China’s Assertiveness in the South and East China Sea: A Constructivist Approach

<p><strong>La asertividad de China en los Mares del Sur y del Este de China: acercamiento constructivista</strong></p><p><strong>Abstract</strong></p><p>This article aims to discuss the issue of China’s assertiveness in the South and East China Seas within the constrictivist framework, as economic (liberalism) and military power (realism) are not sufficient to explain the complexity of the problem.<strong> </strong>It aims to answer the following question: How does the constructivist approach lend itself to the understanding of China’s assertiveness in the case of the South and the East China Sea territorial disputes? It will also explore the following hypotheses: the victimized identity perception leads China to be assertive in the South China Sea dispute and the perception of Japan’s behavior as aggressive (as in the past) provokes China to be assertive in the East China Sea dispute.</p><p><strong>Resumen</strong></p><p><strong></strong>El presente artículo tiene como objetivo discutir la cuestión de la asertividad de China en Los Mares del Sur y del Este de China dentro del marco constrictivista, ya que el poder económico (liberalismo) y el poder militar (realismo) no son suficientes para explicar la complejidad del problema. Tiene como objetivo responder a la siguiente pregunta: ¿Cómo se presta el enfoque constructivista a la comprensión de la asertividad de China en el caso de las disputas territoriales del Mar del Este y del Sur de China? También explorará las siguientes hipótesis: la percepción de la identidad victimizada lleva a China a ser asertiva en la disputa del Mar del Sur de China y la percepción de agresividad en el comportamiento de Japón (como en el pasado) provoca que China sea asertiva en la disputa del Mar del Este de China.</p><p> </p>

Political Hearts of Darkness: The Dark Triad as Predictors of Political Orientations and Interest in Politics

Background: This study investigated the relationships between the Dark Triad of personality (sub-clinical psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism) and four political variables: socio-religious conservatism, support for greater economic equality, overall liberal–conservative orientation, and interest in politics. A theoretical approach that focused on the influence of the Dark Triad in large groups was provided to interpret those relationships. Methodological issues found in previous research that related to the use of abbreviated scales to measure the dark traits and the use of unidimensional indicators of political orientations were addressed. Methods: A hierarchical regression analysis was conducted to determine whether any of the three dark traits could explain variance in the aforementioned political attributes over and above that accounted for by the Big Five, sex, age, and nationality, using the full personality scales and measures of political orientation that captured both social and economic liberalism–conservatism. Results: Machiavellianism uniquely predicted lower levels of socio-religious conservatism, and both Machiavellianism and narcissism uniquely predicted lower levels of overall conservatism. Conclusions: There were important links between the Dark Triad and politics.

6. International Political Economy: Marxism, Mercantilism, Liberalism

This chapter examines the three most important classical theories within the field of International Political Economy (IPE): mercantilism, economic liberalism, and neo-Marxism. It considers the relationship between politics and economics, and between states and markets in world affairs, that IR has to be able to grasp. It suggests that IPE is about wealth, poverty, and power, about who gets what in the international economic and political system. The outlook of mercantilism has much in common with realism, while economic liberalism is an addition to liberalism. Mercantilism and economic liberalism thus represent views on IPE that are basically realist and liberal. The chapter concludes with a discussion about the original theoretical position of Marxism and how this has inspired neo-Marxist IPE theories.

Reflections on an academic life

David Harvey traces his intellectual journey reflecting on what he calls “the central animating theme of his thinking” starting from his days as a positivist geographer and the publication of Explanation. Harvey clarifies that his transition from Explanations to Social Justice, which has often been touted as a radical-epistemological break in his work should actually be seen as a complimentary productive tension. In making this transition, Harvey decided to reject the scientific orthodoxy of positivist science and instead, use dialectics derived from Marx as alternative mode of scientific inquiry. Harvey narrates his Baltimore experience of combatting local racial discrimination as formative in his understandings of the motions of capital and dynamics of uneven development thus imbricating personal politics and Marx's theory of capitalism in his work ever after. Harvey also recalls how teaching of Capital furthered his exploration of the urban condition and accumulation of capital, ultimately leading to the concept of “spatial fix.” Conditions of Postmodernity contends Harvey, taught him the importance of gender and feminist perspective and Justice, Nature written under extreme physical, professional, intellectual duress was intended to bring the “metabolic relation to nature” at the forefront. Economic liberalism propelled Harvey to introspect on his many volumes on the global neoliberal conditions, which he argues is now imbricated with issues of identity and intersectionality involving Black Lives and Me too. Harvey concludes that his intellectual journey has been a preoccupation to understand “contradictory unity between social relations in constant transformation” through Marx's power of abstraction to imagine an “anti-capitalist” future.

FROM BIOPOLITICS TO THE PRECARITY OF COMMODIFIED BODIES, OR THE APOGUE OF PERFORMANCE

The article presents a philosophical study of the social, political, legal, labor, cultural and anthropological status of a person in modern conditions of informatization, economic liberalism, limited employment, post-democracy, visual culture and a pandemic. The growth of the precariat is regarded as a catalyst for the movement of opposite vectors: the activities of the power and the performative actionism of political subjects. As the optimal integrative tactics of a person of late capitalism, his bodily and spiritual self-exploitation is considered.

The Role of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Countermovements Against Economic Liberalism

<p><b>In recent years, revisionist studies of the history of economic, social and cultural rights have deemed that the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) is a failed instrument. My thesis explores the extent to which that assessment is accurate and concludes that, although the ICESCR’s drafters did imbue the treaty with a strong purpose of resistance against the detrimental impacts of economic liberalism, the instrument’s ties to its historical roots might be too strong for it to serve an effective purpose in present and future efforts to push back against excessive marketisation. </b></p> <p>In order to fully understand both the ICESCR’s shortcomings and its unfulfilled potential, it is helpful to analyse the treaty’s content and purpose from the perspective of Karl Polanyi’s theory of the double movement. This theory, presented by Polanyi in his 1944 monograph The Great Transformation, established that the 19th century was defined by a struggle between those who advocated for economic liberalism and those who protected society from that economic model through a “countermovement” that promoted mechanisms of “social protection”. A current wave of neo-Polanyian scholarship has reinterpreted the double movement as a pendulum that has continued to swing between economic liberalism and social protection, explaining the rise of neoliberal practices in the second half of the 20th century and contemporary efforts to limit the influence of the market over society.</p> <p>From a neo-Polanyian viewpoint, the ICESCR was a product of the second countermovement – a series of actions taken by governments all around the world during the mid-20th century to mitigate the harmful effects of the market on people’s wellbeing. After conducting a detailed examination of the ICESCR’s travaux préparatoires, I determine that the members of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights consciously shaped the treaty according to six principles that I identify as underlying the second countermovement. </p> <p>This thesis argues that such an intimate connection with those principles, which at first might seem benign, is the source of the ICESCR’s current limitations. Because the instrument is a product of the second countermovement, it is now out of place in an era where economic liberalism presents different challenges than it did in the mid-20th century. That dilemma is illustrated by the contrast between the tentative approach of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – bound by the constraints of the ICESCR – and the confrontational tone of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, which has taken advantage of its wider mandate to endorse practices of an emerging third countermovement that directly address the specific challenges of this era. Therefore, while the ICESCR has been used by those bodies to resist neoliberal ambitions, the treaty might become less relevant the further we move away – both chronologically and socio-politically – from the second countermovement.</p>

The Role of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Countermovements Against Economic Liberalism

<p><b>In recent years, revisionist studies of the history of economic, social and cultural rights have deemed that the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) is a failed instrument. My thesis explores the extent to which that assessment is accurate and concludes that, although the ICESCR’s drafters did imbue the treaty with a strong purpose of resistance against the detrimental impacts of economic liberalism, the instrument’s ties to its historical roots might be too strong for it to serve an effective purpose in present and future efforts to push back against excessive marketisation. </b></p> <p>In order to fully understand both the ICESCR’s shortcomings and its unfulfilled potential, it is helpful to analyse the treaty’s content and purpose from the perspective of Karl Polanyi’s theory of the double movement. This theory, presented by Polanyi in his 1944 monograph The Great Transformation, established that the 19th century was defined by a struggle between those who advocated for economic liberalism and those who protected society from that economic model through a “countermovement” that promoted mechanisms of “social protection”. A current wave of neo-Polanyian scholarship has reinterpreted the double movement as a pendulum that has continued to swing between economic liberalism and social protection, explaining the rise of neoliberal practices in the second half of the 20th century and contemporary efforts to limit the influence of the market over society.</p> <p>From a neo-Polanyian viewpoint, the ICESCR was a product of the second countermovement – a series of actions taken by governments all around the world during the mid-20th century to mitigate the harmful effects of the market on people’s wellbeing. After conducting a detailed examination of the ICESCR’s travaux préparatoires, I determine that the members of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights consciously shaped the treaty according to six principles that I identify as underlying the second countermovement. </p> <p>This thesis argues that such an intimate connection with those principles, which at first might seem benign, is the source of the ICESCR’s current limitations. Because the instrument is a product of the second countermovement, it is now out of place in an era where economic liberalism presents different challenges than it did in the mid-20th century. That dilemma is illustrated by the contrast between the tentative approach of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights – bound by the constraints of the ICESCR – and the confrontational tone of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, which has taken advantage of its wider mandate to endorse practices of an emerging third countermovement that directly address the specific challenges of this era. Therefore, while the ICESCR has been used by those bodies to resist neoliberal ambitions, the treaty might become less relevant the further we move away – both chronologically and socio-politically – from the second countermovement.</p>

The Authoritarian Predisposition and American Public Support for Social Security

Authoritarianism, an individual-level predisposition that favors security, conformity, and certainty, has been powerfully linked with cultural conservatism and support for “strongman” politicians but weakly and inconsistently linked with public opinion toward economic issues. In examining this latter relationship, past work has tended to pose a dichotomous question, is authoritarianism associated with economic liberalism/conservatism or not? Here, I diverge from this approach and argue that authoritarianism is associated with support for one specific program—Social Security. I argue that the unique framing of this program, which emphasizes rule-following, certainty, and deservingness, should resonate with authoritarian-minded individuals. I test this with survey data, primarily from the American National Election Studies (ANES). Overall, I find a positive and substantively significant relationship between authoritarianism and support for Social Security but not for other types of domestic social welfare spending. These findings help us better understand the correlates of mass support for Social Security as well as the policy consequences of authoritarianism. These findings also suggest that Social Security will likely remain popular in an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party.

The Financial Press and the Investing Public

For centuries, Britain has had a financial media landscape unrivalled in Europe with newspapers like the Financial Times or The Economist traditionally keeping business professionals up to date about market developments. But by the early twentieth century, punters could get the latest prices and market-moving stories from tabloids like the Daily Express and the Daily Mail. By 1960, even the working-class Daily Mirror had a designated City page—right next to the racing coverage—and gave investment advice to people of modest means. This chapter takes a fresh look at the financial press as the main source of information for private investors of different social backgrounds. When seeking to explain why economic liberalism became fashionable again in Britain during the 1970s, we must consider that for more than two decades, millions of newspaper readers had been increasingly exposed to the asserted benefits of free-market capitalism and were actively encouraged to take part in the market. Recent studies on the history of neoliberalism state that financial journalism became an important amplifier for the Thatcherite language of profits in the 1980s. This chapter argues that this misses the point and shows instead how Britain’s financial press was not an echo chamber of Westminster politics—it set the tone of the wider share ownership agenda. The newspaper columns of the Financial Times and the Daily Telegraph or the market populism of The Express, The Mail, and The Mirror played a crucial part in shifting British public opinion in favour of free-market capitalism.