China’s Engagement in COVAX: From Hesitation to Active Participation

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the whole world has suffered great losses in personnel and economy. While there had been encouraging news about the research, development and production of several COVID-19 vaccines in 2020, it was imperative to make the vaccines accessible to all. To address this issue, Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, together with other organizations, launched the COVAX initiative in April 2020 and set an Advance Market Commitment (AMC) mechanism to contribute to it. Until October 2020, China had not officially signed any related contracts or agreements with Gavi to join the initiative. However, there has since been a shift in China’s attitude from hesitation towards active participation. In the early stages, China’s concern over problems within the AMC mechanism, success in combating COVID-19 and concern on the participation conditions of COVAX caused it to take a cautious stance towards this initiative. However, upholding the flag of multilateralism, China has committed to offering international public goods, assisting in coordinating the equitable distribution of vaccines and promoting Chinese-made vaccines internationally. These factors have motivated China to join the initiative actively.

Status Quest and Peaceful Change

This chapter discusses various mechanisms and approaches regarding how states could promote peaceful change while seeking status on the world stage. While status competition is often viewed as a source of international conflict, the quest for status can also promote peaceful change. Even if status politics is often competitive, it is not always a zero-sum game. As status is ultimately social and cultural, states could seek it through social creativity, which will help them avoid confrontation with other states. The quest for status could also encourage states to pursue prosocial behaviors. In particular, states could seek higher status through the provision of international public goods. However, to promote a maximalist peaceful change, leading powers must reconstruct norms and criteria for status symbols and implement a more moral foreign policy.

Contractual Constitutions

Arendt pointed out that social contract theory identified some elementary truths of democratic politics. What might be those elementary truths? The first is the need for public goods; the second the role of a two-level theory; and the third is the essential role of government in providing the conditions for social cooperation. Democratic contracts need to respect the requirements of political equality. However, this still leaves us with the problem of knowing what could be agreed among agents reciprocally situated. The empirical method suggests that we need to look to social conditions that embody the circumstances of impartiality. One such set of conditions is found in common property resource regimes, where power is roughly equal. Such regime exhibit various forms of equality, but they also suggest the need for participation as well as monitoring and sanctions. Large-scale societies need to incorporate conditions of open representation and effective deliberation if they are to exhibit the circumstances of impartiality. International contracts are best understood if the Grotian norms of traditional international relations are regarded as equivalent to the individualistic minimum of a domestic order, which needs a social contract to deal with externalities and provide international public goods. It is plausible to think that, in an interdependent world, mutual advantage may exhibit the logic of a universalization to humanity as an end in itself.

Governed and ungoverned integration in the Mexico–US border region

English abstract: US cities and towns on the border with Mexico tend to have below-average incomes, while Mexican border cities and towns tend to be above the average of Mexico. Social scientists have not explained these differences from national averages in a convincing way. Nor have they described the characteristics of border cities and towns in ways that differentiate them from cities and towns in the interiors of their respective nation. The key to both puzzles is the fact that the institutional environment in the US–Mexico border region is binational in origin. Mexican institutions create externalities in the United States and vice versa. Recognition of this fact is a first step in dealing with the international public goods and common pool resources of the border region.Spanish abstract: Ciudades y pueblos a ambos lados de la frontera México–EE. UU. comparten características que las hacen diferentes de las comunidades en el interior de sus respectivas naciones. Por ejemplo, las diferencias de ingresos transfronterizos son más pequeñas que las diferencias nacionales y cada lado está fuertemente influenciado por políticas y eventos que se originan en el otro lado. Hay tres razones principales para estos efectos: proximidad, redes y externalidades. Este ensayo utiliza la perspectiva de economía institucional para argumentar que el ambiente institucional de las ciudades y pueblos fronterizos es binacional. El reconocimiento de este hecho es un primer paso en la gestión de los bienes públicos internacionales y los recursos comunes de la región fronteriza.French abstract: Villes et villages des deux côtés de la frontière américano-mexicaine partagent des caractéristiques qui les différencient des communautés à l’intérieur de leurs nations respectives. Par exemple, les écarts de revenu de part et d’autre de la frontière sont plus réduits que les différences nationales, et chaque côté est fortement influencé par les politiques et les événements qui proviennent de l’autre côté. Trois raisons principales expliquent ces effets : la proximité, les réseaux et les externalités. Cet essai utilise la perspective de l’économie institutionnelle et soutient que l’environnement institutionnel des villes frontalières est binational. Cette reconnaissance est une première étape pour la gestion des biens publics internationaux et des ressources communes de la région frontalière.

Emerging research practice for impact in the CGIAR: The case of Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI)

Under increased scrutiny by its funders, the CGIAR continues to search for ways of translating research excellence into innovation and developmental impact. Several approaches have been suggested that recognize the interactive nature of innovation. While these have been deemed useful, it is the deeper institutional change agenda that has been a bottleneck in the evolving ways of the CGIAR deploying science for impact. This article documents an example in the CGIAR where significant innovation appears to have taken place in research practice, and where the institutional setting of both the CGIAR center involved and its donors have adapted to accommodate this new approach. The case study presented is recent experiences at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) of developing and facilitating the adoption of Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) in Kenya and Ethiopia. The approach of the IBLI program evolved as a form of research practice that expands the boundaries of legitimate research practices in the CGIAR: it maintained the essentials of international public goods, but also included activities engaging with innovation processes that led to tangible household impacts. While the development and use of this approach was not without its tensions both within ILRI and with donors funding the work, the approach proved highly successful and won acceptance and legitimacy. This suggests that organizations should encourage and support individual projects and teams to adapt, develop, and adopt different approaches in order to achieve impact. Accepting pluralistic narrative of success will be a critical part of this.

Definitions: From Cultural Property to Cultural Heritage (and Back?)

This chapter focuses on the multiple definitions of ‘heritage’ in UNESCO instruments, and particularly on their relationship to the idea of ‘property’, with respect to communities’ engagement with heritage. It examines the drafting history of the key UNESCO treaties in the area, to identify the role of communities and other stakeholders in the definitions, as well as the political compromises made. The chapter also re-examines the move from ‘cultural property’ to ‘cultural heritage’, an important part of the elevation of the field to one overseeing international public goods. The chapter argues that this shift has had unintended consequences, key among which is the exclusion of communities. The field would do well to revisit the idea of ‘property’, but, as the chapter discusses, as a specific understanding of property that goes against conventional wisdom based on property as the ultimate bastion of individual liberty.

China’s Building of Overseas Military Bases: Rationale and Challenges

China’s military capability to perform out-of-area operations and provide international public goods falls short of the increasing need to protect its expanding economic, political, and security interests abroad. Overseas military bases can not only facilitate the soft application of China’s growing hard power, but also benefit the host nations in terms of national security, economic development, and job creation. A strong case can be made on both legal and precedential grounds for China’s construction of overseas military bases in the future. It is irreproachable for a great power like China to have overseas military installations as long as the Charter of the United Nations, host nations’ laws, and the longstanding non-intervention policy are upheld. Planning for overseas base-building must involve shaping an international environment that accepts Chinese military presence and conducting systemic risk assessments and practical solutions on such related matters as the location, size, functions, law enforcement, and maintenance of each military base.