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This book reveals the pernicious effects of aid dependence and its perversion of Cambodian democracy. It analyzes the period since international intervention liberated Cambodia from pariah state status in the early 1990s and shows how the country’s social indicators and the integrity of its political institutions declined rapidly within a few short years, while inequality grew dramatically. It argues that international intervention and foreign aid resulted in higher maternal mortality rates and unprecedented corruption by the mid-2000s. Similarly it shows that the more aid-dependent a country is, the more distorted its incentives to develop sustainably become. Contrasting Cambodia’s clothing sector with its rice and livestock sectors and its internal handling of the avian flu epidemic, the book showcases the international community’s role in preventing Cambodia from controlling its national development. It argues that as Cambodia is a post-conflict state that is unable to refuse aid, it is rife with trial-and-error donor experiments and their unintended consequences, such as bad governance and poor domestic and tax revenue performance—a major factor curbing sustainable, nationally owned development. By outlining the terms through which countries can achieve better ownership of their development, the book offers alternatives for governments that are on the brink of collapse and dependent on foreign intervention and aid.

This book looks at the political challenges facing modern-day Myanmar and assesses how other nations should act in relation to the country. It affirms the importance of foreign interests in Myanmar's democratic awakening, but emphasizes that this should be done through committed, grassroots strategies of engagement that encompass foreign states, international aid agencies and global corporations. The book prioritizes the opinions of local citizens and draws upon the latest scholarship on this issue, particularly research that takes historical events, contemporary political and social investigations, and global justice literature into account. It also draws on studies that focus on the effects of democratic transition, the aid industry, and socially responsible corporate investing and sanctions. It applies broad-ranging global justice theories to the issue and offers a resource for those researching Burma/Myanmar, nonspecialists interested in Southeast Asian politics and society and general readers who seek a richer understanding of Myanmar. It is the first book-length study on the nation to be completed after the contentious general elections of 2010.

Despite the destabilizing potential of governing of a vast territory and a large multicultural population, the centralized government of the People’s Republic of China has held together for decades, resisting efforts at local autonomy. By analyzing Beijing’s strategies for maintaining control even in the reformist post-Mao era, Centrifugal Empire reveals the unique thinking behind China’s approach to local governance, its historical roots, and its deflection of divergent interests. Centrifugal Empire examines the logic, mode, and instrument of local governance established by the People’s Republic, and then compares the current system to the practices of its dynastic predecessors. The result is an expansive portrait of Chinese leaders’ attitudes toward regional autonomy and local challenges, one concerned with territory-specific preoccupations and manifesting in constant searches for an optimal design of control. Jae Ho Chung reveals how current communist instruments of local governance echo imperial institutions, while exposing the Leninist regime’s savvy adaptation to contemporary issues and its need for more sophisticated inter-local networks to keep its unitary rule intact. He casts the challenges to China’s central–local relations as perennial, since the dilution of the system’s “socialist” or “Communist” character will only accentuate its fundamentally Chinese—or centrifugal—nature.

Many have viewed the tribute system as China's tool for projecting its power and influence in East Asia, treating other actors as passive recipients of Chinese domination. China's Hegemony sheds new light on this system and shows that the international order of Asia's past was not as Sinocentric as conventional wisdom suggests. Instead, throughout the early modern period, Chinese hegemony was accepted, defied, and challenged by its East Asian neighbors at different times, depending on these leaders' strategies for legitimacy among their populations. Focusing on China-Korea-Japan dynamics of East Asian international politics during the Ming and High Qing periods, Ji-Young Lee draws on extensive research of East Asian language sources, including records written by Chinese and Korean tributary envoys. She offers fascinating and rich details of war and peace in Asian international relations, addressing questions such as: why Japan invaded Korea and fought a major war against the Sino-Korean coalition in the late sixteenth century; why Korea attempted to strike at the Ming empire militarily in the late fourteenth century; and how Japan created a miniature tributary order posing as the center of Asia in lieu of the Qing empire in the seventeenth century.

This book examines China's place in the world and looks at a range of crucial issues now facing the country, such as the growth (or deterioration) of its economy, the government's ever-delayed democratization, the potential outcomes of a national political crisis, and the possible escalation of a revamped authoritarianism. The book draws on a wealth of archival and contemporary materials and ultimately reads China's current progress as a set of easy accomplishments presaging a more difficult era of development. It sets out the difficult decisions now confronting China's elite, who are under tremendous pressure to support an economy based on innovation and consumption, to establish a political system based on law and popular participation, to rethink their national identity and spatial organization, and to define a more positive approach to the world's problems. These leaders are also besieged by corruption among their ranks, an increasingly restless urban population, and a sharp decline in their country's demographic growth. The book highlights these anxieties and looks at the attempts that are being made to alleviate them. It reveals a China much less confident and secure than many would believe.

This book traces the development of various policy disputes and perspectives from the period of South Korea’s democratic transition and provides an understanding of how policymakers have managed inter-Korean relations. It shows how, in South Korea, the contentious debate over relations with the North transcends traditional considerations of physical and economic security. It also describes how political activists play a critical role in shaping the discussion of these issues as they pursue the separate yet connected agendas of democracy, human rights, and unification. The book focuses on four case studies—the 1980 Kwangju uprising, the June 1987 uprising, the move toward democracy in the 1990s, and the decade of “progressive” government that began with the election of Kim Dae Jung in 1997. It tracks activists’ complex views on reunification along with the rise and fall of more radical voices encouraging the adoption of a North Korean style of socialism. It shows that, while these specific arguments have dissipated over the years, their vestiges can still be found in recent discussions over how to engage with North Korea and bring security and peace to the peninsula. The book shows how the historical trajectory of norms and beliefs can have a significant effect on a state’s threat perceptions and security policy.

In the poorest countries, such as Afghanistan, Haiti, and Mali, the United States has struggled to work with governments whose corruption and lack of capacity are increasingly seen to be the cause of instability and poverty. The development and security communities call for “good governance” to improve the rule of law, democratic accountability, and the delivery of public goods and services. The United States and other rich liberal democracies insist that this is the only legitimate model of governance. Yet poor governments cannot govern according to these ideals and instead are compelled to rely more heavily on older, cheaper strategies of holding power, such as patronage and repression. The unwillingness to admit that poor governments do and must govern differently has cost the United States and others inestimable blood and coin. Informed by years of fieldwork and drawing on practitioner work and academic scholarship in politics, economics, law, and history, this book explains the origins of poor governments in the formation of the modern state system and describes the way they govern. It argues that, surprisingly, the effort to stigmatize and criminalize the governance of the poor is both fruitless and destabilizing. The United States requires a more effective foreign policy to engage poor governments and acknowledge how they govern.

No country feels China's rise more deeply than Japan. Through case studies of visits by Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, conflicts over the boundaries of economic zones in the East China Sea, concerns about food safety, and strategies of island defense, this book explores the policy issues testing the Japanese government as it tries to navigate its relationship with an advancing China. The book finds that Japan's interactions with China extend far beyond the negotiations between diplomats and include a broad array of social actors intent on influencing the Sino–Japanese relationship. Some of the tensions complicating Japan's encounters with China, such as those surrounding the Yasukuni Shrine or territorial disputes, have deep roots in the postwar era, and political advocates seeking a stronger Japanese state organize themselves around these causes. Other tensions manifest themselves during the institutional and regulatory reform of maritime boundary and food safety issues. The text scrutinizes the role of the Japanese government in coping with contention as China's influence grows and Japanese citizens demand more protection. Underlying the government's efforts is Japan's insecurity about its own capacity for change and its waning status as the leading economy in Asia. For many, China's rise means Japan's decline, and Smith suggests how Japan can maintain its regional and global clout as confidence in its postwar diplomatic and security approach diminishes.

Jerusalem’s formal political borders reveal neither the dynamics of power in the city nor the underlying factors that make an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians so difficult. The lines delineating Israeli are frequently different from those delineating segregated housing or areas of uneven service provision or parallel national electoral districts of competing educational jurisdictions. In particular, the city’s large number of holy sites and restricted religious compounds create enclaves that continually threaten to undermine the Israeli states control over the city. This lack of congruity between political control and the actual spatial organization and everyday use of the city leaves many areas of occupied East Jerusalem in a kind of twilight zone where citizenship, property rights, and the enforcement of the rule of law are ambiguously applied. This book plots a history of Jerusalem that examines this intersecting and multileveled matrix and, in so doing, is able to portray the constraints on Israeli control over the city and the resilience of Palestinian enclaves after forty-five years of Israeli occupation. Adding to this complex mix is the role of numerous external influences—religious, political, financial, and cultural—so that the city is also a crucible for broader contestation. While the Palestinians may not return to their previous preeminence in the city, neither will Israel be able to assert a total and irreversible dominance. The book’s conclusion is that the city will not only have to be shared but that the sharing will be based upon these many borders and the interplay between history, geography, and religion.

Narrated by dozens of activists and everyday individuals, this book documents the unprecedented events that led to the collapse of dictatorial regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen. Beginning in 2011, these stories offer unique access to the message that inspired citizens to act, their experiences during revolt, and the lessons they learned from some of the most dramatic changes and appalling events to occur in the history of the Arab world. The riveting, revealing, and sometimes heartbreaking stories in this volume also include voices from Syria. Featuring participants from a variety of social and educational backgrounds and political commitments, these personal stories of action represent the Arab Spring's united and broad social movements, collective identities, and youthful character. For years, the volume's participants lived under regimes that brutally suppressed free expression and protest. Their testimony speaks to the multifaceted emotional, psychological, and cultural factors that motivated citizens to join together to struggle against their oppressors.