Suchergebnisse

In the prevailing geopolitical environment, China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the new addition with hopes of exploring new horizons in economic cooperation and expected to have regional and global geopolitical implications. Strategic thinkers, policy-makers, and scholars have heralded CPEC as a magnificent trade and investment project of future geopolitics. Yet many analysts have raised their eyebrows about the USA and Chinese competition ultimately seeking robust security and economic strategy by China and Pakistan to avoid Indo-US designs. The objective of this study is to focus on the all-weather relationship, which China and Pakistan are enjoying with shared goals and interests in the region. This article focuses on the China and Pakistan relations while keeping in mind the emerging strategic partnership of the United States with Pakistan's belligerent neighbour India through a neo-realistic perspective focused on structure and anarchy in the international political system.

In 2016, the South African government proposed a 20% sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) tax. Protracted consultations with beverage manufacturers and the sugar industry followed. This resulted in a lower sugar-based beverage tax, the Health Promotion Levy (HPL), of approximately 10% coming into effect in April 2018. We provide a synthesis of findings until April 2021. Studies show that despite the lower rate, purchases of unhealthy SSBs and sugar intake consumption from SSBs fell. There were greater reductions in SSB purchases among both lower socioeconomic groups and in subpopulations with higher SSB consumption. These subpopulations bear larger burdens from obesity and related diseases, suggesting that this policy improves health equity. The current COVID-19 pandemic has impacted food and nutritional security. Increased pandemic mortality among people with obesity, diabetes, and hypertension highlight the importance of intersectoral public health disease-prevention policies like the HPL, which should be strengthened.

The twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist strikes presents a good occasion for scholars and policymakers to take stock of what has been learned about Islamist, anti-American terrorists. In this article, the author evaluates a number of proposed causes of terrorism against the empirical record of 60 individuals who, claiming to have been motivated by their understanding of Islam, have plotted or carried out attacks against the American homeland. The analysis finds that while many theories of terrorism fail to explain the phenomenon of Islamist, anti-American terrorism, these terrorists do share a few traits, namely that they tend to be well-educated, young men reared in countries characterized by government repression, many of which happen to be security partners of the United States. The insights of this analysis suggest a number of policy prescriptions. ; Published version

In 2016, the South African government proposed a 20% sugar‐sweetened beverage (SSB) tax. Protracted consultations with beverage manufacturers and the sugar industry followed. This resulted in a lower sugar‐based beverage tax, the Health Promotion Levy (HPL), of approximately 10% coming into effect in April 2018. We provide a synthesis of findings until April 2021. Studies show that despite the lower rate, purchases of unhealthy SSBs and sugar intake consumption from SSBs fell. There were greater reductions in SSB purchases among both lower socioeconomic groups and in subpopulations with higher SSB consumption. These subpopulations bear larger burdens from obesity and related diseases, suggesting that this policy improves health equity. The current COVID‐19 pandemic has impacted food and nutritional security. Increased pandemic mortality among people with obesity, diabetes, and hypertension highlight the importance of intersectoral public health disease‐prevention policies like the HPL, which should be strengthened.

Over the last years, Brazil and China's oil-related finance activities have expanded substantially. Between 2007 and 2019, Brazilian companies received approximately one-fourth of Chinese policy banks overseas oil-related loans, and Chinese financial institutions became Brazil's biggest oil company Petrobras' main creditor. A deep analysis of these loans highlights their usage as economic statecraft tools, with impacts on the bilateral crude trade and investments. Loan-for-oil mechanisms, content purchase requirements, and a countercyclical lending pattern have helped to influence Brazilian players to behave in a manner conducive to the Chinese state's energy security objectives and strategic goals, namely increase of imports, diversification of sources, and internationalisation of firms. With these loans, China has satisfactorily guaranteed a stable oil supply over time and has helped Chinese equipment makers and service providers to expand their footage in Brazil. (JCCA/GIGA)

The study highlights and analyses important developments of political and social processes in Georgia during the 30 years of state independence of the country. It sets the dynamics of the democratization and state-building process of Georgia. As a result of the conducted focus group and survey of 44 experts, the foreign policy and building of state institutions could be considered as the most successful realms of political life; nevertheless, there are some regressions in the latter during the last years. There is some progress in democratic development, although accompanied with some notable problems. For example, there is a low phase of improvement in the following key sectors: independence of the court, supremacy of law, balance between the branches of the government and the existence of counter-balancing between them. Security and social-economic sectors are the least successful spheres of the country.

The deep-rooted protectionism tendency towards the American women prevented women from occupying high posts in the legislative branch.However, women's prominent movements ingendered several outstanding women in elected positions starting from the first half of the XXth century.By the mid-1990s there were more women in Congress in Capitol Hill. Janet Reno was appointed as the first woman U.S. attorney general in theAmerican History, Madeline Albright, the first woman secretary, Condoleezza Rice as the first woman national security adviser for President Bush,Nancy Pelosi was the first woman, the new minority leader of the House of the 108th Congress in 2003 and others, Kamala Harris is the first highestrankingfemale, the first African American and first Asian Vice President of the United States.The question is – whether elected women can make a crucial difference in political institutions and public policy that is still dominated by masculinistinterests?Keywords: Accomplishment, election, participation

Maritime sovereignty is an integral part of the Indonesia's foreign policy, historically in the era of Nusantara, many competitions to conquer maritime territory was even tangible from the era of Majapahit and Sriwijaya kingdom during their ruling. With the notion of Indonesia as the world's maritime axis, Indonesia's diplomacy is defined clearly by the manifestation of efforts either in bilateral, regional, and multilateral. This article discussed on how Indonesia's diplomacy through IORA cooperation is done to overcome the issue of IUU fishing during the presidency of Joko Widodo from 2015 until 2020. Indonesia's IORA Chairmanship from 2015-2017 has rejuvenate Jakarta's maritime diplomacy. Indonesia's diplomacy depicted that Indonesia is beyond thatn norm-setting but also to the level where Indonesia assert their identity as a sovereign maritime axis amid the challenges and modernization that made non-traditional security as one of the core of contemporary diplomacy.

The aim of this article is to describe the specious use made of the Italian criminal justice system as a device to manage the demands for security due to the general perception of increased immigration flows in Italy. In particular, the article analyses - in each stage of the penal system from substantive criminal law, through criminal procedure law, to the prison system - the connection between the processes of criminalization and the use of extrajudicial measures to control immigration flows (such as border controls and expulsions). The results suggest that this criminal 'double track' (Italian citizens on the one side and migrants on the other) - with the subsequent hyper-incarceration of aliens and their final deportation as a consequence of the breach of either or both administrative and criminal law -is a disguised but deliberate choice of recent Italian legislative policy regarding the justice system.

At the moment, there are new types of legal acts emerging in environmental law of Russia. Despite the vague legal nature of the strategic documents, they are gaining relevance in regulating environmental relationship though the regulation by strategic documents has become an uncontrolled and unpredictable process. This article reviews strategic and political documents addressing protection of the environment, environmental security and nature use. It points out the necessity to find their place within the system of environment-related legal acts to build a clear hierarchy in the system, to raise the efficiency of laws and to create a functional enforcement mechanism. The authors suggest two options: to adopt a separate legislative act on the national environmental policy or to introduce a separate chapter into the Federal Law "On Environmental Protection", or alternatively, to carry out codification of the adopted strategic instruments

AbstractSocial assistance is increasingly promoted as a means of tackling poverty. However, in established democracies stable delivery has often proved difficult because of tensions between national and local government, the former desiring comprehensiveness and uniformity, the latter requiring flexibility to meet local needs. These issues are explored in the context of China and Dibao, the world's largest social assistance system, with three questions posed: Do similar tensions exist in China as in the Western world? How are they resolved and what is the nature of the political compromise? How do recipients fare? Policy analysis in a village in south‐central China reveals similar tensions. A regime in which local government employed discretion to prioritize social stability over poverty alleviation has been replaced by an inherently unstable system based on surveillance of officials and local cadres who now prioritize their personal security over the needs of applicants.

The asymmetric distribution of power in the Asian maritime region is favoring China, increasing theapprehension of its neighbors that, faced with their evident vulnerability, fear about Beijing's intentions. In this context, the balance of power maintains the status quo and limits China's behavior against other coastal countries. Given the disparity of military and economic power between Southeast Asia and China, this balance can only be achieved with the intervention of an extra-regional power, the United States. The renewed American participation as a guarantor of regional security has created new bonds of strategic dependence for Southeast Asia, which in turn have economies that mainly rely on China. The South China Sea conflict is then posing two dilemmas for the region: China's increasing economic leverage and Washington's reactive and challenging Indo-Pacific policy, which might make a stalemate in the maritime conflict possible.

Abstract
An increase of Chinese investment into the territory of the European Union has raised EU regulators' concerns regarding the public security of the EU. As a result, the new Framework Regulation 2019/452 establishing a framework for the screening of FDI into the EU was adopted as a legal instrument aimed at their control, applicable from 11 October 2020. Adopted within the scope of Common Commercial Policy of the EU, the Framework Regulation, however, might not become an effective legal measure, as its application by Member States both in light of the freedom of movement of capital and the relevant CJEU jurisprudence raises significant legal questions. This article broadly discusses the newly introduced cooperation mechanism between Member States and the European Commission, as well as the relevant effect of the Framework Regulation upon Chinese investment and the pending negotiations of the EU-China BIT.

Marriage, family reunification, forced labour and trafficking are some of the most widely attributed causes of women's migration within South Asia. This paper contributes to a small but growing literature about women's migration within South Asia for employment amidst social, cultural and policy level barriers that hinder women's mobility choices. It examines the experiences of 45 migrant women from economically poorer backgrounds comprising both cross-border, undocumented migrants from Nepal and Bangladesh and internal migrants from India working in informal jobs within India. This paper also explores similarities and differences between migration and labour market experiences of women migrants in South Asia showing how migration for employment can contribute towards agency formation but at the same time increase vulnerability by bringing about a reduction in well-being, security and dignity in the absence of secure policies that address challenges of women migrants in the region.