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How does technology influence international negotiations? This article explores 'track-change diplomacy' – how diplomats use information and communication technology (ICT) such as word processing software and mobile devices to collaboratively edit and negotiate documents. To analyze the widespread but understudied phenomenon of track-change diplomacy, the article adopts a practice-oriented approach to technology, developing the concept of affordance: the way a tool or technology simultaneously enables and constrains the tasks users can possibly perform with it. The article shows how digital ICT affords shareability, visualization and immediacy of information, thus shaping the temporality and power dynamics of international negotiations. These three affordances have significant consequences for how states construct and promote national interests; how diplomats reach compromises among a large number of states (as text edits in collective drafting exercises); and how power plays out in international negotiations. Drawing on ethnographic methods, including participant observation of negotiations between the EU's member states as well as in-depth interviews, the analysis casts new light on these negotiations, where documents become the site of both semantic and political struggle. Rather than delivering on the technology's promise of keeping track and reinforcing national oversight in negotiations, we argue that track-change diplomacy can in fact lead to a loss of control, challenging existing understandings of diplomacy. ; How does technology influence international negotiations? This article explores 'track-change diplomacy' – how diplomats use information and communication technology (ICT) such as word processing software and mobile devices to collaboratively edit and negotiate documents. To analyze the widespread but understudied phenomenon of track-change diplomacy, the article adopts a practice-oriented approach to technology, developing the concept of affordance: the way a tool or technology simultaneously enables and constrains the tasks users can possibly perform with it. The article shows how digital ICT affords shareability, visualization and immediacy of information, thus shaping the temporality and power dynamics of international negotiations. These three affordances have significant consequences for how states construct and promote national interests; how diplomats reach compromises among a large number of states (as text edits in collective drafting exercises); and how power plays out in international negotiations. Drawing on ethnographic methods, including participant observation of negotiations between the EU's member states as well as in-depth interviews, the analysis casts new light on these negotiations, where documents become the site of both semantic and political struggle. Rather than delivering on the technology's promise of keeping track and reinforcing national oversight in negotiations, we argue that track-change diplomacy can in fact lead to a loss of control, challenging existing understandings of diplomacy.

The article introduces the main topics that this thematic issue covers. It highlights the emerging patterns of cooperation in cyberspace that have been identified by individual contributors, including at the national levels and in the working of the regional organizations. While various contributions in this thematic issue deal with different dimensions of international cooperation (e.g. legal, normative, political), this article demonstrates that they are all representative of major trends in cyberspace development, provide a valuable illustration of the patterns that we observe in the rapidly evolving digital environment, and highlight very similar challenges when it comes to finding sustainable and workable solutions that contribute to peace and stability in cyberspace.

This chapter considers the idea that international human rights law is both produced by and dependent upon crisis. Surveying the capaciousness, ambiguity, and constructedness of the concept, we position the relative weight given to particular rights in terms of their framing as 'crises'. We focus on how the idea of crisis has been differently deployed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the division between civil and political rights and economic, cultural and social rights to argue for a critical engagement with the language of crisis in human rights law, and to ask how that language has shaped the value and meaning of rights discourse more generally.

This chapter considers the idea that international human rights law is both produced by and dependent upon crisis. Surveying the capaciousness, ambiguity, and constructedness of the concept, we position the relative weight given to particular rights in terms of their framing as 'crises'. We focus on how the idea of crisis has been differently deployed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the division between civil and political rights and economic, cultural and social rights to argue for a critical engagement with the language of crisis in human rights law, and to ask how that language has shaped the value and meaning of rights discourse more generally.

Der Beitrag setzt sich mit zwei Argumentationen auseinander. Das erste Argument lautet: Trotz Internationalisierung und Globalisierung der Unternehmensstrategien lässt sich eine Tendenz zur Dezentralisierung beobachten, die grundlegend neue Chancen für die Entfaltung einer regionalen Ökonomie und für wirtschaftliche Prosperität bietet. Insbesondere die Realisierung von regionalen Unternehmensnetzwerken wird als Hoffnungsträger angesehen. Das zweite Argument lautet: Vor dem o.g. Hintergrund lässt sich eine Art "best practice" von Regionalpolitik formulieren, die auf die Etablierung solcher Netzwerke abzielt und die dieses mit neuen Formen des Regionalmarketings nach innen und außen kommuniziert. Die Kernthese der Autoren lautet: Die internationale Ausrichtung von Unternehmen ist heute von mehr strategischer Offenheit gekennzeichnet, es gibt in der Regel mehrere plausible (und betriebswirtschaftlich rentable) Optionen. Diese Offenheit ermöglicht es, mit Mitteln der Regional- und der Betriebspolitik Einfluss zu nehmen. Aber diese Offenheit bedeutet keineswegs umstandslos eine grundsätzliche Aufwertung der regionalen oder der dezentralen Unternehmensteile. Eine Regionalpolitik, die dies nicht erkennt und nicht versucht, soweit wie möglich gegenzusteuern, führt letztlich zu einer Unterordnung unter die Strategien der jeweils dominierenden Unternehmen. Damit werden nicht nur vorhandene Chancen nicht genutzt und Entwicklungsprobleme weiter verschärft, sondern ganze Regionen politisch zum Spielball der Entwicklung degradiert. (ICA2)

The existence of confederations of democratic political parties provides an international organizational structure through which a human rights network might operate. By exchanging information and taking coordinated initiatives, there is good prospect for encouraging positive developments in human rights. Efforts at such cooperation are discussed, as are two projects which were undertaken. Initiatives are suggested to strengthen the effectiveness of these efforts.

This edited book shares the experiences of a broadly representative and globally dispersed set of writers on higher education and social responsibility, broadening perspectives on the democratization of knowledge. The editors have deliberately sought examples and viewpoints from parts of the world that are seldom heard in the international literature. Importantly, the have intentionally chosen to achieve a gender and diversity balance among the contributors. the stories call us to take back the right to imagine and reclaim the public purposes of higher education

Almost everyone recognizes the salience of cyberspace as a fact of daily life. Given its ubiquity, scale, and scope, cyberspace has become a fundamental feature of the world we live in and has created a new reality for almost everyone in the developed world and increasingly for people in the developing world. This paper seeks to provide an initial baseline, for representing and tracking institutional responses to a rapidly changing international landscape, real as well as virtual. We shall argue that the current institutional landscape managing security issues in the cyber domain has developed in major ways, but that it is still "under construction." We also expect institutions for cyber security to support and reinforce the contributions of information technology to the development process. We begin with (a) highlights of international institutional theory and an empirical "census" of the institutions-in-place for cyber security, and then turn to (b) key imperatives of information technology-development linkages and the various cyber processes that enhance developmental processes, (c) major institutional responses to cyber threats and cyber crime as well as select international and national policy postures so critical for industrial countries and increasingly for developing states as well, and (d) the salience of new mechanisms designed specifically in response to cyber threats. ; This material is based on work supported by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Grant No. N00014-09-1-0597. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations therein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Office of Naval Research.

pt. 1. 1952-1955 : human rights NGOs, world politics, and international law -- pt. 2. 1956-1963 : liberal idealists for the rule of law -- pt. 3. 1963-1970 : NGO pioneers for international human rights -- pt. 4. 1970-1990 : elite advocates for economic and social justice -- pt. 5. 1990-1993 : third world leadership for a new order