Ukraine: The battle beyond war
Ukraine is fighting for survival against Russia while its democracy faces a second battle at home. Ukrainians show extraordinary trust in the Arme...
Frokostmøte: Ytre høyre i EU. Hva betyr det for Norge?
Tankesmia Europa leverer paneldiskusjoner og analyser der du får svar på hvem ytre høyre er, hva de vil og hvordan. Hva kan vi forvente skjer videre og hva bør vi i Norge gjøre?
Alexander Cooley
Alexander Cooley is an affiliate of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and the Claire Tow Professor of Political Science at Barnard...
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'.