Suchergebnisse

International nuclear nonproliferation efforts have been one of the most important agendas of international relations after the World War II. Since the first aim of nuclear energy was for the military purposes and destructive power of nuclear weapons were experienced in a wartime, it has been inevitable for great powers to go into an arms race to obtain nuclear weapons. However, nuclear energy is a kind of energy which can be utilized for peaceful purposes as well as military purposes. In this context, initiatives have been started to promote the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes such as medicine, agriculture and electricity generation in order to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Due to the dual use aspect of nuclear energy, certain measures have been developed in safety, security, and safeguards so that the opportunities offered for peaceful purposes are not diverted into military purposes. However, these measures are needed to be further strengthened in technical terms with regard to the nuclear power reactors, which are closely related to the nuclear fuel cycle. Because, using uranium as a nuclear fuel can facilitate diversion of peaceful use in certain stages of nuclear fuel cycle. Therefore, this thesis deals with the contribution of thorium as a nuclear fuel and its fuel cycle to the international nuclear nonproliferation regime and the mitigation of proliferation concerns. ; Uluslararası nükleer silahların yayılmasının önlenmesi çabaları İkinci Dünya Savaşı sonrası dönemde uluslararası ilişkilerin en önemli gündemlerinden biridir. Nükleer enerjinin ilk hedefinin askeri amaçlı olması ve nükleer silahların elde edildikten sonra yıkıcılığının savaş meydanında görülmesi sonucunda büyük güçlerin nükleer silahları elde etmek için bir yarışa girmeleri kaçınılmaz olmuştur. Ancak, nükleer enerji askeri kullanımın yanı sıra barışçıl amaçlarla da kullanılabilecek bir enerji türüdür. Bu bağlamda, nükleer silahların yayılmasının önlenmesi amacıyla nükleer enerjinin tıp, tarım ve elektrik üretimi gibi barışçıl amaçlarla da kullanımının yayılması çalışmaları başlamıştır. Nükleer enerjinin çift yönlü kullanım özelliği sebebiyle barışçıl amaçlar için sunulan imkânların askeri amaçlara dönüştürülmemesi için nükleer güvenlik, emniyet ve güvence konularında belirli önlemler geliştirilmiştir. Fakat bu önlemler nükleer yakıt çevrimi ile yakından ilgili olan nükleer güç reaktörleri konusunda teknik bağlamda daha da güçlendirilmeye ihtiyaç duymaktadır. Zira uranyumun yakıt olarak kullanılması nükleer yakıt çevriminde belirli aşamaların barışçıl kullanımdan silahlanmaya yönelimini kolaylaştırabilmektedir. Bu yüzden, bu tez toryumun yakıt olarak kullanılmasının ve bu amaçla geliştirilecek nükleer yakıt çevriminin nükleer silahların yayılmasının önlenmesi rejimine ve silahlanma endişelerinin azaltılmasına katkılarını ele almaktadır.

Die neue Regelung bezüglich der Hinzurechnungsbesteuerung wird in Österreich zu einem Umdenken führen. Eine vergleichbare Gesetzeslage ist derzeit nicht vorhanden und wurde jahrelang auch nicht gewünscht. Durch die Veröffentlichung der internatio-nalen Maßnahmen des OECD-BEPS-Aktionsplans und in weiterer Folge die ver-pflichtende EU-Anti-BEPS-Richtlinie müssen die Mitgliedstaaten zukünftig ein gewis-ses Mindestmaß an Schutz gegen Gewinnverkürzung und Gewinnverlagerung in ihrer Gesetzgebung implementieren. Österreich wird im Zuge des Jahressteuergesetzes 2018 den Methodenwechsel und die Missbrauchsregelung anpassen sowie den § 10a KStG für eine richtlinienkonforme Umsetzung einführen. Große Teile des Inhalts sind auf al-len drei Ebenen ident, jedoch erlauben Optionsmöglichkeiten und die erlaubte Verschär-fung des Standards auf nationaler Stufe einen immensen Spielraum. Dies führt nicht nur zu unterschiedlichen Intensitätsstufen bei den Anwenderstaaten und steigenden Ver-waltungsaufwand, sondern wirkt insbesondere gegen die ursprüngliche Intension der Vereinfachung des internationalen Steuerrechts. Der Entwurf des § 10a KStG, der zu-künftig die Hinzurechnungsbesteuerung regeln soll, beinhaltet in der derzeitigen Version noch einzelne Schwächen wie beispielsweise eine zu restriktive Einstellung in der Fest-legung der Grenze für die Niedrigbesteuerung mit 12,5%, die fehlende Berücksichti-gung von Beteiligungen unter 5% und einen fehlenden Hinweis für die Möglichkeit ei-nes Anrechnungsvortrags. Die tatsächliche Relevanz dieser Neuregelung ist aufgrund der mangelnden Anzahl an empirischen Daten, vor allem für den österreichischen Raum, nur sehr schwer einschätzbar und wird sich erst nach einer gewissen Anwendungszeit herausstellen. ; The new regulation on controlled foreign corporation will lead to a rethinking in Austria. A comparable legal situation does not currently exist and has not been desired for years. By publishing the international measures of the OECD-BEPS action plan and subse-quently the binding Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive in the EU, the member states will have to implement a certain minimum standard of protection against base erosion and profit shifting in their legislation. In the course of the Annual Tax Act 2018 Austria will adapt their change-of-method rule under, their abuse regulation and introduce a CFC-rule with § 10a KStG for a directive-compliant implementation. Many parts of the regu-lation is identical at all three levels, but granted options to choose the preferred model and the permitted tightening of the standard at national level allow immense scope. This not only leads to different levels of intensity in the user states and increasing administra-tive costs, but also has a particular effect against the original intention of simplifying international tax law. The current version of the draft of § 10a KStG, which will regu-late corporate foreign control in the future, still contains individual weaknesses such as an excessively restrictive setting in the determination of the limit for low taxation of 12.5%, the lack of consideration of shareholdings below 5% and a missing indication of the possibility of a tax carry-forward. The actual relevance of this new regulation is very difficult to assess due to the lack of empirical data, especially for the Austrian region, which will only become apparent after a certain period of application and observation. ; von: Jagschitz Dominic, BSc MSc ; Abstract in englischer Sprache ; Universität Innsbruck, UniversitätslehrgangSteuerrecht, Rechnungslegung und Rechnungswesen, Masterarbeit, 2018 ; (VLID)2868196

Despite being the global legislative reality for more than half a century, when it comes to the control and management of illicit drugs, there is still a sharp academic divide between strict prohibitionists and open access legalisers, with both sides claiming supremacy in their ability to reduce the harms drug users face. Spanning these opposing academic extremes, governments around the world have experimented with, or put into practice a range of alternatives to prohibition that generally hold harm reduction as a centrally guiding principle. However, in the realm of drugs control, harm reduction is not a simple utilitarian problem and is often clouded by a number of moral aspects that will seemingly continue to frustrate the prospects for consensus among the various drug control stakeholders for the near future. Moreover, while proponents of reform and legalisation have put forth seemingly plausible and well considered theories for the regulation and control of drugs in lieu of prohibition, it has become rather clear in the wake of the recent United Nations Special Assembly on Drugs in 2016 that a significant top-down change in international drugs control policy is unlikely for the foreseeable future. This is not to say the global prohibitionist framework is destined to remain predominant, and clear lines are emerging for the practical evolution of international drugs control policy. With an ever expanding variety of novel alternative methods being implemented by countries around the world to reduce the harm from illicit drug use, especially with regards to the unique challenges faced by intractable, chronic users of 'hard' drugs such as heroin, coupled with a softening of hard-line attitudes, a path towards sensible drug reforms is becoming clearer. This short article examines a number of those alternative methods, where it is argued that medicalised harm reduction for 'hard' drugs is the most likely to find broad acceptance under the international drug regime and the growing tolerance and liberalisation of cannabis laws will likely continue because of its relatively low risk profile and high cost of prohibition.

Since its publication three decades ago, Hedley Bull and Adam Watson's The Expansion of International Society has served as the main point of departure for historically informed discussion of how today's states system emerged and then went on to envelop the world. In a recent article, Iver Neumann criticized Bull and Watson's conceptualization for being Euro-centric, in the sense that these scholars only ascribed agency to the European side of the relationship between an entrant and international society. For International Relations, it is particularly apposite that the new entrants to international society themselves came from suzerain systems, such as Habsburg-dominated or the Ottoman-dominated one. Neumann's example was Russia, whose experiences with Mongol suzerainty and, before that, with being a part of a suzerain system centred on Byzantium, infused Muscovy with experiences and memories that formed the reference point for what to expect when getting in contact with international society. This forum broadens this debate by looking not only at one state, but at a set of Central and South-Eastern European states with experiences and memories from various suzerain systems. The articles discuss when and how Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Turkey began to aspire for membership in international society; experiences, memories and ideas such as translatio imperii that informed what they made of the entry; and how and in what degree the ensuing tensions remain today.

This forum brings together critical engagements with Andreas Bieler and Adam David Morton's Global Capitalism, Global War, Global Crisis to assess the prospects and limits of historical materialism in International Studies. The authors' call for a 'necessarily historical materialist moment' in International Studies is interrogated by scholars working with historical materialist, feminist and decolonial frameworks in and beyond International Relations (IR)/International Political Economy (IPE). This introductory essay situates the book in relation to the wider concerns of historical materialist IR/IPE and outlines how the contributors assess the viability of Bieler and Morton's historical materialist project.

This dissertation explores the puzzle that international environmental regulations seem to develop dynamically despite the close involvement of business actors in their making. First, the dissertation asks to what extent international regulations are designed to really exert control over corporate environmental conduct. I conceptualize the notion of regulatory stringency, develop a novel stringency index, and use it to gather data on the regulation of environmental impacts of maritime shipping and offshore oil and gas production. The descriptive statistical data analysis finds that numerous regulations go beyond window-dressing as they require improvements in environmental performance and aim at eliciting compliance with these requirements. Among several patterns of regulatory variance, the analysis shows that international organizations with strong business participation produce relatively high shares of stringent regulation. Second, the dissertation asks how and to what extent business and its environmental practices can influence or shape contentious decisions in international regulatory design. I develop the theory of argumentative coproduction which posits that corporate environmental practices can tip the scales when regulators argue over technology. Building on psychological assumptions about consistency-seeking decision-makers, I argue that progressive environmental practices of first-mover companies provide powerful evidence for the feasibility of more stringent regulation. My theory differs from models which highlight ideas of activists and scientists or interests and power resources of materially dominant corporations and states as drivers of regulation. The explanatory power of the different models is probed in two qualitative case studies of shipping regulation by the International Maritime Organization. The case studies find that the empirical observations are most congruent with argumentative coproduction. In the regulation of nutrient inputs from passenger ships in the Baltic Sea, arguments for demanding standards prevailed thanks to the development and uptake of new sewage treatment technology by a few first-mover firms. In the regulation of fuel use in Arctic shipping, the voluntary transition to cleaner fuels by ever more companies facilitated the development of a ban of heavy fuel oil. The findings suggest that international environmental regulations develop dynamically not despite but because of business involvement in negotiations. The dissertation concludes that green first-mover businesses are constructive partners in international environmental politics and should therefore be involved more systematically into regulatory processes.

In this paper Friedmann (1953) and Mundell´s (1968) position favouring flexible over alternative exchange rate regimes is reassessed in the context of international financial market integration. In a new open economy macroeconomic framework the paper shows that financial market integration causes a monetary policy trade-off between stabilising domestic goods prices as opposed to stabilising the terms of trade. Therefore, the welfare ranking of different exchanges rate rules changes during the process of international financial integration. It becomes evident that no single exchange rate regime outperforms in stabilising both domestic consumption and output variability in the process of financial market integration.