Recognition and Japan’s Post-coup Diplomacy in Myanmar and Afghanistan
How does Japan diplomatically engage with post-coup countries? Officially, it does not maintain diplomatic relations. Unofficially, however, Japan conducts a vibrant post-coup diplomacy. Probing different forms of recognition, this article investigates how Japan manages its diplomacy with countries where illiberal, military governments have violently assumed power. Since the military government’s coup in Myanmar in 2021, Japan has adapted its policies in terms of magnitude, span and content to remain engaged in this strategic location. Similarly, since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in 2021, Japan has shifted its contributions for humanitarian assistance, political process and economic infrastructure. In both cases, Japan has crafted its post-coup relations amid intensifying great power dynamics on the one hand, and a changing domestic policy agenda for foreign aid and security on the other. Japan has developed its own distinct form of post-coup diplomacy that involves a ‘pragmatic’ approach to engagement and implied forms of recognition.
Recognition and Japan’s Post-coup Diplomacy in Myanmar and Afghanistan
How does Japan diplomatically engage with post-coup countries? Officially, it does not maintain diplomatic relations. Unofficially, however, Japan conducts a vibrant post-coup diplomacy. Probing different forms of recognition, this article investigates how Japan manages its diplomacy with countries where illiberal, military governments have violently assumed power. Since the military government’s coup in Myanmar in 2021, Japan has adapted its policies in terms of magnitude, span and content to remain engaged in this strategic location. Similarly, since the Taliban’s return to power in Afghanistan in 2021, Japan has shifted its contributions for humanitarian assistance, political process and economic infrastructure. In both cases, Japan has crafted its post-coup relations amid intensifying great power dynamics on the one hand, and a changing domestic policy agenda for foreign aid and security on the other. Japan has developed its own distinct form of post-coup diplomacy that involves a ‘pragmatic’ approach to engagement and implied forms of recognition.
From synergy to subsidy – The cultural problem of public–private partnerships in international development
This chapter explores the cultural problem of PPPs. The PPP policy agenda in international development seeks to juxtapose actors with distinct rationales and institutional logics, with the ambition to create synergy between them. In practice, however, the intentional encounter between public and private actors produces interface situations that also amplify the actors’ distinctiveness and thus the cultural problem of PPPs. The chapter draws on data collection in the World Bank and a case study in Ethiopia of a PPP development project involving an NGO and a multinational corporation. This shows the practical renderings and effects of the culture problem, here causing the private actor to withdraw from the partnership and their joint project. Thus, what was meant as a project of synergy becomes a publicly funded proxy and subsidy of private interests. At the general level, the chapter shows how the PPP agenda compels categorisation as either public or private while at the same time it seeks to merge these differences. As such, the interface dynamics and cultural problem are not only produced by the PPP agenda but may also undermine it. This chapter is part of the book 'The Politics of Public–Private Partnerships and International Development'.
Unravelling the Ps in public–private partnerships for development
With the launch of UN Agenda 2030, public–private partnerships (PPPs) became formalised as both an objective of and a means of implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals. An established policy-oriented research agenda has long sought to make sense of the ‘jungle’ of PPPs by identifying critical success factors and chronic shortcomings. Yet the instrumentalist inclination to evaluate PPPs restricts this agenda’s theoretical horizons. Building on a relatively smaller but significant body of critical PPP work, Agenda 2030 calls for research that embraces the messiness of PPPs and treats the plasticity of the term as a feature to understand rather than a bug to be overcome. To wit, Agenda 2030 advances an inductive approach to exploring the PPP buzzword in its specific enactments and makes the case for problematising the Ps in PPP from the bottom up and from multiple perspectives. Ultimately, Agenda 2030 highlights the theoretical value of escaping the evaluation meta-narrative that delimits the theoretical potential of a great deal of existing research on PPPs for development and PPPs more broadly. In addition to helping inform and enhance our understanding of the contemporary PPP agenda, this approach is useful for making sense of the political and capitalist forces that are shaping not only Ethiopia but the world at large today. This chapter is part of the book 'The Politics of Public–Private Partnerships and International Development'.
Tracing the travels of a development model
Historicising Ethiopia’s contemporary global Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) agenda, this chapter examines how its contemporary manifestation in Ethiopia bears the imprint of the PPP model’s checkered historical and political trajectory. The underlying analytical gambit is that tracing the ‘travels’ of the PPP model – via analyses of China and the UK’s PPP waves – can both help explain how Ethiopia ended up adopting the model in the first place and understand the distinct form this adoption has taken. In the process, the analysis shows how Ethiopia’s PPP policy relies upon a highly selective process of ‘lessons’ to be ‘learned’ from (un)successful projects that partially but not entirely airbrushes out experiences that would threaten the uptake of the model. These elisions are crucial for imagining that the risks of PPP can be overcome with capacity-building and more rigorous management processes. The chapter contends that this selective learning can help account for the spread of PPPs to Ethiopia and the persistence of the PPP promotion efforts by international financial institutions globally. Taken together, the chapter makes the case for treating the PPP model as an unfolding global process. This chapter is part of the book 'The Politics of Public–Private Partnerships and International Development'
The Politics of Public–Private Partnerships and International Development – Insights from Ethiopia
With the launch of Agenda 2030, public–private partnerships (PPPs) were heralded as an important means of realising the UN Sustainable Development Goals and providing more sustainable development financing in the global south. This book explores PPPs from the bottom up, drawing on extensive empirical research in Ethiopia to illuminate the diversity of practices, arrangements and contradictions that the PPP agenda enables, generates and occludes. Despite the omnipresence of PPP talk among governments and international organisations, donor and recipient agencies, and private actors, there exists no universally agreed definition of PPPs, and in practice they encompass a remarkable diversity of activities and arrangements. This book thoroughly examines PPPs in Ethiopia, considering what actors they bring together, what power dynamics they produce, how the dynamics alter them, what PPPs and such dynamics say about changing state–society relations and how the individual Ps of PPPs get infused with context-specific meaning. By investigating how PPPs play out in practice, the book sheds new light on how this ambiguous but proliferating discourse is changing the meanings, processes and mechanisms of international development. This book illuminates the unseen consequences of translating bold sustainable development goals into practice and will be of interest to researchers and practitioners of international development.
Norwegian-German space collaboration: A pathway to Europe
This brief examines the renewed Norwegian-German partnership in space and its strategic importance for Norwegian foreign policy and the country’s space ambitions. The analysis explores how the partnership reflects Europe's push for strategic autonomy and assesses how Norway can leverage its unique space assets to secure a stronger role in European space cooperation despite being a non-EU member. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s first visit to Norway at Andøya Spaceport in March 2026 kicked off a new ambition for Norwegian-German cooperation in space, with a focus on space-based surveillance, secure satellite communication, and launch capabilities from the spaceport. The partnership shows new signs of conceptualizing space as a highly cross-sectoral domain where joint capacity-building is needed. Where Germany brings industrial scale and technological breadth, Norway contributes with specialized expertise, research environments, and a unique geographic position for space activities in the High North. The partnership could strengthen Europe’s competitiveness and security, but its success will depend on navigating EU regulations governing third-country participation, ensuring long-term Norwegian investment and engagement, and establishing pathways for collaboration. The collaboration with Germany has the potential to position Norway as a leading Arctic spacefaring nation and a key partner to European in space.