果冻传媒

A Pinpoint Politics article by Helen Jane Martin

Cases of deaths caused by US drone strikes are rarely far from front pages, with high-profile insurgents regularly falling victim to their new mechanised enemy. Yet, despite this publicity, reliable statistics are unavailable on the number of strikes, the number of deaths, and, importantly, the locations of strikes. This is not only down to the CIA’s secrecy concerning the operation, but also because in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), where most of the attacks are taking place, the environment for outsiders and foreigners is nothing short of hostile. The most comprehensive effort to scale the impact of the new drone war has been carried out by the based on the strikes. However, the organisation admits that this effort is still not the full story, stating that it only gives best approximations of locations and its details of drone attacks are reliant on media organizations for their information.

Prof Chris Hughes, Head of Department, was interviewed by the National Bureau of Asian Research on 2 August 2012 in an article entitled 'China’s Military Modernization and Implications for Northeast Asia':

Q: How have Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK), and Taiwan sought to strike a balance between their increasing economic interdependence with China and their concerns over Chinese military modernization and strategic aims in the region?

A: I think that hedging, rather than building a strong strategic or military balance, has been the approach that these countries have taken toward China’s military modernization in the last few years. That is, while they still see China’s military modernization as alarming, they are also aware that increasing economic dependence on China is inescapable. So, as they continue to hedge, they are hoping that economic growth will eventually moderate China’s behavior, lead to diplomatic engagement, and counterbalance the asymmetric dependence that is building up.

We have a handful of places for strong candidates (AAB or higher) on BA Politics or BA Politics with International Studies in the PAIS department at 果冻传媒. Please contact the confirmation hotline for more details: +44(0) 2476 533 544. For informal enquiries contact Dr Trevor McCrisken, undergraduate programme director, on +44(0) 24 765 74693 or at trevor.mccrisken@warwick.ac.uk.

A Pinpoint Politics article by Brendan Pastor

"Well, we’re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is we’re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer. So for us, the base we’ve got for that is the fact that we’ve got – budgetarily we can’t afford not to. If we have collective bargaining agreements in place, there’s no way not only the state but local governments can balance things out.” ()

The above quote by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was in response to a question posed by billionaire and Republican Party donor Diane Hendricks, who asked if Walker could make Wisconsin a “completely red [Republican] state, and work on these unions’, transforming his state into “a right-to-work” state. Accepting Walker’s poorly phrased and politically slanted answer, Hendricks would go on to contribute over $510,000 to the Walker re-election campaign, his single biggest individual donor.

Dr John Parkinson, Associate Professor of Public Policy and Director of Research Degrees, was recently featured in an article entitled 'What Makes a Public Space Good for Democracy?' by Emily Badger in the Cities section of The Atlantic magazine.

“Filling the National Mall is a seriously impressive achievement,” Parkinson says. See, for example, . A lot of these other capitals offer pretty meager public gathering spaces on the steps of their political institutions. Chater Garden, the main square next to the Legislative Council in Hong Kong, could fit maybe 5,000 people. “It’s so much harder in Hong Kong to express the physical scale of public displeasure,” Parkinson says.