In 2010, Taiwan and China concluded a landmark trade agreement: the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) that sought to pave the way for closer commercial ties by lowering tariffs on several trade items. Just a decade earlier, both sides of the Taiwan Strait were ratcheting up rhetoric that seemed to point to growing political uncertainty across a region once a hotspot during the Cold War. What was behind this political sea change? The paradox of state policy in the cross-Strait political economy over the past three decades is that despite increased economic activity between both sides, national identity remains an important barometer in framing the prospects and limits of policymaking. In accounting for this paradox and how actors have dealt with it through problem definition and trade policy adjustment, this research utilizes economic imaginaries, a discursive field that shapes the conceptualization of economic life. As discourse and structure are dialectical in relation to one another, an economic imaginary represents an analytical concept to map out ideational shifts concerning economic life and national identity. Specifically, the author aims to address the following questions with the regard to the reconceptualization of cross-Strait commerce in Taiwan government policy: - What ideas and practices are selected and drawn upon by political elites in Taiwan to create new economic imaginaries? - How are these ideas being negotiated and resisted in rebuilding of social relations? - What are the areas of unevenness and contradictions within the discursive process? This research utilizes a combined methodological approach toward navigating economic imaginaries, including critical discourse analysis, analysis of collective action frames and the critical junctures that challenge their hegemonic power. Drawing upon expert interviews, key policy texts from political and intellectual elites, critical discourse analysis demonstrates the linkage between imaginaries and framing actions by revealing the cognitive mapping of the cross-Strait political economy, the dominant discourses that inform them and the ways in which hegemonic ideas are reproduced within the discourse.

It is often argued that there is an inherent tension between international human rights law and the rules of free trade. This book explores the assumptions underlying this debate and argues that we need to reconsider them, focusing more on how expert knowledge and informal relationships shape trade law and its interaction with human rights.

Trade flows and trade policies need to be properly quantified to describe, compare, or follow the evolution of policies between sectors or countries or over time. This is essential to ensure that policy choices are made with an appropriate knowledge of the real conditions. This practical guide introduces the main techniques of trade and trade policy data analysis. It shows how to develop the main indexes used to analyze trade flows, tariff structures, and non-tariff measures. It presents the databases needed to construct these indexes as well as the challenges faced in collecting and processing these data, such as measurement errors or aggregation bias. Written by experts with practical experience in the field, A Practical Guide to Trade Policy Analysis has been developed to contribute to enhance developing countries' capacity to analyze and implement trade policy. It offers a hands-on introduction on how to estimate the distributional effects of trade policies on welfare, in particular on inequality and poverty. The guide is aimed at government experts engaged in trade negotiations, as well as students and researchers involved in trade-related study or research. An accompanying DVD contains data sets and program command files required for the exercises. Copublished by the WTO and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

Zusammenfassung: In this innovative volume, experts from international relations, anthropology, sociology, global public health, postcolonial African literature, and gender studies, take up Ngūgī wa Thiong'o's challenge to see how Africa gives to the west instead of the reverse. Humanitarian assumptions are challenged by unpacking critical legacies from colonial and missionary genealogies to today's global networks of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Who Gives to Whom: Reframing Africa in the Humanitarian Imaginary is a decolonial gesture that builds onNgūgī's work as well as that of pan-Africanist and intersectional feminist scholars. Contributions range from assessing the impact of historical legacies of colonialism on gender, religious/secular attempts at "saving" Africans to (South) African unrealized project to reconfigure foreign policy frameworks shaped by apartheid. Case studies of "silver bullet" solutions focus on the incorporation of women in peacebuilding, microfinance, and e-waste disposal, to argue that humanitarian interventions continue to mask ongoing forms of despoiling African well-being while shortchanging intersectional African forms of agency. Cilas Kemedjio is Professor of Francophone African and Caribbean literary and cultural studies at the University of Rochester, USA. Cecelia Lynch is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine, USA

The purpose of this book is to explore new developments in the field of economic sociology. It contains cutting-edge theoretical discussions by some of the world's leading economic sociologists, with chapters on topics such as the economic convention, relational sociology, economic identity, economy and law, economic networks and institutions. The book is distinctive in a number of ways. First, it focuses on theoretical contributions, by pulling together and extending what the contributors believe to be the most important theoretical innovations within their own particular areas of the field. Second, there are contributions by leading economic sociologists from both the US and Europe, which gives the book both wider scope and appeal, while also creating the opportunity for some interesting dialogue between distinct theoretical traditions. The book will be of interest to researchers, Ph.D. students, and advanced students on both side of the Atlantic, and indispensible in advanced economic sociology courses.

Dealing with Losers addresses the transition costs associated with most policy reforms and strategies for mitigating those costs in order to facilitate the necessary political compromises to ensure that socially desirable reforms move forward. This book examines widely disparate public policy contexts - from trade liberalization to agricultural supply management, immigration, and climate change policy - to illustrate the importance, in political economy terms, of well-considered transition cost mitigation strategies.