This paper examines the impact of constitutional barriers on the privatization of public utilities in 21 OECD-countries between 1980 and 2008. We present new and improved indicators for privatization and constitutional barriers. Three empirical findings stand out: first, national privatization trajectories differ across both countries and sectors. Second, there is a significant cross-national variation in terms of constitutional provisions related to public utilities which, thirdly, constitute important impediments to privatization.

In International Relations, the question of global governance has become a main issue that has given rise to numerous research programs and products on the question of how to govern. IR scholarship, however, has more or less been conducted according to the tradition of regime and institution studies, focusing on how rules govern and how institutions can promote cooperation by lowering transactional costs and reduce conflict by increasing predictability and decreasing uncertainty. 1 In the IR discourse, rule-based governance seems to be the only model at international, regional, and global levels.

Fiji and Trinidad are similar in terms of their colonial and postcolonial historical experiences, yet their political outcomes are different. The argument put forth is that constitutional reforms that were adopted by Fiji were unsuccessful because of systemic conditions specific to the country. Sustained by structural features such as land rights and chiefly jurisdiction, and more intangible factors such as cultural identity and nationalism, ethnic identity is the lens through which most public discourse occurs. By contrast, Trinidad does not have these corresponding institutional structures, and the existence of public spaces for the contestation of ethnic identities together with the construction of hybrid identities at the local and national levels have contributed towards political stability.

Budget support-aid delivered directly to developing country government budgets-accounts for a growing proportion of overseas development assistance. In theory it has multiple benefits over other forms of aid in terms of attaining poverty reduction and development objectives. However, recent years have seen several incidents of budget support being frozen, halted or redirected because of slippage in the democratic credentials of certain countries, including Ethiopia, Uganda, Nicaragua, Honduras, Madagascar and Rwanda. This article analyses these incidents in relation to debates over aid conditionality. It finds that donors are willing to apply political conditionality when otherwise good performing governments go politically astray, but it questions whether budget support is a viable instrument for pushing for democratic change. Co-ordinated donor action appears to be increasing, but aid flows to the countries discussed remain high and the governments in question tend to be dismissive in the face of such pressure.

In this article we contrast the theoretical tradition of radical democracy developed by Chantal Mouffe with an alternative tradition of radical democracy rooted in the practices of subaltern social movements. While the former is wedded to the context and aspirations of Western modernity, the latter consists of place-based forms of 'colonial difference' within the Third and Fourth Worlds that are subalternised by the (aggressively globalising) modern tradition of democracy. Working within a 'modernity/coloniality' framework, we contrast these traditions of radical democracy along three main axes: 1) the logic of articulation among diverse struggles and movements; 2) the orientation towards, and aspirations with respect to, the state; and 3) the relation to the global scale and vision of the 'pluriverse'.

Why and how do issues expire? This paper applies the concept of path dependency to issue-life cycle and argues that the manner in which an issue dies is closely associated with how it comes to life. This paper argues that, on the Access to Medicines issue, the first actors (1) to have called attention to a legal problem, (2) to have capitalised on the HIV/AIDs crisis, and (3) to have used the example of Africa, were also the first to have felt constrained by their own frame in their attempt to (1) look for economical rather than legal solutions, (2) expand the list of medicines covered beyond anti-AIDs drugs, and (3) allow large emerging economies to benefit from a scheme designed by countries without manufacturing capacities. In order to escape an issue in which they felt entrapped, issue-entrepreneurs worked strategically to close the debate in order to better reframe it in other forums.

An increasing amount of attention is being given to the use of human rights measurement indicators in monitoring 'progress' in rights and there is consequently a growing focus on statistics and information. This article concentrates on the use of statistics in rights discourse, with reference to the new human rights institution for the European Union: the Fundamental Rights Agency. The article has two main objectives: first, to show that statistics operate as technologies of governmentality - by explaining that statistics both govern rights and govern through rights. Second, the article discusses the implications that this has for rights discourse - rights become a discourse of governmentality, that is a normalizing and regulating discourse. In doing so, the article stresses the importance of critique and questioning new socio-legal methodologies, which involve the collection and dissemination of information and data (statistics), in rights discourse.

In recent years the People's Republic of China has garnered international attention for its aggressive and often sophisticated employment of cyber capabilities against domestic and international targets alike. With increasing frequency, the targets of Chinese cyber operations are American companies or government networks. If the United States and China find themselves in conflict in the coming decades, this newest arena of operations, cyberwarfare, will play a decisive role in determining the outcome. This article examines the relative cyber strengths and weaknesses each country commands today, and offers policy recommendations for the improvement of the United States' own cyberwar capabilities.

Governance architectures are strategic and long-term institutional arrangements of international organizations exhibiting three features; namely, they address strategic and long-term problems in a holistic manner, they set substantive output-oriented goals, and they are implemented through combinations of old and new organizational structures within the international organization in question. The Lisbon Strategy is the most high-profile initiative of the European Union for economic governance of the last decade. Yet it is also one of the most neglected subjects of EU studies, probably because not being identified as an object of study on its own right. We define the Lisbon Strategy as a case of governance architecture, raising questions about its creation, evolution and impact at the national level. We tackle these questions by drawing on institutional theories about emergence and change of institutional arrangements and on the multiple streams model. We formulate a set of propositions and hypotheses to make sense of the creation, evolution and national impact of the Lisbon Strategy. We argue that institutional ambiguity is used strategically by coalitions at the EU and national level in (re-)defining its ideational and organizational elements.

This article examines the discourses of democracy in the context of political development in Hong Kong during the first 12 years after the 1997 handover using rhetoric and frame analysis. Overall, the study shows how political actors define political options and promote development, which is favourable to their interests and views, through framing democracy in different ways. The study reveals the frames that describe different points of view, and contributes to the understanding of democrats' position as re-framers. The found frames are clustered into paradigmatic framesets that deal with the concrete democracy issue and the political situation in present-day Hong Kong. Consequently, the democracy debate in Hong Kong is organised around two opposite and idealised templates for democracy. The first cluster forms the pro-establishment model, which suggests solutions built around consensus and practical means. The second frameset, mostly used by the pro-democrats, supports the idea of a wider democratic change which entails broad normative changes in politics.

As Africa's foremost "emerging market" Angola is receiving increasing recognition for its oil wealth, leading to attempts to engage it as a strategic partner, especially amongst the "rising powers". In particular, there has been considerable escalation in development cooperation between Angola and China recently, though relatively little is known about the precise terms of this "partnership" despite China's key role in Angola's post-conflict reconstruction. The growing importance of Chinese credit lines and increasing presence of Chinese corporate agencies across Angolan territory raise important questions about development, poverty reduction and inequality; governance and labour relations; and Angola's institutional capacity and the social structure of its cities. This paper critically examines the specific outcomes of Angola's "partnership" with China along with the hybrid conceptions and tangled geographies of "development" produced as a result. In particular, it seeks to interrogate the visions of Angola's future articulated by the Angolan state and the reference points and "models" of development that they draw upon.

This article explores the ideational dynamics that shaped the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) campaign to establish capital mobility as a formal obligation of IMF membership during the 1990s. First, the article examines how the IMF made the issue of capital account liberalisation 'legible' through constructing a particular 'legibility map' on capital mobility, which was rigorously promoted across its membership. Second, the article explores the processes through which the IMF's legibility map on capital mobility was accepted by the organisation's member states. The article traces debates within the IMF Executive Board relating to the decision to amend the IMF's Articles of Agreement to give the organisation a formal mandate and jurisdiction over capital account liberalisation to complement its existing mandate and jurisdiction over current account transactions.

International organisations (IOs) often serve as the 'engine room' of ideas for structural reforms at the national level, but how do IOs construct cognitive authority over the forms, processes and prescriptions for institutional change in their member states? Exploring the analytic institutions created by IOs provides insights into how they make their member states 'legible' and how greater legibility enables them to construct cognitive authority in specific policy areas, which, in turn, enhances their capacity to influence changes in national frameworks for economic and social governance. Studying the indirect influence that IOs can exert over the design of national policies has, until recently, often been neglected in accounts of the contemporary roles that IOs play and the evolution of global economic governance

A stark contrast exists between the popular image of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as a uniquely powerful international organisation (IO) and its actual capacity to monitor national policies and to enforce compliance with WTO rules among its member states. Rather than overseeing policy implementation itself like the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, the WTO relies much more heavily than other high-profile IOs on a legalist method of surveillance. This article suggests that the notion of a 'member-driven legalism' is central to how the WTO 'sees' the world. In particular, the WTO's processes reflect a strong institutional belief that neo-liberal policies can be implemented by a consensus- and member-driven legalistic WTO system.

This essay presents a consideration of the past sixty years of Chinese economic development. It argues that in order to understand the success of Chinese development the analyst must consider the prior Maoist years and in particular the structures of social relations; the forms of sovereignty; and most important, the highly participatory mobilizations of peasants and workers in building China. The author argues that the legacy of these earlier policies is key to a proper grasp of the current moment. In this sense, the "dialectics" refer to the ongoing relationship among past, present, and the possible future.

This article aims to show the theoretical added value of focussing on discourse to study identity in international relations (IR). I argue that the discourse approach offers a more theoretically parsimonious and empirically grounded way of studying identity than approaches developed in the wake of both constructivism and the broader 'psychological turn'. My starting point is a critique of the discipline's understanding of the 'self' uncritically borrowed from psychology. Jacques Lacan's 'speaking subject' offers instead a non-essentialist basis for theorizing about identity that has been largely overlooked. To tailor these insights to concerns specific to the discipline I then flesh out the distinction between subject-positions and subjectivities. This crucial distinction is what enables the discourse approach to travel the different levels of analyses, from the individual to the state, in a way that steers clear of the field's fallacy of composition, which has been perpetuated by the assumption that what applies to individuals applies to states as well. Discourse thus offers a way of studying state identities without presuming that the state has a self. I illustrate this empirically with regards to the international politics of whaling.

In Democracy and the Political Unconscious, Noëlle McAfee analyzes social pathologies that have arisen in the United States since September 11, 2001. In particular, she argues that we have been suffering society-wide repetition compulsions and time collapses, compelling us to experience the trauma repeatedly, and we have been acting out in ways that continue the cycle of suffering. She also presents a prescription for how we might work through these issues more democratically and fruitfully using deliberative talking cures. McAfee's application of the psychoanalytic model to society is fascinating, and she offers concrete and practical suggestions for how to better resolve social trauma. In the first four chapters, McAfee presents a perspective on humanization that centers on social participation. Human identity is developed in making and keeping social commitments, rather than in the achievement of autonomy. Language enables humans to sublimate and channel drives into public meaning. Silence is troubling because it reflects a social unconscious that alienates people, cutting them off from full participation. McAfee argues that modernity itself causes trauma, as the world has become disenchanted and devoid of meaning. In addition, specific elements of modernity, like colonization and the slave trade, have played significant roles in the development of the social unconscious. Because our culture remains mostly silent about privilege and race, historic traumas continue to haunt us. McAfee suggests that isolationism, repression, McCarthyism, and the abjection of supposed barbarian elements are all subconscious defenses against working through modernity's social traumas. These defenses prevent the development of a public sphere of deliberation that has demonstrated its ability to work through traumas in Eastern Europe, South Africa, and elsewhere. Following Derrida, McAfee

In this article we contrast the theoretical tradition of radical democracy developed by Chantal Mouffe with an alternative tradition of radical democracy rooted in the practices of subaltern social movements. While the former is wedded to the context and aspirations of Western modernity, the latter consists of place-based forms of 'colonial difference' within the Third and Fourth Worlds that are subalternised by the (aggressively globalising) modern tradition of democracy. Working within a 'modernity/coloniality' framework, we contrast these traditions of radical democracy along three main axes: 1) the logic of articulation among diverse struggles and movements; 2) the orientation towards, and aspirations with respect to, the state; and 3) the relation to the global scale and vision of the 'pluriverse'.

As plentiful and productive as recent empirical work has been, we still know very little about globalisation's long-run impact on economic development. This is only partly because of data limitations. At least as important, this article suggests, have been theoretical limitations: economists and political scientists have yet to resolve a number of key conceptual points. This article brings these remaining theoretical puzzles to the surface, starting with the link between openness and growth. It then turns to the relationship between trade and inequality. Both links-the one from trade to growth, the other from trade to inequality-have been subjects of heated debate among development economists. By contrast, the main focus of this article is the relationship between these two strands of research. How growth and equity interact is a theoretical puzzle which, though no less basic than the others, has to date received far less attention. The article concludes by laying out a back-to-basics research agenda for future-oriented globalisation research in which this growth/equity trade-off is restored to its rightful place at the theoretical centre of the wider development literature.

Since the 1970s, China has changed from a centrally planned economy to a more open and globalized one. Within this context we ask how, under what circumstances and through what means are local governments able to make policy innovations in upgrading the business environment within their jurisdictions. Theoretically, it is possible to learn policy innovations from the past, from neighbours and from aboard. Leading development regions, like the Yangtze River Delta, are unlikely to learn from either their domestic neighbours or their past communist history. Therefore, they must learn from the experiences of other countries. We argue that this transnational learning process occurs through three different but interrelated mechanisms. These are (1) the personal networks of local officials interacting with foreign investors who are familiar with international business standards of global production networks; (2) institutional alliances in which local officials interact with foreign governments that have co-invested in development zones and joint interests; and (3) hegemonic discourse, wherein local officials interact with foreign consultants who have essential development knowledge. We examine this contention by analysing three empirical cases of local governments in the Yangtze River Delta - Kunshan, which demonstrates the personal network learning mechanism; Suzhou, demonstrating institutional alliance learning; and Shanghai, which exemplifies learning through hegemonic discourse.