Suchergebnisse

This paper is the first academic attempt to critically bridge the politics of sustainability fix with social conflict theory (SCT) focusing on Indonesia's foreign-sponsored development of Ultra Supercritical (USC) coal power plants. I examine the contradictory development of 'green' projects in Indonesia and specifically unpack: how transnational politico-economic forces have secured a stable sustainability fix for the USC and how they have tamed opposition forces and reshaped governance strategies for intensified accumulation. I attempt to empirically demonstrate how such process unfold through two case studies – Cirebon II developed by Japanese and Korean companies and the Java 7 project funded by China. Albeit each have different alliance formations and strategies, both cases demonstrate that the safeguarding of stable conditions for sustainability fixes of USC power plant development is primarily determined by contestation, conflicts, and compromises between socio-political forces – international fractions of capital, state apparatuses, Indonesia's PLN and coal oligarchy as well as broader civil society actors. They reshape governing strategies that are ultimately organised through the Indonesian state and react to the selectivity of state strategies which privilege dominant forces. The paper contributes to the existing literature on the political economy of infrastructure and serves to take state transformation into account and to dispel the 'methodological nationalism' view that presupposes policy outcome and institutional features are inherent to the mode of capitalism of the investor's country of origin. (Pac Rev / GIGA)

This paper attempts to analyze both internal and external determinants which influence the persistence of the democracy deficit in China, as Beijing successfully surpressed its people's demand for democrartic change and freedom. This paper also examines how the longevity of one-party regimes has simply made democracy such a forgettable discourse. Meanwhile, this paper argues three watersheds of undemocratized China. First, the historical precedence has shown that attempts of electoral democracy have not been successful in China. Second, there is an absence of constructive engagement toward China by external powers, such as the European Union and the United States (henceafter, "US"). Third, democracy lacks strong support from large sections of Chinese society. This paper also sees the another perspective of how the monopolized power of Chinese Communist Party (henceafter, "CCP") has been substituting the implementation of liberal democracy through the meritrocacy system and creatingthe dependencies of middle class to government.