Creative Ambiguity Research Articles

The End of Composite Monarchies: Hugo Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis and Mid-Seventeenth-Century Iberian Diplomacy

Abstract This article sheds light on the seventeenth-century Catalan, Portuguese and Castilian uses of Hugo Grotius’s De iure belli ac pacis (1625) and, in particular, his chapters on the matter of monarchical succession. By studying the patterns in the ways that Catalan and Portuguese rebels and Spanish diplomats drew on this source to mediate disputes over succession, the article suggests that, while Grotius’s works may have eroded the rights of possession in the Atlantic and the Pacific by building on classical, biblical and Spanish sources, Iberian authors saw the text as a shared rulebook for discussing a sensitive matter that Spain had traditionally resolved through creative ambiguity, by granting and expanding local privileges under the threat of brute force. The article, in this way, encourages a reconsideration of the practical, diplomatic and high-political uses of Grotius’s ideas in Catholic Europe, a reassessment of a clear-cut binary between Dutch ideas of liberty and Spanish visions of empire, and a reconsideration of the historiographical explanation for the decomposition of composite monarchies.

CREATIVITY AND TRANSNATIONAL COMMERCIAL LAW: FROM CARCHEMISH TO CAPE TOWN

AbstractThis article examines the creative aspects of a range of international commercial law instruments which have in common that they seek to bypass traditional doctrine in order to increase commercial efficiency and ease of transacting. In short, the purpose of the harmonising measure is functional in that it seeks to overcome a serious obstacle to cross-border trade by providing commercially sensible solutions to typical problems regardless whether this disturbs established legal theory, which should always the servant of the law, not its master. Creativity applies not only to the formulation of an instrument but also to its interpretation. Those entrusted with preparing a commentary on the detail of such an instrument are likely to face difficult issues of interpretation which may take years to surface and may only be resolved by a willingness to risk error in order to provide the reader with clear guidance rather than sheltering behind the presentation of alternative interpretations, while at the same time resisting the temptation to ascribe to words in a convention the meaning they would have under one's own national law.At least one of the instruments examined was conceptually flawed; it is mentioned to highlight the danger of over-ambition in delineating the sphere of application of the convention concerned. Undisciplined creativity comes at a cost. Another convention, and a highly successful one, is referred to only to demonstrate the value of creative ambiguity.

Creative ambiguity

Creative ambiguity

Kosovo- Serbia Agreements between Creative and Destructive Ambiguity Abstract:

Kosovo- Serbia Agreements between Creative and Destructive Ambiguity Abstract:

Creative ambiguity in the service of language policy and new speakers

This paper critiques the contribution made by specialists working within the COST Action Network on New Speakers Programme. It then offers an evaluation of the progress made to date in a number of fields such as conceptual advancement, ideological dispositions, migration and international mobility before contributing a series of policy related recommendations and an assessment of the challenges yet to be faced by researchers and practitioners. The first challenge is the parallel cross‐fertilisation of evidence and best practice from new speaker experiences within hegemonic and lesser used languages and also the particular additional hurdles faced by those who simultaneously grapple with a new hegemonic and lesser used language in tandem, such as English and Irish which must surely be a daunting prospect for migrants and refugees alike. The second is to analyse how and to what extent members of the host community either welcome or frustrate the attempts by new speakers to be fully accepted as co‐equal members, and with what consequences for the perseverance of new speakers. The third is to distil the essence of this new wave of research into practical policy proposals in a range of domains so that outcome‐based programmes and actions can be initiated by political authorities who are charged with improving the opportunities and realisation of those who wish to move beyond being learners of a target language into being active new speakers and full participants in their chosen milieu.

Radical incarnation and creative ambiguity

This article examines Martin Luther's perception of gender and ministry in relation to what may be coined his radical incarnation theology, the Word incarnate in Jesus Christ, in-fleshed in human beings and in the entire material, created world, and expressed in the verbum vocale through the ministry of the word. The article aims at presenting a thorough theological analysis of seminal texts on Luther's new understanding of the ecclesial office in the dialectics of the priesthood of all believers and the ministry of the word. The article claims that Luther's new perception of ministry opened avenues for women to gain authority as preachers, but that he was pressed – partly by his peers and particularly the papal church - and chose to express his liberal ideas by way of creative ambiguity.

Practical Implementation Issues for the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol from a Korean Perspective

The Nagoya Protocol is an international agreement that aims to share the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources in a fair and equitable way. It is considered one of the innovative achievements of global environmental governance and is expected to generate new opportunities. However, the Nagoya Protocol has been described as “a masterpiece in creative ambiguity” because of its lack of legal clarity. The Republic of Korea, although it has not yet ratified the Protocol, has made considerable efforts to address the upcoming changes. The current legislation, which is one of the most important way-stations for ratification, is in its final stages. However, there are differences of opinion among government departments. This article analyses the legal and policy responses of the Korean government to access and benefit sharing, with a focus on marine biological resources.

Which Mary? Eastern Christian Women Bringing their Mary into the Lebanese Protestant Church

Marian images are powerful and active in the lives of many faithful Christians. This research looks at the role of Mary in the lives of a particular kind of Christians who have a complex liturgical make up: Lebanese women who come from Orthodox and Maronite backgrounds and who by marriage join Lebanese Protestant churches. While one would suppose that Protestantism and Marian devotion should exclude each other, we show that in this case a creative ambiguity is at work where images of Mary help qualify the relationship with the divine.

The Serbia-Kosovo Agreements: An eu Success Story?

The agreements between Serbia and Kosovo—mediated by the eu since 2011—constitute a major step toward the normalization of relations between the two countries following Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008. They are also a test case for eu mediation and its ability to utilize the prospect of accession to address protracted conflicts. This article argues that the eu used creative ambiguity, as well direct pressure, in facilitating a number of agreements between Serbia and Kosovo. While this approach has yielded concrete results, it also bears risks, as the process was top-down and, also, left considerable room for divergent and conflicting interpretations of key provisions. This article will trace the negotiations and identify the particular features of the process.

Negotiating failure: understanding the geopolitics of climate change

Negotiating failure: understanding the geopolitics of climate change

Rules for a lender of last resort: An historical perspective

The Federal Reserve was established in 1913 to be a lender of last resort. Paul Warburg, its principal architect had in mind that a U.S. central bank would follow Bagehot׳s strictures ‘to lend freely at a penalty rate’ in the face of a scramble for high powered money. Yet the Federal Reserve Act never spelled out how the Fed was supposed to act as an LLR. This omission came to the fore in the Great Contraction 1929 to 1933 when the Fed failed to prevent four banking panics which turned a serious recession into the Great Contraction. Reforms in the 1930s corrected some of the Fed׳s failures but clamped down on financial activity for 40 years. The financial crisis problem returned in the 1970s with financial liberalization. The Fed abandoned Bagehot׳s strictures and adopted the ‘Too big to fail’ doctrine and ‘creative ambiguity’. This policy shift contributed to moral hazard and created new threats to financial stability with the rise of the ‘shadow banking system’. The subprime mortgage crisis prompted the Fed to take unprecedented LLR activities which have opened up a Pandora׳s box of perils. The Fed has moved away from rules based policy in its LLR function.

Don’t mention the culture war: Beyond creative ambiguity and professional “quietism” in Northern Ireland/North of Ireland spatial planning?

The breakdown of political talks in Belfast over Christmas in 2013 dealing with how the legacy of conflict (including its spatial expression) and frictions involving symbolic spatial markers (flags...

Citizens of Empire: Puerto Rico, Status, and Constitutional Change

This paper proposes a new account of how empire became constitutional. When the United States took a deliberate imperial turn in 1898-1899 by annexing Puerto Rico and the Philippines, many jurists thought that the Constitution automatically made these islands proto-states and their residents U.S. citizens with full constitutional protections. Three decades later, this view was no longer mainstream. Contrary to standard accounts, this momentous change was neither quick nor the result of unilateral judicial action. To perceive dynamics extending beyond the judiciary, this study examines the attempts to win U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans by their first representative in Washington, Federico Degetau y Gonzalez. Aware that constitutional meaning was not exclusively the province of courts, he brought claims to U.S. citizenship before administrators, legislators, and the president as well. Officials responded with evasions through concessions. When Degetau sought a right as a citizen, they granted him it on other grounds. Meanings of U.S. citizenship changed as officials reduced the rights that would accompany a grant of citizenship while envisioning without endorsing the possibility of noncitizen U.S. nationals. That novel idea – like the idea of U.S. lands that would never be states and U.S. people with less than full constitutional rights – ripened into conventional wisdom and eventually still-binding doctrine. This suggests that the constitutional law of empire emerged as judges together with administrative and elected officials engaged in an iterative process in which they deployed forms of creative ambiguity to manage perceived conflicts between Constitution and empire.

Earle Brown's ‘Creative Ambiguity’ and Ideas of Co-creatorship in Selected Works

After explaining Brown's concept of ‘creative ambiguity’, and discussing the idea of co-creatorship with regard to determinate and indeterminate music, a recording of Brown's December 1952 will be examined. Other works briefly mentioned are Corroboree and Twentyfive Pages. The article illustrates that, despite Brown's statement about wanting flexibility and spontaneity, he was increasingly less convinced that performers should be given broader choices when executing indeterminate notations. His solution was to pass on the final control of his works to the conductor. Using statements by Brown, the article also argues that Brown was not interested in achieving specific libertarian, social or political situations with his compositions.

A new process for negotiating multilateral environmental agreements? The Asia–Pacific climate partnership beyond Kyoto

The Kyoto Protocol is widely regarded as representing a failed approach to the problem of climate change, especially since the US and Australia have declined to ratify, and developing countries such as India and China—sources of much future emissions growth—have signalled an unwillingness to take on obligations for binding reductions within the framework of an extended Kyoto-like instrument. A new Asia–Pacific Partnership to deal with the problems has emerged and held its first meeting in Sydney in January 2006. Involving Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea and the US, this new partnership provides not only an approach better suited to the interests and resource endowments of the region, but a new model for negotiating multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). In the past, MEAs have been beset by a dilemma, in that the slow pace of their negotiation was overcome by devices (such as lowest common denominator measures, creative ambiguity, iterative functionalism, and double standards provisions) that limited their effectiveness. This article argues that by involving only six parties which account for half of existing emissions, the new Partnership provides the opportunity for better policy to be developed among a smaller number of parties, with the potential to overcome the pitfalls of past MEAs.

Three Variations on ‘The Future of the WTO’

1Professor of Economics at Sciences Po, Paris and Director of the Groupe d’Economie Mondiale de Sciences Po (GEM)

Devolution—The Northern Ireland Way: An Exercise in ‘Creative Ambiguity’

Devolution in Northern Ireland followed directly from the 1998 Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement which provided, inter alia, for a democratically elected Assembly “inclusive in its membership, capable of exercising executive and legislative authority, and subject to safeguards to protect the rights and interests of all sides of the community”. More than six years on, the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly are in suspension for the fourth time (the latest since October 2002). The conjunction of devolution and the implementation of the Agreement mean that the former is wholly dependent on the vagaries of the latter and, as a consequence, has devalued the potential of devolution to improve the governance of Northern Ireland.

Lawlessness on the frontier: The Anglo‐Scottish borderlands in the fourteenth to sixteenth century

This paper uses an historical case to explore the concept of borderlands as a type of space. Based upon an analysis of contemporary and historical description of the endemic raiding (reiving) that characterized the Anglo‐Scottish border region from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, I highlight five dimensions of border regions and their consequences for identity and place‐making. The first is that border space can change dramatically over time. The second is the significance of recognizing the difference between figurative and geographic borders or boundaries. The third is the importance of distinguishing between border zones as peripheral spaces on the one hand and as frontier spaces on the other hand in terms of their implications for constructing local identities. The fourth is the dynamic and creative ambiguity of border zones not as stigmatized peripheries but as dynamic frontiers. The fifth is the way in which actions of borderers are both shaped by and shape the action of spatially central state governments.

Optimal Bail Out Policy, Conditionality and Constructive Ambiguity

This paper addresses the issue of the optimal behaviour of the Lender of Last Resort (LOLR) in its microeconomic role regarding individual financial institutions in distress. It has been argued that the LOLR should not intervene at the microeconomic level and let any defaulting institution face the market discipline, as it will be confronted with the consequences of the risks it has taken. By considering a simple cost benefit analysis we show that this position may lack a sufficient foundation. We establish that, instead, uder reasonable assumptions, the optimal policy has to be conditional on the amount of uninsured debt issued by the defaulting bank. Yet in equilibrium, because the rescue policy is costly, the LOLR will not rescue all the banks that fulfill the uninsured debt requirement condition, but will follow a mixed strategy. This we interpret as the confirmation of the creative ambiguity principle, perfectly in line with the central bankers claim that it is efficient for them to have discretion in lending to individual institutions. Alternatively, in other cases, when the social cost of a bank's bankruptcy is high, it is optimal for the LOLR to bail out the insititution, and this gives support to the too big to fail policy.

Philosophical and Rhetorical Modes in Zen Discourse: Contrasting Nishida's Logic and Koan Poetry

Reason in Zen practice is not jettisoned in favor of the irrational but may be used as a bridge to the suprarational. Metaphor- ical descriptions of place, using the language of both philosophy and poetry, provide forms for this use of reason. Nishida's philosophical text, Topological Logic and the Religious Worldview, functions as a bridge between these philosophical and rhetorical modes, helping in the process understanding between East and West but perhaps sacri- ficing somewhat the creative ambiguity of the koan tradition.