Other News
Prof Chris Hughes interviewed by National Bureau of Asian Research on 2 August
Prof Chris Hughes, Head of Department, was interviewed by the National Bureau of Asian Research on 2 August 2012 in an article entitled 'China’s Military Modernization and Implications for Northeast Asia':
Q: How have Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), and Taiwan sought to strike a balance between their increasing economic interdependence with China and their concerns over Chinese military modernization and strategic aims in the region?
A: I think that hedging, rather than building a strong strategic or military balance, has been the approach that these countries have taken toward China’s military modernization in the last few years. That is, while they still see China’s military modernization as alarming, they are also aware that increasing economic dependence on China is inescapable. So, as they continue to hedge, they are hoping that economic growth will eventually moderate China’s behavior, lead to diplomatic engagement, and counterbalance the asymmetric dependence that is building up.
A few places in Politics at Warwick!
We have a handful of places for strong candidates (AAB or higher) on BA Politics or BA Politics with International Studies in the PAIS department at Warwick. Please contact the confirmation hotline for more details: +44(0) 2476 533 544. For informal enquiries contact Dr Trevor McCrisken, undergraduate programme director, on +44(0) 24 765 74693 or at trevor.mccrisken@warwick.ac.uk.
State of the Union(s): The Relevance of Narrative for America's Post-Crisis Economy
A Pinpoint Politics article by Brendan Pastor
"Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer. So for us, the base we’ve got for that is the fact that we’ve got – budgetarily we can’t afford not to. If we have collective bargaining agreements in place, there’s no way not only the state but local governments can balance things out.” (Huffington Post, 2012)
The above quote by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was in response to a question posed by billionaire and Republican Party donor Diane Hendricks, who asked if Walker could make Wisconsin a “completely red [Republican] state, and work on these unions’, transforming his state into “a right-to-work” state. Accepting Walker’s poorly phrased and politically slanted answer, Hendricks would go on to contribute over $510,000 to the Walker re-election campaign, his single biggest individual donor.
Dr John Parkinson's research on the political use of public space featured in The Atlantic
Dr John Parkinson, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Director of Research Degrees, was recently featured in an article entitled 'What Makes a Public Space Good for Democracy?' by Emily Badger in the Cities section of The Atlantic magazine.
“Filling the National Mall is a seriously impressive achievement,” Parkinson says. See, for example, this. A lot of these other capitals offer pretty meager public gathering spaces on the steps of their political institutions. Chater Garden, the main square next to the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, could fit maybe 5,000 people. “It’s so much harder in Hong Kong to express the physical scale of public displeasure,” Parkinson says.
Waist Deep in the Big Muddy: Why a Military Intervention Will Not Work in Syria
A Pinpoint Politics article by Christopher Ogunmodede
In the wake of former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s failed six-point Syria peace plan and the Assad’s regime not-so-subtle admission that it possesses chemical weapons, the stakes of a Western-led military intervention have increased significantly in less than a week. A report by the Royal United Services Institute noting the possibility of chemical weapons being used or stolen, not to mention the increased capability of the opposition forces as well as the geopolitical implications of the conflict spreading to and gripping other nations, concludes that a military intervention may take place to prevent the conflict from spilling beyond Syrian borders. As the ongoing crisis continues to manifest itself in the international realm, many pro-intervention voices in academia, the media, think-tanks and policymaking circles have decided that a military intervention will be the pill that cures all that currently ails the conflict-ridden country. John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush, has been making the rounds of Fox News and other right-wing press outlets decrying the administration’s response to the conflict.