Suchergebnisse

AbstractAlthough the 'Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived' (FEAD) is a peripheral financing instrument with respect to European cohesion policy, it is a concrete case of a redistributive and highly targeted European anti‐poverty programme. In this sense, it is a unique supranational instrument providing social protection to European citizens, playing on the necessity of food aid in most European Union (EU) countries. With this in mind, we shed light on the Fund's budgetary scope in relation to national welfare state efforts. Also, we argue that there is some indication that FEAD could potentially contribute to shifting responsibilities from the national to the European level. For a better understanding of this phenomenon, we draw parallels to the case of the United States' Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program. We conclude that FEAD bears resemblance to a contemporary 'Trojan horse': it is welcomed by the Member States as a deceptively innocent EU gift but it might in the long run support the role of the EU as an agent that plugs gaps within national social protection schemes.

In the field of consumption history there is growing interest in informal shopping practices, smuggling, and black-market activities in state socialist societies. Yet, little emphasis has been placed on how the foremost socialist workplace, the factory, became a crucial hub for smuggled goods and the extent to which workers played a role within it. This article explores local Budapest court cases from the beginning of the 1960s using the methodological insights of everyday history (Alltagsgeschichte). The cases show that white-collar workers (and in rare cases blue-collar workers) with a command of foreign languages frequently acted as middlemen in making transactions. This specific cultural capital put white-collar workers in a position to gain profit over and above their usual state salary, often contradicting wage hierarchies set by the state. At the same time, blue-collar workers embraced informal shopping possibilities at the factory in a climate of diversifying consumer expectations. This article examines how informal practices of selling and obtaining goods transformed relations among workers and created a new social hierarchy within working-class communities.

Background: The author shows logic of security as a crucial element of philosophy of security, a subfield of security sciences. Objectives: The author states that logic – in the form of the logic of security – plays contemporarily a vital role in maintaining international, national, and also social and individual security. Methods: The usage of the logic of security is shown on the basis of its application in two security-related institutions: United States Army War College, Carlisle, US and Academia Diplomatica Europaea, Brussels, Belgium. After listing of methods used by philosophy of security, methodologies of both institutions are presented and compared as regards the methods used. Results: The logic implemented by United States Army War College is based on the belief in the objectivity and stability of the observations of security environment, and focuses on individual subjects of security. Academia Diplomatica Europaea regards the situation in the security environment as fluid and unstable, and focuses on relations between subjects of security. Conclusions: The activity of both analysed institutions is a proof corroborating the importance of logic for the improvement of the security situation in the world.

Abstract
Much of international relations scholarship attributes the United States' commitment to prevent the global spread of nuclear weapons as the outcome of US national security interests. Yet, US nonproliferation policy comprises a compelling set of economic goals and strategies, beyond economic sanctions. Without incorporating economic factors and actors, and their convergence with the Cold War US national security state, the understanding of US nonproliferation policy remains incomplete. The 1970s challenged US postwar economic preeminence through the "Nixon shock," the end of dollar convertibility to gold of the Bretton Woods system, and the 1973 oil price shock. Concurrently, the United States' market share in terms of global nuclear reactor sales declined while those of West European suppliers like France and West Germany increased. This essay argues that US nonproliferation efforts, which in the Nixon-Ford era took the form of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) after India's 1974 nuclear explosion, were guided as much by security concerns about proliferation as by Washington's aim to reclaim its market share to protect US nuclear industry against West European competition.

This article examines the intersections between the visual, spatial and material and considers how these interactions capture the border politics of everyday 'banal' objects. We do this by looking at some of the objects and things that constitute the 'Balkan Route' through Europe: posters, signs, directions, notices, flyers and maps produced by state authorities and volunteer-led aid networks. We use objects to reflect more broadly on how seemingly banal and everyday things become incorporated into the political work of states and become constitutive of fluid borders. We argue that everyday objects become visualisations of states and authorities, and help to make and regulate physical spaces. We show how each visual object encountered along the route gives us a broader insight into the macropolitics of European border regimes, specifically the effects of 'closed borders' and the criminalisation of aid networks. The article pushes forward the 'aesthetic turn' debate in international relations by bringing in insights from political geography and materialism, and suggests that a walking methodology can be a productive way of encountering the visual and understanding how its physical location creates political effects.

This study was led by the Social Inclusion and Social Policy Research Unit at Monash University, and conducted in partnership with the Monash Indigenous Studies Centre and SNAICC. The aims of the study are as follows: • To ascertain the number of Indigenous young people leaving state care in each state and territory; to document the existing policies and programs aiming to support this group in each jurisdiction; • to gather information concerning the outcomes for Indigenous young people transitioning from care; • to document and share identifiable good practice in supporting Indigenous young people transitioning from care and; • to provide recommendations with regard to policy, program and service provision in relation to Indigenous care leavers. Data collection involved 22 focus groups or interviews with a total of 53 individuals. Participants represented government departments, non-government organisations and ACCOs in the leaving care sector from every state and territory in Australia. The key topics discussed aligned with the aims of the study, and included funding of support programs, existing policies and policy application, service provision, challenges and outcomes facing Indigenous care leavers and best practice.

The European Union, established after World War II, has strengthened the revival of Europe, which has suffered greatly due to the war in many areas, including economic, political and socio-cultural. At the same time, the European Union overtook the conflicts between states. The European Union, which has occasionally passed through major breaks since its foundation, has recently begun to evolve into a new structure called multispeed Europe. On the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, the member states, for the first time, have mentioned this new structure in an official publication. This structure has led to disagreements 13 among EU member states. On the other hand, it is also a matter of curiosity how the candidate countries will follow once this structure is created. This study assesses the potential effects of a a multi-speed European Union on Turkey-EU relations. In addition, it tries to evaluate whether the EU's new structure will be an advantage for Turkey or not. In other words, this study aims to explore the possibility of Turkey's EU full membership in the EU's new model.

Objectives. To examine indoor tanning trends among US adults, and the relation to indoor tanning youth access legislation. Methods. This study analyzed the Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS), a mailed survey, from the years 2007, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2017, and 2018 (combined n = 20 2019). Results. Indoor tanning prevalence decreased significantly over time among all US adults from 2007 (10%) to 2018 (4%; P < .001), among young adults aged 18 to 34 years (14% to 4%; P < .001), and among both women (14% to 4%; P < .001) and men (5% to 4%; P < .05). Indoor tanning significantly decreased in states that enacted youth access legislation by 2018, but did not significantly decrease for other states. Frequent indoor tanning was common in 2018; about one quarter of respondents who reported any indoor tanning did so 25 times or more in the past year. Conclusions. This study identifies several challenges in continuing to reduce indoor tanning in the United States. Youth access legislation may be effective for reducing tanning among the broader population of tanners; however, there remains a need for focus on highly frequent tanners, as well as men.

The development of the association of modern states increasingly influences how the constitutional norms of the country are guarded and maintained. Inter-state relations in the economic, social, political, and security sectors established through various treaties have influenced the existence of the constitution because of the impact on multiple changes. Furthermore, it also affects the integrity of the country's sovereignty, especially when there is a conflict between the international legal system and the constitution. In this connection, the problem discussed is how constitutional changes occur through international treaties and how the impact of constitutional changes through international conventions on the existence of state sovereignty placed in the hands of the people. This study concludes, Firstly, the 1945 Constitution as a constitution has not only changed through formal changes in accordance with Article 37 of the 1945 Constitution but has also been changed in an informal manner through the ratification of international treaties. Second, amending the constitution through international treaties can reduce the existence of the constitution as the embodiment of the country's supreme power, which is placed by the people.

This article considers what is necessary politically to respond to the empirical challenge of climate change and to the present calls of climate science (a carbon-neutral world by 2050). Its basic argument is that, among an array of national and international actors, it remains the state can that can drive a successful politics of climate change. Without the heavy-lifting of the state and the state's ability as a national entity to motivate behavioural change, neither the daunting scale nor imminent time-horizon of climate mitigation and adaptation is possible. The article shows how this specific argument, far from pitching anew nationalism against internationalism, can bring the two presently polarized movements together. The article then suggests that if these arguments are essentially valid, the discipline of International Relations needs to focus much more on the climate challenge, re-engage with its traditions of thought on the state and help harbour a specific disposition or mindset in the research and teaching of the discipline for the next decades: a fierce optimism.

This article examines the intersections between the visual, spatial and material and considers how these interactions capture the border politics of everyday 'banal' objects. We do this by looking at some of the objects and things that constitute the 'Balkan Route' through Europe: posters, signs, directions, notices, flyers and maps produced by state authorities and volunteer-led aid networks. We use objects to reflect more broadly on how seemingly banal and everyday things become incorporated into the political work of states and become constitutive of fluid borders. We argue that everyday objects become visualisations of states and authorities, and help to make and regulate physical spaces. We show how each visual object encountered along the route gives us a broader insight into the macropolitics of European border regimes, specifically the effects of 'closed borders' and the criminalisation of aid networks. The article pushes forward the 'aesthetic turn' debate in international relations by bringing in insights from political geography and materialism, and suggests that a walking methodology can be a productive way of encountering the visual and understanding how its physical location creates political effects.

The technological and social expansion of the personal data use including the possibility of their cross-border transfer and exchange increases the risks of their unfair use. The consistency and coherence in resolving issues on legal regulation of relations in the field of personal data protection are demonstrated by the European Union and its member states. Ensuring a uniform and consistent legal regulation at the level of the European Union largely depends on the actions of EU Member States to adopt national laws to implement the European approach, as well as their active participation in the development of new legal acts, the adoption of which is planned at the final stage of the legal regulation reform of protection personal data in the Union. This raises the question of how much the rules of individual states diverge since this significantly affects the practice of applying the common European law on the protection of personal data. Indeed, when introducing the relevant provisions in their legislation, EU countries went in different ways [1]. This paper discusses the approach to the protection of personal data that was used in France

AbstractThe informal sector and informal employment relations occupy a prominent place in India's economy: one of their key features is the apparent absence of the state from labour regulation. This article seeks to trace the emergence of the division between the formal and informal sectors in India's economy from a historical perspective: it shows how the state, far from being absent, played a fundamental role in creating the dichotomy. This is done through a close study of labour legislation and the politics around it, taking South India as a case study. The article examines the enactment of four laws in Madras province in the late 1940s, ostensibly aimed at protecting workers, and their subsequent implementation by the Madras government. It shows how these laws ended by excluding workers from small unorganized industries (such as beedi-making, arecanut-processing, handloom-weaving, and tanning) from legal protection. It explores the ramifications of this exclusion and argues that the reinforcement of the formal–informal divide was the outcome of a complex political struggle between employers, workers' unions, and the state during this formative period.

AbstractThis article attempts to discover why states have chosen to co‐ordinate within ad hoc informal international organizations instead or on top of formal ones, in order to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis in the period 2003–15. Three informal groups of states – the E3 (France, Germany and the UK), the EU‐3 (the E3 + the EU High Representative), and the EU‐3 + 3 (the EU‐3 + the US, Russia, and China) – are widely seen as having contributed to the diplomatic solution. Empirically, one can wonder why formal international organizations like the UN, the IAEA and the EU were not able to do the wheeling and dealing by themselves in the case of the Iranian nuclear conflict. From a theoretical perspective, this article highlights the role of informal international organizations, a subject that is under‐researched both in EU and International Relations studies. It will argue that these temporary informal international organizations have three advantages: no (or less) bureaucracy, speed, and the ability to buy time for more important diplomatic actors like major states or formal international organizations.

AbstractIs it joint democracy or state similarity that has a pacifying impact on interstate relations? This study explores the complementarity of the two propositions and demonstrates the potential of a particular kind of shared emancipative culture embracing values of autonomy, equality, choice, and voice to amplify the impact of joint democracy on interstate conflict. The data on cultural values, which comes from the World Values Survey, was integrated with the data from the Correlates of War Project to test the impact of joint democracy and cultural similarity on militarised interstate disputes (1981–2010). We find that culturally similar dyads are less likely to be involved in conflict with each other than culturally dissimilar dyads. Although, cultural similarity does not wash out the pacifying effect of democracy, it offers a complementary explanation to the democratic peace. We also find that states that are democratic and share higher than average scores on the emancipative values are less likely to engage in militarised interstate disputes than democratic states, which are culturally dissimilar or score low on the emancipative dimensions. This provides support for an additional normative/cultural impact on democratic peace.