Intellectual elites have been the collective agents responsible for many democratic transitions worldwide since the early twentieth century. Intellectuals, however, have also been blamed for the evils in modern times. Instead of engaging in abstract debates about who the intellectuals are and what they do, this project studies intellectuals and their ideas within historical contexts. More specifically, it examines the social forces behind the evolving political attitudes of Chinese intellectuals from the late 1970s to the present. Chinese politics has received an enormous amount of attention from social scientists, but intellectuals have been much less explored systematically in social sciences, despite their significant role in China’s political life. Chinese intellectuals have been more fully investigated in the humanities, but existing research either treats different “school of thought” as given, or gives insufficient attention to the division among the intellectuals. It should also be noted that many studies explicitly take sides by engaging in polemics. To date, little work has thoroughly addressed the diversity and evolution, let alone origins, of political ideas in post-Mao China. As a result, scholars unfamiliar with Chinese politics are often confused about the labels in the Chinese intelligentsia, such as the association of nationalism with the Left and human rights with the Right. More important, without considering how the ideas took shape, we would not adequately understand the political trajectory of communist China, where elite politics and local policies have been profoundly shaped by intellectual debates. This dissertation takes a relational approach to the intellectual debates in contemporary China by analyzing the formation of political ideas and crystallization of intellectual positions. It asks two questions: who are the Chinese liberals, and how were their distinctive bundles of political views formed? Drawing on 67 semi-structured interviews with Chinese intellectual elites across the ideological spectrum, as well as detailed historical and textual analyses, this dissertation examines the social forces that have shaped the political attitudes of liberal intellectuals in contemporary China. It argues against the prevailing attempts to define Chinese liberalism as a social category with a coherent ideology comparable to its Western counterpart; rather, as a community of discourse that contains a number of competing and contradictory discourses, it is embedded in China’s social reality as an authoritarian regime governed by a communist party, and contingent on China’s history straddling the Maoist and post-Mao eras. Rather than a monolithic or tight-knit group, Chinese liberals are comprised of an array of social actors, including scholars, journalists, lawyers, activists, and house church leaders. They are liberal not because of what they are for, but because of what they are against; more specifically, Chinese liberals are united by an anti-authoritarian mentality, which is a historical product of the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976 and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. In addition to biographical factors, the views of Chinese liberals have been shaped by structural factors represented by the neoliberal reforms and the rise and growth of the intellectual field since the 1990s, as well as interactive factors manifested by the polar opposition between the liberals and the New Leftists. On the one hand, as state-driven capitalism unleashed China’s economic potential, China was well on its way to becoming a major player in the international community toward the end of the 1990s; on the other hand, the fusion of the free market and political power led to rampant corruption and social injustice. How to make sense of China’s crony capitalism became an important dividing line between the New Left and liberalism. As the intellectual debates were increasingly cast as part of global cultural production, how to appropriate Western thinkers and concepts became a site of contestation. While the dramatic expansion of higher education led to the growth of the intellectual field with its own logic and rules, in which both liberals and New Left intellectuals were struggling for symbolic power, the penetration of the political field remained, not only in terms of visible incentives and punishments, but also in terms of its subtle influence on the manner of problem construction and debate. Through combative interactions, the liberals and the New Leftists have defined themselves by reference to each other. In the process of binary opposition, the views of both sides have moved further and further apart with little overlap. This dissertation contributes to political sociology and the sociology of knowledge in three ways. First, departing from the conventional approach that takes political orientations for granted, it takes a relational approach by analyzing the dynamic processes of ideological formation and polarization. Second, it traces the process of ideological alignment and differentiation on three levels: structural, interactive, and biographical. Third, while it has been observed that intellectual elites have been the collective agents responsible for many democratic transitions worldwide since the early twentieth century, the internal division of the intellectuals has received much less attention. My work addresses this issue by analyzing how the Chinese intelligentsia has structuralized into binary opposition since the Tiananmen Square protests. In particular, I treat political ideas as historical contingencies, rather than fixed properties, that are internally shaped by “fractal distinctions.”

This thesis explores the interplay between global finance and remote firms and institutions. It highlights the interactions between global institutional investors and Japanese firms on environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) standards, and the process of change in Japanese corporate governance practices. It focuses on analysing the responses of large Japanese firms with a high level of foreign ownership to global finance and global institutional investors' strategies for engagement. Japan provides an excellent research environment for the topic. It is geographically and culturally remote from the West, and has the world's third largest economy with increasing foreign ownership on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Under the influence of global finance, the Japanese economy has been in transition despite the persistence of its traditional institutions. There are many globally recognised Japanese firms, although certain firms have come under scrutiny in several recent corporate governance scandals. Recently, corporate reform has become one of the priority policy agendas, which has led to incremental convergence to global standards. The aims of this thesis are as follows: (i) to analyse the evolution of shareholder activism and corporate governance practices in ownership structure change (Chapter 3); (ii) to examine how global institutional investors privately engage with remote firms (Chapter 4); (iii) to explore the power of global investors in an industry with lower foreign ownership (Chapter 5); (iv) to analyse the perceptions of local firms towards global ESG standards under policy change (Chapter 6). The thesis revealed the following findings. First, global investors provide one of the only opportunities for ESG-related dialogues for local firms, in a country where local institutional investors are not active shareholders. Global finance has the power to transform local corporate governance practices by breaking down path dependence and institutional complementarities, although the status quo does persist. Second, local firms' norms and perceptions based on the existing institutions are culturally derived informal constraints, which slow down the change of corporate governance practices even after instrumental change. Third, the target firms of engagement activities are home-biased and limited to a small number of large global brand firms; hence, non-target firms and industries maintain their ESG standards unless policy reform occurs. Finally, local firms' unfamiliarity with engagement activities limits the power of global finance in a remote market. There is a gap between global institutional investors' motivation for engagement and Japanese firms' readiness to respond; hence, considered strategies and modes of communication are critical for effective engagement with remote firms, especially when language and organisational issues are present.

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O objetivo deste artigo é o de analisar a organização rítmica de uma obra para piano do compositor brasileiro Cláudio Santoro. A análise da obra denominada Paulistana n.º 2 – Tempo de Catira – apoia-se na fundamentação teórica postulada por Grosvenor Cooper & Leonard Meyer (1960). Este trabalho alia os pressupostos teóricos fundamentados em estudos recentes sobre o ritmo e sua organização, em agrupamentos e em níveis hierárquicos com o propósito de delinear uma interpretação musical. Neste contexto, as considerações teóricas são utilizadas para entender a partitura. Os dois pólos, o teórico e o prático, são complementares e juntos contribuem para um entendimento musical equilibrado.

On 12 June 1986, at a joint sitting of the three houses of Parliament, the State President declared a National State of Emergency. In his speech he said: “. . .the sporadic instances of violence have once again begun to increase and have taken on such proportions that I am of the opinion that the ordinary laws of the land at present on the statute book are inadequate to enable the Government to ensure the security of the public and to maintain public order.” What were the State President’s reasons for declaring the State of Emergency? Was the Government’s action justified? What of the rule of law? Has the National State of Emergency achieved its objectives? When will the National State of Emergency be lifted?

Coleman, Tara Jean. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-149). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter 1 --- p.26 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- p.61 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- p.102 / Conclusion --- p.141 / Bibliography --- p.144

Japan has maintained a low profile in its diplomacy since the end of World War II, relying heavily on the United States for its security and prosperity. The cold war structure allowed Japan to maintain its passive foreign policy behavior. By the end of 1980s, West-East confrontations largely ended and global issues such as arms control, environmental problem, human rights, economic development, and ethnic conflicts became the main international concerns. It was expected that in this changed world environment, Japan as an economic power, would take on a more active international role. Yet Japan has not shown any significant political initiative despite of its willingness to contribute to international peace and prosperity. The primary purpose of this thesis is to identify the underlying factors that have kept Japan from being a strong voice and taking initiatives in world affairs. This study presents Japan's official guidelines on global issues as its foreign policy. The guidelines indicate that Japanese foreign policy is too general and broad; it aims at cooperation with everybody. Japan's foreign-policy behavior is represented by its voting behavior in the United Nations General Assembly. Inasmuch as it has adopted a U.N.-centered diplomacy, I believe that Japan's voting in the U.N. delineates its foreign-policy behavior. A statistical method of factor analysis I apply in this study delineates Japan's stance and voting cohesion issue by issue. The voting maps reveal Japan's ambivalent stance on most of the issues. Japan's voting pattern often does not follow its idealistic guidelines. The study further inquires into the discrepancy between Japan's foreign policy and its foreign-policy behavior. The main reasons seem to stem from its dependent security relations with the United States, the close economic ties with Asian countries and the oil-producing Middle East states, and historical constraints in relations with Asia. In addition, Japan's ambiguous foreign policy guidelines are themselves a factor which creates the discrepancy. These factors prevent Japan from independently reacting to international incidents. Yet given its financial and technological advances, Japan could play a leading role within the framework of international organizations, especially on global environmental issues.

With the Second World War, the U.S. defense establishment attained a scale and permanence it never had before. The new strategic blueprint of the Cold War dictated constant readiness for military confrontation, but it was also clear that the country could not keep up wartime levels of total economic mobilization. Faced with the problem of managing this military behemoth, leaders in the defense bureaucracy looked to private industry for expertise to help them run the emerging national security state. The result was a remaking of defense administration in the image of the post-war corporation. This dissertation explains how and why reformers placed their faith in models of business enterprise, an approach that was neither self-evident nor readily accepted across the military leadership. In the decades after World War II, the reorganization of the defense bureaucracy around values of efficiency and productivity shaped U.S. military operations and affected millions of people around the world. In concrete terms, this dissertation tracks how managerial science changed the ways the military kept accounts, disciplined labor, trained officers, and handled government assets. Interest in improving military management exploded after 1950. In the realm of budgeting and finance, reformers set up transactions between units to imitate buyer-seller relationships, requiring officers to express their needs for supplies and labor in dollar terms. Drawing analogies between military and private industry, defense establishment reformers embraced methods like Taylorist work measurement, which they used to control work ranging from filing to the production of massive weapons systems. Borrowing directly from Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program, defense leaders established schools to train high-ranking military officers in the latest trends of business management. While these business-inspired reforms gained traction in many parts of the military bureaucracy, they were not accepted without controversy. After the Vietnam War, many military leaders questioned the dominance of “managerialism” and denounced it in favor of traditional concepts of command and leadership. By the 1970s, however, the language and values of management had become thoroughly embedded in the institutional structure of the military. I argue that the reorganization of the defense bureaucracy in the image of the profit-seeking firm changed the experience of work in the military, redefined what it meant to be an officer, and facilitated the privatization of many of the defense establishment’s functions. Further, I aim to show that understanding how the military governed and produced can reframe key historiographic debates about 20th century American political economy.

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