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The essay discusses the emergence in mainland China in the 1980s of "new authoritarianism", a doctrine which aroused tremendous interest among Chinese intellectuals. It outlines the nature and scope of peaceful evolution in the country and the Chinese Communist Party's strategies in the anti-peaceful evolution campaign. (DÜI-Sen)

According to the author, one of the Peking regime's chief pre-occupations since the bloody crackdown at Tiananmen Square in June 1989 has been combating the perceived efforts of outside forces to encourage a "peaceful evolution" from communism to capitalism in mainland China. He examines the changes in mainland society and the measures Peking has adopted in its campaign against "peaceful evolution" which is part of its attempt to regain the control and legitimacy it lost as a result of Tiananmen incident. (DÜI-Sen)

The emergence of global value chains (GVCs) and their rapid expansion over the past two decades has transformed the global trade environment. GVCs involve task-based trade across multiple stages of the production process that take place across a number of different countries, in which multiple inputs and exports of intermediate goods and services are necessary to produce a final good, which may also be exported. GVC-oriented trade is seen to offer significant opportunities for developing countries, especially smaller ones, to benefit from global integration by changing the nature of competitiveness. With competition for GVC investment taking place in a truly global market, factor competitiveness relative to other countries matters a lot. In this context, the purpose of this note is to shed some light for policymakers, in this case specifically in the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) countries, on where to focus efforts to drive competitiveness for GVC participation. This is a data-intensive exercise that requires indicators to represent underlying capabilities, disaggregated international trade data, and finally, a classification of which products are likely to be trade within GVCs.

This report documents the progress of Lithuania in science, technology and innovation (STI) in areas singled out by three major international reports prepared by the Norwegian Research Council (1996), the World Bank (2003) and the CREST-OMC panel (2007). The task was to summarize recommendations of these studies, report on the progress achieved to date and point to priorities for the future. From a low point in the mid-1990s the Lithuanian STI system has gradually strengthened. Funding for R&D has increased and Lithuanian research groups have stepped up their performance in terms of publication output and relevance. It is the opinion of the reviewers that marked progress is evident and visible with respect to the goals of the three reports. This development has indeed been very positive and shows the strong commitment for a continuous improvement of the basic framework conditions for R&D in Lithuania. Nonetheless challenges remain. In order to further the development of STI-policies in Lithuania the report offers new recommendations in four areas: oversight and governance, science base, R&D linkages, and increasing innovative capacity.

AbstractThis article explores the constitutional regulation of birthright ius soli citizenship in two Latin American countries which restrict access to citizenship for the children of foreigners deemed to be passing through the countries. Access to citizenship is a significant marker of membership, setting the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion within and across States. Choosing the cases of Chile and Colombia, this article uses historical, institutional and comparative analysis in order to excavate the evolving conceptions of citizenship in those two countries, with particular reference to the concepts of the 'transient foreigner' and of 'domicile'. The case studies provide an excellent laboratory within which to examine the evolution of constitutional ideas of citizenship and 'the people'. In Colombia, the outcome of the investigation shows that there is unlikely to be significant long-term change in the citizenship regime towards a more generalised acceptance of unconditional ius soli, notwithstanding the substantial shorter-term measures taken to accommodate the children of undocumented migrants from Venezuela and to respond to international pressure. In Chile, combined with other ongoing constitutional work in the citizenship space as part of a wider reform process, there may be a slow journey towards a different constitutional future for so-called 'transient foreigners' and others excluded within the State, but this is currently stalled. Chile has, however, introduced legislation cementing a more limited concept of 'transient foreigner', linking this work on citizenship to the wider domain of migration governance.

At the centre of the international trading order, under the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO), lies a dispute-settlement system. This system offers a graduated conflict-resolution mechanism that begins with a consultation process; progresses to adjudication, through a panel system, and ends in an appellate process.1Under this machinery, in October 1996 India, Malaysia, Pakistan and Thailand (the complainants) requested joint consultations with the United States, regarding the US prohibition on the importation of certain shrimps and shrimp products caught with fishing technology considered by the United States adversely to affect the population of sea turtles—an endangered species under CITES.2The US prohibition arose from section 609 of Public Law 101–1623and associated regulations and judicial rulings (hereafter referred to as section 609). In a nutshell the complainants claimed denial of market access to their exports, and the United States justified this on grounds of conservation. However, as a consequence of the failure of the consultations, the WTO Dispute Settlement Body established a panel, around April 1997, to consider a joint complaint against the United States in relation to section 609. Australia, Ecuador, the European Communities, HongKong, China, Mexico and Nigeria joined the complainants as third parties. In May 1998 the panel's report was published, containing a decision in favour of the complainants. In July 1998 the United States appealed to the WTO Appellate Body, and in October 1998 the Appellate Body issued its report.4

International, European and in Italy and France - constitutional law take into account the vulnerability that characterises asylum seekers, by providing substantial disciplines to grant them some form of political-humanitarian protection when they fall under the conditions normatively provided for those purposes The thesis aims toverify whether this weakness is considered by the procedural disciplines as well. Indeed, the guarantee of the fundamental rights of the foreigner does not concern only the normative level, but it involves the judges as well. The asylum seeker must enjoy the possibility of defending his/her personal position before these latter. The question is very urgent, especially when considering the tendency to approve increasingly restrictive national laws. The positivisation of the right to asylum, an essential prerequisite for its realization, is not likely to cancel the distance between its enunciation and its realization; it rather reproduces it on a different level, that of effectiveness. The question arising is then that of verifying the effectiveness of the protection for asylum seekers, with specific reference to the judicial phase of the procedure for the recognition of the right. More particularly, this thesis aims at studying the concrete possibility for these individuals to apply to the judge by asking him/her the recognition of the right to asylum after the negative decision of the administrative authority on the same request. ; Après avoir constaté que le droit international, européen et - en Italie et en France – constitutionnel prennent en considération la vulnérabilité qui caractérise les demandeurs d'asile, en prévoyant au niveau substantiel des disciplines pour leurs accorder une quelque forme de protection politique humanitaire au cas où ils tombent dans les conditions normativement prévues à ceux fins, la thèse vise à vérifier si cette faiblesse est tenue en compte par les disciplines processuelles aussi. En effet, la garantie des droits fondamentaux de l'étranger ne relève pas seulement du niveau normatif ; le premier lieu de tutelle des non-citoyens est celui des tribunaux. Le droit d'asile peut se dire plein seulement quand l'étranger ait la possibilité effective de défendre sa position personnelle. La question est très urgente, notamment quand l'on considère la tendance à approuver des législations nationales de plus en plus restrictives. La positivisation du droit d'asile, préalable indispensable pour sa concrétisation, n'est pas de nature à annuler la distance entre son énonciation et sa réalisation ; elle la reproduit plutôt sur un niveau différent, celui de l'effectivité. Le problème qui s'impose à nous est alors celui de vérifier l'effectivité de la tutelle pour les demandeurs d'asile, avec référence à la phase juridictionnelle de la procédure pour l'octroi du droit. Plus spécifiquement, il s'agit d'étudier la possibilité concrète pour ces individus d'engager l'instance juridictionnelle pour qu'une forme de protection lui soit reconnu (au cas échéant) après la décision défavorable de l'autorité administrative sur la même demande.

Military assistance is a perennial feature of international relations. Such programmes typically aim to improve the effectiveness of local partners, exporting the donor's way of war through the provision of training and equipment. By remaking indigenous armies in their own image, donors likewise hope to mitigate the profound agency costs associated with the transfer of military capability. But, while technical and organisational transformations can provide notable battlefield advantages, the philosophies underlying such innovations are not so easily propagated. Instead, new tactics, structures and technologies typically intersect with pre-existing local schemata of war, producing novel if sometimes dysfunctional hybrid praxes. According to principal-agent theory, the application of greater conditionality in the provision of military assistance should improve the fidelity of military diffusion, aligning agents' divergent interests with their principals' goals. In practice, however, principal-agent exchanges rarely exist in isolation. Examining the modernisation of nineteenth-century Japan as a case study in military diffusion, this paper argues that competition between rival patrons allows recipient states to play would-be principals off against each other, bypassing conditionality by replicating a marketplace for military assistance. In so doing, however, agents trade functionality for sovereignty in their military diffusion.