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Articles 301 - 330 of 667

Full-Text Articles in Political Science

Pockets Of Participation: Bureaucratic Incentives And Participatory Irrigation Management In Thailand, Jacob Ricks Jun 2015

Pockets Of Participation: Bureaucratic Incentives And Participatory Irrigation Management In Thailand, Jacob Ricks

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite a history of participatory policies, Thailand’s Royal Irrigation Department (RID) has had little success in developing water user organisations (WUOs) capable of facilitating cooperation between farmers and the irrigation agency. Even so, pockets of participation exist. What can explain these rare successes? What policy lessons can they provide? Comparing nine WUOs, I identify factors that contribute to the emergence of relatively successful groups. Most importantly, I show that successful WUOs are contingent on the actions of local irrigation officials. These findings emphasise the important role of street-level bureaucrats in implementing participatory policies. The incentive structures provided by the RID, …


Pung Chhiv Kek [Cambodia, Activist], Pung Chhiv Kek May 2015

Pung Chhiv Kek [Cambodia, Activist], Pung Chhiv Kek

Digital Narratives of Asia

Dr Pung Chhiv Kek is the Founder and President of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights (LICADHO) and was nominated in 2005 for the Nobel Peace Prize as part of the 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize project. Apart from her work to improve the rights and lives of Cambodians, she talks to DNA about her efforts to bring Hun Sen and Sihanouk together for talks, which later led to the Peace Accords of 1991.


Somsavat Lengsavad [Laos, Deputy Prime Minister], Somsavat Lengsavad May 2015

Somsavat Lengsavad [Laos, Deputy Prime Minister], Somsavat Lengsavad

Digital Narratives of Asia

Somsavat Lengsavad is Deputy Prime Minister of Laos. He joined the People's Revolutionary Movement as a combatant in 1961 and his efforts to liberate and unite Laos found him in government decades later. He speaks to DNA about his time in combat, as well as the lessons he learnt from his role model, former President Kaysone Phomvihane.


The Metro Manila Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington May 2015

The Metro Manila Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Although Western colonisers have, to varying degrees, shaped the political structures and economies of nearly all modern Southeast Asian nations, they achieved an unmatched level of cultural and institutional penetration in the Philippines. Far from the Indic influences that inspired Angkor Wat, Borobudur and Bagan, the island group was only marginally sanskritised during the pre-colonial period. With some notable exceptions in the south, Muslim communities were also never able to establish firm roots. Mindanao, Sulu and even southern Luzon were home to maritime sultanates beginning in the late 14th century, but a Spanish victory over the Muslim Rajah of Maynila …


Asean's Role In Asia Pacific In The Driver's Seat Or Just A Back-Seat Driver?, Sudhir Devare May 2015

Asean's Role In Asia Pacific In The Driver's Seat Or Just A Back-Seat Driver?, Sudhir Devare

Asian Management Insights

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has often been described as the fulcrum around which the security, political and economic architecture of AsiaPacific will be built. But can ASEAN play that role?


The Visual Turn In Ir: Documentary Filmmaking As A Critical Method, William A. Callahan May 2015

The Visual Turn In Ir: Documentary Filmmaking As A Critical Method, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Although the field of international relations (IR) is arguably in the midst of a ‘visual turn’, few scholars have directly discussed research methods for studying visual international politics. This article follows the aesthetic turn’s call to resist the rational methods that frame our understanding of ourselves and the world. Yet it also argues that the visual turn is more than an elaboration of the aesthetic turn. While analyses of visual culture are characteristically suspicious of the power of images, this article argues that making films can provide an innovative method for studying IR. In particular, the visual turn can better …


Asean: Growth In The Fast Lane, Edward Lee May 2015

Asean: Growth In The Fast Lane, Edward Lee

Asian Management Insights

ASEAN’s political, economic and demographic factors suggest a giant is awakening.


Global Mass Media Coverage Of Hdrs - Replication Data For: 'The Critical Role Of Mass Media In International Norm Diffusion: The Case Of Undp Human Development Reports' International Studies Perspectives, Devin K. Joshi May 2015

Global Mass Media Coverage Of Hdrs - Replication Data For: 'The Critical Role Of Mass Media In International Norm Diffusion: The Case Of Undp Human Development Reports' International Studies Perspectives, Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This dataset compares global newspaper media coverage of the "Human Development Reports" Dataset is based on coding of 250 articles (50 randomly selected newspaper articles each year 1992, 1997, 2002, 2007, 2012). Newspaper articles were collected from Lexis-Nexis Global Newspaper Archive in 2014 and 2015.


Twenty Years' Evolution Of North Korean Migration, 1994-2014: A Human Security Perspective, Jiyoung Song May 2015

Twenty Years' Evolution Of North Korean Migration, 1994-2014: A Human Security Perspective, Jiyoung Song

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Over the past two decades, there have been notable changes in North Korean migration: from forced migration to trafficking in women, from heroic underground railways to people smuggling by Christian missionaries. The migration has taken mixed forms of asylum seeking, human trafficking, undocumented labour migration and people smuggling. The paper follows the footsteps of North Korean migrants from China through Southeast Asia to South Korea, and from there to the United Kingdom, to see the dynamic correlation between human (in)security and irregular migration. It analyses how individual migrant's agency interacts with other key actors in the migration system and eventually …


The Singapore Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Aji Paramartha, Shihui Khee, Regina Unson, Sai Hein Apr 2015

The Singapore Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, Aji Paramartha, Shihui Khee, Regina Unson, Sai Hein

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Singapore has come a long way, since her beginnings as a sleepy fishing village and a tiny Malay settlement ruled by the Sultan of Johor. Sir Stamford Raffles first arrived in Singapore in 1819 and immediately recognised that its strategic location along the Straits of Malacca would be useful to the British in developing an alternative to challenge Dutch influence and monopoly in the region. During British colonial rule, Singapore developed into an important free port and trade city, an essential trait that continues to feature heavily in Singapore’s economic development to this day.


The Basic Arithmetic Of Legislative Decisions, Michael Laver, Kenneth Benoit Apr 2015

The Basic Arithmetic Of Legislative Decisions, Michael Laver, Kenneth Benoit

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Despite the huge number of possible seat distributions following a general election in a multiparty parliamentary democracy, there are far fewer classes of seat distribution sharing important strategic features. We define an exclusive and exhaustive partition of the universe of theoretically possible n-party systems into five basic classes, the understanding of which facilitates more fruitful modeling of legislative politics, including government formation. Having defined a partition of legislative party systems and elaborated logical implications of this partition, we classify the population of postwar European legislatures. We show empirically that many of these are close to critical boundary conditions, so that …


The Negative Soft Power Of The China Dream – Ii, William A. Callahan Mar 2015

The Negative Soft Power Of The China Dream – Ii, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

As Ming Wan writes in his commentary in The Asan Forum on the “China Dream,” Chinese leaders use New Year’s celebrations as an opportunity to sum up the achievements of the recent past and to chart new directions for the future. Here, I discuss such New Year’s activity to argue that soft power works in interesting and unexpected ways in China. Joseph Nye famously defines soft power as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments.” Soft power, thus, is framed as a positive attractive force that is useful for a state’s foreign policy. …


Decentralization And Collaborative Disaster Governance, Yooil Bae, Yu-Min Joo, Soh-Yeon Won Mar 2015

Decentralization And Collaborative Disaster Governance, Yooil Bae, Yu-Min Joo, Soh-Yeon Won

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Decentralized disaster governance has been gaining much attention with the rising global urbanization rate and the complex nature of the disasters occurring in densely urbanized areas today. This paper studies the case of South Korea, a highly urbanized country with relatively recent decentralization reforms, in order to analyze the evolution of its disaster management system and to draw out implications from its experience. Specifically, it traces the national-level institutional changes in its disaster management, and then closely examines a hydrofluoric gas leakage in the industrial city of Gumi. The finding is that South Korea simultaneously carried out both centralization and …


Political Connections And Firm Value: Evidence From The Regression Discontinuity Design Of Close Gubernatorial Elections, Quoc-Anh Do, Yen Teik Lee, Bang D. Nguyen Mar 2015

Political Connections And Firm Value: Evidence From The Regression Discontinuity Design Of Close Gubernatorial Elections, Quoc-Anh Do, Yen Teik Lee, Bang D. Nguyen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using the regression discontinuity design of close gubernatorial elections in the U.S., we identify a significant and positive impact of the social networks of corporate directors and politicians on firm value. Firms connected to elected governors increase their value by 3.89%. Political connections are more valuable for firms connected to winning challengers, for smaller and financially dependent firms, in more corrupt states, in states of connected firms’ headquarters and operations, and in closer, smaller, and active networks. Post-election, firms connected to the winner receive significantly more state procurement contracts and invest more than do firms connected to the loser.


Nguyen Khac Huynh [Vietnam, Diplomat], Nguyen Khac Huynh Feb 2015

Nguyen Khac Huynh [Vietnam, Diplomat], Nguyen Khac Huynh

Digital Narratives of Asia

Nguyen Khac Huynh was a key member of the 1968-1973 Paris Peace Talks on the Vietnam War. He talks to DNA about how Vietnam managed to negotiate a settlement that saw the US withdraw from South Vietnam, despite being a weaker power. Hear also the long-time diplomat, soldier and academic's thoughts on the qualities of a good leader.


Textualizing Cultures: Thinking Beyond The Mit Controversy, William A. Callahan Feb 2015

Textualizing Cultures: Thinking Beyond The Mit Controversy, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This essay examines how the MIT Controversy hardened identities in terms of the time worn template of geopolitical conflict of national stereotypes. It critically analyzes the Chinese students’ response to the “Visualizing Cultures” project by putting it in the context of the PRC’s patriotic education policy that securitizes culture by focusing on identity as difference in a zero-sum game that distinguishes civilization from barbarism, and China from the rest of the world. It critically analyzes the professors response to the controversy by highlighting how meaning is not only produced by the author; it is also consumed by various audiences that …


The Federalist Provenance Of The Principle Of Privacy, Elvin T. Lim Feb 2015

The Federalist Provenance Of The Principle Of Privacy, Elvin T. Lim

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

The right to privacy is the centerpiece of modern liberal constitutional thought in the United States. But liberals rarely invoke “the Founding” to justify this right, as if conceding that the right to privacy was somehow a radical departure from “original meaning,” perhaps pulled out of the hat by “activist” judges taking great interpretive liberties with the constitutional text. Far from being an unorthodox and modern invention, I argue here that privacy is a principle grounded in the very architecture of the Constitution as enumerated in its Articles, perhaps even more so than in particular sections of the Bill of …


Fidel Valdez Ramos [Philippines, President], Fidel Valdez Ramos Jan 2015

Fidel Valdez Ramos [Philippines, President], Fidel Valdez Ramos

Digital Narratives of Asia

Fidel V Ramos was the 12th President of the Philippines. As Director-General of the Integrated National Police and Acting Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, he rose up against the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos, to lead the military in the People Power Revolution of 1986. He tells DNA why he decided to stand up to his second cousin, what led him to run for the presidency and the thinking behind one of the key achievements of his term - the peace agreement with the MNLF.


Ramon Navaratnam [Malaysia, President Of Transparency International Malaysia], Ramon Navaratnam Jan 2015

Ramon Navaratnam [Malaysia, President Of Transparency International Malaysia], Ramon Navaratnam

Digital Narratives of Asia

Former Secretary-General of Malaysia's Transport Ministry and Former President of Transparency International Malaysia, Ramon Navaratnam speaks his mind. An outspoken critic of Malaysian politics and society, Mr Navaratnam feels that it is his duty to speak up and tell the truth. He shares his thoughts with DNA over the merger and separation of Malaysia and Singapore, as well as his frank assessment of the two countries' pioneer Prime Ministers, Tunku Abdul Rahman and Lee Kuan Yew.


Rising Powers And Human Rights: The India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum At The Un Human Rights Council, Eduard Jordaan Jan 2015

Rising Powers And Human Rights: The India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum At The Un Human Rights Council, Eduard Jordaan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

In the official declarations of the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA), the three states claim a shared understanding of human rights and a deep commitment to the international promotion and protection of these rights. This article considers these two propositions in light of the actions of the IBSA states on the United Nations Human Rights Council. After examining the positions of the IBSA states on seven controversial country-specific cases (Belarus, Darfur and Sudan, Iran, Israel, North Korea, Sri Lanka, and Syria) and four controversial thematic domains (economic rights, racism, freedom of expression, and sexual orientation), I conclude that the three …


Ko Ko Gyi [Myanmar, Activist], Ko Ko Gyi Dec 2014

Ko Ko Gyi [Myanmar, Activist], Ko Ko Gyi

Digital Narratives of Asia

Myanmar democracy activist Ko Ko Gyi spent a total of 17 years in prison for his political beliefs. First detained for his involvement in student protests in 1989, he was eventually released in 2012, along with 600 others, when the military-led government began implementing reforms. Mr Ko Ko Gyi now champions democracy and human rights issues as General Secretary of the 88 Generation Peace and Open Society. He was also a member of the government's Rakhine Investigation Commission to investigate the sectarian violence in Rakhine state. He speaks to DNA about the darkest days of his time in the infamous …


Mapping The Umbrella Movement: Uncovering Grounded Theologies In Hong Kong, Justin Kh Tse Dec 2014

Mapping The Umbrella Movement: Uncovering Grounded Theologies In Hong Kong, Justin Kh Tse

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

As this Syndicate forum on the Umbrella Movement and theology winds to a close, the physical occupations in Hong Kong seem to be nearing their end stage. With court injunctions, police clearances, statements of support from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for the Hong Kong government, the attempted voluntary surrender of Occupy Central leaders to the police, and a student hunger strike after over seventy days of street occupations, it might seem late in the game to call for the mapping of “grounded theologies,” “performative practices of placemaking informed by understandings of the transcendent,” woven into the political constitution …


China Dream – 1, William A. Callahan Dec 2014

China Dream – 1, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

What Can the China Dream “Do” in the PRC?Since Xi Jinping chose “The China Dream” (中国梦) as his signature slogan in late 2012, much has been written on the topic. By mid-2014, 8,249 articles with “China dream-Zhongguo meng” in the title had been published within the PRC, according to the CNKI China academic journals database. Indeed, the 2014 round of major social science research grant funding in China was dominated by large projects that explore Comrade Xi’s thought in terms of the China dream. The China dream is also a popular topic among English-language journalistic and think tank commentaries, and …


Goenawan Mohamad [Indonesia, Editor Of Tempo], Goenawan Mohamad Nov 2014

Goenawan Mohamad [Indonesia, Editor Of Tempo], Goenawan Mohamad

Digital Narratives of Asia

Goenawan Mohamad is the founder of Indonesia's Tempo magazine and a leading voice of democracy in the country. As founding editor, Mr Goenawan had to make the tough call of whether to continue Tempo's critical reporting of the government and face a ban, or toe the line to ensure survival. DNA talks to him about how he came to his decision and stuck to his principles, as well as his take on the many Indonesian leaders he has observed.


Risk Regulation In China, Singapore Management University Nov 2014

Risk Regulation In China, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Local political power poses a formidable challenge to Beijing's efforts to enforce regulation...and shore up popular support for the regime


Singapore’S Growth Story: Leadership And Innovation, S. R. Nathan, Rajendra K. Srivastava Nov 2014

Singapore’S Growth Story: Leadership And Innovation, S. R. Nathan, Rajendra K. Srivastava

Asian Management Insights

The sixth president of the Republic of Singapore, S.R. Nathan, talks about leadership and innovation as the key foundation stones in Singapore’s growth story in this interview with Rajendra Srivastava.


On The Road To Watershed Hustings, Tan K. B. Eugene Nov 2014

On The Road To Watershed Hustings, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law and former Nominated Member of Parliament Eugene Tan noted that with just 23 months left in the 12th Parliament's five-year term, the next polls, which will have to be held by Jan 9, 2017, promise to be the watershed general election. He also commented that it will almost certainly be a straight fight between the ruling People's Action Party and the Workers' Party, providing some indication of whether Singapore is evolving from a one-party dominant to a two-party political system.


Citizen Ai: Warrior, Jester And Middleman, William A. Callahan Nov 2014

Citizen Ai: Warrior, Jester And Middleman, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Ai Weiwei is famous for crossing boundaries, especially the boundary between art and politics. To appreciate the often contradictory nature ofAis work, this essay employs multiple narratives: " Ai the Heroic Warrior" who cńticizes the Chinese government; " Ai the Court Jester " who plays with the Chinese state and Western media; and "Ai the Middleman " who acts as a broker between China and the West, between young and old people, and between civil society and the state in the PRC. The essay concludes that afourth narrative can bńng together these three stones in a multicoded understanding ofAis work: …


Is America Ready To Be Number 2?, Singapore Management University Oct 2014

Is America Ready To Be Number 2?, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

China's GDP will soon eclipse America's, but it might not matter in the grand scheme of things.


The Yangon Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington Oct 2014

The Yangon Report: National Landscape, Current Challenges And Opportunities For Growth, Institute For Societal Leadership, John W. Ellington

Institute of Societal Leadership Research Collection

Since its independence from British rule in 1948, Myanmar has struggled with multiple obstacles, including a series of violent internal ethnic and sectarian conflicts, isolationist fiscal policies instituted by an increasingly distrustful military government and international sanctions and condemnation following government crackdowns in 1988 and 2007. In spite of all these setbacks, President Thein Sein’s decision in 2011 to liberalise the country’s political and economic systems has created a new wave of optimism for what was once commonly regarded as a failed state.