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The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) hosted its sixth annual South China Sea conference in July 2016. The conference provided four panels of highly respected experts from 10 countries with a first opportunity to assess the results of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea tribunal ruling and begin to measure its impact.

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Abbreviations -- Channelling International Law into the Domestic Legal Order - Some Practices and Constitutional Problems -- Beyond the Call of Duty? Domestic Courts and the Standards of the European Court of Human Rights -- The Interpretation of the English Civil Procedure Rules in the Context of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights -- The Europeanisation of Fundamental Rights Protection in Switzerland : Two Steps Forward, One Step Back -- Gold-plating and Double Banking: an Overrated Problem? -- Sale of Consumer Goods: the Adaptation of (Dutch) National Law to Transnational Demands -- EU Law-making and its Impact on National Company Law -- Inspiration From Above: Making and Interpreting Dutch Law on Jurisdiction in Civil and Commercial Matters in Light of European Law -- Interpretation of national rules for ex offi cio raising of points of Community law by national courts -- Interpretation of the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts by national courts -- Interpretation of English Law in Light of the Common Frame of Reference -- The White Paper on Damages Actions for Breach of the EC Antitrust Rules

According to popular accounts, China's international influence is increasing with its growing material capabilities. However, researchers repeatedly demonstrate gaps between China's power and its influence. Building on earlier research, we propose an inclusive approach to conceptualizing China's influence abroad. Our approach conditions China's net influence on three dimensions. First, intentionality distinguishes between intentional influence-seeking and influence that accrues unintentionally via influence externalities. Second, a systematic treatment of Chinese intermediaries–the diverse set of substate actors operating overseas–is needed in order to expand the study of Chinese influence beyond state-level behavior. Finally, domestic institutions in host countries are essential conduits for conditioning how the behavior of Chinese actors, as well as group and individual reactions within host countries, are aggregated up to the policy level. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

International law underlying the UN response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait; in particular the illegal use of force, self-defense, and policing the world community.

Smart power is defined as the effective combination of both hard and soft power. The concept is increasingly used in policy and academic debates, yet a clear understanding of what it actually means is still lacking. As a result, there is little serious consideration of how smart power can contribute to long-standing debates about power in international relations. This article seeks to clarify the meaning of smart power through first analyzing its main components -- hard and soft power -- separately; and second bringing these components together to re-conceptualize smart power. The aim is to make smart power more analytically useful, and to outline the various ways in which hard and soft power can be combined effectively. The author considers the case of Europe to argue that it is mainly a soft power and sometimes a smart power. Adapted from the source document.

"This first volume of the Official History of the Joint Intelligence Committee draws upon a range of released and classified papers to produce the first, authoritative account of the way in which intelligence has been used to inform UK foreign policy. For more than half a century, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) has been a central player in the secret machinery of the British Government, acting as broker between the intelligence agencies and the policy-makers. Since its creation, the JIC has been involved in almost every key foreign policy decision taken by the British Government. This volume covers the evolution of the JIC in 1936 and culminates with its role in the fateful events of Suez in 1956. Throughout this period the JIC was a sub-committee of the Chiefs of Staff, and this book charts its vital input into key foreign and defence policy decisions and British responses to global developments. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, British politics, international diplomacy, security studies and International Relations in general. Michael S. Goodman is Reader in Intelligence and International Affairs in the Department of War Studies, King's College London. He is author or editor of four previous books, including the Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies (2013)"--

The present article analyzes the world order in the past, present and future as well as the main factors, foundations and ideas underlying the maintaining and change of the international and global order. The first two sections investigate the evolution of the world order starting from the ancient times up to the late twentieth century. The third section analyzes the origin and decline of the world order based on the American hegemony. The authors reveal the contradictions of the current unipolar world and explain in what way globalization has become more profitable for the developing countries but not for the developed ones. The authors also explain the strengthening belief that the US leading status will in-evitably weaken. In this connection we discuss the alternatives of the American strategy and the possibility of the renaissance of the American leadership. The last section presents a factor analysis which allows stating that the world is shifting toward a new balance of power and is likely to become the world with-out a leader. The new world order will consist of a number of large blocks, coa-litions and countries acting within a framework of rules and mutual responsi-bility. However, the transition to a new world order will take certain time (about two decades). This period, which we denote as the epoch of new coali-tions, will involve a reconfiguration of the World System and bring an increas-ing turbulence and conflict intensity.

Why does stigmatization sometimes fail? The literature on stigma in international relations has done an excellent job of pointing to the role successful stigmatization processes play in the construction and maintenance of normative hierarchies, but there has been far less exploration of the conditions under which they may fail in this purpose and the potential consequences for international security and society. This article contributes such an exploration by focusing on the attempted stigma imposition on Russia following its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and support for the insurgency in eastern Ukraine. While Russia was stigmatized as an aggressor by a significant part of international society, including through diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions, this failed to deter further Russian aggression, as demonstrated by its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and thus to reinforce the norm of territorial integrity. The article investigates the reasons for this failure, locating them both in insufficient stigma imposition—the difficulty in building and maintaining a committed "audience of normals" and to impose strong enough status loss and material costs—and to some extent in Russia's counter-stigmatizing stigma management. In conclusion, it considers what could in theory be done differently for stigma imposition to "work," and calls for further research on the connections between stigma and emotion, as a core under-researched factor in the stigma literature.

The world of water services changed significantly over the last two decades, opening it to new business possibilities as promoted by different international financial institutions. Such prospects arose in the face of extraordinary population growth and dire water expansion needs. Accordingly, a vast increase of water-services privatization contracts between foreign investors and states ensued. Today, 10 percent of global consumers receive water from private companies. Inevitably, disputes have emerged regarding these privatization contracts, with little indication of subsiding anytime soon. In the absence of a specialized international regime to regulate these fast-growing activities, both investors and host states filed twenty-one investment claims to investment tribunals in less than two decades. These filings have invited tribunals to interpret foreign investments in the water industry. The tribunal interpretations have generated the embryonic international regulatory and jurisprudential regime on water services analysed in this Article. Governments must design water related policies that comply with investment treaties because failure to do so results in higher water costs and deters foreign investors from providing much needed high quality services to local populations and industries. Although the investment jurisprudence may be seen as progress towards the regulation of an important service, it also emphasizes the lack of a true global holistic approach to regulate water services.