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| 1 |
ID:
137229
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| Summary/Abstract |
The anti-corruption norm in both scholarship and the policy world has too narrowly focused on the domestic and institutional context of bribe-taking and public corruption. Instead, we argue that corruption in the contemporary global economy requires a multiple set of connected transactions, processes, and relationships that take place within informal transnational networks that blur the line between illegal and legal activities. These networks include multinational companies, elites in host countries, offshore financial vehicles and conduits, middlemen and brokers, and destination financial institutions. We examine how these actors operate in Central Asia, a region that is widely identified as corrupt, yet is rarely understood as embedded in the types of global processes, offshore connections and transnational links specified in our analysis. Examples of offshore centers in tax planning from Central Asia, and partial results from a field experiment based on impersonating high corruption risks from four Central Asian states, provide evidence for how the various actors in transnational financial networks structure their dealings. We then present two brief illustrative cases of how these transnational networks have operated in energy explorations services in Kazakhstan and telecommunications contracts in Uzbekistan. Our findings have theoretical, practical, and normative implications for scholars and practitioners of Central Asian international political economy and other ‘high risk' regions.
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| 2 |
ID:
070226
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| 3 |
ID:
130962
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2014.
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MODERN DEMOCRACY IS, ABOVE ALL ELSE, a procedural ideal. To be sure, high substantive hopes are often placed in democracy. Yet the essence of democracy lies not in the specific outcomes that it may (or may not) help reach, but in a set of procedures that ensure, in the words of Philippe Schmitter and Terry Karl, that "rulers are held accountable for their actions in the public realm by citizens," who act primarily "through the competition and cooperation of their elected representatives."1 Historically, the main political arena in which democratic procedures have been implemented, and the main reference point for democratic theory, has been the state. According to a well-established argument, the democratization of non-state entities-such as international and supranational organizations or transnational networks with various degrees of institutionalization-is therefore faced with significant conceptual and practical challenges.2 This article seeks to assess the severity of these challenges: Can democratic procedures be transferred to political entities "beyond the state," or is democracy doomed to failure in non-state contexts?
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| 4 |
ID:
105360
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2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
As Obama took office at the beginning of 2009, several new figures attained important advisory positions in his administration. Anne-Marie Slaughter, former Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and now Director of Policy Planning in the State Department, is a prime example of the 'change' that has come to Washington. In recent years she has been part of a growing academic circle that views networks at the centre of international relations. At the same time, she has promoted the idea that the United States can be 'the most connected country' in such a world. By taking a closer look into the discourse of US supremacy and the current state-of-the-art in the theory of transnational networks, this article reveals the divergence between wishful thinking and reality in Slaughter's position. By analysing her position and introducing three case studies, we conclude that the complexity of power relations in a world of networks makes any assumption of US supremacy highly problematic. Some might 'mirror' the beliefs and values of America (Open Society Institute); some might only be a 'prism' of various different voices (Al-Jazeera); and some might fall totally outside state control to form 'shadow networks' (Khan Network). Ultimately, it is the belief in US exceptionalism that perpetuates the claim that the United States has 'an edge' in such a world, with potentially problematic consequences.
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| 5 |
ID:
178331
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In the early 1960s, Israeli diplomats based in Paris noted that student life there had become political in new ways that threatened to undermine Israel’s image and standing in the public mind. In an effort to understand the growing international student body and its nine thousand well-integrated Arab students, the embassy asked Israeli students to spy on their colleagues and submit detailed reports about their political associations, thoughts, opinions, connections, whereabouts, and much else. Using the reports and other auxiliary material that the Israeli diplomats collected, this article examines the formation process of a unique, student-led intellectual and political ecosystem. Specifically, it shows how, in tandem with the rise of the New Arab Left and other transnational student collaborations, the Palestinian question grew from a marginal and marginalized issue to a major cause that was deeply entwined with other contemporaneous causes of universal resonance, such as those of South Africa, Rhodesia, and Algeria.
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| 6 |
ID:
090407
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2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article examines the role and effects of the state on the operation of social capital through a case study of Islamic holding companies in Turkey and their social networks within transnational space. In the last two decades, there has been a proliferation of Islamic enterprises, banks and holding companies which formed their own business organization in 1990. The capital outlay of these holding companies was created, without any legal basis, through mobilizing the savings of hundreds of thousands of pious small savers in Turkey and across Europe. While the state actors initially overlooked, at times encouraged, this mobilization of savings, the development of political Islam in the 1990s raised a concern that political Islam along with its economic base and power posed a significant threat to the secularist political regime. Consequently, the secularist state elites actively intervened in both domestic and transnational spheres to disrupt and undermine these networks which provided monetary inflows into these companies. The intervention and campaigns of the state in Turkey and Europe led to bankruptcy of several Islamic holding companies, exposed the mismanagement of fund by some companies and resulted in widespread distrust toward Islamic holding companies among small local and migrant investors.
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| 7 |
ID:
076508
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| 8 |
ID:
090496
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| 9 |
ID:
086136
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| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
On September 28, 1986, the Democratic Progressive Party was formed in defiance of restrictions set by a decades-old authoritarian regime, heralding the emergence of a fully competitive multiparty electoral system in Taiwan. Existing literature on Taiwan's democratic breakthrough suggests that international factors have played a significant role in bringing about democracy on the island. But what exactly were these external factors and how have they effected political change in Taiwan? A reexamination of the changing geopolitical and normative environments surrounding Taiwan suggests that they were crucial in shaping political development on the island in ways that have not been described in the literature. This article examines how the geopolitical and international normative environment enabled myriad external substate and nonstate actors to form a transnational "protection regime" around the political opposition, preserving the democratic movement and allowing it to reach its full mobilizational potential in time.
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