This paper examines the relationship between the number and rights of low-skilled migrant workers in high-income countries. It identifies a trade-off: Countries with large numbers of low-skilled migrant workers offer them relatively few rights, while smaller numbers of migrants are typically associated with more rights. We discuss the number-vs.-rights trade-off in theory and practice as an example of competing goods, raising the question of whether numbers of migrants or rights of migrants should get higher priority. There is no easy or universal answer, but avoiding an explicit discussion of the issue – as has been done in recent guest worker debates – can obscure an important policy choice.

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Numbers vs. Rights: Trade-Offs and Guest Worker Programs1

Discussions of policy transfer have primarily focused on official actors and networks. The non-governmental mode of policy transfer via foundations, think tanks and non-governmental organizations is a relatively neglected dimension. Accordingly, this paper addresses the role of think tanks in promoting the spread of policy ideas about privatization. The importance of think tanks to policy transfer is their ability to diffuse ideas by (1) acting as a clearing-house for information; (2) their involvement in the advocacy of ideas; (3) their involvement in domestic and transnational policy networks; and (4) their intellectual and scholarly base providing expertise on specialized policy issues. Concepts from comparative public policy and international relations such as “social learning” and “epistemic communities” are used to outline the way think tanks advocate innovative policy ideas. However, not only have think tanks been effective in promoting the transfer of policy ideas, the international spread of think tanks also exhibits organizationaltransfer.

Non‐Governmental Policy Transfer: The Strategies of Independent Policy Institutes

Mapping the relations between intimacy and geopolitics is gathering momentum within critical geopolitics. Both world events and geographical research have demonstrated the importance of politicised understandings of intimacy (Harker and Martin 2012; Oswin and Olund 2010; Smith 2011), and of dissolving the customary boundaries between global/local, familial/state and personal/political as objects of study (Cowen and Story 2013; Mountz and Hyndman 2006; Pain and Smith 2008; Pratt and Rosner 2012; Pratt 2012). This collection is prompted by the growth of interest in intimacygeopolitics, but also by a wish to push understanding forwards, both of the ambivalence of intimacy itself (Harker 2013) and of the common framing of intimacygeopolitics as a binary (see Pratt and Rosner 2012). We interrogate the ways that intimacy-geopolitics is tightly interwoven, and how this relation functions in different settings. In this introduction, we make some suggestions for how this might be framed. Each of the seven short papers that follow takes a particular cut across this relation within a specific geographical context; together, the collection intends to provide a series of conceptual, empirical and methodological questions and provocations for further research.

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Introduction: intimacy‐geopolitics and violence

'Structural adjustment' has been a central part of the development strategy for the 'third world'. Loans made by the World Bank and the IMF have been conditional on developing countries pursuing rapid economic liberalization programmes as it was believed this would strengthen their economies in the long run. M. Rodwan Abouharb and David Cingranelli argue that, conversely, structural adjustment agreements usually cause increased hardship for the poor, greater civil conflict, and more repression of human rights, therefore resulting in a lower rate of economic development. Greater exposure to structural adjustment has increased the prevalence of anti-government protests, riots and rebellion. It has led to less respect for economic and social rights, physical integrity rights, and worker rights, but more respect for democratic rights. Based on these findings, the authors recommend a human rights-based approach to economic development.

Human Rights and Structural Adjustment

The papers in this special issue of JEMS illustrate how the field of citizenship studies is moving towards a much more systematic comparative approach. They also indicate that the gap between political and legal branches might be narrowing. This brief concluding contribution reflects on a perspective that goes beyond the currently dominant framework, without replacing it. For both comparative and normative purposes, we need to study not merely the citizenship traditions, laws and policies of states considered separately, but rather as part of intertwined citizenship constellations.

Studying Citizenship Constellations

Introduction: reflection on dialogues between practitioners and theorists of human rights Daniel A. Bell Part I. Northern INGOs and Southern Aid Recipients: The Challenge of Unequal Power: 1. The pornography of poverty: a cautionary fundraising tale Bette Plewes 2. An imperfect process: funding human rights - a case study Mona Younis 3. Transformational development as the key to housing rights Steven Weir 4. Human rights INGOs, the North/South Gap: the challenge of normative and empirical learning Bonny Ibhawoh Part II. INGOs and Governments: The Challenge of Dealing with States that Restrict the Activities of INGOs: 5. Dilemmas facing INGOs in coalition-occupied Iraq Lyal Sunga 6. Human rights in action: supporting human rights work in authoritarian countries Birgit Lindsnaes, Hans-Otto Sano and Hatla Thelle 7. Driving without a map: implementing legal projects in China aimed at improving human rights Sophia Woodman 8. Normative compliance and hard bargaining: China's strategies and tactics in response to International Human Rights criticism Sun Zhe Part III. INGOs and Economic Rights: The Challenge of Dealing with Global Poverty: 9. Defending economic, social and cultural rights: practical issues faced by an International Human Rights Organization Kenneth Roth 10. Thinking through social and economic rights Neera Chandhoke 11. Amnesty International and economic, social and cultural rights Curt Goering 12. Moral priorities for International Human Rights NGOs Thomas W. Pogge 13. The problem of doing good in a world that isn't: reflections on the ethical challenges facing INGOs Joseph H. Carens Conclusion: International NGOs as collective mobilization of transnational solidarity: implications for human rights at the United Nations Jean-Marc Coicaud.

Ethics in action : the ethical challenges of international human rights nongovernmental organizations

Justice for Migrant Workers? The Case for Foreign Domestic Workers in Hong Kong and Singapore

The contemporary Chinese intellectual Kang Xiaoguang has argued that Chinese soft power should be based on Confucian culture, the most influential Chinese political tradition. But which Confucian values should form the core of China’s soft power? This paper first explores the coexistence of state sovereignty and utopian cosmopolitanism through an analysis of Confucian tradition up to contemporary Chinese nationalism. It insists on the exogenous roots of the cosmopolitan ideal and its relations with the ideal of a harmonious political order and a global peace. Then, it compares the philosophy of ‘all-under-heaven’ in its classical and contemporary forms, with Mencius’ theory of a ‘hegemon’, a theory that still informs the moral language that Chinese intellectuals use to evaluate foreign policy, especially regarding morally-justified warfare. It ends on a reflection on the role that Mencius’s theory of just and unjust war can play in the contemporary Chinese context and to help understanding and defining th...

War, Peace, and China's Soft Power: A Confucian Approach

Many global indicators rank countries according to valued goods such as freedom, wealth, or happiness, but they all share the same flaw: they neglect the importance of rich and diverse social relations for human well-being. The Harmony Index (HI) is an effort to remedy this flaw. It measures four types of relations that matter for human well-being. The HI attempts to measure the extent of peaceful order and respect for diversity—what Confucian thinkers call harmony—within each relation, and ranks countries according to the score for overall harmony. This inaugural HI made use of comprehensive and reliable comparative data for 27 countries. Our findings show that small and relatively wealthy countries tend to be more harmonious countries. Compared to other leading global indices, however, the Harmony Index is less influenced by gross domestic product per capita and by the extent of democracy in a country. Population has a greater impact on harmony than either wealth or political system. We constructed another HI with fewer measurements for family well-being but covering a broader range of countries. A chart with 43 countries demonstrates that it is possible to achieve a high score on the HI without a high level of wealth or democracy. A detailed breakdown of the findings allows us to draw some tentative policy implications at the end of the report. Establishing and nourishing harmonious social relations and a non-destructive approach to the environment is a goal shared by most of the world’s cultures, ethical systems, and religions, and a harmony index can and should be used as a key indicator of social progress and regress.

Harmony in the World 2013: The Ideal and the Reality

Liberal democratic ideals and institutions command almost universal allegiance in Western societies, a phenomenon to be understood in the light of the West’s shared history and culture. In what seems like an all too obvious theoretical mistake, however, it is often assumed without argument that liberal democracy also meets the deeper aspirations of the rest of the world, most notably by Francis Fukuyama with his now infamous claim that we are witnessing an ‘end of history’ in which liberal democracy has finally triumphed over all its rivals. More concretely, this blind faith in the universal potential of liberal democracy takes the form of a US governmental policy to promote liberal democracy abroad, regardless of local needs, habits, and traditions, and not unexpectedly moral exhortation has proven far less effective than in the days when General MacArthur could forcibly impose democratic forms of government on recalcitrant countries. In short, democracy activists have encountered much resistance in non-Western contexts, and the task of exporting liberal democracy appears to be a great deal more complicated than optimists had supposed in the heady days after the collapse of communism in the Soviet bloc.

Daniel A. Bell

Papers

Ethics in action : the ethical challenges of international human rights nongovernmental organizations

Justice for Migrant Workers? The Case for Foreign Domestic Workers in Hong Kong and Singapore

War, Peace, and China's Soft Power: A Confucian Approach

Harmony in the World 2013: The Ideal and the Reality

Understanding Illiberal Democracy: A Framework