Coercive Instruments Research Articles

Power alliances for biodiversity—Results of an international study on community forestry

Protecting and enhancing biodiversity is one of the most important ecological goals of community forestry. Meeting this goal depends on a complex interaction of ecological as well as social and economic factors. With this paper we ask, whether the power of actors has a strong influence on the ecological outcomes of community forestry and if so, how such alliances for biodiversity look like. For empirical evidence we use our database compiled of research on 84 international community forestry cases of both developed and developing countries, taken from 2009 to 2016. The results show that the powerful actors are driving biodiversity in community forestry. With a small number of powerful actors interested in enhancing biodiversity we were able to identify only little substantial support for this goal. The widespread public announcements of biodiversity goals are mostly symbolic. Dominant information and financial incentives are the most common instruments for protecting the ecological equilibrium. This indicates a “soft” policy for biodiversity in contrast to the hard coercive instruments which protect the forest area as such. We conclude that the analysis of power can be a valuable factor in explaining the outcomes of community forestry in practice.

Cutting Out Her Tongue: The Impact of Silencing Trauma through a Nondisclosure Agreement

Using a clinical example of my work with a patient who signed a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) following a sexual assault, I examine the impact of legal silencing in the aftermath of trauma. I describe how NDAs function as coercive instruments of powerful institutions and patriarchy. By closing off access to social and political space, the victim’s responses are compressed into the intrapsychic domain where they are experienced as shame, self-doubt, and worthlessness. Outrage is turned inward and shame is transferred to the victim. Silencing and isolation collapse mental space for thinking and prevent the relational processes necessary for recovery. I argue that NDAs are an ethical betrayal of victims by the institutions that use them, and by society in allowing them. The therapist’s role as witness and ethical ally is discussed. I reflect on motives for, and dilemmas inherent in, writing about a treatment in which the patient is legally silenced.

РАДИКАЛИЗАЦИЯ ИДЕОЛОГИЧЕСКОЙ СОСТАВЛЯЮЩЕЙ ЭТНОРЕЛИГИОЗНЫХ КОНФЛИКТОВ В СИСТЕМЕ НАЦИОНАЛЬНОЙ БЕЗОПАСНОСТИ

This article analyzes the impact of ethno-religious conflict on national security in the context of the radicalization of their ideological component. The nature of ethnoreligious conflicts lies in the unequal position in the system of social coordinates, but at the same time relatively unfree development and restriction of the interest arising from social conditions of life, which receives final social life and satisfaction as a result of its political legitimation, manifested in the form of state support. Every ethnoreligious conflict is a symptom of both the lack of equality and freedom, manifested primarily in ideological radicalization, striving for fundamentalism, extreme forms of conscious and unconscious aggression, reduced from an ideological state to extremist actions, which creates a real danger and threat to social and national security. The growth of ideological tension and subsequent conflict actions reaches the limits beyond which the existing security system either actualizes its protective functions, or seeks to change the degrees of equality and freedom of actualized interest. While in the first case, the state, in an effort to maintain the security system at the same level, uses coercive legal instruments, which manifest themselves in other forms of coercion than before, in the second case, both the normative and social coordinates of the realization of ethnic and religious interest, and then in the second case, both the normative and social coordinates of the realization of ethnic and religious interest and at the same time of the entire existing security system are subject to revision. Understanding by the state of the indisputable fact that in the modern world security is relative to social interests, it allows it to react sensitively to the growth of ethnic and religious tension, to protect these movements from ideological radicalization and ethnic religious extremism.

National Sovereignty: Socio-Political Transformation in Context of Modern Cyber Realities

The key idea of the study is the question of the relationship between such categories as “national sovereignty” and “cyberspace”. The authors consider that the current theory of law and positive legal regulation at the present stage do not offer reasonable options for interaction and coexistence of these concepts. 
 
 In the conditions of the dramatic changes in the existing realities over the past 30 years, the question arises of the differentiation of legal regulation, which is still more intended to the social relations that existed in the 20th century. Today technical progress is significantly ahead of social, in particular, legal regulation, which, in turn, is seriously tied to the state or, as any law student confirms, “territorial organization of power in a society with sovereignty...”. And here the main question arises about the reasonableness of the above formulation. Is it suitable for existing realities? Or is it itself an obstacle to legalization? The article analyzes various approaches to the legal settlement of relations in cyberspace, as well as offers two options for supranational regulation of these legal relations - through the development and establishment of an extraterritorial international body that will have not only the ability to control public relations within cyberspace, but also special instruments of coercion to influence the citizens of any state, either through the creation of a global system of international acts that will regulate most of the existing questions about the interaction of persons in cyberspace and included a clear mechanism to respond quickly to the emergence of new relations in this sphere.
 
 The authors also consider that the inability at theoretical level to conceptualize the relationship between these categories could lead to the discrediting of such notions as “national state” and “national sovereignty” in the future.

Integrated Water Resources Management and Policy Integration: Lessons from 169 Years of Flood Policies in Switzerland

In times of increasing pressures on water resources, the integrated management of the resource is a central policy objective. While there exists encompassing research about the concept of integrated water resources management (IWRM), much remains to be studied regarding the integration of water-related policies. Water resources management profits when policy actors coordinate their demands and actions across policy sectors, territorial entities, and decision-making levels within a water basin. However, actors are bound by the policy framework, which organizes water resources management in defined sectors and, over time, develop into independent and specialized policy pillars. A growing number of policies increases the need to integrate those policies over time following the institutional resources regime (IRR) framework. However, an increasing number of policies also proves challenging in establishing an integrated, coherent regime compliant with IWRM. In this study, we analyze flood risk management policies and find an almost exponential increase in policies over time, while flood risks and damage have not decreased in parallel. We address this empirical puzzle with an in-depth analysis of the design of Swiss flood risk management policies over time. To this end, we survey the opinion of 146 flood experts on the importance of ten policy design indicators in three flood-prone regions in Switzerland. Flood risk management experts attribute particular importance to policy designs characterized by integration, a sufficient budget for policy implementation, and coercive instruments and sanctions. We then compare survey results to the ways in which Swiss policies have been designed in legislation across policy sectors related to flood risk management over the last 169 years. We find that policy designs follow a national policy style. Placing these results in local contexts, we explain why the design of policies represents both a challenge and opportunity for policy-makers involved in flood risk management.

A tribe and its states: Yemen’s 1972 Bayḥan massacre revisited

Across the Middle East, tribes and states have entered into different relationships. In many countries, tribes were confronted with massive attempts at interference by their respective states. The northern Yemeni Republic, in contrast, remained a weak state with little coercive instruments at its disposal. Its rule was rather based on indirect means: the politics of patronage, the politicization of development efforts, and the exploitation of tribal conflict. This article aims to look closer into state-tribe relations in Yemen by reviewing the power struggle between the Khawlan al-Tiyal tribe and the republican government. In 1972, the regional ramifications of this struggle culminated in the so-called ‘Bayhan massacre’ whose legacy continues to resonate across tribal Yemen today. The Khawlan case gives evidence of how power and legitimacy in republican Yemen remained, and still remain, largely contingent on the politics of co-optation and patronage, an endemic feature that comes at the expense of real institution building.

Unholy Alliance: The Connection between the East German Stasi and the Right-Wing Terrorist Odfried Hepp

ABSTRACTThis article, providing an example of state support for terrorists, looks at the cooperation between the Stasi and the right-wing West German terrorist Odfried Hepp in the 1980s. Based on research in Stasi archives, the article explains that gathering information, rather than using him as a terrorist weapon in the Cold War, was the main motivator for the Stasi to cooperate with a high-profile neo-Nazi. By looking at the details of the Hepp-Stasi alliance, it assesses what forms, results, and dangers this relationship produced. The article challenges the myth of the all-mighty East German State Security and demonstrates that the dynamics of this alliance were not always in the Stasi's favour. In the absence of other instruments of coercion, the Stasi used the personal relationship between Hepp and his officers to control him. The article offers insights into Hepps's terrorist career but also the pragmatic way in which the Stasi built its network of informants outside the GDR. It also adds nuances to the understanding of the relationship between Socialist states and terrorists during the Cold War.

What drives violence against civilians in civil war? Evidence from Guatemala’s conflict archives

Dominant theories of mass violence hold that strategic concerns in civil war drive the deliberate targeting of civilians. However, the causal mechanisms that link strategic objectives to large-scale violence against civilians remain underspecified, and as such the causal logics that underpin each remain blurred. In this article, we identify and explicate four plausible mechanisms that explain why armed groups would target, for strategic purposes, civilians in war. We then turn to the peak period of violence during the Guatemalan armed conflict to assess which mechanisms were most prevalent. Specifically, we leverage unique archival data: 359 pages of military files from Operation Sofía, a month-long counterinsurgent campaign waged in the northwestern Ixil region. Through process tracing of real-time internal communications, we find that state actors most commonly described the civilian population as loyal to rebel forces; violence against civilians was a means to weaken the insurgency. Troops on the ground also depicted the Ixil population as ‘winnable’, which suggests that security forces used violence in this period to shape civilian behavior. These findings are most consistent with the idea that mass violence in this case and period was a coercive instrument to defeat insurgents by punishing civilians for collaboration. The evidence from this period is less consistent with a logic of genocide, in which the purpose of violence would be to destroy ‘unwinnable’ civilian groups. Our analysis illustrates how a mechanism-centered approach based on process tracing of conflict archives can help uncover logics underlying civilian killing.

Planned obsolescence: legal aspects of counteraction

Modern society faces new challenges due to the development of technology, economy, level of consumption. The article deals with the legal aspects of counteraction to the strategy of unscrupulous manufacturers for deliberate programming of technical defects of the goods, leading to the need to replace it immediately at the end of the warranty period. This strategy has significant implications for public health, social and environmental security. The objectives of the work are studying the actual problems of planned obsolescence of products, the search for its essence, principles and features. The author identifies legislative and law enforcement practice formed by the European Union and different countries in this area. The analysis of law in other countries allows to state the tendency of shift of emphasis from private law methods of protection of consumer and social rights to public law methods, to wider use of a number of coercive instruments. Rethinking the balance of private, public and public interests led to the author’s proposal to develop a holistic concept of legal regulation of civil law relations. As a result of the article, the directions for improving various branches of law in order to counteract the planned obsolescence of goods are proposed.

Reflections on the Limitations Imposed by the Zimbabwean State's Essentialist Interpretation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Identity on Yvonne Vera's Representation of Human Rights in The Stone Virgins

AbstractYvonne Vera's novel The Stone Virgins (2002) stands out as a courageous text that questions the Zimbabwean state's use of violence and an ethnically exclusivist nationalist ideology in its pursuit of a one‐party state objective between 1982 and 1987. This article argues that subtle intimidation through the articulation of a violent postcolonial nationalist discourse and the state's deployment of a military unit and other instruments of coercion might have forced Vera into self‐censorship in her representation of the ‘Gukurahundi’ atrocities in the provinces dominated by the ethnic Ndebele minority. Furthermore, the discursive limitations imposed by the dominant ideology of paternalist Shona nationalism, the need to avoid persecution by the state, and to narrativize the national memory of a painful and emotive history, compromised her objectivity in the representation of culpability for the genocide.

The Economic and Legal Sides of Additionality in Payments for Environmental Services

AbstractThis paper aims to clarify two distinct but complementary questions on economic and legal additionality in the payments for environmental services (PES) debate based on examples from the literature and direct observations made in Madagascar and Mexico. For the economic dimension of additionality, we explain two ‘regimes of justification’, efficiency on the one hand and social equity on the other, and discuss how analysts position themselves with regard to both regimes. For the legal dimension, we review and analyse specific cases in which PES are implemented in addition to existing environmental regulations. We propose a renewed framework of analysis to distinguish ‘compensation’ and ‘reward’ in PES by crossing the opportunity cost dimension and the legal constraint vis‐à‐vis the environment. We show how difficult it is to fully maintain the objective of efficiency when PES are implemented simultaneously across different combinations of opportunity costs and regulation constraints. We propose policy options to address the contradiction between incentive and coercive instruments. These options are land sparing, social targeting and chronological combinations. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Chemical Terrorism as a Coercive Instrument of Foreign Policy of the US and the West

This article considers modern chemical terrorism to be one of the specific and new methods for resolving political contradictions. The acts of chemical terrorism or its threat can be used deliberately as a coercive instrument of foreign policy in the Middle East. Chemical terrorism can be used as an excuse for the open aggression against other nations and for sending regular military forces into the territory of other sovereign states. The article shows that the destabilization of the situation in the Syrian Arab Republic is caused by the financial support of the so-called «moderate opposition», by the imposition of economic sanctions against the state institutions and also by the false accusations of chemical attacks. The article presents certain facts and evidence from different reliable sources, that allow to suggest the possibility of cooperation of foreign intelligence agencies with the armed groups that were committing chemical terrorist acts. The special expert group from the Troops of Radiological, Chemical and Biological Defence of the Russian Federation has been formed for the confirmation of the alleged acts of chemical terrorism. The article presents the results of the work of this expert group that have been accepted by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW)

Russian military strategies in the Arctic: change or continuity?

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the nature of Moscow’s military strategies in the Arctic. It is argued that the roles of military power have radically changed since the Cold War era. According to Russian strategic thinking, instead of being a coercive instrument in a global confrontation between two superpowers and capitalist and socialist systems, now military power has new functions, such as to ascertain Russia's sovereignty over its (not their) exclusive economic zone and continental shelf in the region, protect Moscow’s economic interests in the North, prevent illegal migration and potential terrorist attacks against critical industrial and infrastructural objects, fulfil some dual-use functions (such as search and rescue operations, monitoring air and maritime spaces, providing navigation safety, mitigating natural and man-made catastrophes), help academic community in developing Arctic research, and carry some symbolic functions. These new roles, however, do not preclude military power from fulfilling its traditional functions, such as territorial defence, power projection, deterrence, and containment. Russia’s military modernisation programmes are described. The authors arrive at a conclusion that these programmes do not provoke an arms race or undermine the regional cooperation. To prevent negative security trends, a system of arms control and confidence- and security-building measures should be developed in the region.

Good and Everlasting Friends: Letter-Writing and Friendship in a "Boy-Saving" Reform Endeavor in Progressive-Era America, 1896 to 1906

This essay examines the familiar and intimate correspondence between poor boys from America's industrial cities (ages twelve to eighteen) who were confined to the George Junior Republic, a Progressive-Era juvenile reform program, and Thomas Mott Osborne, the organization's board chairman and wealthy benefactor. By focusing on the social act of writing letters and the relationships these acts engendered, it uncovers the dynamic interplay of interest, power, and feelings in the relationships of the boys and their patron Osborne. In doing so, the essay complicates the more familiar view of such relationships as instruments of social control. Regarding the "friendships" as the boys and Osborne believed them to be—that is, as actual friendships—reveals the intense emotional ties that bound the boys and their older and more powerful benefactor across hierarchies of age, class, and ethnicity. The letters show that friendship between the comparatively powerful and powerless was not only possible; it also tempered the inequalities of incarceration and enabled the boys to resist the more coercive instruments of uplift by declaring their right to sympathy, compassion, and love.

Argument siły czy siła argumentów? Unia Europejska w stosunkach międzynarodowych jako soft power

The article attempts to analyze how the European Union plays its distinctive international role as a so-called soft power. The paper takes into account the fact that the EU acts on its external environment using primarily of a political, diplomatic, economic and cultural means, and not through the use of ‘hard’ instruments of coercion (including the armed forces). The concept of the European Union as a ‘soft power’ serves as a starting point for the presentation of other theories directly related to it – in the first place the concept of the EU as a ‘civilian power’ and ‘normative power’ and other theories derivatives. They take into account various aspects of the specificity of the European Union as a unique participant in contemporary international relations, restraining from using military force and promoting democratic values.

The Coercive Side of Collective Capabilities: Evidence from the Bolivian Altiplano

Theorists have critiqued the individualism at the heart of Sen’s capabilities approach, and have advocated the concept of “collective capabilities” to better understand the role of social institutions in influencing human flourishing and freedom. However, the extent to which collective capabilities are complementary to, or in tension with individual ones has been under-researched. This paper explores the relationship between collective and individual capabilities by analysing the social institutions of indigenous peasants living in the Bolivian Altiplano, a relatively collectivist society, considering the roles of three key social institutions: village-level political organizations, social activities, and Evangelical churches. It argues that the strength of institutions to contribute to both individual and collective well-being often depends on their ability to use coercive instruments to override individual freedoms. Therefore, while the data support the claim that individualist approaches to well-being and freedom are inadequate, it also calls for more dynamic understandings of the ways in which social institutions enable and constrain people’s capabilities.

Ending cyber coercion: Computer network attack, exploitation and the case of North Korea

ABSTRACTThe use of coercive instruments of statecraft and military power to affect changes in strategic behavior is a common feature of international politics. Recently, a variety of state and sub-state actors have attempted to utilize cyber instruments of disruption and intrusion to bring about favorable outcomes. This article notes that digital instruments for coercion offer limited potential for effective compellent effect in world affairs. Nevertheless, as the case of North Korea's 2015 hack and (attempted) manipulation of Sony demonstrates, coercion using cyber weapons of intrusion and disruption is possible under particular conditions. In describing these conditions, I argue that the limits of cyber coercion should be seen more as a function of relevant social and institutional context than of the current state of technological possibilities. Technology certainly determines parameters of coercive interaction between actors, but success—and thus most determinants of strategic decisions surrounding cyber coercion—derives directly from sociopolitical context.

Turning Nature against Man: The Role of Pandemics, Vaccines and Genetics in the UN’s Plan to Halt Population Growth

Faced with resistance from civil society, pressured by an increasingly volatile world, handicapped by the loss of the cover of secrecy, disarmed of plausible deniability, and driven by the sustainability agenda, the UN and national governments have become desperate and isolated and have been forced to adopt a new strategy of population control that no longer relies on their lost ability to turn man against man but on a newly gained ability to turn nature against man. Population control via chemically-induced sterility and morbidity over the course of a lifetime through the adulteration of the basic elements of life with endocrine disruptors is being phased out as more ambitious depopulation targets via vaccine-induced apoptosis through mandatory immunization programmes are being phased in. This new methodology of subverting fertility and increasing mortality, the two means of stable populations, implemented under the guise of societal interventions for public health outcomes with the help of a new global instrument of coercion called ‘public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) requires far fewer financial and human resources but entails far greater risks for mankind and for all life on earth. This methodology allows for the concomitant pursuit of peak population and peak life expectancy by genetically programming sterility and morbidity early in life through childhood vaccines so the engineered demographic transition is accomplished worldwide by 2050 in the most economical fashion and with the furthest timeframe of responsibility, but also with little or no regard to the integrity of human life, fully outside the law and in defiance of constitutional guarantees.

The Rule of Law between England and Sudan: Hay, Thompson, and Massoud

Two significant writings, one by Douglas Hay and the other by E. P. Thompson, appeared in 1976. Both sought to explain relationships between law and social (specifically, ruling‐class) power in a manner that avoided treating law either simply as a coercive instrument of class domination (“vulgar Marxism”), or as a good for all “(liberal legalism”). They overlapped and each was influenced by the other, but they differed significantly, in substance, in tone, and in admirers. Mark Massoud sensibly and thoughtfully draws inspiration from both. This article queries, however, whether his account of the role and rule of law in Sudan manages to resolve a significant tension between Hay and Thompson. This results in a certain ambivalence in the telling, a sometimes anguished oscillation between two interpretive modes, perhaps sensibilities, represented by Hay and Thompson, each of which can lead in different directions.

Targeted Versus Conventional Economic Sanctions: What Is at Stake for Human Rights?

ABSTRACTThe adverse impact of economic sanctions on human rights is well documented in the literature (Peksen 2009; Wood 2008) and so are the consequences of sanctions for democracy (Peksen and Drury 2009, 2010) and for the survival of leaders (Escribà-Folch & Wright 2010; Marinov 2005). Using data from the Targeted Sanctions Consortium (Biersteker, Eckert, Tourinho, and Hudákóva 2013), we analyze whether sanctions that target segmented groups within the leadership fare any better with respect to human rights protection. The analysis focuses on the universe of targeted sanctions against African countries, between 1992 and 2008, and finds that the adverse impact of this coercive instrument—though unintended—is not statistically distinguishable from the adverse consequences already identified by the literature with respect to conventional sanctions. All else equal, the protection of rights to physical integrity (the right to life and the prohibition of torture) in the targeted country is 1.74 times more likely to worsen under an episode of targeted sanction when compared to a situation where there is no sanction. We propose a signaling model wherein a targeted leader is perceived by the opposition as weakened by the sanctions, which leads to more protest and repression. Higher levels of human rights violations follow.