bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Verdict is in: The Impact of Crime on Public Trust in Central American Justice Systems
Authors: Malone Mary Fran T.
Published: February 2019

Over the past two decades, the countries of Central America have confronted soaring crime rates. Justice systems of dubious quality provide thin shields against this crime crisis, despite substantial international and domestic investment in justice reform. Indeed, there is growing concern that crime will undermine justice reform efforts. Scholars and practitioners have pointed out that public frustration with crime, coupled with dissatisfaction with justice institutions, can lead citizens to reject reform efforts. Still, the micro-level relationships between crime and public support of the justice system have been understudied. Using public opinion data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), this study aims to add to the literature by examining the effects of victimization and fear of crime on public trust in the justice system. The results indicate that crime can erode public support for the justice system, but the mechanics of this relationship vary according to national context.
Pursuing Centralization amidst Decentralization: The Politics of Brazil's Innovative Response to HIV/AIDS
Authors: Gómez Eduardo J.
Published: February 2019

In recent years, Brazil has been highly revered for its response to HIV/AIDS. Despite the government's delayed response, why and how did the national AIDS program eventually become so successful? This is even further puzzling when one considers the challenges associated with Brazil's decentralized response to healthcare needs, lack of subnational resources and political will to effectively implement AIDS policy. This article maintains that Brazil's successful response eventually required the strategic centralization of national AIDS bureaucratic and policy authority, entailing policies designed to aid local governments while creating fiscal policies incentivizing sub-national compliance with the national bureaucracy and more effective policy implementation. Taking advantage of renewed political support, kindled by international pressures and the president's reputation-building pursuits, the sources of AIDS officials’ success, however, resided not in their technical and financial prowess, but in their ability to forge historically-based partnerships with civic AIDS NGOs and social movements sharing like-minded ideational beliefs in policy centralization. This article also discusses how these findings contribute new insights into theories addressing the reasons for centralization, as well as the ideational sources of gradual institutional change.
“Today There Are No Indigenous People” in Chile?: Connecting the Mapuche Struggle to Anti-Neoliberal Mobilizations in South America
Authors: Funk Kevin
Published: February 2019

The books under review all deal with the same fundamental phenomenon: mobilization against neoliberal policies by South American indigenous groups. These works fall into two groups: those that focus on the Mapuche struggle in Chile, and those that consider anti-neoliberal indigenous mobilization in the region more broadly. Just as literature in the former group fails to draw any linkages between the Mapuche and other South American indigenous struggles, the latter body of literature does not engage with Chile as a case worthy of consideration. This essay delineates the arguments made by scholars from both groups and argues that they must be brought into dialogue with one another in order to develop both a more holistic conceptualization of the Mapuche struggle in Chile and a more complete understanding of indigenous mobilization in the region. Further empirical work is needed on how Mapuche mobilization relates to other indigenous, anti-neoliberal mobilizations in South America.
Corruption in Latin America: Understanding the Perception-Exposure Gap
Authors: Bohn Simone R.
Published: February 2019

What beliefs do citizens who perceive levels of corruption in their countries to be of significance hold? Do those beliefs arise from their exposure to corruption? Furthermore, do perceptual and experiential corruption decrease the reservoir of legitimacy of a democratic regime? We attempt to answer these questions using the 2012 Americas Barometer survey of 24 Latin American countries. We find that whereas “rational-choice corruptors,” males and, to a lesser extent, individuals with resources are particularly exposed to corruption, perceived corruption originates from a sense of impunity derived from a negative evaluation of the state's ability to curb corruption. In addition, we show that perceived corruption significantly decreases citizen satisfaction with democracy, but exposure to corruption does not. All in all, the policy implications of our study are straightforward: having an efficient and trusted judiciary is central to curbing both experiential and perceived corruption, even if it increases the latter in the short run.
The Determinants of Arms Spending in South America
Authors: Battaglino Jorge M.
Published: February 2019

In recent years, South America has witnessed a large increase in arms purchases. Nonetheless, there are important intraregional differences in terms of the allocation of resources for weapons acquisitions. How can we account for these disparities? Mainstream literature suggests that levels of arms importation depend on either the size of the defense budget or the perception of threat. In contrast, this article contends that the level of spending on arms is mainly determined by: (a) the expansive or nonexpansive nature of the strategic assessment of defense, (b) the available resources allocated by the defense budget, and (c) the level of political attention to defense issues. Thus, the aim of this article is to account for and assess the determinants of the different levels of arms importation in South America from 2000 to 2011.
The Legalization of Dispute Resolution in Mercosur
Authors: Arnold Christian , Rittberger and Berthold
Published: February 2019

The Southern Common Market (Mercosur), the world's fourth-largest trading bloc, represents an intriguing yet under-researched case of a regional organization which has made significant advances in regional integration in the past decades, legalization being a central dimension of its integration process. In 2002, Mercosur's dispute settlement system was substantially revised by its four member states. Up until then, disputes among member states had been resolved by diplomatic negotiations and ad hoc tribunals with limited independence from the member-state governments. The reforms mark a significant advance in the legalization of this regional organization: a standing court with a more independent judiciary and improved access to the court's jurisdiction was established. In order to account for the shift towards more legalization of Mercosur, this article presents a rational institutionalist explanation and develops hypotheses about states’ preferred levels of legalization (why), an account of the “timing” of qualitative shifts in legalization (when), and the institutional form that legalization decisions take (how).
Determinants of Judicial Dissent in Contexts of Extreme Institutional Instability: The Case of Ecuador's Constitutional Court
Authors: Basabe-Serrano Santiago
Published: February 2019

This article identifies the variables that explain the dissenting legal vote in courts that operate under conditions of extreme institutional instability. Drawing on three logistic regression models, this article proposes that judges’ ideological preferences constitute a good predictor of the dissenting vote. Contrary to the classic argument, which indicates that the instability of judges encourages strategic voting, this article argues that this relationship can be demonstrated only up to a certain point – that is, until an exponential increase in institutional instability leads the judges to vote sincerely, even when this means being part of a minority or “losing” coalition.
The Participation of Civil Society in Lula's Government
Authors: Dagnino Evelina , Teixeira Ana Claudia Chaves
Published: February 2019

This article discusses the participation of civil society during the governments of President Lula, particularly in institutional public spaces. The participation of civil society in decision-making processes, incorporated in the Brazilian Constitution of 1988, has been a central principle in the political project of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) since its foundation in 1980. This paper examines the extent to which this principle has remained effective and has been actively implemented at the federal level since the PT came to power in 2002. It also analyzes the concrete results of implementing greater participation and the difficulties faced in doing so. In addition, it explores both the continuities and new developments that have emerged during the government of Lula's successor, Dilma Rousseff.
Surviving Corruption in Brazil: Lula's and Dilma's Success despite Corruption Allegations, and Its Consequences
Authors: Balán Manuel
Published: February 2019

This article analyzes the continued popular support for Lula and Dilma in the face of multiple corruption allegations throughout their respective presidencies. What explains their ability to survive corruption? And what are the implications of this – at first sight – lack of electoral punishment for Brazilian democracy? In searching for answers to these questions, this article looks at four mechanisms that help explain the continued popularity of politicians amid allegations of corruption: the use of clientelism as payoffs, informational failures, the relevance of other issues, and rouba mas faz. By analyzing Lula's and Dilma's terms in office and their inopportune links to corruption, this article argues that the shifting strategies used to deal with corruption allegations effectively shifted the reputational costs of corruption away from individual political leaders and toward the Workers’ Party and the political system as a whole. This finding emphasizes the mid- to long-term consequences of corruption scandals on political parties and democratic institutions, while also shedding light on the paradoxical relationship between corruption as a voting valence issue and continuing electoral support for politicians allegedly involved in corruption.
The Worker's Party, from Contention to Public Action: A Case of Institutionalization
Authors: Goirand Camille
Published: February 2019

The Worker's Party (PT) was created in 1980 during the liberalization of authoritarian rule in Brazil, in the context of contentious mobilizations, which were especially strong in the union sector in São Paulo. The PT then attracted increasing support at the polls and won a number of local executives before winning the federal presidency in 2002; this process has often been labeled as “institutionalization”. This paper defines the notion of institutionalization and proposes an approach for observing institutionalization processes at the grass roots of party organization. The paper then analyzes the PT's transformation at the national level, whereby it became a majority, consolidated its organization, and moderated its ideological discourses. We also analyze the social components of the institutionalization of the PT. Based on the case of rank-and-file PT members in Recife, we show that this process included upward social mobility for local party leadership, included party leaders as professionals in the political arena, and created a growing distance between the party organization and the contentious space.
News Media Consumption and Political Behavior in Latin America
Authors: Salzman Ryan
Published: February 2019

News media are an important factor in any democratic society. Research focused on developed democracies has paved the way for analysis in the context of less well-developed democracies. The project endeavors to continue that investigation into whether and how news media consumption affects democratic behavior among individuals in a region comprised of developing democracies: Latin America. Employing rich survey data available from the 2008 Latin American Public Opinion Project, traditional analyses are used to test one of the most basic questions for political communication researchers: Does news media consumption motivate or depress political participation? The results indicate that, on average, news media mobilize political participation, albeit to different degrees per medium and participation type. This seems to happen because those media socialize Latin Americans to value political participation.
Postmaterialism and Political Elites: The Value Priorities of Brazilian Federal Legislators
Authors: Gatto Malu A. C. , Power Timothy J.
Published: February 2019

We examine the distribution and consequences of postmaterialist value orientations among national legislators in Brazil. Using data collected in the Brazilian Legislative Survey in 2013, we undertake the first systematic study of postmaterialism within the National Congress and the party system and map the materialist/postmaterialist scale onto other salient divisions within the political class. We present five main findings. First, political elites evince vastly higher commitment to postmaterialism than the mass public. Second, Brazilian political elites drawn from constituencies with higher human development are more postmaterialist than their counterparts in other constituencies. Third, within the political class, the materialist/post-materialist cleavage overlaps in important ways with the left–right cleavage. Fourth, although postmaterialism successfully predicts elite attitudes on a number of “new politics” issues that are unrelated to the construction of the postmaterialist scale itself, postmaterialism is a poor predictor of voting behavior on the Congressional floor. Fifth, as others before us, we find institutional factors to be better predictors of legislative voting behavior in the Brazilian context.
Vote Buying with Illegal Resources: Manifestation of a Weak Rule of Law in Mexico
Authors: Serra Gilles
Published: February 2019

Mexico's consolidation strategy seems to be reaching a limit. The country's transition from authoritarianism was largely based on a series of electoral reforms that leveled the playing field in elections. While this strategy was initially successful, it has failed to address several problems, especially in the electoral arena. This essay analyzes the prevalence of two such problems, vote buying and illegal campaign finance, which are closely connected. I draw evidence from available accounts of the 2012 presidential election and subsequent contests in problematic states such as Tabasco. The outcomes of the midterm elections of June 2015 are also used to assess whether previous electoral reforms have provided effective solutions to the problems analyzed here. I suggest that no legal reform will be effective while these laws are only being weakly enforced. A more comprehensive package of measures strengthening the rule of law would help Mexico transition from electoral democracy to liberal democracy.
Armed Forces, Police and Crime-fighting in Latin America
Authors: Pion-Berlin David , Carreras Miguel
Published: February 2019

Over the past two decades, the armed forces have increasingly been asked to take an active role in the fight against the rampant crime in Latin America. Since the militaries in this region are not always trained to conduct themselves with restraint, the possibility of excesses and human rights violations is always latent. Despite that prospect, there is a high level of public support for military counter-crime interventions throughout the region. The key argument in this article is that when the Latin American public supports military interventions to combat crime, it makes a comparative judgment call about the relative efficacy of military vs. police conduct in domestic security roles. Latin American citizens have very low confidence in the capacity of the police to fight crime effectively and to respect human rights. They place more trust in the armed forces as an institution capable of performing effectively and in accordance with human rights standards and the rule of law. This study develops these arguments in greater detail and then turns to recent Americas Barometer surveys that clearly show that Latin American citizens place more trust in the armed forces than the police as an institution capable of effectively and humanely fighting criminal violence.
Assessing the Strength of Pentecostal Churches’ Electoral Support: Evidence from Brazil
Authors: Lacerda Fábio
Published: February 2019

Since the 1980s, the number of Pentecostal candidates elected to the Brazilian legislatures has grown remarkably. Literature has argued that the phenomenon is related to Pentecostal churches’ support for particular candidates. To date, however, this claim has been based only on ethnographies or studies relying on a few cases of elected candidates. Drawing from a new data set of Evangelical (Protestant) candidates for the Federal Chamber of Deputies and state legislative assemblies, I try to answer the following questions: Do Pentecostal candidates raise fewer campaign resources than other candidates? What is the effect of being a Pentecostal candidate on the vote in Brazilian legislative elections? Is the structure of the church relevant to this effect? Using OLS regression models, I show that being a Pentecostal has a negative, though not significant effect on campaign spending. Additionally, there is a positive statistical relationship between being a Pentecostal and receiving votes, and between having the support of more centralized churches and receiving votes. Qualitative evidence of six Pentecostal politicians who lost their churches’ support at some point between elections, attempted reelection, and performed considerably worse than before reinforces the importance of having the support of a Pentecostal church.
China's Foreign- and Security-policy Decision-making Processes under Hu Jintao
Authors: Cabestan Jean-Pierre
Published: February 2019

Since 1979, foreign- and security-policy-making and implementation processes have gradually and substantially changed. New modes of operation that have consolidated under Hu Jintao, actually took shape under Jiang Zemin in the 1990s, and some, under Deng Xiaoping. While the military's role has diminished, that of diplomats, experts, and bureaucracies dealing with trade, international economic relations, energy, propaganda and education has increased. Decision making in this area has remained highly centralized and concentrated in the supreme leading bodies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However, China's globalization and decentralization, as well as the increasing complexity of its international interests, have intensified the need to better coordinate the activities of the various CCP and state organs involved in foreign and security policy; hence, the growing importance of the CCP leading small groups (foreign affairs, national security, Taiwan, etc.). But the rigidity of the current institutional pattern has so far foiled repeated attempts to establish a National Security Council.
Climate Change in China – The Development of China's Climate Policy and Its Integration into a New International Post-Kyoto Climate Regime
Authors: Oberheitmann Andreas , Sternfeld Eva
Published: February 2019

According to the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report, global emissions of carbon dioxide have to be reduced by about 80 per cent by 2050 in order to stabilise the increase in global temperature at 2 to 2.4°C by 2100 compared with its pre-industrial level. An increase of only 2°C would bring about “acceptable” negative impacts on the eco-systems and the world economy. Without a reduction in CO2 emissions in China, however, it will be hard to achieve this goal. Currently, China is already responsible for about 50 per cent of the worldwide increase in CO2 emissions recorded over the past ten years. On the other hand, it is the industrialised countries that are mainly responsible for the greenhouse-gas emissions of earlier years. Taking the challenges of China's economic growth, its impact on future CO2 emissions and the development of China's climate policy into account, this article develops a new post-Kyoto regime based on cumulative per-capita emission rights.
Social Security for China's Migrant Workers – Providing for Old Age
Authors: Watson Andrew
Published: February 2019

The concept of “migrant workers” derives from the household registration system of China's planned economy period. The continued existence of that system conflicts with the development of an integrated labour market. The current social security system, based on household registration and a large number of local pools, discriminates against migrant workers because of their mobility and the lack of mechanisms to transfer benefits between pools. As a result, migrants have made major contributions to China's economic development but do not get the same benefits as urban residents. Faced with this challenge, China's government has begun to introduce policy reforms to improve social security for migrants. This article explores this development through a focus on old-age insurance. It analyses the special needs of migrants, the obstacles facing policy development and the proposed solutions. It argues that social justice and social equity require the development of a system that treats all citizens equally, and that the logic of an integrated labour market will ultimately require a unified national system of old-age insurance.
The Choice of Constitutional Amendments in a Young Democracy – from Indirect to Direct Election of the President in Taiwan
Authors: Liao Da-chi , Chang Hui-chih
Published: February 2019

This paper attempts to determine the kind of constitutional rule preferred in a young democracy when an institutional opportunity for constitutional change occurs. It adopts the standpoint of collective decision-making. This approach involves two crucial theoretical elements: the calculation of the interests of the political elite and the masses' comprehension of what democracy is. The case studied here is Taiwan's constitutional choice between the direct and indirect election of the president during the period from 1990 to 1994. The paper first examines how the political leaders might have used both the logic of power maximization and of power-loss minimization to choose their position on the issue. It then demonstrates that survey results indeed showed that respondents better understood the direct form of electing the president and therefore supported it over the indirect one. This support helped the direct form to eventually win out.
Lamb Buddha's Migrant Workers: Self-Assertion on China's Urban Fringe
Authors: Griffiths Michael B.
Published: February 2019

This paper presents an analysis of the everyday practices of individuality among the migrant workers with whom I worked at “Lamb Buddha”, a hotpot restaurant in Anshan City, Liaoning Province, during the summer of 2007. The majority of the data comes from four young men, meaning that the analysis complements extant studies of Chinese female migrant workers by allowing male-gendered inflections of discourse prominence. The paper examines the internal structure of “symbolic boundaries” drawn and managed in judgements, positioning statements, and so forth, attempting to regress the modalities by which these migrants assert themselves, thus showing how individuality arises from a discursive environment structured by relation to similar peers and distinctly different others.
The Twenty-five Maiden Ladies' Tomb and Predicaments of the Feminist Movement in Taiwan
Authors: Lee Anru , Tang Wen-hui Anna
Published: February 2019

“The Twenty-five Maiden Ladies' Tomb” is the collective burial site of the female workers who died in a ferry accident on their way to work in 1973. The fact that of the more than 70 passengers on board all 25 who died were unmarried young women, and the taboo in Taiwanese culture that shuns unmarried female ghosts, made the Tomb a fearsome place. Feminists in Gaoxiong ([Formula: see text]) had for some years wanted the city government to change the tomb's public image. Their calls were not answered until the Gaoxiong mayor's office finally allocated money to clean up the gravesite and, as part of the city's plans to develop urban tourism, to remake it into the tourist-friendly “Memorial Park for Women Labourers”. Consequently, even though the tomb renovation seemed to indicate a triumph of the feminist endeavour, it was more a result of the Gaoxiong city government's efforts towards culture-led urban revitalization.
China's “Christianity Fever” Revisited: Towards a Community-Oriented Reading of Christian Conversions in China
Authors: Fiedler Katrin
Published: February 2019

Chinese Protestant Christianity has been continually growing over the past three decades, with an estimated one million converts per year. A number of studies have sought to explain this phenomenon. This paper critically reviews existing studies of China's “Christianity Fever” and then outlines the role of the community as one crucial factor in the conversion process. With its emphasis on communality, as a central element of both Christian theology and the fellowship activities that are part of Christian practice, Protestant Christianity fills a gap opened up by the change in traditional familial and social structures. By discussing specific aspects relating to the communal nature of Christianity, such as familism, elitism, and dynamics at work in face-to-face evangelism, this paper offers an alternative reading of existing studies.
Tracing “Taiwanization” Processes in Taiwanese Presidential Statements in Times of Cross-Strait Rapprochement
Authors: Lams Lutgard , Liao Xavier Li-wen
Published: February 2019

Over the last few decades, Taiwanese society has witnessed processes of localization/Taiwanization/ de- and re-Sinicization (Sinification), all vying for legitimacy. These trends in the nation-building process are played out on the state as well as the civil society level. It can thus be useful to examine whether societal (de-)localization trends are paralleled in any ideological repositioning of official and/or media discourses after a change in ruling party. The current article investigates an important discursive site in Taiwan's public space, the presidential discourse of the new Kuomintang (KMT) (Guomindang) era, starting from the inauguration address by President Ma Ying-jeou (Ma Yingjiu) on 20 May 2008.
Protestantism in China: A Dilemma for the Party-State
Authors: Schak David C.
Published: February 2019

This paper examines the relationship between the Chinese state and Protestantism. It demonstrates that it varies widely from place to place; moreover, the actual relationship between individual churches and the local authorities that are supposed to govern them paints a quite different picture from that implied by the laws and regulations. The paper also argues that the state faces a dilemma: On one hand it feels threatened by the appearance of autonomous organizations such as unregistered churches, while on the other it values the contributions they make to society and recognizes that subjecting them to the Three-Self Patriotic Movement and China Christian Council would require a good deal of force and be very socially disruptive.
Information Disclosure in Environmental Risk Management: Developments in China
Authors: Mol Arthur P. J. , He Guizhen , Zhang Lei
Published: February 2019

Entering the twenty-first century, China has been the site of many serious environmental disasters and accidents. These have strengthened the call for the establishment of an environmental risk management system and for the development of new policies to effectively manage risk. Among the new policies in China's environmental risk management strategy are pollution insurance and information disclosure. This paper explores information disclosure policies through the implementation of the Environmental Information Disclosure Decree by governmental authorities and companies. In both 2008 and 2010, we reviewed the websites of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and all 31 provincial Environmental Protection Bureaus, conducted experiments in requesting information disclosure, and held interviews with all provincial Environmental Protection Bureaus. We conclude that the implementation of the Environmental Information Disclosure Decree is improving but still far from widespread, full and effective. The lack of enforcement and the ambiguity of some clauses in the decree give provincial environmental agencies great discretion to avoid disclosure and discourages enforcement of company environmental information disclosure. Implementation shortcomings of the decree are also related to the longstanding closeness, secrecy and monopoly of information in China's political system.
Citizen Complaints about Environmental Pollution: A Survey Study in Suzhou, China
Authors: Liu Xianbing , Dong Yanli , Wang Can , Shishime Tomohiro
Published: February 2019

This paper discusses environmental complaints made by citizens living close to industrial polluters in China. Data collected from a questionnaire survey in Suzhou City is used for the analysis. The results confirm a marginal level of citizen environmental complaints in the study area at present. Meaningful findings include the fact that citizens have a tendency to complain collectively, and that perception of the level of environmental information provided by companies significantly determines a citizen's likelihood of lodging environmental complaints. Therefore, the disclosure of corporate environmental information must be emphasized continuously; citizens must be encouraged to correctly understand the environmental performance of companies so that they might make appropriate complaints. Governments need to show their support for citizen-led environmental complaint initiatives. The successful cases would convince them to keep a closer eye on their neighbouring polluters.
China and Brazil: Economic Impacts of a Growing Relationship
Authors: Jenkins Rhys
Published: February 2019

The paper analyses the economic impacts of China's re-emergence on Brazil, looking at both the direct effects of China on Brazil in terms of bilateral trade and investment flows and the indirect effects through increased competition in export markets for manufactured goods and higher world prices for primary commodities. Despite a surge in Chinese FDI in Brazil in 2010, the main driver of bilateral relations is trade. While bilateral trade has grown rapidly, the pattern that has emerged has given rise to concern because Brazil's exports are concentrated in a small number of primary products while imports from China are almost entirely of manufactured goods that are becoming more technologically sophisticated over time. Brazil has benefitted in the short term from the high prices of primary commodities (partly caused by growing Chinese demand), but has lost export markets to China in manufactures, contributing to the “primarization” of the country's export basket.
Chile's Economic and Political Relationship with China
Authors: Gachúz Juan Carlos
Published: February 2019

China's foreign policy has been characterized in the last decade by a heightened interest in reaching out to Latin America, particularly to countries rich in natural resources and with potential markets for Chinese exports, and Chile is one of these countries. The paper shows that even though the Chilean economy has benefitted from the signing of the FTA, it also faces potential risks. To continue to benefit, Chile needs to boost exports in other potential export sectors (value-added products or services) and should attempt to attract more Chinese FDI to Chile's export industry. The export of raw materials (particularly nonrenewable ones) is not always sustainable in the long term. The roles of the Chilean state and the private sector in attracting Chinese investment and enhancing diversification of exports of value-added products are crucial for the future of the economy of Chile and its relationship with China.
Chinese Migration to Russia as Revealed by Narratives in Chinese Cyberspace
Authors: Rabogoshvili Artem
Published: February 2019

The article provides a seminal analysis of the electronic resources in the Chinese cyberspace devoted to the labour migration of Chinese people to Russia. The author focuses on the online narratives and media stories published on three types of electronic resources – government websites of the northeast provinces of the PRC, online reports by the Chinese news agencies, and postings on bulletin board systems (BBSs) in order to find answers to the following research questions: 1. What is the role of Chinese migrants’ narratives circulated via different electronic resources on the Internet in the reproduction of the state-regulated imagination of Russia? 2. To what extent have different types of electronic resources (government websites, news agency websites, BBSs) been used to renegotiate this imagination? The research has revealed that the websites of PRC government bodies tend to convey a rather consolidated understanding of Russia as a destination country, frequently publishing the narratives of successful migrants online. The mass media reports tend to provide regular coverage of a broader range of themes related to migration, including those related to the legal and economic vulnerability of Chinese labour migrants in Russia. The semi-anonymous and non-official character of the bulletin board system in turn has allowed its participants to make enquiries about or engage in the discussions of aspects of migration that would never be covered or described in detail by official sources such as government websites.
No Winds of Change: Taiwan's 2012 National Elections and the Post-Election Fallout
Authors: Schubert Gunter
Published: February 2019

Taiwan held its first combined national elections on 14 January 2012. Though the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), the largest opposition party, fared much better in the Legislative Yuan elections than it did in 2008, DPP presidential contender Tsai Ying-wen's (Cai Yingwen) clear defeat at the hands of the Kuomintang (KMT, Guomindang) incumbent, Ma Ying-jeou (Ma Yingjiu), in the presidential race came as a surprise. The article examines the election campaigns of both Tsai and Ma, summarizes the election results, and analyses the reasons why the DPP failed to retake the presidency. It then discusses the postelection debate within the DPP on the future of its China policy and ponders what can be expected from the second Ma administration.
Restrictions and Their Anomalies: The Third Forum and the Regulation of Religion in Tibet
Authors: Barnett Robert
Published: February 2019

In 1994, at a meeting known as the Third Forum on Tibet Work, the Chinese authorities announced a series of restrictions on religious practice in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Described by many outsiders in terms of abuses of rights, in fact those measures differed in important ways. By analysing the target, rationale and procedure of these restrictions, it becomes clear that some were relatively routine, while others were anomalous – their purpose was not explained by officials, the source of their authority was not clear, or the restrictions were simply not admitted to at all. These anomalous orders can be linked to major changes in underlying discourses of modernization and development among officials in Tibet at the time. They reflected undeclared shifts in attitudes to religion and cultural difference, and seeded the dramatic worsening in state–society relations that has taken place in Tibetan areas since that time.
Rationalising Stability Preservation through Mao's Not So Invisible Hand
Authors: Trevaskes Susan
Published: February 2019

This paper considers the process of constructing the official discourse of weiwen ([Formula: see text], stability preservation) in the policing arena in the first decade of the 21st century. It focuses on the pivotal period after 2003 when policing priorities were shifted from “striking hard” at serious crime to pursuing weiwen to contain burgeoning protests and civil dissent, as a move to maintain stability in the early to mid years of the Hu Jintao– Wen Jiabao harmonious society era. We observe how Mao has been central in this process. Stability preservation operations have been rationalised through Maoist ideology using some staples of Maoist discourse, particularly “social contradictions”, and policing authorities have adopted key methodological aspects of Maoist campaign-style policing to embed this new weiwen focus in the everyday agendas of policing, while ever more “mass incidents” disrupt the maintenance of stability in China.
Asset or Liability? The Role of the Financial System in the Political Economy of China's Rebalancing
Authors: Gruin Julian
Published: February 2019

China's financial system, dominated by the banking sector, has played a central role in the development of an imbalanced trajectory of economic development and growth. As one of the primary mechanisms for implementing decisive macro-economic policy, the banking sector has hitherto served the Chinese growth strategy well in actively allocating capital towards the investment and export sectors, whilst proving capable of managing the macro-economic ramifications of this highly interventionist strategy. However, the role of the financial system in this growth strategy is also rooted in the requirement that authority over financial capital remains closely tied to state institutions and policies, due to elite concern over politico-economic instability. Based on policy analysis and qualitative interviews conducted in mid-2012, the article suggests that whilst the structure of the financial system was conducive to fostering the growth of the real economy, it will hold back not the need for rebalancing, but rather the process of rebalancing itself.
The Local Government in Corporate Restructuring: Case Studies in Fractured Bargaining Relations
Authors: Lin Kun-Chin , Chen Shaofeng
Published: February 2019

Through two illustrative case studies of enterprise reform in Henan Province, we examine the underlying political contentions behind the changing roles of local government in the process of the corporatization and asset restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOE) starting in the late 1990s. As SOEs lose their ability to meet the multitude of resource demands from central and local officials, they become sites of inter-governmental contentions resulting in fiscal and social uncertainties for affected communities exiting the socialist economy. Our first case study is Puyang municipal government, which leveraged its regulatory authority to exact heavy side-payments in return for not obstructing the corporatization of Zhongyuan Oilfield; the second case involves Zheng-zhou city officials colluding with provincial bureaucrats and the state-appointed managers of the Yutong Bus Company in an insider privatization that effectively circumvented a specific Ministry of Finance prohibition.
Shifting Ideologics of Research Funding: The CPC's National Planning Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences
Authors: Holbig Heike
Published: February 2019

For more than two decades, the National Planning Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences (NPOPSS) has been managing official funding of social science research in China under the orbit of the Communist Party of China's (CPC) propaganda system. By focusing on “Major Projects”, the most prestigious and well-funded program initiated by the NPOPSS in 2004, this contribution outlines the political and institutional ramifications of this line of official funding and attempts to identify larger shifts during the past decade in the “ideologics” of official social science research funding – the changing ideological circumscriptions of research agendas in the more narrow sense of echoing party theory and rhetoric and – in the broader sense – of adapting to an increasingly dominant official discourse of cultural and national self-assertion. To conclude, this article offers reflections on the potential repercussions of these shifts for international academic collaboration.
Re-Fusing Ethnicity and Religion: An Experiment on Tibetan Grounds
Authors: Saxer Martin
Published: February 2019

The relation between ethnicity and religion has had a troubled history in the People's Republic of China. Conflating religious practice with ethnic culture is considered to carry the risk of breeding “splittism” – especially in Tibet and Xinjiang. While in the post-Mao era the outright hostility against religion has given way to a religious revival, keeping religion and (nationality) politics separate has remained a major concern for the Chinese Communist Party. Religion is supposed to be a private matter that does not interfere with politics. Against this backdrop, a recent phenomenon in the Tibet Autonomous Region is all the more remarkable: the (re-)fusion of ethnicity and religion under the label of cultural heritage and its protection. This paper approaches this officially endorsed re-fusion ethno-graphically and examines its wider implications. I argue that endorsing religion as an attribute of Tibetan heritage corresponds to the concept of defining public spaces and events in which religious practice is legitimate and expected. Simultaneously, religious practices outside these dedicated spaces and events become even more problematic, leading to everyday Buddhist practices, such as circumambulation, being seen as (and performed as) political acts.
The Change of Ruling Parties and Taiwan's Claim to Multiculturalism before and after 2008
Authors: Cheng Isabelle , Fell Dafydd
Published: February 2019

In recent years, female marriage migration from China and Southeast Asia has significantly increased the number of foreign-born citizens in Taiwan. This article is a preliminary investigation into how political parties responded to the growing multicultural makeup of the national community between 2000 and 2012. We examine the content of the Understanding Taiwan textbook, the election publicity of the two major political parties, citizenship legislation, and the results of interviewing immigrant women. The findings show that the change in the ruling party did make differences in terms of both parties’ projection of immigrant women in election propaganda and citizenship legislation. However, inward-looking multiculturalism is practised by the two main political parties in Taiwan to forge national identity and enhance national cohesion rather than to promote the recognition of immigrants’ different cultural heritage.
Fragmentation, Centralisation and Policy Learning: An Example from China's Wind Industry
Authors: Korsnes Marius
Published: February 2019

This paper seeks to understand what government mechanisms have allowed China's wind industry to grow as fast as it has over the past ten years. Instead of formal rules and regulations, this paper focuses on specific sets of institutional conditions that have been crucial in the process of high-speed implementation of wind energy in China. Specifically, fragmentation and centralisation, together with policy experimentation and policy learning, have been fundamental for policy flexibility and institutional adaptability. The paper illustrates that there are benefits and disadvantages to these characteristics, and that inherent qualities of China's governing system that lead to rapid growth overlap with those that lead to challenges in terms of quality and long-term performance.
Of Other Spaces? Hybrid Forms of Chinese Engagement in Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Dittgen Romain
Published: February 2019

Chinese economic activities in Africa have gained increased visibility in parallel to the recent acceleration of Sino-African relations. This paper, which is framed from a geographical perspective that is often absent or neglected in studies covering China–Africa, focuses on the spatial forms and dynamics. It depicts the way in which two contrasting Chinese economic entities – a state-owned company in Chad and privately owned commercial malls in Johannesburg, South Africa – engage with their respective host environments. While drawing on concepts of “liminality” as well as “heterotopias”, I argue that the modalities of the Chinese footprint are characterised both by closure and interaction, creating a dynamic tension that produces its own set of unique practices. This ambivalence between enclave and active linkages with host societies is not only perceivable from a spatial point of view, but also emerges with regard to economic strategies. In the midst of a transitional period, along with a launching and a consolidating phase, the Chinese economic entities in both case studies show signs of change in terms of behaviour and territorial foothold.
Engagement and Reflexivity: Approaches to Chinese-Japanese Political Relations by Chinese Students in Japan
Authors: Lai Herby
Published: February 2019

Amidst political tensions between China and Japan, and against the backdrop of the patriotic education campaign in China that promotes a negative image of Japan as the victimiser, Chinese students in Japanese educational institutions study and work in Japan in a highly politicised context. In general, how they chose to interpret their experiences in Japan, and their views on history and controversial political issues involving China and Japan, demonstrates two levels of cosmopolitanism – namely, the ability and the willingness to engage with Japanese people on such issues, and reflexivity towards their own national identities. Meanwhile, some informants would deliberately avoid talking about history and controversial political issues involving China and Japan. While they lacked the willingness to engage with Japanese people on controversial issues, their keenness to separate their daily lives in Japan from the political context means they were also engaged in a reflexive reconfiguration of their national identities.
Landscapes of Aspiration in Guangzhou's African Music Scene: Beyond the Trading Narrative
Authors: Castillo Roberto
Published: February 2019

This article is an exploration into the personal aspirations that converge in Guangzhou's African music scene. I argue that despite being often traversed, articulated, fuelled, and constrained by economies and economic discourses, aspirations are not necessarily economic or rational calculations. I contend that the overarching trading narrative about “Africans in Guangzhou” has left little space for issues of agency, emotion, and aspiration to be considered in their own right. Drawing on a year of continuous ethnographic fieldwork, I show how aspirations are crucial arenas where the rationales behind transnational mobility are developed, reproduced, and transmitted. Indeed, aspirations can be thought of as “navigational devices” (Appadurai 2004) that help certain individuals reach for their dreams. By bringing the analysis of aspirations to the fore, I intend to provide a more complex and nuanced landscape of the multiple rationales behind African presence in Southern China; promote a better understanding (both conceptually and empirically) of how individuals navigate their social spaces and guide their transnational journeys; and draw attention to the incessant frictions and negotiations between individual aspirations while on the move and the constraints imposed by more structural imperatives.