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The alliance system of the United States is frequently called an empire, and for good reason. But it is a peculiar form of empire, in which the metropolitan center seems directed and ruled by the periphery. In the classic idea of empire, rule flowed from the top down. Not in this one. This inversion is nowhere more evident than in the relationship between the United States and Israel. Biden responded to the October 7 attacks by giving Israel total support for its aim of destroying Hamas. The same pattern is apparent in policy toward Ukraine. For 18 months, the Biden administration did not dare to set limits on Ukraine's war aims, though these anticipated, absurdly, total victory over Russia, with Vladimir Putin in the dock at the end. These certitudes, however, have begun to shake. Within the administration, there seems to have been a great awakening over the last few weeks that neither course is sustainable. The gist of recent reporting is as follows: the Ukrainians are losing the war and have to acknowledge that fact, better now than later. The Israelis are behaving barbarically and have got to be reined in, else our reputation in the world is ruined. On the Ukraine front, there were two bombshells. One was an NBC story that painted a dire picture of the military situation and reported that U.S. and European diplomats were telling Ukraine of the need to restrict its aims. It's too late in the day to hope for anything other than a stalemate, said one former administration official: "it's time to do a deal." The other was a long essay in Time that characterized Zelensky as a messianic and fanatical figure, out of touch with Ukraine's worsening prospects. Corruption is even worse than alleged. The West is scraping the bottom of the barrel for key military items. Ukraine's military can't find new recruits. More appropriations from Congress, even the $61 billion requested by the administration, can solve none of these problems.For 18 months, the Biden administration insisted that Ukraine's aims were wholly its own to determine and that the United States would support them regardless. With Ukraine's summer offensive having met with almost total failure, the administration appears to be getting cold feet. This is all very hush-hush, with "quiet" discussions reputedly going on behind the scenes. It's probable, indeed, that Biden's advisers are divided. Though official policy hasn't changed a whit, the impetus to do so is clearly there. The bind over Israel is yet more acute. According to widespread reports, Biden and his advisers believe that Israel is embarked on a mad project in Gaza. They see that the United States — having given Israel a green light, a blank check, and tons of bombs — will be held directly responsible for the awful humanitarian consequences. They don't think Israel has defined a coherent endgame. They fear they are presiding over a moral enormity. They see a precipitous collapse in support from others. Over the past month, Biden has warned the Israelis not to act out of anger and vengeance in retaliation for October 7, advised against a ground invasion of Gaza, and insisted that Israel seek to avoid civilian deaths as much as possible. Use smaller bombs, say Biden's military advisers. Eroding support, his administration told the Israelis, "will have dire strategic consequences for Israel Defense Forces operations against Hamas." Last weekend, Secretary of State Antony Blinken went to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with these ideas and with a request for a "humanitarian pause." Bibi's response: ain't gonna happen. I have an idea. The United States could threaten to suspend military shipments to Israel if it failed to agree to a ceasefire. That might make an impression. Defying Israel, however, is something that no president since George H.W. Bush has been willing to do. The U.S. approach over the last 30 years, as now, has been in the voice of a steadfast friend: "This is really for your own good, but we wouldn't dare demand it of you." Hug the Israelis tight and reassure them endlessly of your undying commitment; that was the way to win an argument with them. There have been some Israeli leaders who responded to this approach, but Benjamin Netanyahu was never one of them. Bill Clinton's comment after first meeting with Netanyahu in 1996 — "Who's the fucking superpower here? — reflects Bibi's considered judgment that he can call forth domestic opposition in the United States that will nullify any threat from a U.S. president. Today, 66% of Americans want a ceasefire, according to one poll, but less than five percent of the House of Representatives does, so maybe Bibi knows whereof he speaks. AIPAC is busy with attack ads against the few brave congresspeople who have criticized Israel and called for a ceasefire. But Biden has to worry about America's larger role in the world and is alive to the likelihood that what is coming in Gaza will wreck America's legitimacy. Who in the non-West could ever bear again a lecture from the United States on its zealous commitment to human rights? What would this do to America's case against Russia? On present trends — no exit to the Sinai for the mass of Gaza's population, the complete collapse of the health and sanitation systems, relentless Israeli military pressure and economic blockade, 1.5 million already displaced — it is difficult to see how the total casualty count among Gazans avoids numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Probably many more will die from disease and epidemics than from bullets and bombs. The experience, as Netanyahu has said, will be remembered "for decades to come." What if it registers in world public opinion as an historic crime? Incredibly, advocates of total war against Hamas invoke Dresden, Hiroshima, and other atrocities to justify their course, neglecting that neither Germany nor Japan had anyone to weep for them after the war, whereas Palestinians have 1.8 billion Muslims to weep over them today. The obvious fact is that Israel cannot pursue to the end its aim of destroying Hamas without causing death on a biblical scale. There is no reason whatsoever for the United States to embrace these aims.Biden's choice is to get tough with the Israelis or to go along with what he fears is going to be a gigantic catastrophe. There are precedents for getting tough, but they are admittedly distant ones. Dwight Eisenhower did it in 1956 over the Anglo-French-Israeli Suez adventure. Bush I did it in 1991 over loan guarantees to Israel. But the most resonant example is 1982, when Ronald Reagan told Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to cease Israeli's bombardment of Beirut. "Menachem," Reagan said, "this is a holocaust." To Reagan's surprise, his threat of an agonizing reappraisal worked. "I didn't know I had that kind of power," he told his aide Mike Deaver. At the time of Reagan's threat, the death toll from two and a half months of war approached 20,000, of which nearly half were civilians.Can Biden summon the will to confront Netanyahu? Will his administration force Ukraine to the bargaining table? In our weird empire, where dependents call the shots, deeply embedded tendencies dictate a negative answer to both questions, though wise policy would dictate positive ones. Perhaps the time is ripe for a new policy in which America consults its own national interests rather than theirs.

October 3, 2023 marks the 30th anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu, when American forces engaged in a pitched battle with a Somali militia in a densely populated residential neighborhood in Mogadishu, Somalia. This battle has become popularly known as "Black Hawk Down" in reference to the several UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters shot down during the battle, leading to the deaths of 18 U.S. soldiers and at least 300 Somali casualties, including militia and civilians. Much has been written about how this event, and the wider U.S. military intervention in Somalia, was a watershed moment heralding a new "world order" led by the U.S. in the aftermath of the Cold War. However, one of the most consequential impacts of U.S. interventions in Somalia has been the hindrance of local socio-political processes that might have, with time, provided an exit from the condition of permanent conflict. In so doing, these interventions have contributed to the continuation of conflict and historical paralysis in Somalia. The Battle of Mogadishu was the culmination of a U.S.-led UN intervention in Somalia which went through several iterations that progressively became more militarized. It began in April 1992 with United Nations Operations in Somalia I (UNOSOM I), which was mandated to monitor a ceasefire agreement between the warring parties in Mogadishu following the fall of the Somali state in early 1991. The ceasefire, however, never took hold, gravely hampering the delivery of humanitarian aid in the midst of an appalling famine. The harrowing images of starving children broadcasted across the globe partly informed the U.S. decision to offer to organize and lead a multinational force, United Task Force (UNITAF). The UN accepted the offer and UNITAF forces arrived in Somalia in December 1992 with the objective and mandate to provide security and facilitate humanitarian relief efforts. UNITAF was succeeded by UNOSOM II in March 1995 with a force of about 30,000 from 27 countries. The U.S. contributed a little over 1,000 personnel to this force, but exercised significant control over the operations. UNOSOM II not only took over the mandate of UNITAF in terms of securing and facilitating aid delivery, but was further tasked with nation-building, including forcible disarmament. This led to a confrontation between UNOSOM II and one of the militias, Somali National Alliance (SNA) led by General Mohamed Farah Aidid. U.S. forces led this confrontation carrying out raids against SNA militia and Aidid. After a series of increasingly violent reprisal attacks, U.S. forces raided a hotel in Mogadishu October 3, 1993 to capture high ranking SNA personnel. The disastrous result of the raid ultimately led the Clinton administration to change course and withdraw U.S. forces from Somalia in the spring of 1994. The U.N. followed suit and was out of Somalia by early 1995. There has been widespread criticism of various aspects of the U.S./UN intervention: the militarization of the intervention with the inevitably high civilian casualties, the racist violence and abuse of Somali civilians, the caricature and reduction of the crisis to images of starving children and drug-crazed militias, the UN's insistence that its failure to act quickly to avert the famine was entirely due to security concerns and not bureaucratic inertia, and the claim that 80% of food supplies meant for famine victims were being looted. Despite the criticism of the intervention, many also felt that the withdrawal of U.S. forces and the termination of UNOSOM II would lead to a resumption of violence and upsurge in the suffering of the population. The fact that this did not happen is a testament to the dynamics of the conflict and social processes that worked to overcome the conflict. Subsequent to the U.S. and UN withdrawal in early 1995, Somalia not only did not return to a cycle of violence, but experienced relative stability in what one commentator referred to as "governance without government." This period lasting about a decade, 1995-2004/05, was characterized by the formation of various self-governance arrangements based on locality and kinship relations as well as the emergence of conflict adjudication/arbitration centers in urban settings like Mogadishu.The best examples of the autonomous and semi-autonomous local administrations that emerged are Somaliland and Puntland in the north and northeast of the country. While no similarly successful administration emerged in the central and southern regions of the country, large-scale conflicts dissipated there as well as conflicts became localized. With the localization of conflicts, it became easier for communities to find locally-grounded solutions led by a mixture of traditional elders, business people, and civic groups. In some urban centers, meanwhile, there emerged adjudication/arbitration centers that utilized a mixture of sharia and Somali customs (heer) to resolve disputes. The most well-known and successful of these are the sharia courts of Mogadishu. These courts emerged within a year of the disintegration of the central government in 1991 as an expression of neighborhood residents' desire to address the disorder and anarchy. Given the centrality of sharia to the very idea of justice and law in Somali society, the centers began to be referred to as sharia courts. The sharia courts of Mogadishu brought a certain level of security to some neighborhoods in Mogadishu throughout the 90s and early 2000s despite the opposition of warlords and militias. The return of large-scale violence to Somalia coincided with the next U.S. intervention. The sharia courts of Mogadishu attracted the attention of American officials in Nairobi starting in the early 2000s because of a suspicion that individuals associated with some of the sharia courts might be harboring suspects in the 1998 U.S. East African embassy bombings. To help find and capture these suspects, the CIA started funneling money to warlords in Mogadishu. This strategy backfired as the sharia courts, with the massive support of Mogadishu residents, defeated the warlords. Whether perpetrators of the bombings were in Mogadishu or not, it was short-sighted to enlist the support of the warlords and target the sharia courts, as the State Department's political officer for Somalia pointed out at the time, because the courts were not a homogenous entity. They were an assortment of independent adjudication centers reflecting the entire spectrum of Islamist views in Somalia. Moreover, the warlords had a terrible reputation and were disliked by the people. When the warlords failed, the U.S. then supported an Ethiopian invasion of Mogadishu in mid-2006 that eventually disbanded the sharia courts. This invasion also backfired because it conferred legitimacy to the most radical elements within the sharia courts, thus, setting the stage for the rise of al-Shabaab and transformation of Somalia into a frontline state in the global war on terror. These American interventions in Somalia can be critiqued from many angles, but what is often overlooked and more damaging in the long run is the impact they had on local historical processes that might have led to Somalia overcoming its protracted conflict. Every time the U.S. intervenes directly or indirectly, through local or regional proxies, it reshuffles the decks, putting an end to organic political and social processes, thus contributing to the perpetuation of the Somali conflict that is now over three decades old. This is not to suggest that local processes of adaptation and governance will necessarily lead to a centralized government or a liberal democracy. But the presumption that this is the only way for Somalia to exit from conflict is part of the problem.

On September 14, a Houthi delegation and a team of Omani diplomats flew to Riyadh for talks on resolving the Yemeni conflict(s), constituting the highest-level Houthi-Saudi official negotiations on Saudi soil since Yemen's civil war began nine years ago. On September 20, Saudi officials said the visit produced "positive results." The talks followed a five-month hiatus in peace negotiations since after the last round of Omani-facilitated Houthi-Saudi negotiations that took place in Sana'a in April. The most recent talks appeared to offer more hope for a sustained truce between the Houthis and the kingdom, which would be necessary for bringing lasting peace to Yemen. But concerns persist that a final peace accord between those two parties to what has been a devastating conflict may lead to renewed warfare between the Houthis and other Yemeni factions.New Saudi LanguageIn Riyadh, the Houthi delegation met with Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, who referred to the visiting Houthi representatives as the "Sana'a delegation," rather than "the Houthis" or "Ansar Allah," the official name of the Houthi militia. Such terminology appeared to signal Riyadh's recognition that the Houthis are indeed running a government, underscoring Saudi Arabia's growing willingness to find a modus vivendi with the powerful force that has effectively consolidated power in northern Yemen. "The shift in language to 'Sana'a delegation' is significant," according to Elisabeth Kendall, who teaches Arab studies at the University of Cambridge. "The Houthis and Ansar Allah have long been vilified in the Saudi media, so removing references to them appears designed to de-stigmatize the talks and avoid any notion of a Saudi climb-down," she told RS."The significance of new naming stems from re-positioning and pre-understandings: the desire to improve [the] diplomatic atmosphere, flip the page of full tensions at any cost, confer symbolic recognition, and gradually shift public perceptions," agreed Ibrahim Jalal, a non-resident scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. (Editor's note: MEI counts the Saudi government among its major donors.)Obstacles to a Houthi-Saudi PactDespite recent progress, the Houthis and Saudis have yet to finally reach a permanent truce, and more work will be required. At least four delicate issues remain unresolved. First is the issue of salary payments for public sector employees in the Houthi-controlled north, where approximately 80% of Yemen's population lives. The Houthis demand payments of salaries of public sector workers in areas under their control. But their adversaries worry that the money will fund Ansar Allah's war machine. Nonetheless, there is some vagueness to this Houthi demand because sometimes Ansar Allah frames their demand as if the Houthis want all the back payment while on other occasions making it seem as though they are only demanding salary payments moving forward.The second issue deals with the distribution of Yemen's national oil and gas revenues. "The Houthis will get what they've been demanding for a long time — their share. Or they won't allow the export of oil and gas to proceed in peace," Nabeel Khoury, the former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Yemen who is currently a non-resident Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC, told RS.The third concern has to do with Houthi demands that the Saudis permit the unrestricted- reopening of Sana'a international airport, as well as other airports in Yemen, and the country's seaports. While these airports and ports have already opened up significantly over the past year, the Houthis demand that they fully reopen. Additionally, Ansar Allah demands flights to and from Sana'a airport from more countries than currently permitted.The final issue regards the Houthis' access to funds in Yemen's Aden-based Central Bank. The talks thus far have addressed how the Central Bank can be reunited, either in Yemen or possibly in another country such as Oman or Jordan. "The idea is again a Houthi demand that money going into the central bank should be available to them as well. The logistics of this will be an important consideration," according to Khoury.Largely thanks to Oman's much-lauded mediation skills, momentum behind the negotiations appears to have accelerated. However, these talks will probably move slowly, with progress coming incrementally given the long-standing distrust that exists between the Houthis and the Saudis. Although trust-building between the two sides can't happen overnight, it is significant that the Houthis sent a senior delegation to Riyadh.Moreover, a September 25 Houthi drone attack along the Yemeni-Saudi border, which resulted in the death of at least three Bahraini soldiers, may set the talks back. According to Jalal, this attack was part of a Houthi effort to "exercise pressure to secure more Saudi concessions…and flip the page at any cost." It will be important to see if and when the Houthis carry out more such attacks and how Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) might respond.Yemen's Bigger Picture There is more to the Yemeni civil war than the Houthi-Saudi conflict. There are many other conflicts in the country that will require hard work to resolve. If a Houthi-Saudi pact is in fact achieved, it will not guarantee peace between Ansar Allah and other armed groups in Yemen. Many communities in Yemen fear that the Houthis could turn their formidable military power on them after they sign a potential truce with Riyadh."This issue is that the Houthis will have reached a deal with the Saudis, not with their domestic enemies and rivals," according to Kendall. "If the Houthis no longer face any military threat from Saudi, they may feel empowered to push their advantage domestically to gain further territory, more resources and greater political power." "Currently, there is no shared domestic vision for the future shape of Yemen, neither between the Houthis and the internationally recognized government, nor even between the nominally allied members of that government. With the domestic parties themselves so heavily factionalized, the risk of civil war or a frozen conflict remains high," she added.Jalal echoed those concerns. "While efforts to end the conflict are welcome, all non-Houthi Yemeni groups and political parties have legitimate concerns, as they should, given the very domestic root causes of the conflict and multiplicity of stakes and interests. "Ongoing Saudi-Houthi talks are one layer but have yet to address the complexity of what matters most to Yemenis, who shall the seek to improve the quality, content and design of any peace agreement because in the past [they] paid the price of fragile peace," he noted.The weak and fragile Presidential Leadership Council, which is Yemen's internationally recognized government, has not participated in the Houthi-Saudi talks. Nor has the UAE. As Khoury told RS, there are signs that Abu Dhabi is "quite miffed" by its exclusion. What this means is that a potential Houthi-Saudi Arabia truce could result in Ansar Allah consolidating its hold on the north, while a regime led by the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) that governs Aden and other parts of southern Yemen declares its independence. The STC has been clear that it will not accept a Houthi-Saudi pact imposed on all of Yemen without its agreement.Ultimately, the latest talks held in Riyadh with the Houthi delegation will ideally pave the way for inclusive Yemeni-Yemeni talks to establish a roadmap toward broader peace across all of Yemen. But the fear is that Yemen's civil war will reignite once Saudi Arabia exits. Time will tell whether a Houthi-Saudi pact would push Ansar Allah toward making concessions to other Yemeni groups or wage war against them.

In defiance of international norms and rules, U.S. officials are laying claim to the large oceanic area in the central Pacific Ocean that is home to the compact states.Now that they are renewing the economic provisions of the compacts of free association with Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia, U.S. officials are insisting that the compacts provide the United States with exclusive control over an area of the central Pacific Ocean that is comparable in size to the United States."We control essentially the northern half of the Pacific between Hawaii and Philippines," U.S. special envoy Joseph Yun told Congress in July.For decades, the United States has overseen compacts of free association with Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. Under the compacts, the United States provides the three countries with economic assistance while it maintains powerful military controls over the islands and their waters.One of these military controls, "the defense veto," enables the United States to prevent the compact states from forging international agreements that could impede U.S. military priorities. Consequently, the compact states have never joined the Treaty of Rarotonga, which established a nuclear free zone in the region.Another U.S. military control is "the right of strategic denial" by which U.S. officials assert that they can prevent other countries from accessing the compact states' lands, waters, and airspace."The compacts do give us full defense authority and responsibility in those countries and provide our ability to strategically deny third country military access," U.S. diplomat Jane Bocklage told Congress earlier this year.Although the compacts include language that permits the United States to foreclose access to the islands by third-party military forces, U.S. officials have broadly interpreted this language to mean that they can exclude third parties from the compact states' exclusive economic zones (EEZs), which extend up to 200 miles around each island's coastlines.At a congressional hearing in July, Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) asserted that strategic denial authority "allows us to deny access to any potential adversary in an area of the Pacific comparable in size to the continental United States." An associate presented a map that portrayed the EEZs as one contiguous area under U.S. control. "It's nearly as large as the continental United States," Barrasso remarked.Defense Department official Siddharth Mohandas agreed with the senator's interpretation. He claimed that the United States maintains unfettered and exclusive access to the area. "We have the ability to deny foreign militaries access and the ability to operate in the exclusive economic zones of the Freely Associated States," Mohandas said, referring to the compact states.This interpretation of strategic denial is inconsistent with international law. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, all countries have the rights of navigation and overflight in the exclusive economic zones of other countries, as stipulated by Articles 58 and 87.Most countries, including the compact states, are parties to the convention. The United States has never ratified the convention, but high-level U.S. officials have expressed their support for it."Although not yet a party to the treaty, the U.S. nevertheless observes the UN LOSC as reflective of customary international law and practice," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration explains, referring to the Convention on the Law of the Sea.When U.S. officials say that they have a right to exclude third-party actors from the compact states' exclusive economic zones, they are making claims that are inconsistent with the UN Convention. There is no legal basis for the United States to prevent ships from other countries from peacefully traversing the compact states' exclusive economic zones.More than two decades ago, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) acknowledged in a major report that strategic denial does not extend to the compact states' exclusive economic zones. According to the GAO report, strategic denial is limited to the 12-mile territorial waters that surround each island. Even within these smaller zones, the GAO noted, military vessels from other countries maintain the right of "innocent passage.""Statements by policymakers that indicate the United States has a right to deny military access to the islands and a vast area of the Pacific Ocean—a widely cited U.S. interest—overstate the breadth of this right, which only covers the individual islands and their 12-mile territorial waters," the GAO explained.A map included in the GAO report shows that strategic denial applies to small isolated areas rather than the much larger expanse of the Pacific Ocean that is often claimed by U.S. officials. A key implication of the GAO's map is that the United States cannot legally exclude third parties from the vast oceanic area that surrounds the compact states.In fact, U.S. officials have long taken the position that exclusive economic zones must remain open to navigation. Across the world, they have promoted "freedom of navigation," which they have presented as the freedom of ships to sail the world's oceans and waterways wherever the law allows, including in the exclusive economic zones of other countries.When U.S. officials have sent warships through some of the world's most contested waterways, such as the South and East China Seas, they have said that they are defending "freedom of navigation." The presence of U.S. military forces has often created tensions, possibly even violating Article 88 of the U.N. Convention, which requires ships to have peaceful purposes, but U.S. officials have always insisted that these operations are consistent with international law."We're committed to ensuring that every country can fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows," Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a speech in June. "Every country, large and small, must remain free to conduct lawful maritime activities."The U.S. mass media has often sided with the U.S. government's position on freedom of navigation, especially as it concerns U.S. military operations in the exclusive economic zones of rival countries. In a July 2023 report about North Korean criticisms of U.S. military activities in North Korea's exclusive economic zone, The New York Times indicated that North Korea has no legal basis for excluding U.S. military forces from the area."A country can claim the right to exploit marine resources in its so-called exclusive economic zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from its 12 nautical-mile territorial waters," The New York Times reported. "But it does not hold sovereignty over the zone's surface and the airspace above it."When countries such as China and North Korea claim that they have the right to regulate foreign military activities in their exclusive economic zones, U.S. officials always disagree, insisting that these areas must remain open to freedom of navigation, particularly for U.S. warships.Regarding coastal states such as China and North Korea, the U.S. position is that they "do not have the right to regulate foreign military activities in their EEZs," according to a report by the Congressional Research Service. "The United States will continue to operate its military ships in the EEZs of other countries."By claiming to have a right of strategic denial over the compact states' exclusive economic zones, however, U.S. officials are taking a position that is inconsistent with international law and their own practices in many parts of the world, including the Indo-Pacific. If they were to use force to prevent a third party from accessing the vast expanse of waters around the compact states, then they would be violating the law and the very principles that they apply to other countries.In short, U.S. officials have no legal basis for their claims to control the vast oceanic area that is home to the compact states, just as the GAO confirmed in its landmark report more than two decades ago.This article has been republished with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus.

China and the United States, like sports captains picking sides, have been engaged in a considered effort to enlist partners. In the recruitment rush, the Biden administration has given short shrift to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its much vaunted balancing, or "centrality" in the Asia Pacific. Washington, like Beijing, has favored certain ASEAN members over others, frustrated no doubt by the group's lack of cohesion and effectiveness. But in the new multipolar world, these hinge countries and their groupings can be as important as power poles. There has been a lot of coalition building lately. In August, the BRICS bloc — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — invited six new members to join at the start of 2024. In March, Iran and Saudi Arabia reestablished ties after years of antagonism in a deal brokered by Beijing. In July, China signed an accord on law enforcement and security with the Solomon Islands and announced a strategic partnership with Georgia. This month, China upgraded its relationship with American bugaboo Venezuela to an "all-weather" partnership.The U.S. has been similarly busy — perhaps more so to make up for Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) bridge-building over the past decade. In August, President Joe Biden and his Japanese and South Korean counterparts launched a trilateral grouping at Camp David. The U.S. and the Philippines in February revived an agreement giving increased American access to Filipino military facilities. In May, the U.S. and Papua New Guinea concluded a defense pact. At the G20 summit in New Delhi this month, the leaders of the U.S., the European Union, India, Saudi Arabia and other countries committed to developing an India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor for cooperation on clean energy, power grids and telecommunications. After the G20, Biden traveled to Hanoi where the U.S. and Vietnam announced that they were elevating relations to a "comprehensive strategic partnership," deepening cooperation in cloud computing, semiconductors and artificial intelligence — all areas of contention between Washington and Beijing. In a 2021 lecture, Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan described how the administration was assembling a "latticework of alliances and partnerships globally." This was "not just about refurbishing the old bilateral alliances," he explained, "but modernizing those elements of the latticework and adding new components." Sullivan cited as examples the upgrading of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S.), to leader level and the creation of AUKUS, the partnership among Australia, the United Kingdom and the U.S. to provide nuclear-powered submarines to Canberra and collaborate on advanced technologies.Both Washington and Beijing say they are not forcing countries to pick sides, though the impression that they do just that is unavoidable. Beijing has applied economic pressure on states for actions that it perceives to hew too closely to American positions — Canada, Australia, South Korea and Japan have had to deal with such coercion. In network building, the U.S. has offered more carrots than sticks, particularly when it comes to courting pivotal states that Washington deems to have distinct geostrategic importance and — more to the point — the capacity to contribute to countering or containing China. In the Indo-Pacific, India, the Philippines and Vietnam have been the chief recipients of American courtship. But what about ASEAN? Washington insists that it values ASEAN centrality, but the proof of its perspective is in its actions. Biden skipped ASEAN's annual leaders' jamboree with dialogue partners, leaving it to his vice president to go to Jakarta, but squeezed in a visit to Hanoi just days later. The president's participation in the G20 was a not-to-be-missed opportunity to butter up Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who only in June had been feted at the White House. India is the most-prized pivot country in the Indo-Pacific (that status so obvious in the term). Under Modi, it sees itself as a power pole in its own right. New Delhi has proven its multi-alignment credentials, with its participation in the Quad, the BRICS and the China/Russia-conceived Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and its refusal to turn against traditional ally Moscow since the Ukraine war broke out. Biden is oiling the Indian hinge so it swings more Washington's way — and may be succeeding, given India's border clashes with China and its participation in joint military activities in the Pacific, Quad initiatives and Biden's Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF).ASEAN should be as critical a hinge player if not to win over, at least to keep "central" as the region's balancer — a crucial section of the lattice that would act as a security blanket for peace and stability. Some member states, worried that the China-U.S. rivalry undermines their agency, have warned the two great powers against forcing them to choose sides. ASEAN has not bought into the American Indo-Pacific construct, merely articulating an "outlook" on the concept. Southeast Asian nations will profit more not by putting on any one team's jersey, but instead playing the field as something of a referee or honest broker in good stead with both sides, however heated the competition.U.S. administrations have never taken the centrality of ASEAN seriously, largely because member states themselves have failed to show what it means to be the region's ballast. It is a systemic problem — ASEAN is no EU in either form or practice. Even though it has launched an "economic community" and has sought to address thorny problems, such as Myanmar and the South China Sea, as a group, it remains a politically divided, economically diverse collection of states, with a reputation for glacial progress and ineffectiveness. It was born this way, though it was successful in its founding mission to be a bulwark against communism's spread.But ASEAN has strengths beyond being the world's fifth largest economy. Its convening power is unmatched, reaching across economic and strategic spheres. Its ASEAN Regional Forum and ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting-Plus are as evolved and inclusive a strategic framework for the region as is possible. ASEAN-led platforms offer a neutral space for the great powers to interact on a wide range of issues. By lavishing attention on certain ASEAN members — the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore (host of a U.S. military facility) — Washington is mimicking the Chinese divide-and-conquer approach (Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are reckoned to be on Team Beijing). But even small gaps weaken a lattice. The ASEAN way may be slow and plodding — negotiations with Beijing on a code of conduct in the South China Sea have dragged on for years — but this tortoise cannot be written off.In a speech on September 13 outlining "the power and purpose of American diplomacy," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tellingly never mentioned ASEAN. Yet, the Biden administration may be smartening up. Seven of the ASEAN 10 are part of the IPEF, the American answer to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), from which the U.S. withdrew, and the ASEAN-China concocted Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) trade accord. And guess who's coming to the White House for a bilateral with Biden in November? Indonesian President Joko Widodo, the very leader whom Biden "snubbed" in favor of one night in Vietnam. With its sizable population, strategic geographical position, participation in China's BRI, a maritime dispute of its own with Beijing, a growing strategic relationship with Washington, and a critical presidential election next year, Indonesia is the key hinge power in Southeast Asia. Like India, it has proven its agency and pragmatism, particularly in vital areas such as data security standards and infrastructure development. Giving Jakarta more attention would bolster ASEAN's position in the American Indo-Pacific latticework, especially with Laos, a country that tilts towards Beijing and is taking over from Indonesia as ASEAN chair next year.

Romina Boccia


Following the Fiscal Responsibility Act's passage, many legislators remain rightfully concerned that the May 2023 debt limit deal doesn't do nearly enough to rein in out‐​of‐​control federal deficits and debt. Now Fitch Ratings has given them a wake‐​up call by downgrading the U.S. credit rating from AAA (the highest possible rating) to AA+. The good news: some members are grappling seriously with fiscal governance issues and voicing support for an independent fiscal commission to address the growth in public debt. Critics charge that relying on an independent commission, especially one whose recommendations would be fast‐​tracked, would be an abdication of Congress's fiscal responsibilities. This view is misguided.
Within mere days of the debt limit deal crossing the finish line, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R‑CA) floated the idea of a BRAC‐​like fiscal commission to address the critical part of the federal budget that was left completely out of debt limit negotiations: rapidly growing entitlement spending. BRAC stands for Base Realignment and Closure and refers to a particular commission structure that helped Congress overcome gridlock in closing military bases. Congress completed five rounds of BRAC from 1988 to 2005, closing more than 100 defense facilities as a result. BRAC offers a powerful model for helping Congress resolve challenges in another politically fraught area: entitlements. According to Rep. Steve Womack (R‑AR), who supported the idea:
"We need to get as much of the politics out of it as we can and just give us the facts… And the facts are that 70% of this whole federal budget is on autopilot right now."

A BRAC‐​like fiscal commission is a promising idea for overcoming political obstacles to entitlement reform. To increase the commission's odds of success, it should be composed of independent experts, tasked with a clear and attainable objective, such as stabilizing the growth in the debt at no more than the GDP of the country, and empowered with fast‐​track authority, such that its recommendations become self‐​executing upon presidential approval, without Congress having to affirmatively vote on their enactment.
That last part, that the commission proposal be self‐​executing unless Congress objects, is key for giving legislators political cover to vocally object to reforms that will create inevitable winners and losers, without re‐​election concerns undermining an outcome that's in the best interest of the nation. According to Colton Campbell in his book, Discharging Congress: Government by Commission:
"Congress occasionally uses an ad hoc commission to distance itself from a politically risky decision. Members struggle when local interests collide with larger policy needs. They may want to see things go well for the nation, but they also want to get reelected. Typically, these conflicting preferences are such that no one can reconcile them, because most congressional representatives see themselves as agents of their constituents and are therefore unwilling to sacrifice their districts to the collective good… [A commission] mechanism paradoxically enables affected legislators to become advocates for their constituents rather than bearers of bad news. They can passionately plead the case for their constituents but also confront a national policy need."

Legislators may have legitimate concerns about delegating extensive legislative responsibility to an independent commission, including that such a mechanism would reduce democratic accountability. Unelected officials do not represent constituents in the way members of Congress do. And that's exactly the point of empowering a commission to make fiscal reforms which have repeatedly eluded Congress.
Discussions concerning the original Base Closure and Realignment Commission are telling in this respect. The late Senator McCain (R‑AZ), in responding to Senator Cohen's (R‑ME) objection that Congress is abdicating its responsibility to decide over the funding for military bases by delegating the task to a commission, argued:
"The Congress has probably abdicated its responsibilities… However, I would like to point out that it is very clear that we are at a condition of gridlock as far as base closings are concerned…history indicates that we are incapable of acting in any other way because of the enormous political repercussions which result in each of our States as a result of a move to close a base or a military installation."

Others worry that an expansive fiscal commission with fast‐​track authority could violate Congress's constitutional Article I power that "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." Legislators can make sure to design a BRAC‐​like fiscal commission such that it respects Congress's legislative powers.
Congressional delegation is constitutionally acceptable so long as Congress establishes clear directives, such as tasking the commission with achieving a specified outcome (i.e. stabilizing debt at no more than 100 percent of GDP within the 10‐​year budget window), and puts in place oversight functions (i.e. reporting requirements), and for as long as Congress retains ultimate legislative say (i.e. the ability to reject the commission proposal). As the Supreme Court noted in Yakus v. United States, "Congress is not confined to that method of executing its policy which involves the least possible delegation of discretion to administrative officers."
Contrary to what some legislators and their staff seem to believe, there's no need for Congress to take an up‐​or‐​down vote on a fiscal commission proposal. Whether Congress decides to empower a fiscal commission with fast‐​track authority is a way to assess whether legislators are serious about tackling the country's fiscal challenges or kicking the can down the road with yet another fig leaf commission. According to J.D. Foster, a former Heritage Foundation economist who previously served as chief economist for the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush:
"A distinguishing feature between a useful and a useless deficit commission is whether Congress is required to vote on its recommendations. Unless Congress expressly legislates to the contrary at the outset, a presidential commission's recommendations are little more than dust in the wind."

BRAC discussions in the House of Representatives during the 100th Congress reflect a similar view. As Representative Jon Kyl (R‑AZ) stated:
"I do not think we are fooling anyone when we say we are all for closing obsolete bases, but then we attach so many preconditions to it that we know we are never going to end up closing the bases. One of these is the difference between automatic closure and the provision that would require Congress to affirmatively act. Who among us believes that we will actually close bases if we have to affirmatively act?"

It's difficult to believe Congress would find it any easier to affirmatively vote for entitlement benefit changes than for base closures. Prudent legislators must confront the political reality of complete gridlock on the entitlement spending issue and act accordingly. With Medicare and Social Security responsible for 95 percent of long‐​term unfunded obligations, according to the Treasury Financial Report, there's simply no way that any serious fiscal reform effort can leave these programs untouched.
Congress long ago decided to abdicate its fiscal responsibilities by putting large and far‐​reaching government programs on autopilot, without any meaningful requirement for regular review. Entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare have grown without course correction for decades. It becomes clear to even casual observers of congressional budget battles that legislators seem paralyzed in addressing exploding entitlement spending. Few legislators—or presidential candidates—are even willing to talk about the need to reform programs like Medicare and Social Security.
At least a few legislators are beginning to consider a new mechanism for forcing action on the growing debt issue. Delegating debt stabilization to an independent commission with fast‐​track authority is a sign of Congress taking responsibility for correcting the fiscal course, it is not an abdication of duty. And addressing the unsustainable growth in Medicare and Social Security spending is also the one meaningful way to restore the U.S. credit rating for the long‐​term.

Nicholas Anthony


Senators Cynthia Lummis (R‑WY) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D‑NY) introduced an updated version of their Responsible Financial Innovation Act. The bulk of the bill addresses issues around market structure and cryptocurrency exchanges—issues my colleagues Jack Solowey and Jennifer Schulp have discussed at length. Yet, within the bill also lies an interesting section on combatting illicit finance within the cryptocurrency market.
What makes this section so interesting is that Senators Lummis and Gillibrand appear to have largely adopted this section from a separate bill introduced by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D‑MA) and Roger Marshall (R‑KS). In fact, all four senators just joined hands to introduce this section as a standalone amendment to this year's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). As many might remember, the Warren‐​Marshall bill received a nearly instant wave of criticism from Cato, Coin Center, Bitcoin Policy Institute, Bitcoin Magazine, Filecoin Foundation, and many others when it was first introduced.
Coin Center's Peter Van Valkenburgh wrote, "The bipartisan Digital Asset Anti‐​Money Laundering Act, introduced today by Sens. Warren and Marshall, is the most direct attack on the personal freedom and privacy of cryptocurrency users and developers we've yet seen." Filecoin's Marta Belcher wrote, "The bill would also effectively ban privacy‐​enhancing technologies in blockchain networks. The bill is a disaster for digital privacy and civil liberties."
A cursory look at the bill makes it easy to see why everyone was so concerned. The Warren‐​Marshall bill proposed expanding anti‐​money laundering (AML) and know‐​your‐​customer (KYC) surveillance to self‐​hosted wallets and cryptocurrency ATMs as well as effectively setting a prohibition on the use of cryptocurrency mixers. The bill also proposed having the Treasury, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) levy new examination and review processes on the companies they oversee. Finally, the bill proposed a requirement for Americans to report to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) if they transact more than $10,000 in cryptocurrency if at least one party in the transaction is outside the United States. As Valkenburgh and Belcher said at the time, it was a direct attack on digital privacy and civil liberties.
How the Two Bills Stack Up
The good news is that the new Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill did not copy the Warren‐​Marshall bill entirely. The Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill would not necessarily expand surveillance to self‐​hosted wallets, prohibit the use of cryptocurrency mixers, or force Americans to report cross‐​border transactions over $10,000. The bad news is that the Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill did pick up other pieces of the Warren‐​Marshall bill (see Figure 1).












Like the Warren‐​Marshall bill, the Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill would require cryptocurrency ATMs to "verify the identity of each customer using a valid form of government‐​issued identification or other documentary method, as determined by the Secretary of the Treasury." The bill would also require owners of cryptocurrency ATMs to report the physical location of ATMs to FinCEN every four months. Targeting ATMs may not be as severe as surveilling self‐​hosted wallets and effectively prohibiting mixers, but it's important to recognize that requiring cryptocurrency users to have their identities verified is still taking a stance against financial privacy.
The Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill also adopted the Warren‐​Marshall proposal to have the Treasury, SEC, and CFTC create new "risk‐​focused examination and review" processes for the companies they oversee. These examinations would be intended to monitor how companies are complying with anti‐​money laundering requirements. Considering compliance is already estimated to cost financial institutions $46 billion a year in the United States to stop an unknown amount of crime, it's unclear what exactly this added burden will contribute, especially since the specifics are left for the agencies to determine.
Where the Warren‐​Marshall bill would have prohibited the use of cryptocurrency mixers, the Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill takes a more nuanced approach by instead requiring FinCEN to issue a report to Congress that explains how mixers are used in markets currently and to make recommendations on possible future legislation. This approach is better than the prohibition proposed by the Warren‐​Marshall bill. However, this approach will require watchful eyes on the part of the public. On the one hand, the report could easily give FinCEN another tool to argue for further expanding its authority over financial transactions. On the other hand, the report could result in essentially kicking a prohibition to a later date.
Beyond Warren and Marshall
The Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill also makes a few unique additions of its own outside of what was adopted from the Warren‐​Marshall bill.
Notably, the section on combatting illicit finance opens with an amendment on penalties for cryptocurrency related crimes. By amending 12 U.S.C. Section 1957, the Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill would make it so violations of financial recordkeeping laws (12 U.S.C. Chapter 21) where cryptocurrency is involved can lead to additional punishments with up to $10,000 in fines and up to five years in prison. It's possible this provision is partly a response to the fall of FTX given it raises the stakes for keeping proper accounting standards.
The Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill would also see to the creation of a working group dedicated to crafting proposals to combat illicit finance. The group would include officials from both law enforcement and regulatory agencies as well as businesses working on cryptocurrency technology, financial institutions, and research organizations. Within this theme, the bill would also require the President to issue a separate, public report. Although exchanging ideas in an open manner is commendable, it's unfortunate that legislation is required to make that happen. (Though, perhaps that's more so a commentary on politics at large.)
Continuing the theme of opening new dialogues, the Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill would create an "Innovation Laboratory" within FinCEN. The laboratory would be dedicated to promoting "regulatory dialogue, data sharing between the FinCEN and financial companies, and an assessment of potential changes in law, rules, or policies to facilitate the appropriate supervision." This idea might sound nice to some, but FinCEN's history of repeatedly refusing to provide data to prove the effectiveness of anti‐​money laundering surveillance in general makes it hard to have faith in the agency's ability to live up to what the senators have in mind. One may be comforted because it's a statutory requirement, but events earlier this year have shown that statutory requirements have still not been enough to get real answers about the effectiveness of anti‐​money laundering requirements.
Finally, although it was not in the section on combatting illicit finance, it's worth mentioning that the Lummis‐​Gillibrand bill does address self‐​hosted wallets elsewhere in the bill. When discussing risk management, the bill says that the CFTC and the SEC must create standards regarding money laundering, customer identification, and sanctions compliance for exchanges dealing with self‐​hosted wallets. This move is not the same assault levied by the Warren‐​Marshall bill. Yet, at the same time, it is concerning that these rules are being left open for regulators to decide and will require watchful eyes if it comes to fruition.
Conclusion
Taken together, the Lummis‐​Gillibrand approach may not be as concerning as the Warren‐​Marshall bill, but that is not to say it is not concerning at all. Although Senators Warren and Marshall sought to take a leap forward for expanding financial surveillance, Senators Lummis and Gillibrand are still creeping forward by pushing forth these proposals. It's for that reason that the Lummis‐​Gillibrand and Warren‐​Marshall alliance should be concerning for advocates of privacy and freedom.
It was only a few months ago that Senator Warren was described as "building an anti‐​crypto army." The fact that her proposals spreading, even in limited form, should give people pause to ask if that army isn't growing. The new bill is not the full assault from last year, but it also isn't a retreat.
As debates move forward on both this bill and the recent NDAA amendment, it will be important for the public to keep a watchful eye.

The objective of this work was to present and validate a comprehensive evaluation model of occupational health and safety management (GSST), this method is based on the conceptualization of GSST, identifying areas and dimensions, which, when conceptualized and subsequently decoded, allow us to reach measurable elements, the indicators. Which applied through a scalar instrument, to the interested parties (Stakeholders), in a weighted way, allows through technical processing, to arrive at a comprehensive control and monitoring table of the GSST, allowing the elaboration of an improvement plan considering; areas, dimensions, and each of the stakeholders jointly or disaggregated, the method used is descriptive with a semi-quantitative approach, and the Delphi technique (consultation of experts) was used for validation, applied to 25 national and international prevention specialists. from six countries, generating general results that allowed us to endorse our proposal. Keywords: Evaluation, indicators, 360 degrees, safety, health at work. References [1]OIT, Organización Internacional del Trabajo, «Seguridad y Salud en el Centro de Trabajo del Futuro, Aprovechar los 100 años de Experiencia,» OIT, Ginebra,2019. [2]MDT, Ministerio del Trabajo del Ecuador, «Reglamento de Seguridad y Salud de los Trabajadores y Mejoramiento del Medio Ambiente de Trabajo,» RegistroOficial, Quito, 1986. [3]J. Molano and N. Arévalo, «De la salud ocupacional a la gestión de la seguridad y salud en el trabajo: más que semántica, una transformación del sistema general de riesgos laborales,» Innovar, vol. 23, nº 48, pp. 21-31, 1 abril 2013. [4]CAN, Comunidad Andina de Naciones, «Resolución 957,» de Reglamento del Instrumento Andino de Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo, Lima, 2008. [5]OIT, Organización Internacional del Trabajo, «Sistema de Gestión de la SST, una Herramienta para la mejora continua,» Publicaciones OIT, Ginebra, 2011. [6]M. Riaño, E. Hoyos and I. Valero, «Evolución de un sistema de gestión de seguridad y salud en el trabajo e impacto en la accidentalidad laboral,» Ciencia & Trabajo, vol. 18, nº 55, pp. 68-72, 13 marzo 2016. [7]R. Lira, «Index de percepció veïnal,» Centro de Recursos comunitarios de Badalona, Badalona-Barcelona, 1991. [8]UPOLI, Universidad Politécnica de Nicaragua, «Web oficial de la Universidad Politecnica de Nicaragua,» Prensa Upoli, 29 febrero 2016. [Online]. Available: https://www.upoli.edu.ni/noticias/ver/483-el-cambio-significa-esfuerzo-porque-es-parte-de-nuestra-labor-. [Last access: December 20th, 2021]. [9]IAEN, Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales, «Universidad de Posgrado del Estado IAEN,» Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales, 20 enero 2015. [Online].Available: https://www.iaen.edu.ec/wp-signup.php?-new=iaen.edu.ec. [Last access: December 20th, 2021]. [10]R. Lira, M. Ordoñez, M. Iturralde, L. Vistin and L. Altamirano, Modelo educativo de las Fuerzas Armadas del Ecuador, Quito: Instituto Geográfico Militar, 2018. [11]L. Mora, M. Durán and J. Zambrano, «Consideraciones Actuales Sobre Gestión Empresarial,» Dominio de las Ciencias, vol. 2, nº 4, pp. 511-520, 4 octubre 2016. [12]F. Guzman, Interview, "inédito" Consenso de macro concepto de "Gestión de Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo". [Interview]. September 24th, 2021. [13]L. Altamirano and R. Lira, «La Evaluación Integral: una Constatación de Aprendizaje, Roles y Competencias de los Diferentes Actores de los Ambitos Educativos, » Ciencias de Seguridad y Defensa, vol. III, nº 4, pp. 84-102, 2018. [14]MDT, Ministerio del Trabajo, «Acuerdo Ministerial 135 y su reforma con Acuerdo MDT-2020-001,» de Ministerio del Trabajo, Quito, 2020. [15]IIMAD, Instituto Internacional, para el Medio Ambiente y el Desarrollo, «Herramientas de fuerza,» 12 marzo 2005. [Online]. Available: https://policy-powertools.org/Tools/Understanding/SPA.html. [Last access: January 10th, 2022]. [16]E. Martinez, «La Técnica Delphi como estrategia de consulta a los implicados en la evaluación de programas, » Revista de Investigación Educativa, vol. 21, nº 2, pp. 449-463, 2003. [17]E. López, «El método Delphi en la investigación actual en educación: una revisión teórica y metodológica » Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia,UNED, vol. 21, nº 1, pp. 17-40, 2018. ; El Objetivo de este trabajo fue presentar y validar un modelo de evaluación integral de la gestión de seguridad y salud en el trabajo(GSST), este método parte de la conceptualización de la GSST, identificando ámbitos y dimensiones, las mismas que, al ser conceptualizadas y posteriormente decodificadas, permiten llegar a elementos mensurables, los indicadores. Los cuales aplicados a través de un instrumento escalar, a las partes interesadas (Stakeholders), de forma ponderada, permite mediante un procesamiento técnico, llegar a un cuadro integral de control y seguimiento de la GSST, posibilitando la elaboración de un plan de mejora considerando; ámbitos, dimensiones y cada uno de los stakeholders de forma conjunta o desagregada, el método empleado es de tipo descriptivo con enfoque semicuantitativo, y para la validación se empleó la técnica Delphi (consulta a expertos), aplicada a 25 especialistas de la prevención nacionales e internacionales de seis países, generando unos resultados generales que nos permitieron avalar nuestra propuesta. Palabras Clave: Evaluación, indicadores, 360 grados, Seguridad y salud en el trabajo. Referencias [1]OIT, Organización Internacional del Trabajo, «Seguridad y Salud en el Centro de Trabajo del Futuro, Aprovechar los 100 años de Experiencia,» OIT, Ginebra,2019. [2]MDT, Ministerio del Trabajo del Ecuador, «Reglamento de Seguridad y Salud de los Trabajadores y Mejoramiento del Medio Ambiente de Trabajo,» RegistroOficial, Quito, 1986. [3]J. Molano y N. Arévalo, «De la salud ocupacional a la gestión de la seguridad y salud en el trabajo: más que semántica, una transformación del sistema general de riesgos laborales,» Innovar, vol. 23, nº 48, pp. 21-31, 1 abril 2013. [4]CAN, Comunidad Andina de Naciones, «Resolución 957,» de Reglamento del Instrumento Andino de Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo, Lima, 2008. [5]OIT, Organización Internacional del Trabajo, «Sistema de Gestión de la SST, una Herramienta para la mejora continua,» Publicaciones OIT, Ginebra, 2011. [6]M. Riaño, E. Hoyos y I. Valero, «Evolución de un sistema de gestión de seguridad y salud en el trabajo e impacto en la accidentalidad laboral,» Ciencia & Trabajo, vol. 18, nº 55, pp. 68-72, 13 marzo 2016. [7]R. Lira, «Index de percepció veïnal,» Centro de Recursos comunitarios de Badalona, Badalona-Barcelona, 1991. [8]UPOLI, Universidad Politécnica de Nicaragua, «Web oficial de la Universidad Politecnica de Nicaragua,» Prensa Upoli, 29 febrero 2016. [En línea]. Disponible en: https://www.upoli.edu.ni/noticias/ver/483-el-cambio-significa-esfuerzo-porque-es-parte-de-nuestra-labor-. [Último acceso: 20 diciembre 2021]. [9]IAEN, Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales, «Universidad de Posgrado del Estado IAEN,» Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales, 20 enero 2015. [En línea].Disponible en: https://www.iaen.edu.ec/wp-signup.php?-new=iaen.edu.ec. [Último acceso: 20 diciembre 2021]. [10]R. Lira, M. Ordoñez, M. Iturralde, L. Vistin y L. Altamirano, Modelo educativo de las Fuerzas Armadas del Ecuador, Quito: Instituto Geográfico Militar, 2018. [11]L. Mora, M. Durán y J. Zambrano, «Consideraciones Actuales Sobre Gestión Empresarial,» Dominio de las Ciencias, vol. 2, nº 4, pp. 511-520, 4 octubre 2016. [12]F. Guzman, Interview, "inédito" Consenso de macro concepto de "Gestión de Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo". [Entrevista]. 24 septiembre 2021. [13]L. Altamirano y R. Lira, «La Evaluación Integral: una Constatación de Aprendizaje, Roles y Competencias de los Diferentes Actores de los Ambitos Educativos, » Ciencias de Seguridad y Defensa, vol. III, nº 4, pp. 84-102, 2018. [14]MDT, Ministerio del Trabajo, «Acuerdo Ministerial 135 y su reforma con Acuerdo MDT-2020-001,» de Ministerio del Trabajo, Quito, 2020. [15]IIMAD, Instituto Internacional, para el Medio Ambiente y el Desarrollo, «Herramientas de fuerza,» 12 marzo 2005. [En línea]. Disponible en: https://policy-powertools.org/Tools/Understanding/SPA.html. [Último acceso: 10 enero 2022]. [16]E. Martinez, «La Técnica Delphi como estrategia de consulta a los implicados en la evaluación de programas, » Revista de Investigación Educativa, vol. 21, nº 2, pp. 449-463, 2003. [17]E. López, «El método Delphi en la investigación actual en educación: una revisión teórica y metodológica » Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia,UNED, vol. 21, nº 1, pp. 17-40, 2018.

Public libraries, which are undergoing technological and socio-cultural changes, today become centres of socialization of communities, creating social and cultural well-being, therefore, their effective management becomes the object of research. This is also relevant in the implementation of public policy: strategic documents ("Europe 2030", "Lithuania 2030"), which guide public sector bodies to achieve a sustainable economy, also actualize the ability to anticipate the necessary changes in the organization.In addition to the usual long-term strategic goals (providing high-quality various services, programs, resources to people of all ages; developing existing collections; creating an environment that responds to community needs and promotes creativity), municipal libraries aim to strengthen the institution's management and develop local communities. Due to COVID-19, the revised strategic plans of public libraries of the Republic of Lithuania have made the accessibility aspect of services even more relevant. Long-term goals testify to the need for strategic change, at the same time raise the problematic questions: what are the essential aspects of science in the management of strategic change in the municipal public library? What is the situation of strategic change management in Lithuanian municipal public libraries? The research aims to practically investigate the situation of strategic change management in Lithuanian municipal public libraries and to discern the aspects to be improved.Based on the scientific literature, we define strategic change as significant fundamental changes in the organization aimed at positive change: to eliminate shortcomings, negative consequences and take on new challenges inherent in the organization's strategy. They are always linked to the strategic goals of the organization, are changing or touching the entire organization, requiring strategic and change management competencies.The strategic changes implemented in the libraries of the Republic of Lithuania in this decade are more attributable to adaptation or evolution, as there are changes in sustainable growth. According to the hierarchical structural model, strategic administrative (changes in management structures, processes) or strategic functional changes (e.g. changes in personnel, financial management strategy, etc.) are usually initiated in the municipal public libraries themselves. Strategic political and strategic changes in work are mainly driven by politicians. Strategic change requires leadership at all levels of an organization's governance and is generally seen as a significant factor in increasing employees' commitment to change.The management of strategic change in libraries as a process has much in common with the management of strategic change in other public sector institutions. Their management in libraries is influenced by external and internal factors, in particular public policy. Among the internal factors for municipal public libraries, the process of managing changes, in general, is important, as it was common practice in Lithuanian municipalities to work in accordance with the municipal cultural policy strategy without developing a separate strategy for the development of their own, separate institution. In the current context of increasing decentralization of governance, it is increasingly the responsibility of libraries to take the initiative and take care of the long-term goals of the organization.The public libraries of two neighbouring municipalities (Akmenė district and Mažeikiai district) were selected for the research, a strategy of mixed methods was applied, combining qualitative research methods (content analysis of documents) and quantitative research methods (total questionnaire survey of both library employees except director and deputy director usingapklausa.lt, after receiving participants' consent via e-mails).Having analysed the strategic plans and activity reports of the years 2011–2021 of public libraries in municipalities of Akmenė district and Mažeikiai district, it was revealed that the most important strategic changes in the recent period correspond to the guidelines of Lithuanian cultural policy (2010) and were mostly technological changes or technological-organizational: related to building reconstructions, renovations; with the digitization of administrative management and services; with the socialization of socially excluded groups, with the increase of digital literacy of communities through education, etc. The documents testify that the public library in Mažeikiai district, during the research, already had its own strategic plan, while the public library in Akmenė district, was developing its first strategy. Different experiences of strategic management have also led to partly different expressions of strategic change management in libraries. The library in Mažeikiai district constantly performs the analysis of external factors, while the library in Akmenė district yet only intends to do so. Among the external factors, the project activities carried out by Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, including public libraries, are important in both cases. By strategizing activities, both libraries conduct the performance analysis using SWOT, highlighting similar weaknesses (limited funding for modernization), strengths (systematically training staff, modernized public library infrastructure, strong collaborative relationships with other public and county libraries).Wider cooperation with business is not yet visible. The library in Akmenė district sees the consideration of the needs of stakeholders and the use of social partners' resources as an opportunity, whereas the library in Mažeikiai district is already planning more active partnership relations, also with Lithuanian and foreign libraries.After conducting the opinion research of the employees of public libraries in Akmenė district and Mažeikiai district, the following most important aspects of the management of strategic changes in the studied municipal public libraries have been revealed:Situation– libraries undergo strategic changes initiated by external institutions through programs and projects; they have experience in implementing strategic change, communicating the results of change; there is no resistance to innovations in libraries; employees begin to be involved in strategic change management through separate sub-processes, while for the time being, managers take the lead in strategic change management; organizations lack a deeper understanding of strategic change, the competencies to initiate them involving the entire library community.Potential– employees would like to be more involved in the management of strategic change: 1) relatively good internal communication about already implemented (mostly project-based) strategic changes is revealed; 2) over 10 percent of employees are already involved in managing strategic change; 3) half of the surveyed employees feel able to offer ideas for innovations and strategic changes, the other 50 percent of employees feel "not invited" to do so; 4) Most staff feel ready to take on good practice from other (including foreign) institutions.This research has confirmed the insights of scholars and cultural strategists that public libraries today are undergoing tremendous change, making long-term perspective knowledge and strategic planning a necessity in every organization. With the growth of decentralization of management as well as the uncertainty due to global changes, in the public sector this is achieved through greater involvement of the community in governance and inter-institutional cooperation. Leadership alone is not enough.This research shows that municipal public libraries have the potential to initiate and manage strategic change themselves, as they have been involved in the implementation of changes initiated by external institutions for 10 years, there is no anti-change attitude in organizations. On the other hand, there is a lack of experience and competencies to anticipate change, initiate change, motivate employees to get involved themselves. This research also raises the debate questions that require broader research: Knowing that municipal public libraries are accustomed to working according to the programs, projects and plans coming from above, the question arises whether the current 2016-2017 legislation on improving library management approved by the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania is effective and meets today's challenges; why there is no methodological assistance to public libraries on how to improve their management. What governance structure of municipal public libraries would be conducive to increasing staff involvement in strategic change management? What managerial innovations would increase employee motivation to initiate change? ; Išsikėlus teorines prielaidas,kad strateginiais pokyčiais siekiama tobulinti organizacijos veiklą įgyvendinant nacionalinę, vietos kultūros politiką atliepiančius strateginius tikslus, kurių išsikėlime dalyvauja organizacijos bendruomenė, kad pokyčių valdyme svarbi vadovų lyderystė, jų kompetencija valdyti pokyčius, empiriniu tyrimu siekiama ištirti Lietuvos savivaldybių viešųjų bibliotekų strateginių pokyčių valdymo situaciją, įžvelgti tobulintinus aspektus. Bibliotekų vidinių dokumentų analizė bei darbuotojų apklausa parodė, kad bibliotekos geba įgyvendinti kitų inicijuotus pokyčius. Iš organizacijos vidaus pareinančioms iniciatyvoms valdyti, panaudoti turimą pozityvų nusiteikimą dalyvauti pokyčiuose trūksta strateginio valdymo, pokyčių, bendruomenės įtraukimo į pokyčių valdymą kompetencijų, motyvacijos.

The aim of the article is to prepare an analysis in order to formulate propositions regarding the digitalisation of Polish criminal proceedings as regards the administration of justice. These hypotheses would have merited consideration even pre-pandemic, but they demand even more attention as a result of the pandemic. The pandemic has served to highlight the pre-existing necessity to adapt criminal law to the latest observable technical and technological advances. In light of the above, the first issue to be analysed concerns the conditions, procedures, and possibilities surrounding the collection of evidence electronically, taking into account the most recent relevant guidelines of the Council of Europe. The second issue to be examined will be the adaptation of criminal procedures, including Polish, to the standards stipulated in the Convention of the Council of Europe on Cybercrime of 23 November 2001, in light of national norms regarding evidence gathering. The third issue that will be assessed in this study will be the benefits, risks, or potential of the application of artificial intelligence algorithms in criminal procedure. The consideration of each of the three areas will have regard to the present global pandemic. 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Gandaki Province is centrally located in Nepal with most of its area being hills and high hills (64%). There are 11 districts in Gandaki Province with one metropolitan city, namely, Pokhara; 26 municipalities and 58 rural municipalities. Gandaki Province contributes about 9% to the GDP of the whole country. In terms of agriculture production, Gandaki Province is food deficit and relies on other provinces for the supply of pulses, fruits, vegetables, and livestock products. Of the total area of the province, 24% of the land area is cultivable; around 24% of the cultivable land is fallow land (117,076 ha), which remains a great challenge for the upcoming days in terms of food production and enabling food security in the province. The prevalent climate is varied in the province starting from the plains of Nawalpur to the high Himalayas of Manang and Mustang. The highest maximum temperature has been recorded in Kaski district (30.7°c) and lowest minimum temperature has been recorded in Manang district (-4.6°c) over the time period 1971 to 2014. Similarly, the highest annual precipitation has been recorded in Kaski district (2,710.5 mm) while the lowest annual precipitation has been recorded in Mustang district (257.8 mm). Varied climatic risks are prevalent in Gandaki Province such as temperature and rainfall risk, ecological risk, flood, landslide, drought and Glacier Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) risk. Lamjung district is very highly prone to the combined risk index of all these risks. Similarly, Gorkha, Tanahun, Manang, Myagdi, Parbat and Baglung districts are highly prone to the combined risk index. The Nepalese economy is highly dependent on the agriculture and forestry sector which contributes around 33% of the national GDP. Agriculture is climate sensitive, which makes the Nepalese economy vulnerable to climatic variability. Although Nepal is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to erratic climate phenomenon, Nepal's contribution to greenhouse emissions is negligible. Food production and food security are of high concern in the changing climatic scenario as compared to land availability at individual household level. In the Nepalese context, food security is of high importance; despite the fact that agriculture is still subsistence in nature. Food production in these changing climatic/socio-economic situation and people's access to food are the key indicators of food security. Thus, adoption of CSA technologies at farmers' field level is of immense importance in order to mitigate the ill effects of climate change while ensuring food production and food security. The Climate Investment Plan (CIP) has been designed as a decision-making tool for agricultural investment in terms of adoption of climate smart agricultural (CSA) technologies. It will act as a yard stick to the government and policy makers to calculate how much investment is needed for attaining certain levels of crop production, thereby enhancing the livelihood of the farming society. Adoption of CSA technologies is expected to improve food production, increase agricultural income, increase technical efficiency of inputs used, enhance climate change adaptation, and produce a low environmental footprint. With the changing weather conditions, decreased farm production and productivity it is of prime necessity to enhance crop/livestock production in the Nepalese context. Adoption of CSA technologies by farming communities is the most appropriate way to do this. CIP will act as a document to guide government authorities to plan, implement, monitor and evaluate agricultural investment targeted to enhance agricultural/livestock production via adoption of CSA technologies. The Climate Investment Plan has been methodologically divided into five steps: The first two steps consist of the formation of a climate risk matrix and risk-CSA matrix. The climate risk matrix was formed at district level to identify climatic risks pertaining to individual crop/livestock. Similarly, the risk-CSA matrix contains the potential CSA technologies addressing the climate risk for each crop/livestock at district level. These two steps help in the identification of climate risk pertaining to each crop/livestock commodity and potential CSA options. Thirdly, cost of cultivation was calculated for normal production and along with CSA technologies with the help of experts. This data was analyzed using Excel Solver in the fourth step and climate investment was carried out in the fifth step. Crop specific CSA technologies were selected from Excel Solver analysis, an Excel based commonly used optimization technique, and a certain area was allocated for cultivation which in general maximized the production/income while minimizing GHG emissions and human labour use in agricultural operations. Individual CSA technologies in each crop/livestock component was treated as a single treatment i.e., no bundling of technologies. Each CSA technology were treated as a single component while looking at the production, productivity and income generation. In the case of rice, a system of rice intensification (SRI), alternate waiting and drying (AWD), improved varieties, effective nutrient management, direct seeded rice (DSR), use of farm yard manure (FYM), and normal rice cultivation were the CSA technologies recommended/identified from the expert's consultation (representing NARC, DoA and MoALD). Similarly, in wheat production, ICT, minimum tillage, improved varieties, nutrient management and normal production systems were identified. Likewise, different CSA technologies were identified for maize, lentil, black gram, potato, tomato, cole crops, apple, banana, mango, sweet orange, and mandarin orange. In the case of livestock - cow, buffalo, goat and fish were selected and cost benefit was analyzed. Due to lack of cost of production data for these livestock components from government sources, experts in their respective fields were used for the purpose. Gandaki Province needs to invest in seed, fertilizer, mulching materials, pesticide and micronutrients as required for crop commodity production. Investment in building infrastructure i.e., irrigation facilities, can be a long term investment by the provincial government. Similarly, crop/livestock insurance schemes should be a yearly strategic programme in the province. The Climate Adaptation Investment Plan has been developed mainly after considering the input supply needed while adopting the CSA technologies. Provincial government is recommended to provide a 25%, 15% and 5% subsidy on the input cost for the first three years of implementing the plan. From the 4th year onwards, the provincial government should make proper arrangements for collateral/interest free loan to the farming communities via proper channels. The investment amount has been calculated based on CSA technology and districts selected for each crop items. Crop and district specific (selected districts) investment should be done to augment agricultural production/productivity in the province. For livestock production, we lack official data on cost and return and the estimates done in this report are based on experts' judgement and knowledge. Unlike crops/fruits/vegetables, CSA technologies are very specific in the case of livestock production. In the case of buffalo milk production, high yielding breeds in both the Terai and hill regions are expected to give higher returns from the investment. Similarly, for cow milk, high yielding breeds are expected to give higher return on the investment. Regarding goat farming, high yielding goat breeds need to be introduced in the Nepalese situation to make goat farming a lucrative agri-business. Fish farming can be promoted to make Nepalese fish production enough to feed the population. Rainbow trout is best suited to the cold running water in the hill regions of Nepal. Similarly, polyculture of Carps, Catfish, Pangas and other fish can be produced across both the Terai and hill regions. As the present study is based on secondary data sources and experts' consultation, the results generated from this study are prone to errors but maximum diligence has been given to make the results more authentic and pragmatic. The investment portfolio generated in this study is based on CSA technologies that are/can be relevant to Gandaki Province. No socio-economic and gender perspective study has been carried out to validate the CSA technologies at farmer level. The present study has generated investment at district/ province pertaining to specific crop commodities. Authentic data from credible sources is required at municipal/rural-municipal/ward level to estimate the investment required at these levels.

ABSTRAKPenelitian ini bertujuan untuk menguji dan menganalisis pengaruh ukuran pemerintah daerah, ketergantungan pemerintah daerah, temuan audit dan opini audit terhadap audit delay pemerintah daerah kabupaten/kota di Indonesia. Penelitian ini merupakan jenis penelitian kuantitatif dengan menggunakan bantuan software IMB SPSS versi 26. Penentuan sampel dilakukan dengan metode purposive sampling sehingga diperoleh sebanyak 488 sampel penelitian. Data penelitian yang digunakan berupa data sekunder yang diperoleh dari laporan keuangan pemerintah daerah yang telah di audit dalam bentuk Laporan Hasil Pemeriksaan yang dikeluarkan oleh BPK. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa ukuran pemerintah daerah tidak signifikan berpengaruh terhadap audit delay, ketergantungan pemerintah daerah berpengaruh negatif terhadap audit delay, temuan audit berpengaruh positif terhadap audit delay dan opini audit tidak signifikan berpengaruh terhadap audit delay. 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Omwille van fatsoen. De staat van menswaardige zorg. Samenvatting proefschrift Willemijn van der Zwaard Tilburg University 2021 Dit boek gaat over fatsoen en vernedering in de Nederlandse verzorgingsstaat. De verzorgingsstaat is tot op zekere hoogte een abstracte, technische operatie geworden, waarin 'de mens' uit beeld is geraakt. Aan de instituties van de verzorgingsstaat liggen daarentegen wel altijd normatieve opvattingen over een menswaardig bestaan ten grondslag. Dat onderliggende 'mensbeeld' heeft gevolgen voor de manier waarop instituties burgers in de praktijk bejegenen. Op dit moment lijkt in Nederland sprake van een verzorgingsstaat die een menswaardig bestaan voor iedereen wil garanderen, maar in dat streven diezelfde menselijke waardigheid onder druk zet. Die observatie is niet vrijblijvend, getuige het verhaal van de fatsoenlijke samenleving van Avishai Margalit (1996). Hij betoogt in The Decent Society dat de manier waarop instituties in de praktijk mensen in hun waarde laten – oftewel: niet vernederen – van doorslaggevende betekenis is voor het fatsoen van de samenleving als geheel. De verzorgingsstaat heeft in de ogen van Margalit vanwege zijn bureaucratische grondslag goede papieren om niet te vernederen. Risico's van 'institutionele vernedering' zijn er echter ook: paternalistisch overheidsoptreden, kille bureaucratie en verhulde liefdadigheid. Dat maakt onderzoek naar de normativiteit van de Nederlandse verzorgingsstaat relevant en urgent. In dit onderzoek sta ik stil bij een aantal sleutelmomenten in het proces van verstatelijking van sociale voorzieningen in Nederland. Daaruit blijkt een 'angst' voor institutionele vernedering: te veel overheidsregulering zou kunnen leiden tot kille bureaucratie en paternalisme in persoonlijke aangelegenheden zoals inkomen en gezondheid. Deze angst is nader te duiden met behulp van het inmiddels 'klassieke' denken van Abram de Swaan, Max Weber en Michael Lipsky. Opvattingen over menswaardig bestaan zijn bepalend voor hoe een samenleving haar verzorgingsarrangementen inricht. Wanneer de staat daarbij betrokken raakt, ontstaat een paradoxale situatie waarin 'vertegenwoordigers' van de staat in ontmoetingen met burgers moeten laveren tussen handelen met en zonder aanzien des persoons tegelijkertijd. In de eigentijdse Nederlandse verzorgingsstaat is deze paradox verstrikt geraakt in een rechtsstatelijke dynamiek van categoriseren, fragmenteren en verantwoorden – zoals inzichtelijk gemaakt door Cees Schuyt, Paul Frissen en Willem Trommel. De decentralisaties van 2015, waarbij gemeenten verantwoordelijk werden voor taken op het terrein van jeugdhulp, participatie en maatschappelijke ondersteuning, zijn een belangrijke recente poging om deze dynamiek te doorbreken en zijn daarom een relevante casus om nader te onderzoeken. Om dat onderzoek te kunnen verrichten is een conceptueel kader nodig dat opvattingen over menswaardig bestaan omvat, dat oog heeft voor ontmoetingen tussen staat en burger én dat recht doet aan de intrinsieke rechtsstatelijke logica's van de eigentijdse Nederlandse verzorgingsstaat. Because of decency. The state of dignified welfare Summary doctoral thesis Willemijn van der Zwaard Tilburg University This book is about decency and humiliation in the Dutch welfare state. The welfare state has to a certain extent become an abstract, technical operation, in which 'the human being' has moved out of the picture. The institutions of the welfare state, on the other hand, are still based on normative ideas about human dignity. These underlying 'ideas' have consequences for the ways institutions treat citizens in practice. At this moment it seems that the Dutch welfare state aims to guarantee a dignified existence for everyone, but in striving to do so puts that same human dignity under pressure. That observation is not without obligation, as Avishai Margalit's (1996) story of the decent society shows. He argues that the way in which institutions respect human dignity – in other words: do not humiliate people – is of decisive importance for the decency of society as a whole. In Margalit's view, the welfare state, because of its bureaucratic foundation, has good credentials for being decent. However, there are also risks of 'institutional humiliation', such as state paternalism, cold bureaucracy and disguised charity. This makes research into the normativity of the Dutch welfare state relevant and urgent. In this research, I present several key moments in the development of the Dutch welfare state. They reveal an underlying 'fear' of institutional humiliation: too much government regulation could lead to cold bureaucracy and state paternalism in personal matters such as income and health. The now 'classic' works of Abram de Swaan, Max Weber and Michael Lipsky help to get a closer view of this fear. Political and societal ideas about human dignity determine how a society organises its care arrangements. When the state becomes involved, a paradoxical situation arises in which representatives of the state, in encounters with citizens, must navigate between acting with and without respect to individuals at the same time. In the contemporary Dutch welfare state, this paradox has become entangled in a constitutional dynamic of categorising, fragmenting and monitoring – as made clear by Cees Schuyt, Paul Frissen and Willem Trommel. The decentralizations of 2015, when Dutch municipalities became responsible for tasks in the areas of children support, healthcare support and resocialisation, are an important recent attempt to change this dynamic and therefore a relevant case study for further research. In order to perform this research, a conceptual framework is needed which encompasses views on human dignity, includes encounters between state and citizen, and does justice to the intrinsic constitutional logics of the contemporary Dutch welfare state. That is why I use a conceptual framework for the case study that consists of the reciprocity of 'man', 'work' and 'task'. This reciprocity starts with the normative ideas behind the 2015 decentralisations – namely ideas about human dignity – and then exposes how this normativity influences the daily practice of caregiving and social support and the associated conceptions of tasks and responsibilities. The discourse of decentralisations of 2015 revolves around independent, participating citizens, receiving (if necessary) close-to-home and custom-made care and support, and a government committed to affordable care with clear sense of 'ownership'. The municipality of Utrecht – where the case study took place – constructed a local version of this story, which was the basis for employing social outreach teams in the city. The discourse of national and local policy plays a clear role in the encounters between professional team members and residents of Utrecht. In these encounters, however, the professionals must first and foremost consider for themselves, among themselves and in conversation with residents, what is 'the right thing' to do at that moment and in that setting. The ideas about human dignity that play a role in this do not always correspond to those on which the policy discourse is based. What's more, the overarching policy discourse is not always helpful, because it is difficult to translate to the versatile, capricious daily lives of residents. This is where paper and practice differ. However, the ethnographic study of encounters between 'representatives' of the state and citizens also shows that there is some reason for optimism. The professionals working for the social outreach team in Utrecht give great efforts to respect human dignity and show a great ability to navigate between acting simultaneously with and without respect to persons. A point of interest here – in consideration of the risk of disguised charity – is the extent to which citizens can become dependent on these 'representatives' of the state. But the discretionary power of these 'representatives' requires support and protection in principle, because it offers an important safeguard against the risks of cold bureaucracy and state paternalism. This research has shown that the described discretionary power is easily undermined by well-intentioned rules and guidelines. The realization that this is not without obligation, but entails real risks of institutional humiliation, urges a call for modesty to managers, policy makers and politicians.

This thesis illustrates and puts in context two of the main research projects I worked on during my Ph.D. program, in collaboration with several national and international co-authors from "La Sapienza" and other prestigious universities. Both research lines concern spatial and spatio-temporal analysis of geo-referenced datasets, which is of broad and current interest in the statistical research literature and applications. My focus on such an area of statistics was not meditated before the start of the program. However, while pursuing my original research interests in the broader domain of Bayesian statistics, I realized there was an ever-increasing demand for viable and efficient statistical methods to analyze spatial and spatio-temporal data. That is a consequence of the extraordinary technological development that interested data collection systems during the last few decades. The innovative, cutting-edge technologies conceive new devices that can record and store data and information about the most diverse phenomena, possibly at a fine spatial scale and with high temporal resolution. Such capabilities were just a dream up to 20 or 30 years ago. Spatial statistics methods are rapidly evolving to face this surge of novel data structure in various application fields: geology, meteorology, ecology, epidemiology, economics, politics, and more. The first chapter of this thesis introduces the general idea behind spatial statistics, that is the branch of statistics devoted to analyzing and modeling temporal and spatial structure in time and/or geo-referenced datasets. A brief historical introduction of its developments is provided, starting from the first (sometimes unwitting) applications of its logic to practical and theoretical problems at the end of the XIX century. Many methods and techniques in this domain evolved independently, driven by the specific needs of the application fields in which they were developed. The historical excursus leads to a coarse (but reasonable) distinction in three main areas: continuous spatial variations, discrete spatial variations, spatial point patterns. These areas present further facets within themselves, making spatial statistics an incredibly diverse and rich topic. A really comprehensive review would require an entire book to be written and maybe a lifetime to be thoroughly studied. Therefore, in the following Chapters, the discussion is focused on specific areas and techniques used in the studies. Only those tools that proved valuable for the analysis performed in Alaimo Di Loro et al.(2021) and Kalair et al. (2020) are extensively treated. The second chapter focuses on analyzing continuous spatial variation, which is the modeling of outcomes varying continuously over some space. First, the most relevant properties for continuous spatial processes are introduced; second, some of the most common methodologies for performing spatial interpolation of the mean trend and stochastic modeling of the residuals are listed and sketched. In particular, the chapter digresses on Spline Regression as a valid technique to catch the first-order structure in spatial data. Soon after, the Geo-Statistical methods and the Bayesian Hierarchical framework are claimed as invaluable tools to attain the simultaneous estimation of the first and second-order structure of a process. Extension to spatio-temporal contexts is not as trivial as it may seem but must be approached with due care. An extensive discussion about the possible pitfalls and viable solutions is included in the same chapter. Finally, the problems arising in the analysis of Big spatial data are highlighted in the last section, where The Nearest Neighbor Gaussian Process (NNGP, Datta et al. (2016a,b)) model is introduced as a highly scalable framework for providing full inference on massive spatial and spatio-temporal datasets. The third chapter includes an extended version of the paper Alaimo Di Loro et al. (2021), currently under-review and published as a pre-print. It describes how the aforementioned technological development has strongly affected human tracking and monitoring capabilities, generating substantial interest in monitoring human activity. New non-intrusive wearable devices, such as wrist-worn sensors that monitor gross motor activity (miniature accelerometers), can continuously record individual activity levels, producing massive amounts of high-resolution measurements. Analyzing such data needs to account for spatial and temporal information on trajectories or paths traversed by subjects wearing such devices. Inferential objectives include estimating a subject's physical activity levels along a given trajectory, identifying trajectories that are more likely to produce higher levels of physical activity for a given subject, and predicting expected levels of physical activity in any proposed new trajectory for a given set of health attributes. We argue that the underlying process is more appropriately modeled as a stochastic evolution through time while accounting for spatial information separately. Building upon recent developments in this field, we construct temporal processes using directed acyclic graphs (DAG) on the line of the NNGP, include spatial dependence through penalized spline regression, and develop optimized implementations of the collapsed Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) algorithm. The resulting Bayesian hierarchical modeling framework for the analysis of spatial-temporal actigraphy data proves able to deliver fully model-based inference on trajectories while accounting for subject-level health attributes and spatial-temporal dependencies. We undertake a comprehensive analysis of an original dataset from the Physical Activity through Sustainable Transport Approaches in Los Angeles (PASTA-LA) study to formally ascertain spatial zones and trajectories exhibiting significantly higher physical activity levels. Suggestions for further extensions and improvements on the currently adopted methodology are discussed in the last section of the chapter. Chapter four undergoes a paradigm shift and introduces the basic theory and tools of spatial point patterns analysis. Some common probabilistic models for point processes are briefly discussed, with some of their properties and limitations highlighted. The rest of the chapter is instead entirely focused on the Hawkes process and its spatio-temporal extension. It is a particular kind of self-exciting point process that presents a strong inter-dependence structure. While conceived in Hawkes (1971a), its use in the statistical application has been for a long time limited to the analysis of earthquakes dynamic. The recent escalation of data at the high temporal resolution, sometimes accompanied by spatial information, has favored its use in modeling events dynamics in diverse fields: finance, society, biology, etc. In particular, its defining properties are presented and state-of-the-art estimation methods of the spatio-temporal version are introduced. In the fifth chapter, the semi-parametric Hawkes process with a periodic background originally introduced in Zhuang and Mateu (2019) is outlined. While very recent, it has already revealed itself very useful to model phenomena that are likely to present a cyclic pattern. It assumes that primary events occur as an effect of the background intensity, while secondary events are associated with the self-excitation effect. There are sound motivations that justify its utilization in the context of road accident dynamics, e.g.: excitation may occur when a driver, reacting to the disruption of one accident, triggers a subsequent accident upstream of the first one. The proposed framework is tested on two original applications on two original sets of data: the first one, somewhat preliminary, involves the modeling and analysis of road accidents that occurred on the urban road network of Rome, in Italy; the second is instead a conclusive analysis recently published in (Kalair et al., 2020), conducted on a collection of road accidents occurred on the M25 London Orbital, in the United Kingdom. Adaptations of the original methodology to the road accident setting were deemed necessary in both cases to consider specific features of car accidents and the geometry of the underlying space. The final results permit a fruitful interpretation of the temporal and spatial background that detects the typical commuting behavior in the Roman and Londoners communities. The self-excitation component appears to have slightly different intensities in the two contexts, suggesting excitation mechanisms that vary between urban networks and motorways. Finally, the sixth chapter summarizes all the main passages in the thesis, highlighting the previous chapters' original contributions. It also tries to summarize a take-home message about statistical modeling's fundamental importance as a scientific tool to formulate and verify hypotheses that must not be discouraged by new challenges and technological advancements.

AbstractAn organization will have human resource management as the central factor which is can be useful to do, manage, and reach the vision and mission that already set by the organization. The quality of the employee is one of the key that can determine improvement of an organization. The success of development program that implemented by the government is depend on the quality and quantity of the human resources that the government have and the management of the human resource in the company can be review from the organizational behavior that happen in the organization. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of Person-Job Fit toward Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior in Marine & Fisheries Agency and Provincial Inspectorate Agency in West Borneo. The sampling technique that used in this research is using the 10 times formative indicator. The data is evaluated by Structural Equation Model (SEM) and to analyze the data it is use SmartPLS 3.0 software application. The result of this research are: (1) Person-Job Fit is have significant impact on Job Satisfaction, (2) Person-Job Fit is have significant impact on Organizational Commitment, (3) Job Satisfaction is have significant impact on Organizational Commitment, (4) Person-Job Fit is not have significant impact toward Organizational Citizenship Behavior, (5) Job Satisfaction is have significant impact toward Organizational Citizenship Behavior, and (6) Organizational Commitment is not have significant impact toward Organizational Citizenship Behavior.Keywords : Person-Job Fit, Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, Organizational Citizenship Behavior Referencees A.K.M. Tafzal HAQUE, M. A. (2019). Job Satisfaction and Citizenship Behavior: A Mediating Effect of Organizational Commitment. Organizacija Research Papers Volume 52.Abdillah, W., & Hartono, J. (2015). 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