Suchergebnisse

AbstractHuawei, the telecommunications company based in the People's Republic of China (PRC), has presented the governments of several middle powers with a policy dilemma. On the one hand, Huawei's affordable 5G network technology is attractive to telecommunications operators in these countries, which do not have domestic producers of this equipment. On the other hand, the U.S. government and intelligence agencies in other countries maintain that Huawei gear presents intolerable network security risks, a charge that the PRC government and Huawei forcefully reject as they insist Huawei merits access to foreign markets. Facing the question of whether and how to allow the installation of Huawei's 5G equipment in their domestic networks, the governments of Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany have been caught between the competing demands of the two rivalrous superpowers and faced internal divisions among communities of government experts. At first glance, Japan, the UK, and Germany each appear to have responded to the Huawei dilemma in a different way. The Japanese government moved quickly and without formal announcement to exclude Huawei from its market, while publicly denying a ban. The UK government initially allowed Huawei to supply some of its national 5G infrastructure, but then reversed itself to ban the company's equipment outright after a U.S. regulatory change. The German government has yet to officially ban Huawei, but has taken successive steps to curtail the PRC company's continued involvement in its domestic networks. In spite of their apparent differences, the three national responses to the Huawei dilemma share a fundamental commonality: all amount to 'non-decision decisions' on the question of whether and how to allow Huawei to supply domestic 5G networks. In one way or another, each government avoided making policy decisions that were either explicit, definitive, or singular on the issue, but nonetheless reduced the likelihood of Huawei's participation in its domestic 5G infrastructure. After developing the concept of a 'non-decision decision,' we explain why these maneuvers are not isolated responses to a specific policy conundrum, but may presage a mode of middle power coping with competing demands from two increasingly rivalrous superpowers.

Although less than a decade old, the People's Republic of China's (PRC) Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been the subject of considerable attention and conjecture. After initial waves of speculation and punditry, now more rigorous work on the plans, structure, and implementation of this initiative is beginning to contribute to the debate. In this essay, we showcase how three recent monographs make sense of the BRI: One Belt One Road: Chinese Power Meets the World, by Eyck Freymann; The Belt Road and Beyond: State-Mobilized Globalization in China: 1998–2018, by Min Ye; and Orchestration: China's Economic Statecraft across Asia and Europe, by James Reilly. Surveying the arguments and findings of these works together, we seek to draw out insights and implications for how we should understand the BRI. In particular, we highlight the political significance of the BRI's close association with PRC leader Xi Jinping, the ways in which the BRI follows long-standing patterns of campaign-style mobilization within the PRC, the crucial role of local partners, and the BRI's potential consequences for the larger international system in light of the broader literature in international relations. We conclude by discussing the need to now also consider unintended outcomes.

AbstractA large literature within the field of international relations has now explored both how emotions can shape political perceptions and behavior and how international actors may seek to manipulate, harness, or deploy emotions and emotional displays for political ends. Less attention, however, has been paid to how political struggles can also center upon issues of who can or should feel what emotion and whose feelings matter. Precisely, we theorize a distributive politics of emotion that can manifest in three general forms, all of which have their own properties and logics of contestation. The first centers on emotional obligations, understood as an actor's duties to feel and express specific emotions. The second concerns emotional entitlements, or the rights an actor enjoys to either feel or not feel certain emotions. And the third involves hierarchies of emotional deference, that is, the varying degrees of priority accorded to different actors' feelings. We illustrate how the politics of emotions can unfold on the international stage by looking at developments in the so-called history problem within Sino-Japanese relations.

A large literature within the field of international relations has now explored both how emotions can shape political perceptions and behavior and how international actors may seek to manipulate, harness, or deploy emotions and emotional displays for political ends. Less attention, however, has been paid to how political struggles can also center upon issues of who can or should feel what emotion and whose feelings matter. Precisely, we theorize a distributive politics of emotion that can manifest in three general forms, all of which have their own properties and logics of contestation. The first centers on emotional obligations, understood as an actor's duties to feel and express specific emotions. The second concerns emotional entitlements, or the rights an actor enjoys to either feel or not feel certain emotions. And the third involves hierarchies of emotional deference, that is, the varying degrees of priority accorded to different actors' feelings. We illustrate how the politics of emotions can unfold on the international stage by looking at developments in the so-called history problem within Sino-Japanese relations.