Suchergebnisse

Small States in EU Policy-Making analyses how small states try to impact European Union policy-making through a range of strategies.

With the last rounds of enlargement and Brexit, the number and weight of small states in the European Union have steadily increased. At the same time, small states face distinct challenges in different institutions, which may impact their strategies. Nonetheless, the existing literature primarily focuses on the Council of the European Union and the European Council and offers few insights into how small states navigate the other institutions. The contributions to this volume examine how small states can wield influence in different institutions, arguing that they do indeed pursue different strategies depending on institutional context. The policy case studies on the EU's foreign and security policies confirm these findings: small states can have influence in EU policy-making and can create situations where their needs are met. They are most likely to succeed when they build foreign policy coalitions, when they anticipate major economic developments and when they manage to acquire a high level of expertise in a policy area. However, the case studies also show that there is a risk of small states becoming policy-takers in cases where they cannot provide leadership in terms of ideas and expertise and/or fail to build political weight through coalitions.

This book will be of interest to academics and practitioners of European politics and the EU in particular, as well as policy-makers and practitioners working on small states.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

La gestion migratoire est un imaginaire qui préconise l'ouverture régulée face aux migrations internationales. Il réduit leur complexité pour les rendre intelligibles, les gouverner d'une manière dépolitisée et technocratique, et pour perpétuer les flux de la mondialisation. Mais en l'absence d'un régime international de la migration, la gestion migratoire est concurrencée par les imaginaires de la sécurisation et de la libéralisation des migrations. Sa sédimentation durable dépend alors de la construction matérielle de ses interprétations à travers des institutions. Pour comprendre cette évolution de la gestion migratoire de l'interprétation à la construction, cet ouvrage retrace les trois moments de son émergence, de sa sélection et de son maintien au sein de l'Organisation internationale pour la migration (OIM). Cette institution clé de la gouvernance migratoire a été marquée du début des années 2000 à 2018 par l'extension de son rôle et de ses activités à l'aune de la gestion migratoire.

Cet ouvrage mobilise une approche qui mêle économie politique culturelle et analyse critique du discours pour examiner l'évolution d'un imaginaire à partir de l'interaction entre production de sens, capacité d'action des acteurs sociaux, structuration du contexte institutionnel, et technologies gouvernementales. Fort de l'analyse de réunions et documents de l'OIM, l'ouvrage révèle comment divers fonctionnaires internationaux, diplomates et experts ont formulé, diffusé, matérialisé ou encore contesté la gestion migratoire.

L'étude de cet imaginaire permet de comprendre la transformation de l'OIM et son rôle dans la constitution d'une nouvelle gouvernance migratoire suite à l'adoption en 2018 du Pacte mondial pour les migrations.

The author pursues the hypothesis that tortured bodies are the sites of 'knowing' for torturous societies, the 'places' into which unprocessed social contents are stored and interrogated through torture by the ruling group and/or made disappear through enforced disappearances. The combination of crimes such as torture and enforced disappearance perpetrated by states represents an extreme social case that illustrates the processes leading to the social dynamics of massive denial ('knowing and not knowing') of what is happening in a society slipped into a monolithic societal state for perpetrators, bystanders and victims. The concept of embeddedness expresses the notion that social actors exist within relational, institutional, and cultural contexts and cannot be seen as atomized decision-makers. The body of the victim of torture and enforced disappearance seems to be the site where, in case of severe social violence, the 'truth' is stored and can be regained, together with the possibility of collective healing that repairs social ties, be it a body that survived torture, or one that succumbed, like in the case of many disappeared. Psychotherapy with torture survivors and the collective process of restoring the historical truth in societies that lived enforced disappearances seem to point in this direction.

This open access book critically engages with the social, political and ethical implications of support for people with disability to be fully included in society. The authors examine contemporary issues of quality and safeguarding in disability services, translating research and practice wisdom into foundational knowledge. Written by leading researchers, the book provides a comprehensive overview of knowledge and practice necessary to prepare readers to deliver enabling support.

This open access book explores the intersection of gender and climate change, suggests ways in which innovative technologies can accelerate climate relief actions, and offers strategies for integrating climate change initiatives into national policies and planning. By examining the devastating consequences of climate change on women and girls throughout the continent, the authors pose a crucial question: Does gender matter in climate change discussions in Africa? Political and social traditions have burdened women with greater vulnerability to the impacts of climate-related natural disasters, including violence, displacement, poverty, famine and lack of access to clean water. However, women are also key to effective and inclusive climate mitigation, adaptation, and decision-making. The authors provide a compelling discourse that identifi es the social and economic benefi ts for all citizens when genderinclusive policies shape equitable and targeted action plans, from mitigationto adaptation and funding. The UN's SDG 13 calls for urgent action and commitment to combat climate change. The implementable and action-oriented propositions presented in this book will be of interest to students, educators, practitioners, third-sector actors, and policymakers committed to gender equality, sustainable development and climate action in Africa.

This open access book includes methods for retrieval, semantic representation, and analysis of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI), geovisualization and user interactions related to VGI, and discusses selected topics in active participation, social context, and privacy awareness. It presents the results of the DFG-funded priority program "VGI: Interpretation, Visualization, and Social Computing" (2016-2023). The book includes three parts representing the principal research pillars within the program. Part I "Representation and Analysis of VGI" discusses recent approaches to enhance the representation and analysis of VGI. It includes semantic representation of VGI data in knowledge graphs; machine-learning approaches to VGI mining, completion, and enrichment as well as to the improvement of data quality and fitness for purpose. Part II "Geovisualization and User Interactions related to VGI" book explores geovisualizations and user interactions supporting the analysis and presentation of VGI data. When designing these visualizations and user interactions, the specific properties of VGI data, the knowledge and abilities of different target users, and technical viability of solutions need to be considered. Part III "Active Participation, Social Context and Privacy Awareness" of the book addresses the human impact associated with VGI. It includes chapters on the use of wearable sensors worn by volunteers to record their exposure to environmental stressors on their daily journeys, on the collective behavior of people using location-based social media and movement data from football matches, and on the motivation of volunteers who provide important support in information gathering, filtering and analysis of social media in disaster situations. The book is of interest to researchers and advanced professionals in geoinformation, cartography, visual analytics, data science and machine learning.

This book provides an empirically formulated foundation for conflict-sensitive conservation, a field in which the existing literature relies primarily on anecdotal evidence.

Seeking to better understand the impact of conflict on the implementation and outcomes of environmental projects, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Independent Evaluation Office and the Environmental Law Institute undertook an evaluation of GEF support to fragile and conflict-affected contexts. Following a qualitative and quantitative analysis of documents from more than 4,000 projects, the research team discovered a statistically significant negative correlation between a country's Fragile States Index score and the implementation quality of environmental projects in that country. In this book, the evaluation and research team explain these groundbreaking findings in detail, highlighting seven key case studies: Afghanistan, Albertine Rift, Balkans, Cambodia, Colombia, Lebanon, and Mali. Drawing upon additional research and interviews with GEF project implementation staff, the volume illustrates the pathways through which conflict and fragility frequently impact environmental projects. It also examines how practitioners and sponsoring institutions can plan and implement their projects to avoid or mitigate these issues and find opportunities to promote peacebuilding through their environmental interventions.

Examining data from 164 countries and territories, this innovative book will be of great interest to students and scholars of environmental management, conservation, international development, and the fast-growing field of environmental peacebuilding. It will also be a great resource for practitioners working in these important fields.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

This is an open access book. The double-carbon target has been one of the main motivations and goals for China's social and economic development. The building sector is one of the most important sectors to achieve energy saving and emission reduction. This publication thoroughly examines China's building energy use and carbon emissions with a focus on four categories, including their characteristics and the technologies needed to achieve zero carbon emissions. This year, the key issue is developing carbon-neutrality pathways for China's urban heating system. This report comprehensively discusses the current status and future forecast of heat demand in buildings and non-process industries, introduces the challenges facing the urban energy supply system in achieving carbon neutrality, and elucidates the low-carbon heating model based mainly on low-grade and low-carbon waste heat. Extensive survey and monitoring data and case studies are presented throughout the book. The discussion of technologies and policies has been the subject of extensive research and evidence for over a decade. The information, data, and policy recommendations are of relevance to a national and global audience working in the fields of energy, climate change, engineering, and building science.

​This open access book explores how legal proceedings in and out-of-court can be matched to the complex problems underlying disputes concerning child custody, residence and contact between parents. It focusses in particular on Nordic experiences of in and out-of-court mechanisms as means of resolving custody disputes. The contributors are internationally renowned and experienced researchers from the legal, psychological, and sociological fields who provide empirical as well as legal perspectives. They examine central legal, ethical and knowledge-based dilemmas in custody dispute proceedings. The findings speak to an international audience and suggest ways how to best realize the interests of the child. It transcends disciplinary, institutional, and jurisdictional boundaries in search of new knowledge.

This open access book summarizes the research being pursued as part of the COST Action CA21103 titled "Implementation of Circular Economy in the Built Environment" (Circular B), which aims to define the methodology to develop a common circularity framework for inclusive application and assessment in new and existing buildings to support decision-making for all value chain stakeholders and appraise the implementation level of the European Circular Economy Action Plan (CEAP). The Action is increasingly gaining interest worldwide, bringing multidisciplinary young and experienced researchers together to share the latest studies and develop new knowledge. Consisting of 17 chapters corresponding to the conference themes, the book analyses and discusses topics such as Circular Economy (CE) best practices, design strategies for circular buildings, circular materials and products, adaptive reuse of existing buildings, recovery and reuse of salvaged materials and products, case studies of current applications and trends, barriers against CE implementation in buildings, efficient waste and circular resource management, circular lifecycle management and decision making, stakeholders relationships, CE supporting policies and barriers, circular business models, criteria, KPIs and assessment models for circular buildings, CE criteria in sustainability frameworks, digitalization and BIM for enhanced circularity of buildings and building materials, and standardization of CE definitions in buildings.

​This open access book addresses the problem of creation and reproduction processes of contemporary urban communities, as well as cultural mechanisms and factors of these processes. Rejecting both the environmental determinism, and cultural reductionism of community studies, the book assumes that the postmodern city is a space of diverse urban communities that go far beyond the traditional concept of neighbourhood as well as personal and imagined communities, and thus proposes to comprehend urban community as social practice embedded in urban space. The book applies the Theory of Social Practice and the Theory of Scenes and develops the concept of socio-cultural opportunity structures in order to explain how cultural practices of individuals and symbolic dimensions of territory interact, leading to (re)production of various forms of urban community. It is assumed that culture in general and symbolic meanings of territory in particular, play a crucial role in the process of (re)production of urban communities, that this process takes place in collective cultural consciousness and is mediated by territorially embedded cultural practices of individuals. The book overcomes theoretical gaps in classical community studies and develops a new perspective on urban communal processes based on the analysis of social practices in urban cultural scenes.

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence This book examines what happens when states and other authorities use detention to abuse their power, deter dissent and maintain social hierarchies. Written by an author with decades of practical experience in the human rights field, the book examines a variety of scenarios where individuals are unlawfully detained in violation of their most basic rights to personal liberty and exposes the many fallacies associated with arbitrary detention. Proposing solutions for future policy to scrutinise processes, this is a call for greater respect for the rule of law and human rights.

This open access book explains how leading business organizations attempt to achieve the responsible and ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) and other advanced information technologies. These technologies can produce tremendous insights and benefits. But they can also invade privacy, perpetuate bias, and otherwise injure people and society. To use these technologies successfully, organizations need to implement them responsibly and ethically. The question is: how to do this? Data ethics management, and this book, provide some answers. The authors interviewed and surveyed data ethics managers at leading companies. They asked why these experts see data ethics as important and how they seek to achieve it. This book conveys the results of that research on a concise, accessible way. Much of the existing writing on data and AI ethics focuses either on macro-level ethical principles, or on micro-level product design and tooling. The interviews showed that companies need a third component: data ethics management. This third element consists of the management structures, processes, training and substantive benchmarks that companies use to operationalize their high-level ethical principles and to guide and hold accountable their developers. Data ethics management is the connective tissue makes ethical principles real. It is the focus of this book. This book should be of use to organizations that wish to improve their own data ethics management efforts, legislators and policymakers who hope to build on existing management practices, scholars who study beyond compliance business behavior, and members of the public who want to understand better the threats that AI poses and how to reduce them.

Over the past few decades, there has been a significant amount of research on the Roman Lower Danube frontier by international teams focusing on individual forts or broader landscape survey work; collectively, this volume represents the best of this collaboration with the aim of elevating the Lower Danube within broader Roman frontier scholarship.The Lower Danube, running between Singidunum (modern Belgrade) and Halmyris in the Danube Delta, was one of the most densely fortified regions of the Roman Empire. The region has long been a border zone, today forming part of the border between Serbia and Romania, and the majority of the border between Romania and Bulgaria. Despite its importance for understanding both Roman frontier policy and the relationship between ancient and modern borderscapes, the region has not yet made its full contribution to international Roman scholarship. Bridging the theoretical divide that exists between different regional research traditions, chapters in this volume focus on sites like Ratiaria, in modern north-western Bulgaria, while other contributors examine the complex landscape from a wider perspective oriented around roads, temporary camps, or early Christian sites. The Roman Lower Danube Frontier emphasises the importance of engaging with Roman frontier landscapes, particularly in regions such as East-Central Europe, where they remain part of a contemporary borderscape.

This book examines international aid in North Korea, in particular the ongoing policy of withholding aid, through the lens of the impact on the general population to present an argument for sustainable development.

Focusing on the human rights of North Koreans and presenting a case for the use of aid as a provision for social change, it explores an alternative narrative to the existing long-drawn-out rhetoric of 'denuclearisation-first'. The book's scope includes evaluations of the causes of international sanctions and their impact, the Kim regime's mitigation of sanctions through marketisation and a digital economy as well as barriers to aid monitoring and the reason for the absence of any mass anti-regime movement. It also posits that North Korea is a fragile state but cloaked by the image of a strong regime.

The book succinctly demonstrates that the key to unlocking the potential of North Korea's 'cloaked society' does not lie in sanctions, but is to be found in engagement with development aid. As such it will appeal to students of Korean Studies, Development Studies, Asian Politics and International Relations.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.