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Remittances have been a great support to Pacific island countries (PICs). Aside from providing additions to domestic savings and, hence, real resources, they have been one of the major sources of foreign exchange earnings. In the context of falling exports and limited options to diversify their exports, inward remittances have assumed greater importance. This paper examines the nexus between growth and remittances in Samoa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a new trend in Japan's Official Development Assistance (ODA) policy that emerged at the end of the Cold War. In 1992, the Japanese government adopted the "Official Development Assistance Charter," which obliged Japan to use its foreign aid to promote human rights, democracy, and freedom. Since the beginning of the 1990s, there have been cases when Japan imposed "human rights conditionalities" by increasing the amount of foreign aid to the recipient countries with good human rights records and reducing economic assistance to the countries with poor human rights practices. However, there remain doubts whether Japan is truly committed to use its aid power as leverage to ensure that democracy and human rights are respected by the governments of its aid recipients. This paper uses panel data analysis to examine whether the condition of human rights in aid-recipient countries has become one of the factors that influence Japan's ODA allocation. The findings reveal the lack of evidence to prove that the human rights condition in aid-recipient countries has influenced the allocation of Japanese aid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nikolay Gudalov holds a PhD in Political Science and is an Associate Professor at Saint-Petersburg State University (SPbSU). Her research interests include historical sociology, world-systems analysis, political economy, and social identity in historical policing. His areas of teaching and research interests include international migration, South Asian diaspora, transnationalism, and religion. [Extracted from the article]

On December 17, 2004, El Salvador became the first of six signatory countries to ratify the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (DR-CAFTA) and on March 1, 2006, it became the first to implement the agreement. However, even staunch supporters of trade agreements would likely agree that DR-CAFTA provides questionable advantages for the five Latin American signatories, as they already received most of the DR-CAFTA-related trade-benefits through the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) with fewer conditions. Meanwhile, the potential benefits are questionable, at best. Thus, begs the question, why would any of the five Latin American economies sign on to such an agreement? This paper seeks to explain the motives of just one of these signatories: El Salvador. Understanding El Salvador's participation in CAFTA-DR is critical not only because it's government was the most vociferous supporter of the agreement but because DR-CAFTA demonstrates the consolidation of the country's previously nascent Transnational Capitalist Class (TCC). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nikolay Gudalov holds a PhD in Political Science and is an Associate Professor at Saint-Petersburg State University (SPbSU). Her research interests include historical sociology, world-systems analysis, political economy, and social identity in historical policing. His areas of teaching and research interests include international migration, South Asian diaspora, transnationalism, and religion. [Extracted from the article]

Dr. Sicelo L. Makapela holds a M.A. in Sociology from the University of Connecticut, USA and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Fort Hare, South Africa. Dr. Sicelo L. Makapela holds a M.A. in Sociology from the University of Connecticut, USA and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Fort Hare, South Africa. His major research interests are the international political economy; African political economy; globalization; and socio-economic rights. [Extracted from the article]

With the shift of the world growth gravity from the industrialized countries to the emerging economies, the China-Latin American relationship has greater political and economic implications in the current international power transition. The energy ties between China and Latin America have been significantly strengthened in the oil sector and the China-Venezuela oil cooperation model is a unique example that might explain the dynamics of China's energy interaction with Latin American resource countries. This oil cooperation model is a plural collaboration pattern with the oil sector as the cooperation axis and is extended to the infrastructure, high-tech, agriculture and other sectors under the intergovernmental institutionalized cooperative framework, which is supported by Chinese financial credit. China and Venezuela have high complementarities of energy interest in terms of the oil trade, finance and infrastructure building, based on the two countries' relative economic advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intellectual property right (IPR) negotiations during the Uruguay Round (UR) negotiations were characterized by significant disagreement between developed and developing countries. For developing countries, the WTO system might have gone too far on patents. It is particularly true for essential medicines critical to human life and health. The Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) of the WTO includes a few provisions on special and differential treatment (SDT) of developing countries. However, these do not specifically mention pharmaceutical products. Patentability of pharmaceutical products may be analysed in light of fairness. From the viewpoint of distributional fairness, this article derives several policy suggestions for pharmaceutical products in fair international economic relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following rapid economic development, China's dependence on imported petroleum has been increasing at a pace. In order to prevent an energy shortage that would impede economic development, the Chinese government has come up with a strategy of NOCS 'going out'; this is as an important measure for securing energy safety at the beginning of twenty-first century. However, at a time when nationalization has become widespread among resource-rich countries, the only opportunities for Chinese nocs to implement the 'going out' policy are in politically fragile states. Against this background, Iran and Iraq became important 'going out' destinations of Chinese NOCS. However, the contracts that Chinese NOCS have signed with Iran and Iraq are service contracts. That is to say, by signing this kind of contract, the huge investments made by Chinese NOCS in Iran and Iraq are not equal to their oil or gas interests and the Chinese NOCS are also incapable of ensuring the oil and gas that they produce in both these resource-rich countries are exported to China. As a result, and due to the fact that the needs of the Chinese government with respect to securing stable energy imports, Chinese NOCS' decisions towards investing in Iran and Iraq, as well as the way they manage their projects in these two countries are driven purely by commercial considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As China and India build modern highways through the Tibet-Nepal borderlands, traditional livelihoods, land use patterns, and trade relations are rapidly changing for numerous highland communities across the Trans-Himalaya interface. In response to recently opened border crossings, various social and market networks have (re)emerged, transforming the parameters of mobility for the populations of High Asia. New roads are critical to these transformations. Merging Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Marxist analytics to unpack the "black-box" of roads, this study asks two main questions: what are the factors at play in this socio-cultural and geopolitical transition in the Trans-Himalaya borderlands, and how can roads be thought of as technological objects central to this dynamic? After situating the study in the conceptual framework of Zomia, I then draw on Actor Network Theory (ANT), co-production, and the spatial fix to analyze two contemporary trans-border road development projects in Sikkim, India and Mustang, Nepal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an article in Perspectives on Global Development and Technology (PGDT), Kwangkun Lee revisits the debate on whether the semiperiphery is persistent or short-lived in the long-term historical structure. Lee concludes that semiperipheries only have a brief lifespan due to their (assumed) polarizing tendency. We provisionally agree with Lee's conclusion, but we diverge in our reasoning for upholding this hypothesis. Proponents of the World-Systems Theory claim that an intermediate group of states stabilizes the world-economy. For instance, Giovanni Arrighi posits that the semiperiphery will be persistent in the longue durée. But in our view, the rise of China will ultimately destabilize the so-called constant stratum of the semiperiphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trimodal framework of core-semiperiphery-periphery has been challenged by globalization theorists. This article is not only an anti-criticism of critics but also a criticism of the trimodality itself. Against critics, I argue that the national state is still a meaningful unit of world inequalities. But I also argue that semiperiphery has been decomposed since the late-1970s. It implies that the semiperiphery may not be a constant feature of the capitalist world-economy for a longue-durée but an historical product specific to two decades of development in 1960-70s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study challenges and documents a case against the dominant view that post-Cold War U.S. military adventures in the Middle East, especially the recent invasion of Iraq, have been prompted mainly by oil considerations. The study suggests that although oil is indubitably a concern, and that the United States has used military force in the past for energy purposes, these precedents fail to explain the current military operations in the region. There is strong evidence that major oil companies no longer favor war in the Middle East, because they prefer stability and predictability to periodic spikes in the oil price that result from war and political convulsion. There is also strong evidence that the powerful interests vested in war and militarism might be utilizing oil as a pretext to justify military adventures in order to derive higher dividends from the business of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the bargaining interface between petroleum-rich developing countries and large multinational corporations, with an application to the case of Kazakhstan, formerly a Soviet Republic. In the analytic narrative tradition, this article combines a case study with an extensive form game, applying Theodore Moran's dynamic bargaining theory, which posits that, over time and through repeated interaction, developing countries do better for themselves, incrementally improving their outcomes through bargaining and strategic interaction, thereby advancing along a learning curve. The application of this theory is systematized through the utilization of game theory; an extensive game modeled on strategic, iterated bargaining behavior between the two actors is introduced. This dynamic game allows for the recalculation of strategies based on the players' revealed moves, allowing for the concept of learning while doing. The game is then applied to Kazakhstan's particular situation. The application of Moran's theory through the use of a generalizable game provides a method for resource-rich developing countries—particularly those in the nascent stages of developing these industries—to systematize the negotiation process and accelerate their ascent on a bargaining learning curve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IMF's response to recent financial crises has involved the development of an extensive series of international economic standards that it believes all states should adopt. Fund representatives have justified these reforms by using explicitly moral arguments. In this chapter, I take a closer look at this new turn in order to determine its implications for both financial governance and political ethics. I suggest that although ethical discourse has historically played a crucial role in sustaining financial regimes, the recent turn to moralize finance is novel, for it represents a new kind of economic and ethical liberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the implications of economic globalization and the Internet on the proliferation and mobilization of nongovernmental organizations and social movements who challenge the international trade policy through the World Trade Organization. Trade policy processes in Australia, Canada and the European Union; Economic relations.