Search results

AbstractThe idea that international law and institutions represent cooperative means for resolving inter-state disputes is so common as to be almost taken for granted in International Relations scholarship. Global-governance scholars often use the terms international law and cooperation interchangeably and treat legalization as a subset of the broader category of inter-governmental cooperation. This paper highlights the methodological and substantive problems that follow from equating 'global governance' with 'international cooperation' and suggests an alternative. The traditional model applies liberal political theory to the study of international institutions and interprets global governance as the realization of shared interests. It deflects research away from questions about trade-offs and winners or losers. In place of cooperation theory, I outline an overtly political methodology that assumes that governance – global or otherwise – necessarily favors some interests over others. In scholarship, the difference is evident in research methods, normative interpretation, and policy recommendations, as research is reoriented toward understanding how international institutions redistribute inequalities of wealth and power.

With the rise of international acts of terrorism there has been a commensurate rise in the level of international cooperation in the suppression of terrorism. This book, originally published in 1985, is a detailed and authoritative study of the background to this cooperation, the ways in which it has developed and the obstacles to its proper implementation. Particular emphasis is placed on a study of the European experience of international cooperation, the Council of Europe Convention on the Suppression of Terrorism being used as a case study.

Neoliberals and their neorealist critics have debated the relative importance of two main obstacles to international cooperation—problems of cheating and enforcement and problems of relative gains. By contrast, I argue that problems of international cooperation have a common strategic structure in which a third, distinct obstacle plays a crucial role. Almost regardless of the issue area, states must first resolve the bargaining problem of agreeing on terms before they can implement and begin to enforce an agreement. Furthermore, the bargaining and enforcement problems interact. Using a game model, I show that if states must bargain to determine the deal to be enforced, the "shadow of the future" cuts two ways. A high expectation of continued interactions may make enforcing the agreement easier, but it can also give states an incentive to bargain harder, delaying agreement in hopes of getting a better deal. Empirical evidence from trade and arms control negotiations suggests that this mechanism may help to explain the costly standoffs that are often observed in international politics and are problematic for received neoliberal theories.

The rise of social network analyses in the social sciences has allowed empirical work to better account for interdependencies among actors and among their actions. However, this work has been, to a large extent, descriptive: it has treated these actions as exogenous and immutable. In many cases these networks describe actions like alliance formation or trade – phenomena that are the outcome variables for programs of social scientific research. In this article, I attempt to account for both interdependencies and the endogenous nature of networks by incorporating formal theory, helping answer the question of how these networks arise by looking at the incentives of actors to form links with each other. I discuss the appropriate solution concept for a network formation game, and present an algorithm for finding the equilibrium of these networks computationally as well as ways to compare the theoretical networks to observed networks in order to evaluate the fit of the theory. I apply these methods to the study of international cooperation – a subject where both the interdependencies and purposive nature of actors must be accounted for. The theoretical network is able to reproduce a number of important observed characteristics. Still, there are more factors that must be accounted for if we want to understand how the network of international cooperation is formed.

The article covers the issues of ensuring food security, reforms carried out by Uzbekistan in this regard and mutual cooperation, which are becoming one of the most pressing problems in the world today. The increase in the number of Population year-on-year, climatic changes, urbanization, economic, ecological factors adversely affect the volume and quality of food production. This, in turn, dictates the implementation of deep consistent reforms in the spheres of existing rural agriculture and food industry. In recent years, with the aim of accelerating the development of agricultural production and the food industry, addressing sectoral challenges, Uzbekistan has been working not only in domestic capacity but also with international organizations and developed countries. In particular, Uzbekistan joined the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAOUN) on 2 November 2001. During this period, Uzbekistan has implemented a number of national and regional projects in collaboration with the UN. For example, Uzbekistan carried out 8 national and regional projects in the Republic during 2001-2015 in cooperation with this organization. On June 5-6, 2014 in Tashkent on the initiative of Uzbekistan held an international conference on the theme "significant reserves of Food Program Implementation in Uzbekistan". In addition, the FAOUN's 32nd regional conference for Europe is scheduled to be held in Uzbekistan for the first time among the countries of Central Asia on May 5-7, 2020. This is evidenced by the growing strengthening of cooperation with the FAOUN Organization of Uzbekistan.