Tourism in a 'borderless' world : the Singapore experience
Regional Tourism in Asia PacificThe phenomenon of "regional tourism" emerged in the 1990s. Countries and cities are increasingly looking across political borders to collaborate with one another in policy planning, project development, and tourism marketing. Shared natural and cultural resources can be jointly developed and promoted, and infrastructural duplication and harmful competition between countries minimized. The approach may be especially of interest to small countries, for which the experience of Singapore provides useful insights.The many forms of regional tourism. One of the most recognizable forms of regional tourism is the tourism triangle, in which cities in adjacent countries collaborate. Tourism triangles center on a shared economic or natural resource, such as a scenic attraction. The triangle is usually anchored by three principal cities (sometimes states or provinces) in three different countries. Examples in the Asia Pacific region include (see Fig. 1):* Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore Growth Triangle, or IMS-GT (Indonesia's Riau Islands, Malaysia's Johor state, and Singapore), #1 in Fig. 1;* Northern Growth Triangle (Malaysia's Penang, Indonesia's Medan, and Thailand's Phuket), #2 in Fig. 1;* Southern China Growth Triangle (Flong Kong, Taiwan, and the Guangdong and Fujian provinces of China), #3 in Fig. 1.The goal of tourism triangles is for cities/countries to complement each other and to undertake joint projects that leverage each country's strengths. For example, the IMS-GT promotes itself as a resort region capitalizing on Singapore's air/seaport connections and Indonesia's and Malaysia's golf courses, beaches, and comparatively cheaper labor.A second form of regional tourism is developed within the framework of political and economic alliances established by governments to promote a wide range of mutual goals. Alliances under which tourism collaborations have been initiated include:* Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area, or BIMP-EAGA, #4 in Fig. 1;* The Greater Mekong Subregion (Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and Yunnan Province of China), #5 in Fig. 1;* The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, or SAARC; the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN; and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, or APEC.Within each alliance, regional tourism is usually established through separate subcommittees or working groups. For example, the ASEAN Subcommittee on Tourism facilitates joint marketing of the region, information exchange, and tourism investments between countries. The Greater Mekong Subregion, formed by the Asian Development Bank in 1992, also has a tourism working group that coordinates infrastructure development and markets the participating countries as "Jewels of the Mekong." APEC formed its Tourism Working Group in 1991 to promote social and economic development of member countries through collaborative projects.A third form of regional tourism involves nongovernmental regional associations, which can be credited with first envisioning the potential for regional tourism. One example is the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), which was formed in 1951 with a mix of private and public sector members. Its original goals included encouraging the development of tourist facilities throughout the Pacific and easing government barriers to travel. Today, the Association also acts as a liaison between the public and private sectors within and between countries. Other non-profit regional associations include the nongovernmental ASEAN Tourism Association (ASEANTA) established in 1971 and the South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO) established in the early 1980s.Singapore's Imperative to 'Go Regional'From the 1960s through the early 1990s Singapore worked to develop its local and national tourism infrastructure and marketing. But with limited land for further development, the country began to look beyond its own borders. …
Political parties and political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific region
Democracies need both strength and flexibility--enough structure to transform a kaleidoscope of public opinion into coherent debate and effective policy, but enough openness to protect individual rights. Finding this balance is a particular challenge in ethnically diverse emerging democracies. Political parties usually serve a country best when they are limited in number, strong, and broad-based. Their evolution was once left mainly to chance; today, governments often seek to influence the process. Among those attempting reforms are Papua New Guinea, home to hundreds of languages; Indonesia, with its separatist movements; the Philippines, experimenting with ways to balance party interests with other social concerns; and Thailand, whose once fragmented political scene seems headed toward domination by one party. Their strategies for encouraging stable party systems range from minimum-vote thresholds to efforts to stiffen internal party discipline. Much can be learned from these Asia Pacific efforts at political engineering--including the need for a cautious approach that minimizes unforeseen consequences and costs.
Strategy and Manipulation in Medieval Elections
There are many goals in developing electoral protocols, including a desire for a system which is transparent, in that it is clear what the rule or procedure to follow is; nonmanipulable, in that it is not in a person’s best interest to misrepresent their preferences; honest, in the sense that it elects the ‘right’ candidate; and not open to strategizing, i.e., bribery or collusion. However, these desiderata are in tension with each other: Often, transparent electoral procedures are the least strategy resistant, and many honest procedures encourage manipulation. Thus a balance between these different goals must be sought. In modern times, since the seminal result on vote manipulation, the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem [5, 6], much attention has been devoted to developing voting rules where manipulation is never in the best interest of the voters [4] or which are computationally too complex for the average bounded agent to be able to manipulate [1]. This focus on computational aspects of electoral methods is one of the hallmarks of modern studies on voting. But pursuit of these goals is not restricted to modern times: Those participating in elections in the Middle Ages also sought transparency, non-manipulability, honesty, and strategyproofness in so far as these properties can be consistently expressed in a single procedure. However, given the lack of computational sophistication in the Middle Ages, alternate approaches were needed in order to promote honesty, discourage strategizing, etc. These approaches can be classified as either external (constraints introduced outside of the electoral procedure, such as incentives for coming to consensus quickly) or internal (constraints introduced within the electoral procedure, such as voting rules which cannot be manipulated without adverse effects, or which are too difficult for the average bounded agent to manipulate). Surveying examples of both approaches in the context of medieval ecclesiastical and secular elections provides an interesting comparison to modern electoral procedures. Elections in the Middle Ages were used for the same reasons that they are today: To select suitable candidate(s) for a particular office, duty, or obligation. However, it is important to note that the term electio was used in the Middle Ages in a broader sense than our modern ‘election’. Its primary sense was ‘selection’ or ‘choice’, and only secondarily ‘election’ in the modern sense. Thus, many records which purportedly discuss elections are not discussing elections of the type which interests us. We can identify four categories of medieval electoral processes: (1) Election by an external authority having no direct interest in the election; (2) Indirect election, where electors name other electors who then select or elect the officials; (3) Election by lot; and (4) Election by ballot. Elections of the first and third types are generally computationally uninteresting; the first type corresponds to dictatorial voting rules, and the third type collapses to probability theory. In general, interesting voting methods are found only in the fourth type, election by ballot, though they can also occur in indirect election.