Suchergebnisse

In this article Luke March explores the Russian authorities' efforts to "manage democracy" through the creation of "parties of power." It focuses on the quasi-leftist party Just Russia, one of four parties currentiy represented in the Russian Duma and the only one that represents a "parastatal" opposition (opposition owned and controlled by the state). The history of Just Russia tells us much about the dynamics of what Andrew Wilson has described as Russia's "virtual politics": the regime must continually organize manageable quasi-opposition parties in order to bolster its democratic credentials and channel real social discontent, yet whenever it does so effectively, it quickly creates a potential political threat that must be neutralized. Just Russia has parallels in other authoritarian party systems, such as Mexico under the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) or Nigeria under Abacha and Babangida; the main difference in contemporary Russia lies in the remarkable skill with which Russian state actors conjure up and promote ersatz parties. Nevertheless, even in Russia, virtual politics may become real politics in the longer term.

On 13 July 2007, Governor Charlie Crist of Florida signed executive orders to establish greenhouse gas emission targets that required an 80 percent reduction below 1990 levels by the year 2050. Florida is a very high-risk state with regard to climate change. Its 1,350-mile-long coastline, location in "Hurricane Alley," reliance on coral reefs and other vulnerable natural resources for its economy, and the predictions that state population could double in the next 30 years all contribute to this designation of "high-risk. As a consequence of the potential economic and ecological impacts of climate change to Florida, a series of Action Teams were created to plan for adaptation to impending environmental changes. As the 26th largest emitter of carbon dioxide on a global scale, Florida needs to act aggressively to create a clean energy footprint as part of its statewide initiatives but with global impacts. This case study examines the process and expected outcomes undertaken by a regional government that anticipates the need for stringent adaptation.

Japan has pursued a grand strategy of creating an East Asian maritime order with a special emphasis on situating a U.S.-Japan-China trilateral arrangement, based on cooperative security, at the core of an East Asian maritime regime. The United States and China have slowly adopted some of this Japanese strategy. This article examines the lessons East Asia has learned from several maritime security initiatives-America's Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and its Regional Maritime Security Initiative (RMSI), Japan's ReCAAP, and Southeast Asia's MALSINDO-that were applied to the anti-piracy operations off the Somali coast and the Gulf of Aden. Despite the influence of Japan's strategy for maritime security, paradoxically it has responded more slowly in its deployment to the Gulf of Aden, contributing to the traditional image of Japan as a reactive state. The institutional design of maritime regimes in the Gulf of Aden and in East Asia is thus incrementally unfolding; maritime cooperation is taking place in an ad hoc, bottom-up manner with very uncertain outcomes. (Asian Perspect/GIGA)

A discussion of the relationship between the Russian Federation & the Republic of Korea focuses on the impact of President Lee Myung-bak's official visit with Russian Federation President Dmitry Medvedev on 28-30 September, 2008. It is maintained that the summit emphasized interdependence between the two states & illustrated that Moscow & Seoul share a similar vision of world affairs. The two heads of state addressed cooperation on such matters as climate change, energy, food security, trans-border crime, & new threats. A look at the benefits of a strategic partnership for both Russia & South Korea calls attention to increased trade between the two countries & joint investment projects in such areas as energy, petrochemistry, & car-manufacturing. It was also agreed to participate in large-scale culture & art projects in 2010. In general, the meeting confirmed that a national consensus regarding partnership with Russia has taken place in South Korea. In spite of differences between the two countries, the partnership holds the promise to build a more secure world order. J. Lindroth

AbstractIndia and China were the most important producers of textiles in the world prior to the industrial revolution. However, whereas the Western historiography usually discusses Indian cotton and Chinese silk in connection with European imports, or with their sales in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, cotton and silk were also exchanged between India and China. Indeed, Indian cotton and Chinese silk were probably the principal manufactured goods exchanged between these civilizations. Although Indian records are fragmentary, especially when compared with the voluminous Chinese sources, Indian cotton goods are known to have reached the Indianized states in Xinjiang in the early Common Era (CE), and may have been produced there, in Khotan and the neighbouring states, by the time that indigenous silk production was known to exist in India in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. Yet, while in later centuries large amounts of cotton cloth were produced in China while indigenous centres of silk production developed in India, exchanges of the finest types of cotton and silk cloth continued, usually driven by cultural and social factors in each civilization.

This article appeared in Homeland Security Affairs (May 2009), v.5 no.2 ; Information sharing among federal, state, and local agencies is a critical element of U.S. homeland security strategy. Few researchers, however, have examined the relationship between the use of homeland security information-sharing systems and perceived levels of emergency preparedness at the local level (city, county, and region). In order to explore this relationship, an online survey was administered to eighty-three registered users of Lessons Learned Information Sharing (LLIS.gov) ''' a U.S. Department of Homeland Security information sharing system ''' and interviews were conducted with ten LLIS.gov users located in different regions of the country. This study finds that the concepts of information sharing and preparedness accommodate multiple ''' and at times conflicting ''' meanings and practices. As a result, the government'۪s effort to create a 'trusted partnership' and a 'culture of information sharing' among federal, state, and local agencies faces significant challenges. ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

This article presents an overview of disability rights issues in the context of state socialism in the former Soviet Union, especially the Russian and Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republics. The Soviet state's governmentality of disability, and the little-known history of Soviet-era disability rights movements, produced important legacies that shape disability policy and discourses, rights movements, and experiences of disability in the region today. By focusing on Soviet approaches to housing, education, rehabilitation, and work vis-à-vis people with disabilities, and documenting the varied responses of disability communities, this article contributes a missing Soviet chapter to the new disability history. This approach encourages readers to reconsider some assumptions about the evolution of disability rights outside the West. Especially, I interweave discussions of Soviet-era state policy with descriptions of people's personal experiences to emphasize the ways that people with disabilities in the former Soviet Union have been active agents--if not organized advocates--across the 20th century.

As regards labour-market reform and employment policies, the European Union currently touts the concept of 'flexicurity', aiming at simultaneously enhancing both flexibility and security in the labour market in response to the globalisation of the economy and far-reaching demographic developments such as the ageing of the population. Each Member State is expected to map out its own distinct pathway towards more flexicurity and the European Commission has, for its part, suggested a set of four general pathways. Therefore a need exists for ideas and examples on how to elaborate a flexicurity pathway, looking for inspiration rather than imitation. In the Netherlands, a government-appointed Committee on Labour Market Participation (the so-called Bakker Committee) has recently published proposals and recommendations for further reform of the Dutch labour market. This paper discusses that part of these proposals involving a particular flexicurity pathway towards better transition security and higher labour-market mobility. This possible pathway, now being debated in the Netherlands, may also be of interest to other Member States.

An interview with the special counselor of the French President Sarkozy, starting off with the question why France has, better than other industrialized countries, resisted the global recession. Guaino states that this is the result of government indebting itself instead of forcing citizens to do this by increasing taxes, a lesson in managing public funds with an eye on economy and society. Nonetheless, the 'French system' has shown to paralyze economic growth, mainly due to increasing and lasting unemployment rates. The interview continues with the differences between the French labor market and the more flexible one in the United States, but French problems are stated to be connected with material and human investments and a revalorization of work. Next are discussed the ecological and numerical revolution and the possibility these will proof to have a stabilizing effect on the economy. The latter part of the interview concentrates on the French situation and the need for revolutionary investments and theoretic developments in a global context. Adapted from the source document.

Labour groups in Western countries face an immense challenge to develop a progressive international response to the economic transformation of India and China. This article develops one aspect of such a response through a consideration of the past experiences of internationalism, developments in international labour standards debates, and changes that have occurred in both international and domestic legal arenas. The first section briefly examines the notion of labour internationalism and its checkered past. The second section considers the origins and politics of the North-South divide on the issue of enforceable international labour standards. This debate highlights many of the tensions in internationalism and the difficulties of using and restraining state power. The third section considers the application of extraterritorial law to hold Western multinationals responsible for their actions in other countries. It is based primarily on a consideration of cases arising from the United States. The fourth section highlights some of the difficulties that using an extraterritorial legal approach would entail. The article concludes by speculating about the path forward.

Considering the increasing role of nonstate political actors in world events, this article examines the influence of these players on international crisis dynamics. A theoretical index is developed to assess the power status of nonstate actors (NSAs), taking into account their unique characteristics, advantages and weaknesses. When applied to ethnic-NSAs that participated in interstate crises, in the Cold War and in the post-Cold War periods, the findings indicate that powerful ethnic-NSAs affect crisis outcomes, and would do better to do so under circumstances that suit their power resources and skills, namely, in the post-Cold War multi-centric world system, in crises that involve a small number of states as direct crisis actors and in prolonged international hostile situations. In conclusion, the article highlights the importance of developing theoretical tools for systemic analysis of NSAs in world politics, and suggests directions for future research in this field of IR. It also implies that to be effective, promoting peace and stability, crisis management should involve states and NSAs. Adapted from the source document.

The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD 2000) aims to reduce water pollution in Europe to levels which ideally satisfy both economic & ecological interests. To this end, the EU Member States must conduct cost-benefit analysis in order to establish both targets objectives & timelines for implementation set targets & deadlines. This challenging & ambitious Policy reinstates the issues about the pollution control cost & ecological profits assessments. Regarding costs, the discrimination of pollution abatement effort enables to minimize the total cost when the location of the emissions matters, whereas an uniform effort can reach the required pollution levels more flexibly. Therefore, the discrimination of the abatement effort can't be justified unless it induces significant cost reduction. In this paper, the authors show that the efficiency gains due to a discrimination of pollution abatement efforts depend on the intensity of the ecological constraint, & on the polluters profile. These findings are important for the EU Commission, which is charged with assessing the estimates provided by the member states. Adapted from the source document.

Рассматриваются вопросы, связанные с мерами государства в области переселенческой политики за Урал и в Сибирь во второй половине XIX в.: правовая база, политические и экономические факторы, влиявшие на переселение, социальный состав переселенцев. Особое внимание уделено переселению в Енисейскую губернию, соотношению численности новопоселенцев и старожилов, их взаимоотношениям. Показано влияние переселенцев на формы и методы хозяйствования, а также изменения в государственной политике в условиях нарастания общенационального кризиса. ; Problems connected with the state measures in the sphere of the resettlement policy behind the Urals and in Siberia during the second half of the 19th century, such as the legal basis, political and economic factors affecting the resettlement and the social complement of settlers is considered in the article. A special attention has been paid to the resettlement in Enisey province, the correlation in the number of new settlers and old residents and their relations. There has been shown the influence of settlers on the forms and methods of management as well as the changes of the state policy in the conditions of the increasing national crisis