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This study offers an explanation for Beijing's seemingly self-defeating approach to the South China Sea that distances China ever more from the regional and international communities which it wants to lead and join while drawing in the foreign military presence that it seeks to keep at a distance. Combining recent research on the role of emotions and on hierarchy in international politics, this article shows how the powerful narrative of national 'humiliation' and 'rejuvenation' has informed Chinese maritime politics. As the South China Sea became incorporated in the linear timeline of China's 5000 year civilizational history, the US' and its allies' push-back against Beijing's territorial claims deepened China's ideational isolation. The ensuing state of solipsism increases the risk of violent confrontations.

"In this book, the history and underlying political dynamics characterizing the growth of FIFA and its relationships with global-regional federations and international associations are detailed in a helpful and concise introduction"--

Advisory Committee -- Contents -- Agriculture -- 1 Application of Organic Fertilizer and Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) to Increase Rice Yield and Quality -- Abstract -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Materials and Methods -- 3 Results -- 3.1 Growth Components -- 3.2 Yield Component -- 4 Discussion -- 5 Conclusion -- References -- 2 Clustering of High-Yielding and Early-Maturing Soybean Genotypes -- Abstract -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Research Method -- 3 Result and Discussion -- 4 Conclusion -- References -- 3 Cyperus Rotundus L. Extracts as Botanical Fungicides to Control Soybean Rust Disease -- Abstract -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Materials and Methods -- 3 Results and Discussion -- 4 Conclusion -- Acknowledgements -- References -- 4 Development of Breakfast Meals from Local Taro Using Extrusion for Food Security -- Abstract -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Materials and Methods -- 3 Preparation of Composite Flour-Based Talas -- 4 Development of Taro Crunch Formulation -- 5 Results and Discussion -- 5.1 Early Stage of Taro Crunch Formulation -- 6 Development of Taro Crunch Formulation -- 7 Conclusion -- 8 Acknowledgement -- References -- 5 Factors Determining the Practice of Sustainable Cassava Farming System in Tanjungsiang-West Java -- Abstract -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Methodology -- 3 Results and Discussion -- 3.1 The Study Area -- 4 The Practice of Sustainable Cassava Farming System -- 5 Factors Promoting the Practice of Sustainable Cassava Farming System -- 6 Conclusions and Recommendations -- Acknowledgements -- References -- 6 In Vitro Sterilization and Shoot Induction of Fig (Ficus carica L.) Using MS Containing GA3 Medium Supplemented with BAP and NAA -- Abstract -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Materials and Methods -- 2.1 Optimization of Sterilization -- 2.2 Shoot Induction -- 3 Result and Discussion -- 3.1 Optimization of Sterilization

Not so long ago the overwhelming majority of courts in democratic countries shared a reluctance to refer to foreign and international law. Their policy was to avoid any application of foreign sources of law that would clash with the position of their domestic governments. Many jurists find recourse to foreign and international law inappropriate. But even the supporters of reference to external sources of law hold this unexplored assumption that reliance on foreign and international law inevitably comes into tension with the value of national sovereignty. Hence, the scholarly debate is framed along the lines of the well-known broader debate on "the countermajoritarian difficulty." This article questions this assumption of tension. It argues that for courts in most democratic countries—even if not for U.S. courts at present—referring to foreign and international law has become an effective instrument for empoweringthe domestic democratic processes by shielding them from external economic, political, and even legal pressures. Citing international law therefore actually bolsters domestic democratic processes and reclaims national sovereignty from the diverse forces of globalization. Stated differently, most national courts, seeking to maintain the vitality of their national political institutions and to safeguard their own domestic status vis-a-vis the political branches, cannot afford to ignore foreign and international law.

Knowing how to send and interpret signals is an essential part of both diplomacy and war. Political scientists have recognized that costly signals—gestures and actions that involve significant cost or risk—are central to politics and diplomacy since modeling doyen James Fearon built his Ph. D. thesis around the concept in the 1990s. Because these signaling systems are pervasive in nature (many of these strategies arise independently and repeatedly to solve common problems suggesting evolutionary pressure to select strategies offering the most success at the least cost), their underlying strategic logic has important implications to foreign policy challenges we face today. By capitalizing on solutions derived by evolution over 3. 5 billion years of life on Earth, we may identify ideas that otherwise might not have been explored in a policy context potentially offering quick, novel, and effective options to increase strategic and combat effectiveness. Here we present 8 lessons from evolution for political science. ; supported by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, and the Office of Naval Research-Global

This book examines the legal conundrum of reconciling international human rights law in a Muslim majority country and identifies a trajectory for negotiating the protection of religious minorities within Islam. The work explores the history of religious minorities within Islam in Indonesia, which contains the world's largest Muslim population, as well as the present-day ways by which the government may address issues through reconciling international human rights law and Islamic law. Given the context of multiple sets of religious norms in Indonesia, this is a complicated endeavour. In addition to amending and enacting human rights norms, the government is also negotiating with the long history of Islamisation in Indonesia. Particularly relevant is the practice of customary law, which puts the rights of community over individualism. This practice directly affects the rights of religious minorities within Islam. Readers, especially those conducting research, will also be provided with information and references which are relevant to the field of human rights, especiallyin relationtoreligious minorities and international law. The book will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers in the fields of International Human Rights Law, Law and Religion, and Islamic Studies.

While the political nature of evaluation is widely recognized, few attempts exist to conceptualize and compare these politics. This article develops the concept of evaluation stakeholder influence potential, which builds on four political resources for influence (agenda-setting powers, staff and budgetary resources, access to evaluation results, and access to evaluators). These resources are measured for both member states and international public administrations in 24 United Nations organizations. We find that the administration—and not member states—have the largest influence potential in almost two-thirds of the international organizations. Our findings allow classifying them into three groups for which we expect differences in political contestation about evaluation use: two extreme-case groups (either member state or administrative dominance) and a group of contested middle cases. This finding of bureaucratic dominance reinforces literature on bureaucrats as powerful evaluation stakeholders in domestic settings and speaks to nascent research on bureaucratic influence in international organizations.

The European refugee crisis has been communicated visually through images such as those of Alan Kurdi lying dead on the beach, by body bags on the harbor front of Lampedusa, by people walking through Europe and by border guards and fences. This article examines the broader visual environment within which EU policy-making took place from October 2013 to October 2015. It identifies 'tragedy' as the key term used by the EU to explain its actions and decisions and points out that discourses of humanitarianism and border control were both in place. The article provides a theoretical account of how humanitarianism and border control might be visualized by news photography. Adopting a multi-method design and analyzing a dataset of more than 1000 photos, the article presents a visual discourse analysis of five generic iconic motifs and a quantitative visual content analysis of shifts and continuity across four moments in time. The article connects these visual analyses to the policies and discourses of the EU holding that the ambiguity of the EU's discourse was mirrored by the wider visual environment.

Biometrics is a technology that is increasingly being adopted by armed forces. It is the automated recognition of individuals based on their biological or behavioral characteristics. Important questions in relation to the use of this technology by armed forces concern the legal framework that governs such use. This article discusses the relationship between International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and biometrics, by focusing on a number of different activities carried out during armed conflict in which biometrics can play a role. It concludes that although IHL contains no rules that expressly regulate the use of biometrics, a number of IHL rules are relevant to such use. Some IHL rules may require the use of biometrics under certain circumstances, while others may limit such use. The application of IHL to biometrics raises a number of questions of interpretation, and thus lack of clarity. It is submitted that a discussion among States is required before determining whether new rules are required to address that lack of clarity, or whether clarification of the law will suffice. A first step could be the drafting of a document with non-binding "best practices."

Over the last few decades, coastalscapes have been seriously threatened by the rising effects of climate change such as sea level rise, coastal degradation and extreme flooding. To cope with these threats, since 1992, international development organisations have promoted Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) and its implementation in particular in coastal regions of the "Global South". Inspired by a political ecology of development approach, this paper analyses coastalscape metabolism and community level socio-environmental transformations in relation to ICZM implementation politics in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam. ICZM was designed to integrate management of coastal regions and to promote socio-economic and environmental sustainability. By adopting the concept of metabolism to coastalscapes, and reflecting on their interactions, data were collected through qualitative field-research at the community level in the Mekong Delta. Research shows that ICZM and its development initiatives implementation slightly shaped coastalscape governance and communities relations, merely influencing policy-making and state bureaucratic structure and legitimation. Rather, the Mekong Delta coastalscape was reconfigured by complex metabolic socio-environmental transformations which embed global political-economic processes, shifting water flows and climate change dynamics.