This Spring/Summer 2019 issue features five essays from a variety of different disciplines, one review essay, and 22 book reviews on globalization topics (defined broadly), a predominant theme of the journal.

The first essay by Daisuke Akimoto deals with Japan’s policy on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The author describes the history of the TPP stemming from its early developments in 2009. The TPP policy debates divided the country and the various political parties in Japan. As Akimoto mentions the current Prime Minster Shinzo Abe initially opposed the TPP but in 2013 he reconsidered his policies. The TPP agreement was eventually signed by all the various countries including the United States in 2016. Of course, following the election of Donald Trump, the U.S. abandoned the TPP. The author discusses the domestic debate in Japan regarding the TPP and evaluates the pros and cons in the controversies within the political, academic, and media realms. Akimoto investigates the theoretical aspects of international relations (IR) theories that were employed within the academic areas to assess the TPP debates. He provides a method of ‘analytical eclecticism’ in order to assess the IR debates and Japan’s support of the TPP. As an analytical framework Akimoto uses ‘classical liberalism,’ ‘neoliberalism,’ ‘classical realism, and ‘’neorealism,’ and ‘constructivism’ in order to assess the TPP policy debates. He concludes that all of these IR theories are useful in comprehending the TPP debates and policies that were prevalent in Japan.

The second essay deals with the politics of Zambia, a country that does not have wide global coverage. The authors are Rosemary Fumpa-Makano and Major General Vincent Mbaulu Mukanda of the Dag Hammarskjӧld Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies at The Copperbelt University, Kitwe, Zambia. The authors thank the Dag Hammarskjöld Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies for giving them time off from their teaching duties to conduct this study, the Copperbelt University (CBU) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for co-financing the study, and the Electoral Commission of Zambia who believed in their expertise and capability to engage politicians and help bring peaceful interactions to the political space. The authors discuss the prospects for peaceful rather than interparty political conflict and violence in the democratic election process of August 2016 in Zambia. They use a Participatory Action Research (PAR) design to collect data from political players and understand the roots of conflict and violence. They use field-based training to build peace envoys among political leaders to enhance peaceful interparty and intraparty peace and provide solutions to curb conflict and violence. The authors describe how Zambia is an emerging democracy, but it has a stunted democratic culture and that during electoral cycles, political conflict and violent contests are apparent. The authors provide an important historical context for Zambia since 1964 including its evolution from a one party to a multiparty state. The authors rely on a sophisticated version of relative deprivation theory along with Mancur Olson’s perspective on groups and collective action to help understand why people may engage in political violence and conflict. The bottomup PAR approach was found to be important for both understanding political conflict and providing solutions for inhibiting violence.

The third essay is by Diego R. Toubes in the Business Organization and Marketing Department at the University of Vigo in Spain, Julio García del Junco in the Business Administration and Marketing Department at the University of Sevilla in Spain, and Masataka Abe in the Faculty of Human and Social Studies at the Nagasaki International University in Japan. The authors discuss the similarities and differences in the attitudes and traits associated with entrepreneurs in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Japan. They utilized two different types of questionnaires for entrepreneurs in 188 small businesses in these countries. In this cross-cultural analysis, the authors attempted to measure the relationship between specific cultural values and the traits and attitudes of these entrepreneurs. The authors discuss the entrepreneurial issues in the context of the global economic crisis that began in 2008 when all of these countries faced various recessions. The authors summarize the literature on the relationship between cultural values and levels of entrepreneurship, but they eschew a complete reductionist approach. They found similar behavioural traits and cultural values associated with perseverance and tenacity during times of economic crisis for entrepreneurs in all four countries. However, they found some differences between the Japanese and European Mediterranean entrepreneurs in motivational patterns. In Japan entrepreneurs were primarily motivated by personal achievement, while the Mediterranean sought independence or autonomy in their entrepreneurial pursuits. Yet, they conclude that this study is only an exploratory investigation and follow up in-depth research on cultural values including religious values are needed for establishing generalizations regarding entrepreneurship in different countries.

The fourth essay is by Harold Young J.D./LLb, and PhD in the Political Science Department at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee. His essay is a critical review of the decisions of the Judicial Council of the Privy Council (JCPC) in death penalty cases and appeals from the Commonwealth Caribbean from 1966-2008. Young explores how the judicial environment is influenced by the majority party in Great Britain’s parliament and the selection of judges by the prime minister. He presents a quantitative study of the 262 JCPC death penalty appeals in the Commonwealth Caribbean states. The Commonwealth Caribbean states include Antigua & Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the Grenadines, and Trinidad & Tobago. All of these Caribbean island countries became independent from Great Britain during the period from 1964-1983. Young provides a history of the JCPC as a product of the Judicial Committee Act of 1833 in Great Britain that included constitutional challenges to the death penalty. Most of the British Commonwealth countries, including those in the Caribbean share the common law legal system and the JCPC system as their final appellate courts. Young examines the 262 appeal cases from each Commonwealth Caribbean state, of which166 or 63.1 percent were death penalty cases. From 1966 to 2008, 106 appeal cases were overturned while 70 were upheld by the JCPC. He discusses how the Conservative Party or the Labor Party appointments to the judiciary in Great Britain have an ideological influence on the JCPC decision-making regarding death penalty cases. Young describes how some of the Caribbean states have replaced the JCJPC with a Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ). They abolished the appeals to the JCPC. He concludes that as more Caribbean states join the CCJ the leaders will have to avoid a “hangman’s court” enabling regional states to carry out the death penalty.

The fifth essay is by Olusola Matthew Ojo of the Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution section of the Department of Political Science at the National Open University of Nigeria in Abuja. The essay explores the role of culture in postcolonial Nigeria’s quest for sustainable peace and development. The author utilizes qualitative data and content analysis to investigate Nigeria’s cultural heritage and its influence on mainstream political ideology and socioeconomic conditions. After interrogating the meaning of the elusive concept of culture, Ojo argues that Nigerian leaders have neglected the role of culture in political and economic development policies. The author describes the importance of cultural plurality in Nigeria contrasting the Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa’s significant cultural values and underlying similarities that could be an indigenous basis for promoting development and peace. Ojo draws lessons from the development of Japan’s industrial might and how the country drew from its cultural heritage. The author also uses examples such as plural societies in other areas of the world including America’s melting pot in order to recommend a cultural renaissance in Nigeria that dovetails with indigenous cultural values in order to provide a framework for political policies that will become more effective for sustaining peace and development in the global age of the 21st century.

Volume 10 Number 2 includes one superb review essay by A. Peter Castro from the Department of Anthropology in the Maxwell Center at Syracuse University. He provides an excellent review of two books dealing with infrastructural developments. One volume is edited by Nikhil Anand, Akhil Gupta, and Hannah Appel The Promise of Infrastructure published by Duke University Press in 2018. The other book is applied anthropologist Thayer Scudder’s Large Dams: LongTerm Impacts on Riverine Communities and Free-Flowing Rivers published by Springer in 2018.

Volume 10 Number 2 also includes 22 book reviews dealing with global trends throughout the world. As this is the last issue of the Journal of International and Global Studies we want to encourage scholars to visit our web site listed above to read, distribute, and share the scholarship from this journal.

Sincerely,

Raymond Scupin, PhD Director: Center for International and Global Studies Professor of Anthropology and International Studies Lindenwood University Email: [email protected]