logic in Central European Transition Economies

The main ambition of this study is to explain the unexpected change in the transition process of some Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries starting in the second half of the 2000s. Special attention is paid to changes in and the attitudes of governments toward state ownership. Although statist approaches gained momentum in the economic policy of various states in and after the 2008/2009 crisis, this did not mean a fundamental reorientation expressed in changes in the main economic conditions such as ownership patterns. Nevertheless, governments in some CEE countries seem to flirt with such ideas too in the general policy of increasing state economic intervention. The privatisation process was stopped and in a number of cases, formerly privatised assets were re-nationalised. Governments strengthened their influence in the governance structure in mixed-ownership companies. The main body of the present paper provides a better understanding of this change in state property policies. We also call attention to the risks of a reversal of the privatisation logic. An increasing role of the state as proprietor may today strengthen similar negative political and economic consequences and risks as the ones against which the privatisation agenda of the 1990s was suggested. It can reduce competition, give way for political and personal rentseeking, and weaken the functions of market economic institutions.

In Defence of State Directed Enhancement

AbstractThis article considers the ways in which a liberal society ought to view the potential to cognitively or physically enhance children. At present, the dominant approach in the literature is to leave this decision to parents. I suggest that the parental choice approach is often inadequate and fails to account properly for the interests of children and wider society in enhancement decisions. Instead I suggest that the state should play a greater role in determining when, and how, to enhance. To make this case, I compare the case of enhancement with existing practices of education, an area in which the state already plays a significant role. Finally I suggest that some concerns with a statist approach are not as serious as has been argued.

Emerging powers, state capitalism and the oil sector in Africa

The global development landscape is rapidly changing with the acceleration of the economies of emerging countries and this has important implications for sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Notably, these emerging partners share a broad comparative advantage in their outward engagement. They are able to access large pools of finance and capital reserves and they also uphold a version of the Developmental State Model that encourages a statist approach to business. This state capitalism is increasingly coming to the fore, particularly in the aftermath of the global financial crisis and the evident intellectual collapse of neoliberalism as a sustainable economic model.

A feminist argument against statism: public and private in theories of global justice

Cosmopolitanism and statism represent the two dominant liberal theoretical standpoints in the current debate on global distributive justice. In this paper, I will develop a feminist argument that recommends that statist approaches be rejected. This argument has its roots in the feminist critique of liberal theories of social justice. In Justice, Gender, and the Family Susan Moller Okin argues that many liberal egalitarian theories of justice are inadequate because they assume a strict division between public and private spheres. I will argue that this inadequacy is replicated in statist approaches to global justice. To demonstrate this, I will show how an analogue of Okin's critique of Rawls's A Theory of Justice can be extended to his The Law of Peoples. I will conclude that statist theories inevitably assume a strong divide between public and private spheres and that by doing so they allow for situations marked by gross injustice which anyone concerned with the welfare of the world's most vulnerable should find unacceptable.

A Diamond Scheme is Forever Lost: The Kimberley Process's Deteriorating Tripartite Structure and its Consequences for the Scheme's Survival

Oversight of the multi-billion dollar global diamond trade involves state actors, multinational corporations, and sophisticated civil society groups operating under the umbrella of the Kimberley Process. This unique tripartite governance structure created an opportunity for the parties to develop a system in which conflict diamonds could not enter the stream of commerce, transparency would be institutionalized, and governments and industry participants would be held to account. Yet, the successes of the Kimberley Process are increasingly jeopardized by an overly statist approach that has led to subjugation of the participating nongovernmental organizations. This note argues that for the Kimberley Process to regain its legitimacy, it must reform by recommitting to civil society’s central role, increasing transparency within the diamond industry, and refusing to shield governments from enforcement of its rules.

Global Justice: Between Leviathan and Cosmopolis

Abstract A comprehensive ideal of global justice is not yet theoretically justifiable: nonetheless, it does not deserve the scepticism :(commonly expressed by) many statists express towards it. To create a kind of continuity between global justice –‘Cosmopolis’– and interstate justice –‘Leviathan’– a third, ‘Liberal’ option is proposed. The statist argument is presented through a discussion of Thomas Nagel’s position on global justice. The cosmopolitan argument is presented through a discussion of Amartya Sen’s overall vision of justice. The liberal view, modeled on Rawls’ political philosophy, “proposes” that the right cannot consist in a mere realization of the good. Liberals that respect the ‘priority of right’ believe that morality has to be different from politics. By bypassing institutionalism through moralism, cosmopolitans contradict the priority of the right. Contrary to cosmopolitans, the author maintains that the only moral source of global justice compatible with the priority of the right consists in a duty to protect life in case of ‘urgency’. This duty is not purely humanitarian – as statists would have it – and captures the ethical appeal of cosmopolitanism. Policy Implications • The core problem of global justice is the lack of basic rights to security and subsistence. As such, obligations derived from the duty of justice based on urgency are binding. • The duty of justice can be interpreted through the positions of statism or cosmopolitanism. • The distinction between cosmopolitanism and statism is not only interesting from the point of view of political philosophy but also has a significant tradition within the context of international law and the interpretation of its main sources. While the UN Charter has a generally statist approach, (starting with) Article 2 (that strongly defends) the territorial integrity of states is strongly depended the discipline compromising humanitarian law as introduced in and human rights is largely inspired by cosmopolitanism. • Taking the middle ground between statism and cosmopolitanism into account, based on Rawls’ central idea of the ‘priority of right’, global politics requires more demanding norms than those dictated by humanitarianism. However, global politics of a less demanding type than the ones recommended by a cosmopolitan egalitarian approach.

India's rise in Africa

India's rise in Africa has been largely overlooked, despite the important implications of the growing presence of Indian corporations and a rise in New Delhi's political ties with the continent. Not only are Indian actors providing much-needed investment and capital, but Indo-African connections represent a further important diversification of Africa's international relations, something which reflects a major development for the continent. Indian activity in Africa may be said to constitute a middle ground between China's profit-maximizing and largely statist approach and the much-resented intrusive conditionalities associated with western policies. It is evident that India's growing activity in Africa has the potential to help African companies become more efficient by exposing them to competition, new advances in technology and modern labour skills. African governments could potentially use the opportunity of an increased Indian corporate presence in Africa as sources of appropriate technology, skills and advice for economic development. However, if not handled correctly, any goodwill that India possesses in Africa will quickly be squandered and/or India will become just another actor in Africa. It is up to Africans to negotiate with Indian actors to ensure that the benefits accrued from Indo-African ties are evenly shared and that Indian interest in the continent, alongside that of others, may help to serve as a catalyst for economic revitalization. The key issue is how African leaders can seek to leverage newfound Indian investment and interest in Africa so that Africa's place in global trade networks becomes more proactive and beneficial to the continent's citizens.

Reinventing global democracy

How can democracy be suitably formulated in face of the more global character of contemporary society? Modern ideas and practices of ‘people’s rule’ (whether in a statist or a cosmopolitan mode) fall short as frameworks for global democracy. Statist approaches to global democracy have a host of behavioural, institutional, historical and cultural problems. Modern cosmopolitan approaches do better in addressing contemporary social changes, but are deficient in terms of their globalist tendencies, often oversimplified notions of political identity, limited cultural reflexivity, usually tame responses to resource inequalities and anthropocentrism. To address these shortcomings one might explore an alternative of ‘postmodern global democracies’ built around principles of transscalarity, plural solidarities, transculturality, egalitarian distribution and more ecologically framed ideas of political rights and duties.