Western Analysts Research Articles

The WTO and China's ban on foreign investment in telecommunication services: a game-theoretic analysis

China's telecommunication services sector was closed to foreign direct investment (FDI) during the 1990s. The official ban on FDI persisted despite China's enormous demand for capital to build out its telecommunication infrastructure. It remained in place despite statements from Western analysts that it was not sustainable and repeated predictions that it was about to be relaxed. What created the ban, why did it stay in place so long, and why did China suddenly offer, in its World Trade Organization accession agreement with the United States, to change it significantly? This paper identifies the domestic policy bargains that supported the FDI restriction. A simple game theory model is used to analyze the way four players — (1) the Chinese state, (2) the Ministry of Information Industry/China Telecom, (3) Telecom's domestic rivals, and (4) foreign strategic investors — interacted over access to foreign capital and technology. We contend that this analytical framework provides a much more solid understanding of the forces shaping Chinese telecommunications policy than simplistic extrapolations of Western notions of liberalization and privatization. The model is then used to assess whether China's willingness to open up to foreign strategic investment in the sector was driven primarily by its own domestic reform process, or by the external pressures generated by its desire to join the WTO. Our model predicts that China would not have opened up to foreign investment in telecommunication services without the need to bargain for WTO accession. It is our conclusion that the state's desire for WTO accession tipped the game's equilibrium sufficiently to alter the FDI ban.

A Liberation Psychoanalysis for Russia

���������� Background During my visit to Russia I found it to be a confused and confusing place. Since my visit to Russia in October of 1997, I have developed some tentative ideas concerning the possible “place” of psychoanalytic theory and practice in today’s Russia. While there, and now as well, I feel that the present Western psychoanalytic establishment, which I believe is very vulnerable itself, may be taking an hegemonic approach toward Russia which would be in Western self-interest rather than in the interest of the Russian people. I think that Western psychoanalysts might be enticed by the market value of Russia in at least two ways: the chance to spread a Western brand of psychoanalytic thought and practice to a potentially newly developing democratic/capitalist nation; and to reap the “profits” of their “God’s Eye View.” The “God’s Eye View” of the orthodox psychoanalyst is that they represent a universal standpoint that reifies neutrality in all circumstances. In Russia’s current political atmosphere of post communism/post-totalitarianism and authoritarianism, neutrality and politics cannot coexist. Russia, with its totalitarian history, has a population that responds unreflectively to authoritarian rule. Western orthodox psychoanalysis delivers its messages with authority. The paradox is that although Western analysts are working from a so-called free model of the mind, their delivery style might greatly appeal to Russians who are used to dogma, rigid thinking, and taking orders. The Russians, it seems clear to me, have “no mental model of freedom” (Sebek, Michael, personal communication, Prague, Oct. 1997). The “God’s Eye View” as taken by Western orthodox psychoanalysis might have

Sports history and East German national identity

Modern sports have played a significant role in constructing identities and ideologies since their gradual emergence in the mid nineteenth century. But the political functions of sports have only really been identified in the twentieth century. It is now prudent to look back and consider how sports have influenced the rise and fall of political and social systems. Sports in communist countries have always been a fertile ground for research, yet few Western analysts have examined them beyond the elite, international level. Crucial to any analysis of sports is a critique of the way they function within societies to produce and reproduce dominant ideologies and to garner sympathetic national support. In this way, the hegemonic role of sports can be usefully explored, without simply repeating predictable claims about sports’ role in developing international prestige. When Western researchers have examined sports in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), they have been critical of the perceived significance of international sports there, and of the means the nation used to achieve success. Far less attention has been paid to the domestic significance of sports, and particularly to the history of sports in constructing an East German national identity.

Estimating growth equations for previously centrally planned economies: Dealing with dubious data and disparate information

Rigorous analysis of the previously centrally planned economies (PCPEs) is one of the most important but at the same time difficult tasks currently facing macroeconomists. We develop applied techniques appropriate to situations typically faced by Western analysts of PCPEs, as well as by development economists more generally, involving data which is low in both quality and quantity and doubt concerning the direct applicability of Western theories and ideas, experience and data. We apply these techniques to estimate growth equatiosn for a group of PCPEs and for groups of developed and developing economies.

Collision and collusion: the strange case of Western aid to Eastern Europe, 1889-1998

Conrad's Heart of Darkness comes to mind when one considers Western involvement in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union during the past decade. Like Kurtz, certain political, academic, and business leaders in the West once harbored lofty notions of weaning former communists from their savage ways and bringing them into the light of democracy and free markets. There was much rhetoric about how the West was going to help those countries transform their decrepit political and economic systems into burgeoning capitalist economies. Beneath all the eloquence, however, lay something much more mundane--greed and self-interest. Just as Kurtz discovered a heart of darkness behind all of his enlightened words, on examining the past ten years of financial aid to Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, one finds mostly empty promises, squandered hopes, and bilateral corruption. Wedel's book, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe, provides a fascinating and troubling window into this rapacity.With the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991, what Wedel calls triumphalism prevailed in the West. The forces of capitalism and democracy had won the cold war, yet no clear demarcation existed between victor and vanquished. Many in the East felt like victims, believing that defeat had either been imposed on them by the former elites or that the West shared responsibility. While many Westerners gloated, they displayed little urgency to help the former communist countries. Minus the physical destruction caused in a traditional war, Western analysts argued that advice, planning, and recommendations would serve as the mortar for the countries to rebuild. And there was no shortage of those willing to proffer (and profit from) this advice.The inconclusive cold war victory would not have permitted the West to occupy the countries of Eastern Europe, so many Western governments decided to channel aid through private firms. Smelling a fresh new market, Western consulting firms pounced and willingly accepted the role of political and economic consultants for these fledgling governments. However, the political and economic lessons those firms taught were not the most ennobling.Although the consulting firms claimed to represent Western interests, they were mostly concerned with generating profit for themselves. As Wedel points out, the overwhelming share of Western aid ended up in the coffers of the consulting companies. The often overpaid and underqualified consultants demonstrated their capitalist talents by constructing a nearly foolproof laundering mechanism. The secret to the scheme was the blurred lines between academic experts, private consultants, and government bureaucrats. For instance, Jeffrey Sachs, as economic/academic expert, could work with his former colleague, high-level bureaucrat Larry Summers, to ensure that Sachs's private consulting firm would get the contract for the privatization agenda for country X. The intended recipients were left out.The consulting firm's Eastern colleagues soon cracked the code as to how the aid game was played. Because the West was reluctant to work with those who once espoused Marxist principles, little coordination or collaboration existed between consulting firms and former government officials. Clever former communist bureaucrats (now free market champions) created their own private consulting firms. These private firms could then work with their Western counterparts and take their cut of any remaining aid.Because the bulk of aid money was not funding the rebuilding of factories, roads, or schools, but rather ephemeral advice, there were questions as to how to measure progress. If nothing else, the Western consulting firms were experts at creating glossy brochures and hosting high-level meetings where their future successes could be touted and discussed. …

‘A (more) defensive strategy’: The reconceptualisation of Soviet conventional strategy in the 1980s

THE CHANGES IN SOVIET FOREIGN, SECURITY AND DEFENCE POLICY in the second part of the 1980s, momentous as they were, challenged the common wisdom of Sovietology, international relations research, and political science. These changes were a matter of intense dispute among Western political observers and academic analysts, and they still are, even when the Soviet Union is no longer on our maps. The widely divergent conclusions of these analysts reflect their different approaches, assumptions and methods in treating international relations and foreign policy. This article sets out to reassess these explanations by focusing on the internal Soviet policy processes that led to some crucial decisions in the area of Soviet military strategy. It tries to answer the question of what caused the sea change in Soviet policy from planning a totally offensive strategy to designing a much more defensive one. The focus will be on the Soviet conventional strategy for the European battlefield, as this was the area in which the greatest changes occurred. A methodology will be developed and applied that allows us to assess the relative contributions of both foreign and domestic factors in Soviet military-strategic change. The focus of the study will be on a concept that played an important role in this process: 'a (more) defensive strategy'. The analysis of the concept's life-cycle-encompassing generation, development, realisation and decline-sheds light on the deeper causes of the defensive change in Soviet military strategy. The main conclusion is that this change was only in small part caused by Western military-technological challenges, and in much greater part by changes in policy beliefs of Soviet decision makers and in civil-military relations, in combination with the activity of transnational groups of experts. These factors figure in the explanations offered by Western analysts. Sceptical analysts emphasise the role of the international context. They believe that the Gorbachev leadership reacted to the Western military-technological challenges without changing the traditional goals of Soviet security policy. It still tried to weaken NATO by eroding its flexible response strategy and thinning out its conventional forces, to ensure a Warsaw Treaty capability to win a conventional war, and thus to enhance the Soviet political leverage over West European states. Unlike its predecessors, however, the Gorbachev leadership was flexible, taking unilateral and asymmetrical measures that both made the opulent Soviet forces leaner but meaner and

American Corporate Timetabling

This paper is concerned with corporate forms of timetabling and time reckoning and shows some of the patterns of influence between the corporate cultures of the USA and Japan. Prior to the 1970s, US forms of corporate timetabling were defined by western firms as `best practice'. In the 1970s these approaches were embodied and embedded in computer-based timetabling. The American supply industry marketed them throughout the world. However, by the 1960s key firms in Japan in the automobile sector were using time reckoning and timetabling systems which were neither considered possible nor envisaged by western analysts and theories of management. Since the 1980s US firms in many sectors have been re-authoring their time reckoning and timetabling to incorporate elements from Japanese developments.

Rough times in russia: Post soviet science faces a new crisis

In 1991, the Soviet Union boasted a scientific workforce of 1.5 million people. Since then, the number of working scientists has plummeted 40 percent, 900,000, according Western analysts' estimates. Some former researchers have retired, and many of those under age 40 have moved on other occupations. Western hopes that the number of Russian scientists was rebounding after years of decline diminished last October with the death of a prominent laboratory director. Reportedly despondent over his inability pay researchers, Vladimir Nechai of the nuclear weapons laboratory Chelyabinsk-70 killed himself after his appeals Moscow for more funding went unanswered. The outlook for Russian science is pessimistic, says political scientist Loren R. Graham of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Significant sources of Western aid have run out, years of neglect have eroded equipment, and economic turmoil has destroyed scientists' ability work. Of all the people reeling from the collapse of the Soviet Union, scientists rank among those who have fallen the furthest in terms of pay, prestige, and professional opportunity. For researchers who continue their pursuits, survival as a scientist is difficult. Archaeologist Tatyana M. Arsenjeva of the Russian Academy of Sciences has managed the excavation of the ancient town of Tanais in southern Russia for 20 years. Perched on the marshy edges of the River Don, the site has yielded over 20,000 amphorae-large tapered containers for oil, wine, grain, and so on-since excavations began in 1955. Surrounded by hundreds of these vessels in her workroom, Arsenjeva says that her goal is to create a center for dating research finds using amphorae. It isn't easy. Researchers at the dig make $40 a month and are not always paid on time. A decades-old relationship with a large museum in the nearby city of Rostov-on-Don collapsed over differences on how raise money. Now, Arsenjeva faces her largest problem: how obtain funds without losing the object of her research. When the Greek historian Herodotus wrote about Tanais in the fifth century B.C., he reported that Amazons ruled the city. Now, foreign researchers control Tanais. In 1992, work at the site almost halted when Moscow cut off support. A collaborative agreement with German archaeologists brought in needed funding but wrenched control of the dig out of Arsenjeva's hands. Instead of excavating the remains of houses, 90 percent of which are still buried, the German team preferred search for the town's central meeting place, or agora, hoping determine which ancient Greek city exerted the most architectural influence over Tanais. Polish researchers brought in by the Germans are most interested in the tombs of Goth tribesmen who roamed the region before 600 A.D. Plans for excavations are fixed on these two pursuits until the year 2000. Relations are friendly, but the Russians are now essentially working as contract researchers for foreigners at a site in their own country. And we're lucky have what we do, says Valeriy Chesnok, director of the small museum at Tanais.

Popular Culture and the Culture of the Masses in Contemporary China

Popular culture is perhaps the best place to test the claim that "(capitalist) globalization is now an accepted reality," as the new world-space of cultural production and representation is inhabited by images and goods pertaining to the everyday life of the world population, that is, by images and goods that are manufactured by multinational corporations and circulated in a global market. China, the emergent economic giant of the 1990s, has caught on to the latest global cultural production and marketing trends at an astonishing pace. "Get on line!" for instance, is a popular catchphrase among the millions of Chinese whiz kids who use the Internet. Such a rapid change defies the imagination not only of its Western analysts but also of die-hard Chinese ideologues of Western-style modernization and liberal democracy who were exiled overseas in the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen event and whose goals are purportedly nothing less than a prosperous, market-oriented economy and social plurality. Journalists, the proper "postmodern culture workers," on the other hand, have no time to

The post-Leninist state: A conceptual and empirical examination

While it is becoming increasingly evident that the post-Leninist state is experiencing a considerable decline in capacity and strength, Western analysts have been slow to address the situation analytically. This essay examines the reasons for the lack of attention paid to the state by former Sovietologists, and offers a new theoretical perspective on the Leninist and post-Leninist states. The utility of this perspective is subsequently demonstrated by applying it to the case of local government reform in Poland. The inability of the Polish reform to overcome the administrative weakness of the state demonstrates both the seriousness of the problem, and the need for greater “state” consciousness on the part of post-Sovietologists.

Economics and Shifting Alliances: Jordan's Relations with Syria and Iraq, 1975–81

A key characteristic of inter-Arab politics since World War II has been seemingly ever-shifting alliances. In attempting to explain patterns in Arab state behavior, Arab and Western analysts alike have generally attributed the sources of alignment decisions, implicitly or explicitly, to the personalities of the leaders or to ideological positions. Although such explanations may be intuitively appealing, the historical record is replete with examples that challenge such an analysis: Syria and Iraq's rapprochement in 1979, secular Syria and theocratic Iran's alliance during the Iran–Iraq War, and conservative Jordan's honeymoon with Iraq during the 1980s. These are only a few of the numerous, significant examples of alignments that suggest a rethinking of the bases of Arab interaction may be in order.

Policy-Relevant Theory and the Challenge of Diagnosis: The End of the Cold War as a Case Study

This paper concentrates on three questions: (1) What analytical challenges does explaining the end of the Cold War necessarily entail? (2) In what ways did Soviet perceptions change during the Gorbachev period and how was the change perceived and explained by Western analysts? In other words, what did Americans learn about what Soviet leaders had learned? (3) How can we explain the learning that occurred? What is involved in treating perception as the dependent variable? The first part of the paper argues that Alexander George was correct in identifying actor specific theory as an important need in international relations research. Part two then looks at Western efforts to study Soviet perceptions as a case study of how the field dealt with the theoretical and operational task. The section closes with a discussion of what we can learn about our old conclusions and methods from the new information and changes that Gorbachev's perestroika unleashed. Part three takes up the task of explaining change, treating perception as a dependent variable.

Germans plan chemical renaissance at Bitterfeld

When the Berlin Wall came down three years ago, Western analysts were keen to write off nearly all the chemical industry in what had been East Germany. It was heavily polluting, the plants and equi...

Soviet Negotiating Behavior: A Research Design

Defining, understanding, and explaining Soviet international behavior has been a problem for western analysts and policymakers from the earliest days of the Bolshevik Revolution. Although a great deal of attention has been devoted to this problem over the years, it remains central to an informed understanding of Soviet foreign policy. Particularly with the end of the Cold War, the demise of the Soviet Union, and the opening of Soviet archives, it may now become possible for a full understanding of this controversial question.1 A key part of Soviet international behavior remains Soviet behavior in negotiating situations, because it directly relates to the positions which the west has taken on negotiations. The extraordinary focus in recent years on arms control negotiations testifies to the critical role this issue has played in the development of American policy toward the Soviet Union, particularly since 1963.2

Fueling the Post-Soviet Economies: Oil and Gas

Ever since the nineteenth century, the Eurasian idea has been a popular way of explaining the unique dualism of the Russian national character. But with the collapse of the Soviet Empire, an important phemonenon is emerging a phenomenon that is not receiving sufficient consideration by Western analysts and businessmen. As the ensuing economic disintegration of the former Union accelerates, three distinct zones of influence are forming: western, southern, and eastern. In terms of economic affairs, the western part of the former union is drifting further and further in the direction of the European Community, while the east Asian periphery is leaning towards Japan. The southern Asian regions are gravitating toward Turkey, Iran, and neighboring Muslim countries. Meanwhile, the industrial potential of the states on the territory of the former Soviet Union is rapidly deteriorating. Their capacity to maintain let alone expand output, has been seriously weakened. In 1990, in order to reduce the budget deficit, a dramatic decrease in industrial investment was effected, one that was unprecedented in the economic history of the Soviet Union. This severe cutback in investments was not carried out in a rational manner: it did not facilitate the resolution of

Civil-military relations in changing communist societies: A comparative study of China and the Soviet Union

The events that happened in 1989 in different parts of the communist world-in Yugoslavia’s Kosovo, in Soviet Georgia and Azerbaijan, in China’s Tiananmen Square, and in Bucharest, Romania-all have one thing in common; the conspicuous role played by the military. Indeed, as communism crumbles from Europe to Asia, it appears that the only force that might be able to stop the process is the armed forces controlled by the communist party. Suspicion and speculation of a possible Red Army coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and his reforms have existed both inside and outside the Soviet Union since Gorbachev came to power. Could and will the Tiananmen massacre be repeated in the Soviet Union? Why did the People’s Liberation Army act as it did in the spring of 1989? What factors facilitate the use or non-use of military force in the process of systematic change in communist societies? Have reforms produced different army behavior and divergent civil-military relations in the Soviet Union and China? If so, why? These important questions, surprisingly, have been addressed inadequately by Western academics. Before June, 1989, there was a general lack ofattention by Western analysts to internal developments within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Consequently, the PLA’s action in Tiananman Square on June 4 shocked China-watchers in the West as well as the rest of the world.’ Research on the Soviet military in the last five years has, by and large, focused on disarmament, military strength, military doctrine and strategy, and issues related to East-West security. Few studies have concentrated on changes within the Soviet army and its relations with the communist party and with civilian society.? This study analyses internal developments in the armed forces and civil-military relations, and assesses the changing nature of the military in the PRC and the USSR. On the theoretical level, an effort to evaluate past theories under new circumstances is long overdue. From the late 1960s through the 1970s an extensive literature on civil-military relations in communist states, especially in the USSR and China, became available after many scholars rejected the totalitarian model of communist studies.3 Of

Deciphering the Natures of Lust

We seem a curiously cursed species, caught in a dichotomizing combination of a lusting subjectivity and the experience of being an object of lust. We know we desire and we know we are desired, subject and object in a web of arousals and genders and roles and impersonations of natural order. It is the naturalness of engendered sexuality which is being Questioned now, as anthropologists turn the subtlety of our analytic lens on a close examination of what, at least for those of us encultured into the European tradition, is a fundamental attribute of personhood and being. In this discussion I want to extend the range of Questions which the insightful papers gathered here raise to a more general concern for how we 'read' sexual meaning from the anthropological evidence. What follows is in two parts. The first Questions recent evidence from Brazil regarding the coexistence of mutually exclusive schemes of sexual classification in a single social milieu. My concern in that discussion is how frames of observation applied to novel contexts distort our ability to see sex and sexuality as they are lived. The second section of this discussion considers why Western analysts appear to be trapped in these limiting frames by deciphering the Eurocentric assumptions which are embedded in much research and writing on sex and sexuality in other cultures.

Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World

A dream in which a man has sex with his mother may promise him political or commercial success--according to dream interpreters of late antiquity, who, unlike modern Western analysts, would not necessarily have drawn conclusions from the dream about the dreamer's sexual psychology. Evidence of such shifts in perspective is leading scholars to reconsider in a variety of creative ways the history of sexuality. In these fifteen original essays, eminent cultural historians and classicists not only discuss sex, but demonstrate how norms, practices, and even the very definitions of what counts as sexual activity have varied significantly over time. Ancient Greece offers abundant evidence for a radically different set of sexual standards and behaviors from ours. Sex in ancient Hellenic culture assumed a variety of social and political meanings, whereas the modern development of a sex-centered model of personality now leads us to view sex as the key to understanding the individual. Drawing on both the Anglo-American tradition of cultural anthropology and the French tradition of les sciences humaines, these essays explore the iconography, politics, ethics, poetry, and medical practices that made sex in ancient Greece not a paradise of liberation but an exotic locale hardly recognizable to visitors from the modern world. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Peter Brown, Anne Carson, Franoise Frontisi-Ducroux, Maud W. Gleason, Ann Ellis Hanson, Franois Lissarrague, Nicole Loraux, Maurice Olender, S.R.F. Price, James Redfield, Giulia Sissa, and Jean-Pierre Vernant.

Legitimacy, Religion, and Nationalism in the Middle East

The significance of legitimacy to regime maintenance has been much neglected in recent investigations of the Third World, particularly by behavioralists and rational choice theorists. I define legitimacy, discuss factors that may have contributed to this neglect, and explore the significance of nationalism and religion as major sources of legitimacy in the Middle East. Both a misunderstanding of the role of higher values and rationality in individuals' relationship to social systems and a faulty projection applied to the mainsprings of behavior in other cultures have distorted the perceptions of a number of Western analysts. The relationship between religion and nationalism is complex. Contrary to the common assumption in the West, Islam in general has generated fairly sophisticated constitutional theories. Islamic fundamentalism in particular has been a major source of innovation and adaptation—as well as of spiritual gratification—for the Muslim masses.

The decline of Soviet power

Predictions abound concerning the imminent decline of Soviet power and c o m m u n i s m generally. Prominent Western analysts, both conservative and liberal, have pointed to the plethora of problems M o s c o w faces which appear to make Soviet decline inevitable: economic stagnation, lagging technical development , bureaucratic obstruction of needed economic reform, increasing ethnic tension within the U S S R , the mount ing economic and political problems of Eas te rn E u r o p e , setbacks in the Third World, and the much diminished appeal of Marx i sm generally. Soviet officials have also openly acknowledged many of these problems and have warned of dire consequences for the Soviet Union i f they are not resolved. Mikhail G o r b a c h e v himself, for example, declared that ethnic tension within the U S S R could endanger «the destiny and integrity of our state)).1