Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Cause, conseguenze e strategie di mitigazione Proponiamo il primo di una serie di articoli in cui affronteremo l’attuale problema dei mutamenti climatici. Presentiamo il documento redatto, votato e pubblicato dall’Ipcc - Comitato intergovernativo sui cambiamenti climatici - che illustra la sintesi delle ricerche svolte su questo tema rilevante.

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Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis.

The End of History and the Last Man

Political economists have always been interested in the differences in economic and political institutions that occur across countries. Some regard these differences as deviations from 'best practice' that will dissolve as nations catch up to a technological or organizational leader. Others see them as the distillation of more durable historical choices for a specific kind of society, since economic institutions condition levels of social protection, the distribution of income, and the availability of collective goods — features of the social solidarity of a nation. In each case, comparative political economy revolves around the conceptual frameworks used to understand institutional variation across nations. On such frameworks depend the answers to a range of important questions. Some are policy-related. What kind of economic policies will improve the performance of the economy? What will governments do in the face of economic challenges? What defines a state's capacities to meet such challenges? Other questions are firm-related. Do companies located in different nations display systematic differences in their structure and strategies? If so, what inspires such differences? How can national differences in the pace or character of innovation be explained? Some are issues about economic performance. Do some sets of institutions provide lower rates of inflation and unemployment or higher rates of growth than others? What are the trade-offs in terms of economic performance to developing one type of political economy rather than another? Finally, second-order questions about institutional change and stability are of special significance today. Can we expect technological progress and the competitive pressures of globalization to inspire institutional conver-gence? What factors condition the adjustment paths a political economy takes in the face of such challenges? The object of this book is to elaborate a new framework for understanding the institutional similarities and differences among the developed economies, one that offers a new and intriguing set of answers to 1111 211 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10111 1 211 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 such questions. 1 We outline the basic approach in this Introduction. Subsequent chapters extend and apply it to a wide range of issues. In many respects, this approach is still a work-in-progress. We see it as a set of contentions that open up new research agendas rather than settled wisdom to be accepted …

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An Introduction to Varieties of Capitalism

The East Asian miracle: Economic growth and public policy: By the World Bank. (New York: Oxford University Press for the World Bank, 1993. 389 pp. $19.95, paper.)

The East Asian region generally and Southeast Asia in particular have long been associated with authoritarian rule. It is argued that the intensification of a range of environmental problems means that authoritarian rule is likely to become even more commonplace there in the future. Countries with limited state capacity will struggle to deal with the consequences of population expansion, economic development and the environmental degradation with which they are associated. A resurgence of authoritarian rule is made even more likely by China's ‘successful’ developmental example and the extent of the region's existing environmental problems. The dispiriting reality may be that authoritarian regimes – unattractive as they may be – may even prove more capable of responding to the complex political and environmental pressures in the region than some of its democracies.

The coming of environmental authoritarianism

Since the 1980s a remarkable transformation has occurred in the rationale that informs public policy in Australia. This transformation reflects a fundamental change in the way national economies and populations are conceived by policy-makers, and has led to the emergence of new strategies of governance as a consequence. We argue that this change of direction in Australian public policy may be best thought of as a specific neoliberal 'political rationality'. The first section of the paper outlines changes in conceptions of the economy and subjectivity which are associated with neoliberalism as a political rationality. The second part of the paper examines the articulation and implementation of neoliberalism in Australia over the last couple of decades.

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Neoliberalism as a political rationality: Australian public policy since the 1980s

Identifying ‘East Asia’ is more difficult than it might seem at first glance. One of the problems inherent in describing any region is deciding where to draw the boundaries: who’s in and who’s out? Which countries can be considered ‘authentic’, unambiguous members of a region, and which should be excluded? On what basis should inclusion or exclusion occur? Are there differences in the way political and economic regionalism occur? Even more problematically, is it possible that regionally based ‘security communities’ might even overturn some of the most widely held expectations about regional security and the possibilities for co-operation rather than conflict in East Asia as a consequence? This chapter begins the process of answering these questions by providing some conceptual tools for thinking about regions. It also suggests why it makes sense to consider East Asia as potentially constituting a region in the same way we think of Western Europe or Latin America.

Regionalism and globalization in East Asia: Politics, security and economic development

Regionally based processes of political and economic integration, security co-operation, and even social identification have become increasingly important and prominent parts of the international system. Nowhere have such processes gone further than in Western Europe. Somewhat surprisingly, similar patterns of regional integration have been steadily developing in East Asia - a region many observers consider unlikely to replicate the European experience. This paper uses an historically grounded comparative approach to examine the historical preconditions that underpinned the formation of the European Union, and then contrasts them with the situation in East Asia today. While the overall geopolitical and specific national contexts are very different, such an analysis highlights surprising similarities and differences, particularly in the role played by the United States in both periods. A comparative analysis allows us to understand and rethink the incentives for, and constraints on, regional integrative processes.

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Rethinking regionalism: Europe and East Asia in comparative historical perspective

In the aftermath of the East Asian crisis and Japan's prolonged economic downturn , many observers considered that East Asia's distinctive model of state-led development had become redundant and irrelevant. And yet not only have aspects of this model persisted in Japan despite attempts to reform it , but China is actively embracing elements of neomercantilism and state interventionism that owe much to the

Mark Beeson

Papers

The coming of environmental authoritarianism

Neoliberalism as a political rationality: Australian public policy since the 1980s

Regionalism and globalization in East Asia: Politics, security and economic development

Rethinking regionalism: Europe and East Asia in comparative historical perspective

Developmental States in East Asia: A Comparison of the Japanese and Chinese Experiences