Monique Taylor

Citizen participation, community resilience and crisis-management policy

This article presents two arguments. The first relates to the relevance of citizen participation vis-à-vis the design and implementation of public policy. More specifically, the article empirically demonstrates how a model of community decentralisation can have a number of practical benefits for crisis-management policy. The second argument relates to a question that has come to characterise studies of citizen participation in public policy. Why is it that there is so much rhetoric in support of participation but so little action in terms of the day-to-day realities of policy implementation? We place this question in a crisis-management context so that we might ask: why is it that crisis-management systems built around the principles of community resilience continue to fail on these very grounds? We find our answer to this question in state-centric governance settings which devolve authority, but do not relinquish it. 本文提出两个观点。第一个观点涉及公民参与对于公共政策设计和实施的意义。具体地说，本文用实证的方法说明社区分权模式如何对危机管理政策产生一系列实际效益。第二个观点涉及公民参与公共政策的问题：为什么对公民参与口头上不吝支持，而日常政策的实施上却不见动静？这个问题可以放在危机管理的语境中重新提问：为什么围绕着社区弹性原则的危机管理体系仍以这样的理由失效？我们的答案是：以政府为中心的治理环境虽然转移但并未放弃权威。

China’s Oil Industry: ‘Corporate Governance with Chinese Characteristics’

Through a process of gradualist reform, China’s national oil companies (NOCs) — China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) — have been transformed into globally competitive state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with subsidiaries listed on domestic and international stock exchanges. Poor performance among Chinese SOEs provided the impetus for the latter phase of this transformation from the mid-1990s onwards, whereby the focus of ongoing enterprise reform shifted to ownership and corporate governance restructuring (Ewing 2005: 319; Naughton 2008: 20; Wildau 2008: 28). Despite the corporatisation of the NOCs, the Chinese government retains tight control not only over the holding companies, but also their publicly listed subsidiaries through majority share ownership and a range of unique corporate governance mechanisms, which taken together are often referred to as ‘corporate governance with Chinese characteristics’ (Liu 2006: 418; Ewing 2005: 320). In assessing the nature and extent of control that the Chinese government continues to wield at the firm level, it is necessary to examine the institutions and mechanisms employed by the central party-state to manage and govern the NOCs and their publicly traded subsidiaries.

ASEAN's ‘people-oriented’ aspirations: civil society influences on non-traditional security governance

ABSTRACT Since the Asian financial crisis, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has sought to reorient itself towards becoming a ‘people-oriented’ association. Democratic transitions in the region and increased demands from civil society to be actively involved in regional governance have prompted ASEAN to develop forms of participatory regionalism. In practice, however, the rhetorical aspirations of ASEAN have not often matched the level of participation or support expected by civil society organisations. It has often been the case that ASEANs decisions, especially those related to sensitive issues, have been influenced by external pressure as opposed to participatory mechanisms. The aim of this article is to determine to what extent participatory mechanisms impact ASEANs approach to non-traditional security. By doing so, the authors combine two key elements central to a ‘people-oriented’ approach to regionalism: the incorporation of deliberative and participatory processes and the acknowledgement of transboundary security issues which require cooperation to move beyond state-centric approaches. This article explains that despite the rhetorical emphasis on participatory regionalism, it continues to be the case that regional civil society organisations and non-state actors have limited capacity to influence ASEAN. By providing a critical analysis of influences on ASEANs non-traditional security policies, the authors offer a modest yet valuable contribution to the emerging literature on ASEANs ‘people-oriented’ regionalism and advance a nuanced understanding of ASEANs participatory mechanisms.

Book Review: Keith Baker and Gerry Stoker, Nuclear Power and Energy Policy: The Limits to GovernanceNuclear Power and Energy Policy: The Limits to Governance by BakerKeithStokerGerry. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 245pp., £68.00 (h/b), ISBN 9781137433855

their own political and military preparedness. While military security has improved with the help of allies, the reader seeks an analysis of Baltic institutional preparedness with regard to modern and sophisticated security planning systems. How effective are the workings of national security councils, what is the quality of the laws and analyses of military and other threats, and how convincing are the plans to confront them? Possibly, the author will answer these questions in future works, since the present study’s coverage does not extend beyond 2014 when the new Cold War started. This book is based on extensive research and is written with flair. It is crucial reading for an international audience of students and policy analysts. Readers will also profit from the comprehensive bibliography and many references to empirical sources cited in the text.

Book Review: Orfeo Fioretos, Tulia G Falleti and Adam Sheingate (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Historical InstitutionalismThe Oxford Handbook of Historical Institutionalism by FioretosOrfeoFalletiTulia GSheingateAdam (eds). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 676pp., £95.00 (h/b), ISBN 9780199662814

fast policy refers to the velocity at which ideas now travel and the interconnectivity of a global policy space: all policies ‘exist with and in relation to one another, in dense networks of mutual citation’ (p. 225). A valuable methodological lesson is offered by the authors: scholars must pursue policies wherever they might take them. Static research proposals and nationally circumscribed studies must be scrapped for methods suited to tracking an inherently mutable, elusive object of inquiry. Peck and Theodore’s logic of case selection allows them to advance a compelling argument. CCTs had a neoliberal skew in their early days, being embedded in the turn to ‘workfare’ policies in the 1990s and thus promising to reduce ‘welfare dependency’ and circumscribe the alleged moral turpitude of the poor. PB, on the contrary, which is defiantly anti-neoliberal by design, was a product of the progressive left, arising out of the World Social Forum in the early 2000s. By the mid-2010s, CCTs had a limited track record of success as measured by traditional standards of equitability and decommodification, particularly in Lula’s Brazil. PB, on the contrary, has in many places been reduced to reproducing the status quo. For example, in Germany, citizens have been left to wrangle over cuts to social spending, providing a sheen of popular legitimacy to austerity politics. A central argument in Peck and Theodore’s book, then, is that policy mutation is never unidirectional: while neoliberalism may render harmless even the most radical policy experiments, orthodox policies, such as CCTs, can be retooled to alleviate social suffering. In this battle of adaptability, however, the anti-neoliberal movement is likely to find itself outgunned by the bearers of orthodoxy. Peck and Theodore hint at a question worth pursuing: whether this multitudinous movement can learn from organisations like the World Bank (with its hierarchies, mobility and prolific output) – and whether advantages accrue to those mirroring the structures which they oppose.

A Party-State Centred Explanation of Policymaking in China’s Oil Sector

This volume traces the development of China’s state-led oil strategy, which is frequently referred to in the extant literature as ‘neomercantilist’ in orientation. This statist strategy is in contrast with a liberal market-led approach to energy security, which relies on markets to allocate oil resources and prescribes only a minimalist facilitator role for the state. China’s state-led oil policies entail the use of top-down party-state authority and control in order to undertake domestic and international oil production for the purpose of ensuring a secure, stable and affordable oil supply. The central party-state’s institutional capacities and policy instruments, such as national oil companies (NOCs) and central planning agencies, enable Beijing to pursue this statist approach. In explaining China’s oil policy rationale and implementation, this study provides a historical analysis of party-state institutions and the Chinese policy process. In doing so, it shows that the central party-state has, in recent years, expanded and strengthened the political, organisational and fiscal capacities that permit it to exert centralised, top-down authority, while at the same time retaining the incentives and dynamism that were created through decentralisation of the market-oriented players during the earlier stages of oil industry development.

Authoritarian State Capacity in a Liberal World Order

The main objectives of this study were to provide an explanation of why China pursues a state-led oil strategy, and show how this orientation has been developed and implemented over time. This involved an examination of China’s oil state capacity-building efforts with a focus on the Reform Era, and including a discussion of the Mao era of oil industry development, since it left a legacy of useful policy instruments and bureaucratic capacity, which then formed the foundation of post-Mao industrial development. A sophisticated range of political, organisational and fiscal capacities enables Beijing to pursue a statist oil agenda, and these have been strengthened and expanded during the second Reform Era in particular. At this stage in China’s overall development and transition to a market-oriented economy, state-led oil policies are considered a necessary strategy to safeguard economic growth, industrial competitiveness, and social harmony and stability. Repeating the words of Kreft (2006), quoted earlier in this volume, the Chinese leadership believes that the oil sector is strategically “too important to be left to market forces alone”. The central party-state has demonstrated a core interest in improving the performance of the oil industry through the introduction of market characteristics and institutions, while at the same time maintaining control over this vitally important strategic sector.

Sectoral Governance and State Capacity

The concept of state capacity is central to understanding the ways in which China’s quest for energy security has manifested itself, both domestically and internationally. Specifically, the nature of the political authority and institutional arrangements that govern China’s oil sector need to be evaluated in relation to how they enable a state-led approach to oil production. Such an exercise enhances our knowledge of how China governs the strategic sectors of its economy more broadly, as these sectors remain under party-state control. In examining oil state capacity this study addresses two contrasting characterisations of China, commonly referred to as the ‘fragmentation thesis’ and the ‘rise of China’ or ‘China threat theory’, which have both proved to be remarkably influential and enduring in scholarly and policy circles (Naughton and Yang 2004: 2–5). The former defines China’s strength in relation to state capacity and the exercise of political authority. Broadly, it concludes that the central party-state’s steering capacity, that is, the ability to guide national socioeconomic development, is greatly hindered by both economic liberalisation, and political, administrative and fiscal decentralisation.

The Interplay of Elite and Bureaucratic Power

Scholarly explanations of Chinese political economy make much of its allegedly fragmented and decentralised character, which is deemed to have diminished the capacity of the central party-state to formulate and implement coherent, coordinated and effective policies. More specifically, policy inertia is often cited as a key problem, the result of protracted consensus building among multiple bureaucracies with roughly equal authority. In addition, other deficiencies such as rent- seeking behaviour and low regulatory capacity apparently plague and pervert the policy process. Such features of the Chinese political system are considered to be the result of the ongoing transition, beginning in 1978, from a centrally planned to a socialist market economy. The reforms associated with this transition saw a shift in the policy process away from the realm of non-institutionalised party leadership and toward a bureaucratically structured governmental apparatus (Huang 2004: 32–33). In addition to growing bureaucratic authority, political resources were further decentralised with the implementation of fiscal and administrative reforms, which transferred significant economic and fiscal power from the centre to local governments.1 These trends in the first Reform Era resulted in the fragmentation and decentralisation of political authority within the Chinese state below the apex of political authority (the Politburo Standing Committee).

The Socialist Era of Oil Self-Sufficiency (1949–1977)

During the PRC’s early years the development of the oil sector was heavily influenced by revolutionary fervour, ideological campaigns and the nationwide drive for rapid industrialisation. The oil industry became a locus for these ideational and structural forces to the point where the Maoist innovations achieved within this sector became the model for national industrial development across all economic sectors. For the first thirty years of its history the PRC pursued a vision of socialism that entailed a centrally planned economic system, and the development of a massive socialist industrial complex through direct government command and control. Naughton (2007: 55) labels China’s development strategy during this time ‘Big Push industrialisation’, because the overwhelming priority was to channel the maximum amount of resources and investment into heavy industry. Hence the Big Push strategy shaped virtually every aspect of the Chinese economy. The command economic model, based on the system created in the Soviet Union under Stalin, was adopted in order to implement this strategy. Under this system of economic governance the central party-state directly allocated resources, set production targets and controlled the pricing system.