China as janus: the framing of china by british columbia’s alternative public sphere

In recent years, Canada–China relations have drawn extensive public attention in Canada. To better understand this trend, this article examines the coverage of China in the “alternative public sphere” of British Columbia, Canada’s westernmost province. Based on the qualitative critical discourse analysis of China-related online media generated by four alternative media and advocacy sources (the Tyee, the Dogwood Initiative, the David Suzuki Foundation, and the Pembina Institute), we argue that China’s image within British Columbia’s alternative public sphere is characterized by the tension between two conflicting images. On one hand, China has been framed as a powerful, foreign entity that unduly influences Canada’s economic policies and decisions on energy infrastructure. On the other hand, China has been framed positively as a global leader in renewable energy and, increasingly, in global climate negotiations. Although both images of China were found in the data analysis, the negative image was significantly more prominent than the positive one.     

全球治理中的中东难民问题

难民问题是长期困扰中东地区的一大难题。中东难民问题的严峻现状已经引起国际社会的广泛关注。在难民问题逐步被纳入全球治理框架的趋势下,国际社会采取了多层次、多领域的合作,取得了较为明显的成效。然而一些障碍性因素的存在阻碍了全球治理的有效实施,使得这一问题难以从根本上得到解决。     

中东恐怖主义、全球治理与中国的反恐政策

中东反恐斗争是国际反恐中最关键、最具影响的组成部分,也是国际社会面临的全球治理问题之一。它与当代的国际体系转型和政治经济秩序的重建分不开,又同中东伊斯兰国家在经济全球化深入推进的形势下,如何处理现代化进程中的改革与发展、实现制度变迁和社会转型直接相关。从中东恐怖主义产生的根源、发展和蔓延的轨迹看,中东恐怖主义既蕴含着错综复杂的历史、社会、宗教、民族等内部因素,也掺杂着外来侵略、占领、干涉以及地区国家之间领土、资源和利益等方面的矛盾和冲突等外部环境因素。中国的反恐政策既出于保护海外利益的需要,也折射了中国独特的全球治理理念和治理模式。     

(Re)politicizing global financial governance: what's ‘new’ about the ‘New International Financial Architecture’?

Abstract This article is a contribution to the (re)politicization of global financial governance currently underway in the interdisciplinary field of international political economy (IPE). Particular reference is made to the economistic and technicist discourse prevalent in the so‐called ‘New International Financial Architecture’ (NIFA) process. It is argued that a (re)politicized reading of global financial governance is enabled by a conceptualization of governance networks that combines the institutional focus of existing IPE research with a concern with the discursive dynamics of authority relations and that situates governance networks in the power relations, contestation, contradictions and reproduction of global finance. Claims to ‘newness’ regarding the NIFA process, made by both the ‘architects’ themselves and left unchallenged by the majority of IPE scholars, are also disputed. The NIFA process is shown to have continued the contested development of an exclusionary transnational neo‐liberal network of governance that first began to emerge in the mid‐1970s.     

The US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief

This article analyses the US response under former President George W. Bush to the global HIV/AIDS epidemic at the intersection of neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism, highlighting the various ways their distinct gender logics collide to reproduce masculine privilege and gender inequalities on a global scale. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is the United States global HIV/AIDS policy and is the largest commitment made by any single nation for an international health project. My analysis is based on PEPFAR's ‘formal’ policy texts, including its authorizing legislation, five-year strategic framework and specific policy directives for recipient organizations. In addition, I examine more ‘informal’ texts like Congressional reports and Presidential speeches delivered by George W. Bush on various occasions. Drawing on a rich body of feminist ethnographic work in the fields of global governance, international political economy, organizational theory and sexuality and masculinity studies, the following article examines the various ways market-based norms and practices can legitimate the moral imperatives of neo-conservatism to promote ‘traditional’ values and institutions in the global South as leading solutions to global problems and insecurities.     

The Governance of Forced Labour in the Global Economy

Abstract

The problem of forced labour in the contemporary global economy is attracting increasing attention in global governance debates and policy circles. The effectiveness of governance initiatives depends on underlying understandings of the root causes of the problem. We explore how the root causes of forced labour in global production networks (GPNs) are framed in global governance debates. Focusing on the dominant frameworks mobilized by international institutions, with some attention to cognate national-level and corporate governance strategies, we identify certain limitations to dominant interpretations, which derive from their ‘residual’ character and their associated neglect of the manner in which the roots of forced labour reach deeply into the organization of GPNs, the forms of exploitation which are integral to them, and the connections between exploitation and poverty. We set out an alternative, ‘relational’ perspective on the roots of forced labour in GPNs, based on the concept of ‘adverse incorporation’, and consider the implications of the insights generated by this perspective for contemporary governance frameworks.     

Liberalism(s) and the Critical Securitization of Development Debate

The securitization of development theme has developed substantially since the late 1990s within the critical global governance literature. To varying degrees, contributors to this debate argue that a liberal global governance complex links the discourses of security and development in what is described as the ‘security–development nexus’, such that the South is conceived as an international security threat. Whilst the security–development nexus itself has been thoroughly explored, the use of the central concept of liberalism has not. This paper addresses this issue through demarcating and critiquing the three readings of liberalism relevant to the securitization of development debate. Identifying and elucidating the three distinct strands of liberalism enable this paper to identify several weaknesses within the debate and propose a number of amendments. This includes proposing that the liberal discourse of global governance reflects complexity rather than consensus and that the centrality of ‘liberalism’ is at the expense of a robust investigation into how the structural power of global capitalism underpins the security–development nexus.     

Renewable energy transition under multiple colonialisms: passive revolution,fascism redux and utopian praxes

ABSTRACT

This essay outlines intermedia theory’s contribution to the emerging multiple colonialisms framework and argues that a socio-ecological reproduction feminist approach to the multiple colonialisms problematic is critically necessary for thinking through the contradictions of renewable energy transition. A multiple colonialisms framework needs to be a kind of utopian theorizing, I argue, just as any feminist renewable energy transition seeking to realize energy democracy and energy justice must create a utopian collective praxis that regenerates common-being and reproduces common wealth. Drawing on research on a network of petroleum-free subaltern feminist agricultural cooperatives in Medak, India, and on the creativity of their media practices, this article examines the social contradictions of energy democracy and just transition politics in a conjuncture defined by green passive revolution and fascism redux. The essay proposes the concepts of ‘subaltern counter-environments’ and ‘molecular media’ to decolonize energy democracy and just transition discourse and to articulate the importance of an autonomous domain of subaltern politics for a degrowth strategy of regenerative delinking through and against the state. Molecular media created by the Feminist Energy Futures research collaboration at the University of Alberta seek to regenerate the bias of time in our contemporary intermedia ecology where the bias of spectacularized and colonized space is otherwise dominant so that regenerative delinking strategies can endure social contradictions they embody through subaltern counter-environments they can create.     

Governing the Global Land Grab: What role for Gender in the Voluntary Guidelines and the Principles for Responsible Investment?

The heightened interest in large-scale foreign agricultural investment in regions with ‘unused’ arable land has triggered a great deal of international attention. Concerns about ‘land grabbing’ have initiated efforts at the global level to establish standards for ‘responsible investment’ and good governance. These initiatives warrant critical examination given the social, political, and economic inequalities to which they are designed to respond, yet the scholarship on these initiatives frequently fails to incorporate gendered analyses. This article argues that gendered analysis of the governance of land grabs not only belongs at the local level—where it continues to yield important insights into how gender inequality is manifested in various forms of local governance—but that it is sorely needed at the global level as well. As such, this article begins an assessment of these governance frameworks and how they consider local realities, with particular attention to gender-based inequalities.     

The politics of global youth participation

This article critically examines increased opportunities for youth participation in global political affairs created by the United Nations and its member states in the 2010s. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews at three global youth conferences, this study demonstrates the operationalization of participatory governance, a current mode of global politics, that seeks to engage multi-stakeholders in a seemingly more democratic and egalitarian process. It investigates how the structure and culture of participation mechanisms found in international political processes limited youth engagement. Young people expressed both dissatisfaction with what they perceived to be their inability to participate meaningfully and their desire to fulfill their human right to participation. The author argues that this reflects the construction an ideal global youth-citizen today as marked by an individual’s exercise of compulsory participation as a self-governing and responsible subject. Participation is employed as a mode of governance so that young people may instrumentally advance thier life chances against the insecurities of social risks imposed on them in the retreat of state provisions. The study underscores the need to critically examine the institutionalization of political youth agency.     

Invisible Barricades: Civil Society and the Discourse of the WTO

Concerns about the legitimacy and accountability of international institutions have prompted a sizable literature on the potential of civil society to help democratize global economic governance. Attention has primarily focused on the institutional factors impacting civil society participation in global governance. In this article, however, I point to the existence of yet more fundamental barriers operating at the level of discourse. I use critical discourse analysis (CDA) to analyze the discourse of the World Trade Organization (WTO), focusing on a key text in which it attempts to engage directly with the concerns of civil society, supported by a broad range of additional data sources, including documentary materials, interviews, and observation. Drawing on the case of the WTO, I argue that the discourse of global governance institutions can itself act as an ‘invisible barricade’, preventing the meaningful inclusion of civil society in policy debates and deliberations.     

Political Economy,Ecological Modernization,and Energy Use: A Panel Analysis of State‐Level Energy Use in the United States, 1960–1990

The present study will examine energy consumption from two competing perspectives within environmental social science: political economy and ecological modernization. These frameworks will be evaluated with a fixed‐effects panel analysis of state‐level energy use between the years 1960 and 1990, based on data for 50 states plus Washington, DC, from the Energy Information Administration’s State Energy Data System. The results from the panel analysis show that the increase in total energy use between 1960 and 1990 depended on both increasing economic growth and urbanization, even after controlling for population size, industrialization, and inflation‐adjusted energy prices. The results challenge the claims of ecological modernization theory and support a political economic approach to the study of changes in energy use. In the conclusion, the study’s findings will be framed within the context of the early twenty‐first‐century economic and ecological crises. In light of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, this study can also further advance the renewable energy debate by reminding us of the social drivers of energy use.     

当前国内外经济全局变化及未来趋势展望

当前国际经济金融形势极为复杂。金融危机使全球的治理结构面临重大调整,各国转型发展的压力增大,对市场、资源、标准的竞争更加激烈。同时,我国逐步进入国际体系的核心部位,机遇增大,但挑战更大。2011年,中国经济可归纳为＂五大目标实现＂和＂三大风险缓解＂。2012年,中国宏观金融政策总体上稳中求进。同时,通过分析中国经济内外推动因素,对今后10年中国宏观经济发展作出趋势预判。     

A history of Chinese global Internet governance and its relations with ITU and ICANN

The Chinese contribution to global Internet governance debate has been studied mainly by focusing on the governmental perspective. This study was aimed to provide a broader view by analyzing the participation of Chinese academics and civil society in two of the most important Internet governance international organizations: the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Based on historical material and in-depth interviews conducted in Geneva and Beijing, the findings show the evolution of Chinese Internet governance at the global level and suggest the following: first, the Chinese agents in the global debate on Internet governance support a multi-stakeholder perspective; second, although seldom engaged in the decision-making process, the Chinese agents involved in the global governance identify ITU as the more credible international organization in coordinating global governance; third, the Chinese agents have an ambivalent approach to Chinese participation both in ITU and ICANN. Finally, the findings of the study reported in this article contest the understanding that Chinese Internet governance is isolationist in nature.     

Neoliberal resource governance and counter-hegemonic social movement in Bangladesh

Bangladesh’s energy sector institutionalized neoliberal policies in the early 1990s after a decade long implementation of structural adjustment policies suggested by the World Bank. These policies strengthened the role of foreign private capital and reduced the role of public enterprises. In spite of the country’s success in exploring and developing petroleum resources, the World Bank pushed for policy reforms to reduce the role of state-owned companies. Bangladesh signed several production sharing contracts with multinational energy corporations during 1993–1998. This resulted in the development of a counter-hegemonic social movement, the National Committee. Its activists made the energy sector the most contested national policy domain. Its direct action programs and other mobilization tactics transformed Bangladesh’s public sphere vis-à-vis energy politics. The National Committee caused the government to reverse its decision in some cases, but is far from achieving its main goal: increasing the capability of national institutions to maintain full ownership in natural resource management. Notwithstanding this limitation, the National Committee is a fascinating case of a counter-movement in the Global South contesting neoliberal resource appropriation.     

Security a la Mexicana: on the particularities of security governance in México’s War on Crime

Social scientists from different fields have identified security as a future-oriented mode of governance designed to preserve the social order from diverse types of global risk through international cooperation, militarization and privatization of the state security apparatus, surveillance technologies, community policing, and stigmatization of identities and behaviors deemed dangerous. This literature has largely been limited to English-speaking countries in the Global North, however, that are relatively “secure.”. To understand how security operates in a different context, this article focuses on the current War on Crime in México using newspaper and magazine articles, government documents, and extant academic research. In México, it is argued, the basic elements of security governance (international cooperation, militarized police, surveillance technologies, law, etc.) are present, but in modified form. Rather than focusing on external risks that could develop into future threats, security in México is turned inward against traditional forms of national economic, political, and cultural life thought to produce harm in the present. This, in turn, underscores security’s unique purpose in the country, which is not to preserve the prevailing social order, but to transform an emergent social order that through globalization has come to threaten the state’s legitimacy. These observations suggest an international divide in the operation of security that leaves those most vulnerable in the Global South to bear the greatest costs.     

Post-Brexit Trade Policy Autonomy as Pyrrhic Victory: Being a Middle Power in a Contested Trade Regime

The Leave camp and prominent Brexiteers typically present regaining political control over international trade policy after Brexit as one advantage of leaving the European Union. A newly autonomous UK government, so the argument goes, will be free to negotiate wide-reaching and ambitious trade agreements with the world and will not be restricted by the compromise-culture inherent in supranational, Brussels-based deliberations. In the absence of clear formulations of Britain’s post-Brexit trade political agenda, much of the debate remains hypothetical at this point. Yet, from a global governance perspective, it is clear that the institutional and legal architecture for international trade cooperation is currently fragmented. Given WTO negotiating deadlocks, the institutional strain resulting from parallel country-by-country negotiations, regulatory clash in the existing network of preferential trade agreements, and the UK’s new position as a middle power in the trade regime, this essay argues that Britain may find it more difficult to push its own trade agenda internationally than is currently conceded in the debate. With the global trade regime currently shifting back towards more power-based forms of international interactions, regaining trade policy autonomy post-Brexit may turn out to be a pyrrhic victory for the new trade middle power Britain.     

关于中阿能源合作的若干思考

中阿能源合作对双方社会经济可持续发展乃至全球国际能源安全意义重大。中国要恰如其分地评估阿拉伯世界尤其是海湾国家对我国国际能源合作的重要性及难度,正确处理好我国油气进口来源多元化与经营主渠道的关系。要及时抓住国际形势演变带来的新机遇,同时正视中阿能源合作面临的严峻挑战。新形势下的中阿能源合作要以新能源安全观为指导,积极利用中阿合作论坛等各种合作机制,在互利共赢中推动中阿战略合作关系的健康发展。     

China and global internet governance: toward an alternative analytical framework

Drawing on historical methods, this study assesses the conventional “cyber-sovereignty” framework, which has been used to capture and interpret China’s stance toward global Internet governance. This framework focuses on political control and tends to reduce China’s policies to the attempts by an authoritarian state to elevate governments and intergovernmental organizations to be the only legitimate governors of global cyberspace. As it traces the evolution of China’s relationship with the global Internet in the past three decades, the study demonstrates that China’s stance is more complex than the prevalent framework allows and that it is both built upon and different from the US-centric, market-oriented Internet governance scheme. This study recognizes the inadequacy of the conventional framework and invokes a theory of critical political economy of communication, thereby offering an alternative model to explicate the complex power dynamics behind China’s changing strategies. The alternative model advanced in this study is based on the understanding of China’s evolving approach as the product of multifaceted interactions among a group of power-holders that include both state agencies and business units on the transnational level.     

International and Domestic Dimensions of Russia’s G8 Presidency in 2006

In 2006, as president of the Group of Eight (G8), Russia intended to increase its global status, respond to foreign criticism about its democratic credentials, and advance key policy positions. In determining whether these goals were met, the author examines six important issues that Russia’s G8 presidency covered, including its agenda items (global energy security, infectious diseases, and education), nuclear nonproliferation, counter-terrorism, and the crisis in the Middle East. Informed by international socialization theory, the author finds that the G8 presidency gave Russia a high-profile platform on which to assert its national interests and sovereignty. President Vladimir Putin showcased Russia’s strengths in various ways, ranging from symbolic images of its renewed grandeur to demonstrations of its independent policy line on energy security and rhetoric about its democratizing the G8 decision-making process. He also benefited from the fact that other G8 leaders did not publicly press him on issues related to Russia’s authoritarian backsliding. However, Russia’s achievements as G8 president were soon overshadowed by worsening relations with the United States and the European Union; by further restrictions on civil society; and by high-profile assassinations. The behaviour of Russian officials during 2006 indicates that international socialization was not taking place in any meaningful way beyond a display of diplomatic code (e.g., rhetoric on consensus-building).