Abstract Malaysian foreign policy and diplomacy under Mahathir Mohamad were both grandiose and pragmatic, if not audacious. Faced with a changing and uncertain global environment, current Prime Minister Najib Razak has formulated external strategies expected to sustain Malaysia's economic progress to ensure regime legitimacy and political stability.
Abstract This article examines China's “unconscious power” over Mongolia's environmental sector. It argues that Ulaanbaatar's state weakness and Chinese unconscious power constitute a mutually reinforcing threat to Mongolia's environmental security.
Abstract In this era of globalization, does democracy in Asia have a mediating impact on a country's public sector? As the first empirical analysis focused solely on Asian countries, this paper finds that, in general, democracies are associated with a larger government. In particular, democracies more exposed to the global trade have larger public economies. This is not the case, however, in d…
Abstract Chinese local governments widely resort to extra-budgetary exaction to finance themselves, which generates side effects that necessitate central intervention. Through statistical analysis, this paper finds that the central government intervenes only selectively, following a logic driven by economic development and political stability.
Abstract The Chinese government has implemented electricity reform during the reform era, but the process has been accompanied by widespread power shortages and political struggles among state agencies. This paper addresses this contradiction by explaining two interrelated outcomes: the transformation of the state regulatory structure and the development of corporatized state-owned enterprises.
Abstract Economic overheating is a significant and recurring problem in modern China. This paper analyzes the many factors causing overheating and argues that there are systemic and largely structural explanations for overheating that arise from a number of theorized catalysts, including a bureaucratic catalyst and a historical catalyst.
This article examines the capabilities of Cambodia's garment industry in the post-safeguard policy era, and its future prospects. It first analyzes the industry's experience pre-2005, then discusses the role of foreign investors and the government's open-economy policy. The paper then looks at post-2005 industry problems and offers some recommendations for future growth.
Many observers of the US Supreme Court suspect that justices time their departures from the Court based on ideological and political factors. This paper assesses the theoretical effects of such behavior. Does political timing of retirement devalue the appointment process and thereby make the Court less responsive to the public? Do politically motivated retirements lead to more justices serving …
Although party competition is widely regarded as an important part of a working democracy, it is rarely analysed in political science literature. This article discusses the basic properties of party competition, especially the patterns of interaction in contemporary party systems. Competition as a phenomenon at the macro level has to be carefully distinguished from contest and cooperation as th…
This paper investigates how constituency size affects spatial competition in a two-party system with a new entrant. When the electorate is small, two-party systems are stable only if the following conditions hold: the candidates are neither too certain nor too uncertain about voters’ preferences; competition is sufficiently costly; and the candidates have binding policy commitments. Moreover, w…
This paper reconsiders the discussion on ordinal utilities versus preference intensities in voting theory. It is shown by way of an example that arguments concerning observability and risk-attitudes that have been presented in favour of Arrow’s Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIA), and against utilitarian evaluation, fail due to strategic voting. The failure of these two arguments is t…
Journal of Theoretical Politics
Gradualism is common in international cooperation, as states begin with limited cooperation and choose more ambitious targets slowly over time. However, most models of international cooperation are static and thus cannot explain gradualism. I show that when states can implement domestic reforms to reduce the cost of international cooperation, enforcement concerns prompt gradualism. First, to ac…
This theme issue addresses three research questions: i) how are the impacts of macro-level crises transmitted to children's micro-level experiences of poverty and well-being? ii) in what ways can these impacts be mediated by the policy responses of international and national actors? and iii) what lessons can be derived from responses to past crises and to what extent is this learning being appl…
Central America has been one of the regions hardest hit by the global financial crisis. This article analyses the short-run effects of the crisis on children's schooling and employment outcomes in El Salvador, exploiting repeated cross-sectional samples of the annual household survey for the period 2000–8. It reveals that this early phase of the financial crisis has decreased school attendance …
This article examines case examples of some of the consequences for children and families of average and severe economic and social disruptions, including the economic losses and failure of social supports during the transition after perestroika in Russia, the experience of poor families during economic retrenchment in Mexico, the massive asset loss in the capital of Honduras after a natural di…
How has the well-being of children and young people been affected by the global food, fuel and financial crises that have struck since 2007? This article reports empirical findings from qualitative research in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kenya, Yemen and Zambia in 2009 and 2010. Intended to complement the wider body of mainly quantitative evidence, it explores how the subjective and relatio…
In a mix of responses to the food, fuel and financial crises of 2008–9, some developing countries have introduced new safety-net programmes, while others have modified and/or expanded existing ones. Many have introduced conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in recent years, and these have been used as an important starting point for a response. This article aims to describe these various experience…
The global financial crisis has emphasised the fundamental role of social protection institutions in developing countries. There is also growing evidence that countries with programmes focused on children have a greater chance of minimising the longer-term effects of the crisis. However, financing remains a major challenge: the effects of a slowdown in growth are likely to reduce the fiscal spa…
The wave of unrest that swept through the Arab world at the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011 originated in Tunisia. What happened— and what are the prospects that Tunisia will make a successful transition to democracy?