Die klimapolitische Position der USA hat sich seit der Übernahme des Präsidentenamtes durch Barack Obama grundlegend gewandelt. Dies betrifft sowohl innenpolitische Entwicklungen als auch den außenpolitischen Auftritt in zwischenstaatlichen und internationalen Klimaverhandlungen. Die...

In the last ten years, economic issues related to currency policy have become the major ongoing dispute between China and the U.S. Especially the U.S. Congress is stridently demanding a tougher policy to avert the negative consequences for the U.S. economy of "unfair" Chinese policies in the...

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, independent entrepreneurial migrants from China have been increasingly flocking to Africa in search of "greener pastures". This paper scrutinizes the empirical foundations of the increasingly hostile discourses of African traders regarding the...

Research on Chinese International Relations (IR) theory has produced a variety of discourses, including post-positivist analyses, contributions by area specialists and China watchers, and articles by Chinese IR scholars. These strands, however, hardly overlap or communicate with each other. To...

Analyses of the shape and functioning of systems of political rule need to address informal institutions, which exist alongside and can relate to formal institutions in various ways. In this paper, I first discuss some analytical foundations of the study of such institutions. I then suggest that...

China's leadership currently seems to be extremely worried about unemployment, and particularly youth unemployment, even though the country's official unemployment rate is rather low. Possible reasons for this are that (1) the youth unemployment rate is actually higher than stated; (2) the...

The leadership of powerful states in processes of regional institutionalization is a significant, though still widely ignored topic in the field of International Relations (IR). This study asks about the theoretical conditions of effective leadership in international institution- building, using...

The image of China's peaceful rise, which the Chinese government is keen to enforce in the world, stands in contrast to the view of China's ascent as a threat. China's economic and military growth is perceived as a potential threat to the (East) Asian security structure and as a challenge to the...

Promising growth rates, increased trade, and competition among major global players for African resources have boosted the development and bargaining power of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in relation to the EU. However, Africa's least developed countries remain vulnerable to external shocks....

As the conception of and debates on regional powers have been led by political science, this paper aims to contribute to the discussion from an economics perspective. Based on the discussion of different concepts of economic power - such as those of Schumpeter, Perroux, Predöhl, or Kindleberger...