International Area Studies Review

In recent years the position of the regions in the European Union(EU) became more prominent, notably with the establishment of a “Committee of the Regions” (COR). This can be explained by the centralizaton tendency in the EU. After defining the heterogenous notions of “region”, this article analyzes the influence of the regions in the EU, especially the work of the COR in the last years. While the institutionalization of influence of the regions could have resulted in an increasing importance of the regional level, the analysis shows that this is not the case. Instead, a consequent enforcement of the principle of subsidiarity seems more promising.

Most studies of the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia have largely been concerned with its impact on the development of nationalism of the region. In general, their historiographical wind is divided into two interpretations “interruption” and “transformation” arguments. This paper attempts to reexamine the “interruption” argument, focusing on the impact of Japanese occupation on the development of Malay nationalism with special reference to the Kesatuan Melayu Muda or KMM (Young Malay Union). Based upon this investigation, this paper makes a conclusion that the “interruption” argument which the Japanese occupation did really have a catalytic effect on the development of Malay nationalism is not so convincing a point of view.

The division of Southeast Asia into “mainland” and “insular” components hides a focal, unifying geographic element-the central body of water that the two halves bracket and encircle as a common heritage. Because this body of water, like its Near Eastern counterpart, has been a common maritime highway for all traders of Asia since ancient times, it might just as well be called the “Asian Mediterranean Sea.” The main purpose of the paper is to argue that current and future policies related to the exploitation of marine resources in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Asian Mediterranean Sea, should be carried out on a region-wide and collaborative basis. Such a multilateral approach is supported by a fuller understanding of the past sociocultural, political and commercial relations that marked this region in pre-colonial and colonial periods.

North African countries have been trying to reform and liberalize their economies. In spite of its dramatic start in the mid-1980s with the help of IMF, however, privatization and rationalization of public sector enterprises, which is considered as the core of economic liberalization, have faced significant obstacles. Many of these obstacles derived from the nature of politics. Public enterprises also has an important role to play as a tool to generate improved equity in this region. Therefore, political reform is a necessary condition of change if economic liberalization is to contribute to economic development in North African Arab countries.

Global environmental issues require continuous monitoring, ongoing management, and the periodic recalibration of policies and responses. The recent trend in international environmental law is toward the use of non-adversarial conciliation and non-compliance mechanisms in addition to the right to go to arbitration and to international tribunals. By examining the mechanisms currently existing to enforce multilateral international environmental treaties this paper discusses a variety of considerations and consequences these compliance systems entail and presents several suggestions to enhance the current system.

The purpose of this paper is to review the different arguments concerning the theory of dependency. For this purpose, this paper examines the definitions of dependency, general perspectives, classifications, and the criticism of dependency theory. The main weakness of dependency theory lies in explaining the origin of underdevelopment. In other words, the relation between underdevelopment and dependency is explained in a circular manner. However, nobody can deny that dependency theory opened up a new perspective on the realities of international political economy. This perspective has focused on the problem of the underdevelopment of Third World countries and on the key question who has controlled the development.

This paper is designed to examine the changing paradigm of regulating and institutionalizing broadcasting in recent years. The first section of this paper defines broadcasting regulations in general and the reasons applied to these restrictions, as well as the methods used to carry them out. The second part esamines the rapid change in the methods pointed out in the first section, and also discusses its reasons and trends. the third section takes these basic understandings and applies them to the case of Korea, for further examination. This paper concludes that international broadcasting thends are headed towards the era of open competition at full speed; whether policy makers like it or not. Adapting to intermational trends is no longer enough. It is imperative for receivers, broadcasters and policymakers etc. to fully understand the fundamental aspects and characteristics of broadcasting regulation in order to supplement the weaknesses that these trends possess.

Cognigraphics analysis is designed to break down ideas (e.g. sentences, pictures, messages or ads) into their elemental components. These components are operationalized as objects, attributes and relationships (spatial or temporal) among objects and elements. Findings indicate that (a) ads with headlines focusing on either the consumer or the brand obtain higher recall than those focusing on both the consumer and the brand, and (b) headlines with either spatial or temporal elements obtained higher recall than those with both spatial and temporal elements.

This paper examines the relationship between socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and the form of city government, and the relationship between the type of city government and fiscal and financial policies in the United States. This paper premises that political structure is a reflection of social choice and, at the same time, it is autonomous and coherent engugh to affect what societal members will get. I argue that a political structure be treated as the focal point in the political process. The twogocernment forms (mayor and manager form of city government) are compared to examine the choice of institutional form of city government and to determine whether and how the king of government makes differences. A prediction model is formulated to aid the purpose of the study.

In this paper, we analyse the debate on work organization and control. Current theoretical perspectives on this issue are divided into the following five categories: labour process, efficiency bias, social action, the institutionalist, and political economy. Each perspectives has its own merits and, in fact, to obtain a balanced view of the changes in work organization and control seen in various organizations, all five theoretical perspectives have to be used to construct coherent arguments.