Suchergebnisse

AbstractFrom the end of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, gangs and secret societies (banghui) exercised enormous influence on Chinese society and politics. The two portrayals ofbanghuiin historiography – as modern criminal syndicates that came out of an emerging capitalist economy or, alternatively, a cultural succession of traditional secret society – are so distinct that their proponents often speak past each other. Revisiting primary and secondary materials on the Shanghai Green Gang, one of the most activebanghuiorganizations during the Republican era (1911–49), this article aims to bridge the two understandings by focusing on the gang's self-legitimation claims. Facing rapid social changes of the early twentieth century, I argue, the Green Gang reframed its use of violence as disciplinary, revolutionary, and nationalistic to gain public legitimation. Together with its involvement in state building and resource extraction, the gang's cultural work contributed to its prominence and led multiple political authorities to promote it to an exceptional degree.

After World War II, the non-proliferation of weapons of massive destruction (WMD) and the export controls of conventional weapons and civilian and military dual use technologies have been one of the most important focal point of international cooperation. Many international treaties have been signed and the international organizations have been established to promote these non-proliferation and export control efforts. The industrialized countries and the developing countries of China, India, and Pakistan that possess nuclear weapons and missile technologies have also enacted domestic laws and set up administrative regimes to control these goods and technologies from flowing to other countries or undesirable people. Among these countries, the United States has been the leader strongly advocating non-proliferation of WMD and export controls of civilian and military dual use goods. In fact, the United States has established a very sophisticated export control system to prevent its weapons and technologies from going to the hands of any adversaries. Because the complicities and overlaps of international treaties and domestic laws on this topic, it warrants a research guide for would-be researchers to walk through the maze of international and domestic export control regimes.

Can redistributive policies such as land reform help authoritarian regimes coopt rural societies? Given that land reform has the potential to disrupt preexisting sociopolitical orders, this article highlights an unresolved puzzle of how regimes balance between the objectives of expanding its rural coalitional support through transformative redistribution and stabilizing its political control over rural institutions during land reform. Using a novel dataset of Taiwan's 1950s rural reforms under the Kuomintang authoritarian regime, I find that stronger redistributive effects facilitated cooptation of new land reform beneficiaries through a key institution – the farmers' association (FA). However, I also find that the restructuring of rank-and-file FA membership was still subject to meddling by the native landlord class. I thus argue that land reform, while allowing regimes to broaden their rural coalitions through socioeconomic redistribution, can also paradoxically compel regimes to concede power during institutional cooptation.

How do formal civic organizations shape—and how are they shaped by—the making and transformation of urban space? Place-oriented civil society research emphasizes the central role of civic organizations in producing and changing unequal political and economic orders of cities but largely ignores the intercity connections and competitions that contribute to these local civic dynamics in a global capitalist system. Critical urban studies, in contrast, recognizes the influences of global capitalism and local city boosterism on city development but overlooks the paradoxical roles of formal civic organizations. Bringing the two scholarly camps in dialogue, this article explores how formal civic organizations are situated in entrepreneurial city-making in the Global South, when city governments promote their competitive advantage by boosting "social innovation" through nonprofits. Drawing on survey, interview, and social media data from a random sample of nonprofits in Shenzhen, China, our preliminary results highlight that the Shenzhen municipal government's agenda to promote both global capitalism and authoritarian rules have shaped the urban spaces where nonprofits form and operate. In turn, nonprofits mediate the negotiations between the local state, market, and urban residents to create, transform, and reinvent unequal physical, social, and digital urban space in this Silicon Valley of China.

This paper was originally written for Professor Alexander Moens' POL 484, NATO Field School, Simulation and Experiential Learning Program. The assignment asked students to write a research paper not to exceed 3000 words on questions pertaining to defence policy, military affairs, NATO, international crisis management, multilateral cooperation, Alliance relations, defence spending, peace and security, multinational operations, NATO-UN or NATO-EU/AU cooperation, etc. Papers were expected to incorporate original research, and include an introduction, literature review, theoretical framework, methodology, and references. This paper uses Chicago citation style.