Alvin A Camba
Biographic Data
| ID | 244095 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alvin A Camba |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alvin A |
| FAMILY NAME | Camba |
| SIGNATURE | CAMBA A A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Denver |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4082-8411 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 73 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Incumbent popularity and the political life of Chinese megaprojects
How does incumbent political popularity shape the cancellation and continuation of megaprojects? This paper advances a sequential argument drawing on the Arroyo (2001–2010) and Duterte (2016–2022) administrations in the Philippines, Najib's government in Malaysia (2009–2018), and Widodo's presidency in Indonesia (2014–2024). First, prior popularity conditions political capacity at the moment of project commitment: popular incumbents were better a…
The (Geo)politics of the Belt and Road Initiative
Cementing development and (un)steeling decarbonization
From Duterte to Orbán
From Aquino to Marcos
How does the Philippines form its foreign policy toward the People's Republic of China (PRC)?Existing work on the Philippine foreign policy toward China explains the country's stance solely through geopolitical or domestic factors.By examining the political calculus of, and the policy formulation by, the Benigno Aquino III (2010-2016), Rodrigo Duterte (2016-2022), and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (2022-) administrations, I argue that a combination of dom…
China's Rise in the Global South
From the Belt and Road Initiative to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, China has provided alternative institutional foundations upon which states interact with and work alongside each other. These Chinese-led or Chinese-driven organizations have prompted a scholarly debate: Is China a status quo or a revisionist power? The debate has resulted in scholars choosing their favorite example to prove their point. Some scholars have argued that Chi…
State-facilitated Industrial Parks in the Belt and Road Initiative
The Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia
How did the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) shape the volume and destination of Chinese greenfield foreign direct investments (GFDI)? This article examines Chinese GFDI in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Myanmar using quantitative and qualitative data. Results show first, that the BRI led to a surge of investments by firms with stronger government affiliation in sectors related to infrastructure and connectivity. In contrast, the BRI had…
Leading sector and dual economy
How do states pursue industrial policies in the context of China’s rise? Examining Indonesia and Malaysia’s mineral processing sectors, we argue that these countries illustrate two different pathways that states take to bolster their industrial policies. Indonesia has followed the leading sector strategy to increase domestic nickel processing capacity and decrease reliance on resource exports. Chinese firms and the Indonesian government built the…
Explaining the Belt and Road in the Philippines
Our chapter examines the Belt and Road Initiative's (BRI) investments during Rodrigo Duterte's administration (2016-present). Duterte's "China pivot" opened the Philippines to BRI investments. We ask: to what extent has BRI investments or Chinese capital increased since the beginning of the Duterte administration? We argue that despite the stronger relations between the Philippines and China, the progress of BRI projects has largely been uneven. …
The politics of public–private partnerships
The literature on public–private partnerships (PPPs) often portrays infrastructure construction as a depoliticized and technocratic exercise about efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In contrast to these works, we contend the political and economic elites along with their transnational allies – the congruence of state–capital – recycle PPPs in constructing their spatial fixes, guaranteeing profits and passing risks from the private sector bidder o…
Strongmen politics and investment flows
We examine Chinese President Xi Jinping’s close relations with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak (2009-2018) and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (2016-), an outcome of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). We argue strongmen use their political power, shaped by their own political-economic systems, to tap into the BRI’s available capital to fuel their political agendas. We illustrate this argument in Malaysia, a country with a centralized…
How Chinese firms approach investment risk
How do Chinese firms assess investment risk? I argue that major Chinese firms tend to invest in countries whose leaders they perceive as strong. However, their perception of a host country leader’s strength arises from a range of subjective and relational factors, including their party school socialization, Chinese state’s preferences for strong leaders, efforts by the host country regime to ‘sell’ the image of a strong leader, and information br…
From the postwar era to intensified Chinese intervention
Between Economic and Social Exclusions
The Sino-centric Capital Export Regime
There is an ongoing debate as to whether Chinese capital can be described as developmental. While some argue that Chinese capital is simply a tool of the Chinese state to exploit the global South, others claim that Chinese capital opens new development opportunities. Rather than advancing a framework based upon either an exploitative or an egalitarian mode of development, this article argues that China's current crisis of overaccumulation has led…
The food regime in late colonial Philippines
I argue that food regimes need to take into account the production relations of paid and unpaid work. As an angle of vision, I use the historical geography of late colonial Philippines (1901-1941) to show how paid and unpaid work in food production was not discrete and separated processes but rather conjoined moments of capital accumulation. The colonial regime-in this context, American colonial government, U.S. agribusinesses, and Filipino lande…
From colonialism to neoliberalism
Constructing Capitalisms
Constructing Capitalisms: Transforming Business Systems in Central and Eastern Europe." Europe-Asia Studies, 67(9), pp. 1501–1502
Participatory Governance in the EU Enhancing or Endangering Democracy and Efficiency? by Karl‐OskarLindgren and ThomasPersson. New York
Religion, Disaster, and Colonial Power in the Spanish Philippines in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
In the ?eld of disaster studies, scholars have focused on the social construction of disasters in various historical periods, but they have not attended to the ways in which these social constructions were differentiated within the same period. During the Spanish colonization of the Philippines in the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries, two types of disaster discourses existed. In ‘internal cases’, where Spanish elites had to deal with one an…
How Chinese firms approach investment risk
How do Chinese firms assess investment risk? I argue that major Chinese firms tend to invest in countries whose leaders they perceive as strong. However, their perception of a host country leader’s strength arises from a range of subjective and relational factors, including their party school socialization, Chinese state’s preferences for strong leaders, efforts by the host country regime to ‘sell’ the image of a strong leader, and information br…
The Sino-centric Capital Export Regime
There is an ongoing debate as to whether Chinese capital can be described as developmental. While some argue that Chinese capital is simply a tool of the Chinese state to exploit the global South, others claim that Chinese capital opens new development opportunities. Rather than advancing a framework based upon either an exploitative or an egalitarian mode of development, this article argues that China's current crisis of overaccumulation has led…
From Aquino to Marcos
How does the Philippines form its foreign policy toward the People's Republic of China (PRC)?Existing work on the Philippine foreign policy toward China explains the country's stance solely through geopolitical or domestic factors.By examining the political calculus of, and the policy formulation by, the Benigno Aquino III (2010-2016), Rodrigo Duterte (2016-2022), and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (2022-) administrations, I argue that a combination of dom…
From Duterte to Orbán
The politics of public–private partnerships
The literature on public–private partnerships (PPPs) often portrays infrastructure construction as a depoliticized and technocratic exercise about efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In contrast to these works, we contend the political and economic elites along with their transnational allies – the congruence of state–capital – recycle PPPs in constructing their spatial fixes, guaranteeing profits and passing risks from the private sector bidder o…
From colonialism to neoliberalism
Strongmen politics and investment flows
We examine Chinese President Xi Jinping’s close relations with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak (2009-2018) and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (2016-), an outcome of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). We argue strongmen use their political power, shaped by their own political-economic systems, to tap into the BRI’s available capital to fuel their political agendas. We illustrate this argument in Malaysia, a country with a centralized…
From the postwar era to intensified Chinese intervention
The Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia
How did the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) shape the volume and destination of Chinese greenfield foreign direct investments (GFDI)? This article examines Chinese GFDI in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Myanmar using quantitative and qualitative data. Results show first, that the BRI led to a surge of investments by firms with stronger government affiliation in sectors related to infrastructure and connectivity. In contrast, the BRI had…
Leading sector and dual economy
How do states pursue industrial policies in the context of China’s rise? Examining Indonesia and Malaysia’s mineral processing sectors, we argue that these countries illustrate two different pathways that states take to bolster their industrial policies. Indonesia has followed the leading sector strategy to increase domestic nickel processing capacity and decrease reliance on resource exports. Chinese firms and the Indonesian government built the…
The food regime in late colonial Philippines
I argue that food regimes need to take into account the production relations of paid and unpaid work. As an angle of vision, I use the historical geography of late colonial Philippines (1901-1941) to show how paid and unpaid work in food production was not discrete and separated processes but rather conjoined moments of capital accumulation. The colonial regime-in this context, American colonial government, U.S. agribusinesses, and Filipino lande…
Between Economic and Social Exclusions
State-facilitated Industrial Parks in the Belt and Road Initiative
Religion, Disaster, and Colonial Power in the Spanish Philippines in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
In the ?eld of disaster studies, scholars have focused on the social construction of disasters in various historical periods, but they have not attended to the ways in which these social constructions were differentiated within the same period. During the Spanish colonization of the Philippines in the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries, two types of disaster discourses existed. In ‘internal cases’, where Spanish elites had to deal with one an…
Religion, Disaster, and Colonial Power in the Spanish Philippines in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
In the ?eld of disaster studies, scholars have focused on the social construction of disasters in various historical periods, but they have not attended to the ways in which these social constructions were differentiated within the same period. During the Spanish colonization of the Philippines in the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries, two types of disaster discourses existed. In ‘internal cases’, where Spanish elites had to deal with one an…
Participatory Governance in the EU Enhancing or Endangering Democracy and Efficiency? by Karl‐OskarLindgren and ThomasPersson. New York
From colonialism to neoliberalism
Constructing Capitalisms
Constructing Capitalisms: Transforming Business Systems in Central and Eastern Europe." Europe-Asia Studies, 67(9), pp. 1501–1502
The food regime in late colonial Philippines
I argue that food regimes need to take into account the production relations of paid and unpaid work. As an angle of vision, I use the historical geography of late colonial Philippines (1901-1941) to show how paid and unpaid work in food production was not discrete and separated processes but rather conjoined moments of capital accumulation. The colonial regime-in this context, American colonial government, U.S. agribusinesses, and Filipino lande…
From the postwar era to intensified Chinese intervention
Between Economic and Social Exclusions
The Sino-centric Capital Export Regime
There is an ongoing debate as to whether Chinese capital can be described as developmental. While some argue that Chinese capital is simply a tool of the Chinese state to exploit the global South, others claim that Chinese capital opens new development opportunities. Rather than advancing a framework based upon either an exploitative or an egalitarian mode of development, this article argues that China's current crisis of overaccumulation has led…
Explaining the Belt and Road in the Philippines
Our chapter examines the Belt and Road Initiative's (BRI) investments during Rodrigo Duterte's administration (2016-present). Duterte's "China pivot" opened the Philippines to BRI investments. We ask: to what extent has BRI investments or Chinese capital increased since the beginning of the Duterte administration? We argue that despite the stronger relations between the Philippines and China, the progress of BRI projects has largely been uneven. …
The politics of public–private partnerships
The literature on public–private partnerships (PPPs) often portrays infrastructure construction as a depoliticized and technocratic exercise about efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In contrast to these works, we contend the political and economic elites along with their transnational allies – the congruence of state–capital – recycle PPPs in constructing their spatial fixes, guaranteeing profits and passing risks from the private sector bidder o…
Strongmen politics and investment flows
We examine Chinese President Xi Jinping’s close relations with Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak (2009-2018) and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (2016-), an outcome of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI). We argue strongmen use their political power, shaped by their own political-economic systems, to tap into the BRI’s available capital to fuel their political agendas. We illustrate this argument in Malaysia, a country with a centralized…
How Chinese firms approach investment risk
How do Chinese firms assess investment risk? I argue that major Chinese firms tend to invest in countries whose leaders they perceive as strong. However, their perception of a host country leader’s strength arises from a range of subjective and relational factors, including their party school socialization, Chinese state’s preferences for strong leaders, efforts by the host country regime to ‘sell’ the image of a strong leader, and information br…
State-facilitated Industrial Parks in the Belt and Road Initiative
The Belt and Road Initiative in Southeast Asia
How did the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) shape the volume and destination of Chinese greenfield foreign direct investments (GFDI)? This article examines Chinese GFDI in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Myanmar using quantitative and qualitative data. Results show first, that the BRI led to a surge of investments by firms with stronger government affiliation in sectors related to infrastructure and connectivity. In contrast, the BRI had…
Leading sector and dual economy
How do states pursue industrial policies in the context of China’s rise? Examining Indonesia and Malaysia’s mineral processing sectors, we argue that these countries illustrate two different pathways that states take to bolster their industrial policies. Indonesia has followed the leading sector strategy to increase domestic nickel processing capacity and decrease reliance on resource exports. Chinese firms and the Indonesian government built the…
Cementing development and (un)steeling decarbonization
From Duterte to Orbán
From Aquino to Marcos
How does the Philippines form its foreign policy toward the People's Republic of China (PRC)?Existing work on the Philippine foreign policy toward China explains the country's stance solely through geopolitical or domestic factors.By examining the political calculus of, and the policy formulation by, the Benigno Aquino III (2010-2016), Rodrigo Duterte (2016-2022), and Ferdinand Marcos Jr. (2022-) administrations, I argue that a combination of dom…
China's Rise in the Global South
From the Belt and Road Initiative to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, China has provided alternative institutional foundations upon which states interact with and work alongside each other. These Chinese-led or Chinese-driven organizations have prompted a scholarly debate: Is China a status quo or a revisionist power? The debate has resulted in scholars choosing their favorite example to prove their point. Some scholars have argued that Chi…
The (Geo)politics of the Belt and Road Initiative
Incumbent popularity and the political life of Chinese megaprojects
How does incumbent political popularity shape the cancellation and continuation of megaprojects? This paper advances a sequential argument drawing on the Arroyo (2001–2010) and Duterte (2016–2022) administrations in the Philippines, Najib's government in Malaysia (2009–2018), and Widodo's presidency in Indonesia (2014–2024). First, prior popularity conditions political capacity at the moment of project commitment: popular incumbents were better a…
Economics (18 works) · Political science (18 works) · Politics (13 works) · Business (10 works) · China (10 works) · Economy (10 works) · International Development and Aid (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Market economy (9 works) · Law (7 works)