Home State Research Articles

A Tale of Two Kingdoms: State‐Level Political Determinants of Corporate Social Responsibility

ABSTRACTObjectiveThis research note explores the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the political environment, focusing on the impact of state‐level political determinants on Fortune 500 companies' CSR ratings.MethodWe conduct OLS regression on 485 Fortune 500 companies’ 2020 CSRHub ratings, with standard errors clustered by state. Key independent variables include state partisanship and partisan control of state government, with controls for firm size, political activity, sector, region, and unionization.ResultsOur analysis reveals a significant correlation between the political leaning of a company's home state and its CSR rating, with firms in states that favored President Biden exhibiting higher CSR ratings. Additionally, companies in states with divided government control tend to have higher CSR ratings, suggesting that a balanced political environment may encourage more robust CSR efforts. Finally, the study uncovers a relationship between corporate political activities, such as lobbying and political contributions, and CSR engagement, indicating that firms view CSR as a strategic element of their broader nonmarket strategies.ConclusionThese findings highlight the strategic role of CSR in corporations’ navigation of the political landscape, offering new insights into the motivations behind corporate social responsibility initiatives in today's politically charged environment.

Work‑Related Migration to the Alang Ship‑Breaking Industry from Other Parts of India: An Overview of Health‑Related Issues.

Background: India has a ship‑breaking yard at Alang in Gujarat. The workers are prone to being exposed to various hazardous chemicals, including asbestos. These workers are often interstate migrants, and there is a chance of them developing diseases caused by asbestos, manifesting decades after exposure. This includes mesothelioma, which is a malignancy caused by asbestos exposure and can manifest much after the cessation of their employment. Objective: In the absence of an operational national database of migrants, it is important to understand the source of migrants to trace future disease occurrence, especially after retiring to their home states. This study aims to find the Indian districts from which workers migrate to work at Alang‑Sosiya ship‑breaking yards. Methods: The current study uses the Right to Information Act, 2005, to find out the districts of residents of migrant workers that came to Alang in 2019 as a representative year. Findings and conclusion: The data point to districts in three states: Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar, and have important policy consequences and epidemiological importance as these can be used to understand the aetiology of asbestos‑related diseases.

It Costs More to Kill Us Than to Help Us Get Back on Our Feet: Investing in Recovery is Cheaper and Yields Dividends

Alcohol, Tobacco and other drug mortality leads loss in America if you add it all up, which we do not. But of course, it does not end there. We also fail to consider non mortality associated carnage. It costs us billions in lost productivity, associated healthcare costs, criminal justice expenditures and innumerable other burdens. To highlight one of the myriad of such outlays, the BoatUS Foundation calculates that impaired boating costs us 240 million dollars a year. Last week in ADAW, the lead article cited Indivior, finding that the average case of OUD costs $695,000 a year, most in the criminal justice system. It breaks down costs per state, and it calculates in my home state of PA, Opioid Use Disorders alone cost us over 232 Billion dollars. You cannot look anywhere in our budgets without uncovering similar stats, but we do not add all these vast burdens on society up. It is either a number so large that we cannot fathom it, or that we do not care enough to add it all up because if we did, we would have to actually do more about it. The Occom's Razor of our dearth of data in respect to all the societal costs from alcohol and other substance use. We don't want to know the full scope of costs because then we would have to do more about it.

Understanding the Experiences and Priorities of Patients Traveling to Illinois for Abortion Care Post-Dobbs [ID 1337

INTRODUCTION: The 2022 Dobbs v Jackson decision has resulted in widespread state abortion restrictions. We sought to understand patients’ priorities when travelling to Illinois for abortion care. METHODS: We conducted semistructured interviews between March and September 2024 with adult participants who travelled to Illinois for an abortion. Interviews were recorded, deidentified, transcribed, and coded using Dedoose software. We conducted thematic content analysis to identify key themes across interviews. RESULTS: Twenty-nine participants completed interviews (59% White, 34% Black, 1% Hispanic), with 69% seeking abortion at less than or equal to 10 weeks of gestation and 55% traveling 2 or more hours one-way. When making an abortion appointment in Illinois, participants prioritized: 1) earlier appointment times, 2) a comfortable and safe setting, 3) costs, and 4) minimizing travel. Participants prioritized timing to avoid pregnancy progression, relieve difficult symptoms, and avoid more complex procedures. Participants also sought out clinic locations near friends and family, with good reviews or reputation, without protestors, and that offered preferred method and/or sedation. Comfort and security were valuable in the absence of guidance from trusted at-home providers. Cost was a factor, including free parking, less gas use, and reduced procedure price. Participants also discussed trade-offs; for instance, whereas some sought to minimize travel, others were willing to increase travel time to reduce costs. CONCLUSIONS/IMPLICATIONS: Participants managed a variety of competing priorities to obtain abortion care outside of their home state. Family planning providers must be prepared to support patients navigating these challenging trade-offs through shared decision making in a legally restrictive post-Dobbs world.

Psychedelic Trips: Travel Within the United States to Use Psychedelic Drugs After Legalization.

Psychedelic Trips: Travel Within the United States to Use Psychedelic Drugs After Legalization.

The concepts of nationality and citizenship in the XXI century’s immigration scenario: an agonistic approach

The legal concept of citizenship as it is built on liberal democratic orders, a universalized form of government, establishes nationality as the primary political link between the state and the citizen. We argue that this political composition creates a framework of antagonism between the national, as a citizen, and the foreigner, as a non-citizen, someone who does not belong to the national political community and thus threatens the cohesion between its members and between the people and the government of a nation-state. We counter-argue, however, that the new immigration triggered from the end of the colonial era to the present, has established itself as an organic phenomenon, an analytical category used by Antonio Gramsci linked to Mouffe and Laclau’s theoretical perspective, in particular regarding the paradigm of radical pluralist democracy. We highlight in particular the consolidation of collective subjects such as diasporas, whose members maintain an ambiguous relationship of identification with the nationality of their home state and the state where they are, physically. Mouffe and Laclau’s agonistic perspective allow us to understand the configuration of power relations that structure the social order and the type of hegemony they construct in their intersections with the work of Hannah Arendt, in the field of political philosophy, as well as historians, such as Eric Hobsbawm and Thomas Marshall, besides Carl Rogers. We intend to deconstruct to reconstruct the concepts of citizenship and nationality as placed on the political arena, as resulting of hegemonic articulations that lead to the maintenance of harmonious and non-violent social orders, as the opposite of the political dominance. The exclusion of the person, which always emerges, generates struggle, resistance, but not through an undifferentiated inclusion, but through inclusion as a particular person, who exercises the power to be what he is, in freedom, what is the root of citizenship, an instrument for emancipation.

Childcare Subsidies and Reduced Intimate Partner Violence Victimization: An Unintended Benefit.

Mothers in low-income households face an increased risk for intimate partner violence (IPV). The high costs of raising young children can create household conflict that makes violence more likely to occur. Furthermore, a lack of formal childcare can force women out of the workforce, rendering them financially dependent on partners. Childcare subsidies, which cover a portion of the expenses associated with center-based or in-home care for young children, can alleviate household economic strain and allow mothers to work, potentially reducing relationship conflict and promoting women's financial independence to leave abusive partners. The present study investigated the link between mothers' receipt of government childcare subsidies and IPV victimization. Data came from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, a large longitudinal birth cohort study that sampled families from 20 large American cities. The analytic sample for the present study was limited to mothers who were income-eligible for a childcare subsidy in their home state and were in an intimate relationship at the year 3 interview when children were approximately 3 years old (N = 1,987). Path analysis with a latent dependent variable found that receipt of a childcare subsidy was associated with a significant decrease in IPV victimization (β = -.18, p < .05), controlling for a number of maternal and household characteristics. Maternal employment, parenting stress, and housing insecurity were associated with increased IPV, regardless of subsidy receipt. Findings suggest childcare subsidies are an important policy tool for targeting violence against women. Expansion of federal childcare subsidies may have additional unintended benefits for families.

A Study of Home State Responsibility in the Regulation of Forced Labor by Transnational Corporations

This paper focuses on the home state responsibility of transnational corporations(TNCs) in regulating forced labor. As globalization progresses, The issue of international firms using forced labor has been more apparent.It violates workers' human rights and has an impact on the reputation of businesses, the climate for investment, and the long-term viability of the world economy. The article provides an in-depth analysis of the theoretical basis of the home state's legal responsibility for the regulation of forced labor, covering the protection of general personality rights and personal jurisdiction, as well as the relevant regulation under international law. At the same time, it points out that there are problems such as conflict of jurisdiction,challenges in establishing and compensating the victims, as well as barriers to the application of the removing the corporate veil concept, and imperfections in the home country's legal system, and then proposes ways to improve the situation. The study shows that strengthening home country responsibility and international regulatory cooperation are of great significance in solving the problem of forced labor by multinational corporations. Looking ahead, countries should strengthen the accountability mechanism of home countries, international organizations and NGOs should promote the compliance of enterprises with human rights principles, and countries should strengthen the coordination of laws and regulations, in order to foster the defense of international labor rights and interests and to create a favorable global working environment.

Changing Situation of Employment, Unemployment and Migration in India

This article examines the changing nature, pattern and extent of employment, unemployment and migration in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The labour force participation rate (LFPR) and employment have gradually improved, which had considerably shrunk during the first wave of the pandemic, while the unemployment problem has waned, which had significantly amplified during the pandemic. Expectedly, urban people, in particular, were increasingly becoming more mobile. However, migration remains predominated by rural migration. Migration for work-related reasons was higher for the post-March 2020 than the usual migrants. The impact of the pandemic was severe for the migrant workers as they returned to their home states due to a sudden job loss. Reverse migrant workers constituted about 1% of India’s population. Largely, the pandemic and partly the reverse migration were concerned for the labour market. Eventually, employment, unemployment and migration conditions have been normalised. JEL Codes: J200, J210, J64, J600, J640, J610

Roma EU citizens and the United Kingdom’s EU settlement scheme: Another ‘Windrush scandal’ in the making?

Abstract Roma in Europe have long been racialized and marginalized, both in their countries of origin and their adopted home states. But for many Central and Eastern European Roma, European Union (EU) citizenship afforded them the opportunity to at least try to pursue a better life elsewhere, including in the UK. And although the free movement regime, as it was applied in the UK, contained a neoliberal logic that withdrew rights from some economically ‘inactive’ EU citizens, those exclusions were not definitive; individuals could access rights once they met the economic conditions. This situation changed following Brexit and the UK’s decision to require individuals to actively acquire a new status via the so-called EU settlement scheme (EUSS). Drawing on original 2023/24 research, we show how historical marginalization made it particularly difficult for many Roma to successfully navigate the ‘digital by default’ EUSS in order to acquire a ‘settled’ status and, once acquired, use their new ‘digital only’ status in everyday life. Notably, those who were unable to acquire a new status, including many who probably had a legal right to status, risked a definitive loss of rights post-Brexit. We highlight the potential for a repeat of something like the ‘Windrush scandal’, but this time with racialized Roma EU citizens—rather than the Caribbean-origin ‘Windrush generation’—as its victims.

Good Faith and Investment Treaties With a Particular View on Pillar Two

Good faith has distinct functions in investment law that balance competing interests. It protects investors’ legitimate expectations under investment agreements and stabilization clauses while safeguarding host states’ right to regulate in good faith for a legitimate public interest or purpose. This article first examines whether amendments of the legal and tax regulatory framework by host states, as part of the Pillar Two global policy reform, frustrates investors’ legitimate expectations. It then assesses if such changes could still qualify as good faith conduct by a state that is pursuing legitimate policy objectives thereby excluding liability. Additionally, the article explores how home states’ activation of the Pillar Two mechanisms may conflict with treaties’ performance in good faith and estoppel. Finally, the article investigates how tribunals weigh the good faith aspect in involved parties’ behaviour when calculating liability for damages. It assesses whether the coercive effect on host states caused by Pillar Two mechanisms activated by home states could make them fully or partially liable for damages. The article accentuates the increasing relevance of good faith in current international tax policymaking in which political and economic pressure has become a powerful tool for shaping global rules.

Bringing Home The Bacon: Politician Ambassadors and Home State Trade

abstract: Ambassadors promote domestic exports to a host country and represent the interests of their home country at large. However, are trade benefits equally distributed domestically? In the United States, a substantial number of ambassadors are former governors or legislators—that is, politician ambassadors. The authors argue that these politician ambassadors are particularly equipped with knowledge and incentives to promote exports from their home states to host countries. Leveraging the biographic information of 164 ambassadors and US state–level exports to thirty major export destinations from 2002 to 2020, the authors find that the home states of politician ambassadors, compared to other states, on average enjoy a ten percentage point increase in exports to host countries. The home-state effect is particularly apparent in countries in which the United States exports the most in dollar value, and in industries that export final goods, such as beverages and electrical equipment. The past career paths and future career aspirations of ambassadors can shape how the benefits of diplomacy are distributed domestically.

Children's Theory of Mind and Family Socioeconomic Status: What Can Different Approaches and Contexts Tell Us About the Same Construct?

ABSTRACTChildren's theory of mind (ToM) is a crucial milestone in early childhood, with implications for prosocial behaviours and cognitive skills in later years. Therefore, it is important to characterise children's ToM and the factors influencing its development, such as socioeconomic status (SES) and parental interactive resources. However, most existing research has narrowly focused on only one aspect of ToM (false‐belief understanding), which may provide a limited perspective. Consequently, this study aimed to adopt a more comprehensive approach to characterise early childhood ToM and its associated factors. Specifically, the study explored ToM in children aged 3–4 years within a Chilean sample, consisting of 120 mother‐child dyads, using two measurement approaches (maternal and observational reports) in two dyadic contexts: storytelling and free‐play. Additionally, it examined the indirect associations between family SES and ToM through educational stimulation at home and maternal mental state references (MSR) in both dyadic contexts. The results revealed small but significant correlations between the measurement approaches (maternal and observational reports) within the storytelling context. However, no significant correlations were found between the storytelling and free‐play contexts. Moreover, family SES was found to be indirectly associated with ToM through educational stimulation at home and maternal MSRs during free‐play, as assessed by maternal and observational reports, respectively. These findings underscore that children's understanding of minds is a complex, multifaceted construct that should be examined using diverse and comprehensive approaches and contexts.

Adjudicating while Fighting: Political Implications of the Ukraine-Russia Bilateral Investment Treaty

Russia’s 2014 seizure of parts of Ukraine, notably the Crimean Peninsula, set in motion a flurry of legal activity. Ukraine’s “lawfare” strategy, which aims to fight Russia via international legal means, included explicit encouragement of Ukrainian investors to file disputes under the Ukraine-Russia Bilateral Investment Treaty. We consider the resulting Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) arbitrations, the first instances of ISDS in which state parties to the treaty are actively engaged in armed conflict. Although Ukrainian actors have consistently won at ISDS arbitrations, Ukraine moved to formally withdraw from the treaty a year after the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022. Developments before and since the invasion point to the diverging interests between commercial actors and their home states, the weakness of ISDS as a tool during wartime, and a reconsideration of treaty-based commitments to international investor protections. We highlight the implications of these events for several literatures in international relations.

Lost in conversion: rethinking investment treaty protection against retroactive regulation in the wake of the ‘Francogeddon’

Abstract The Swiss National Bank’s abrupt abandonment of the Franc–Euro (CHF–EUR) exchange rate peg in 2015 unleashed a financial shockwave—dubbed ‘Francogeddon’—that continues to reverberate a decade later. While the immediate crisis has subsided, its aftermath continues to affect hundreds of thousands of mortgage holders with CHF-denominated loans and several of their home States. In response to that fallout, countries such as Croatia and Montenegro mandated the retroactive conversion of CHF loans into local currency, prompting however a series investment claims by foreign banks. Using these disputes as an entry point, this article examines the treatment of currency and exchange rate interventions under international investment law, and canvasses two relatively underexplored dimensions of regulatory interference within the fair and equitable treatment standard: the retroactive nature of financial restructurings and the due diligence obligations of investors marketing complex financial products. It contextualizes these issues within the broader debates over the concept of stability in investment law, and presents a typology of the different approaches, probing into their content and normative justifications. The article ultimately reflects on the implications of these controversial issues for adjudicating disputes in a world increasingly shaped by financial (and other) crises.

Decision Making on the World Court: Are International Judges Geopolitically Biased?

Do international adjudicators align with the foreign policy interests of their home country? This article contributes new evidence that judges on the International Court of Justice (ICJ) diverge along similar lines as their home states in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Ideal points for judges and countries are estimated from nonunanimous judicial votes up to January 2023 using Item Response Modelling and then related to country ideal points estimated from UNGA votes in earlier research. The analysis reveals that, as with countries in the UNGA, a pro-anti-Western divide order constitutes the main dimension of disagreement on the Court. Moreover, ideal points derived from UNGA voting patterns are themselves robust predictors of voting affinity among judges as well as between judges and the parties involved in litigation. Judges originating from nations exhibiting greater geopolitical divergence are more likely to disagree. Just as judges from more pro-Western states are less likely to favour anti-Western litigant states.

The importance of money and connections: Explaining international status from unga draft sponsorship networks

Can money and connections buy international influence and improve a state’s international status? This paper argues that outward foreign direct investment (FDI) by a state is associated with the improvement of its international status, as demonstrated in its increased probability of being co-sponsored in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) drafts initiated by it. Furthermore, connections among states in co-sponsorship networks, which are endogenous network features, such as sociality, popularity, mutuality, and transitivity, are associated with increased co-sponsorship likelihood. The outward FDI has the potential to increase the soft power of the home state from the bottom up and top down: the potential FDI host states are more likely to provide co-sponsorship out of aspiration for attracting FDI; multinational enterprises also have incentives to facilitate good relationships between home and host states. By taking a relational approach to studying international status from the network perspective, this paper explores how FDI is related to the UNGA drafts co-sponsorship networks worldwide from 2009 to 2018. Using temporal exponential random graph models (TERGM), this study finds that more FDI is associated with a state’s greater influence in the UNGA draft sponsorship network. Besides, from the network perspective, this paper enhances our understanding of the important concept of international status in world politics and it empirically highlights the significance of outward FDI and connections in influencing states’ behaviors.

Diaspora Exclusion in Divided Home States: Israel and Turkey Compared

This article examines how home states define and redefine membership within ‘their’ diaspora and how certain groups and individuals are excluded from this conception through discourse, policy and practice. We argue that ontological security, or the state’s need for a stable sense of identity, coherence and continuity, involves a consistent narrative about belonging that is directed at emigrants and their descendants and shapes how states interact with ‘their’ diasporas. The theoretical literature typically portrayed diaspora engagement in positive and inclusionary terms. Recently, however, scholars have argued that diaspora engagement may also have negative and exclusionary dimensions in the form of marginalisation, securitisation and persecution of specific groups and individuals abroad, as well as the cooptation of other groups. Such practices are likely in the context of divided societies, mirroring domestic modes of exclusion. Our comparative study of Israel and Turkey reveals such exclusionary dynamics based on ethnicity, religion and political inclination, which not only characterise both countries’ domestic contexts but also extend to their overseas populations. Our findings suggest that in divided states, where identity struggles and uneven citizenship shape politics and society, diaspora policies claiming to tie emigrants and co-ethnics to the homeland may never achieve full inclusion.

Strategic factors in SME leadership orientation towards initiating exports: India context

PurposeThis paper aims to examine characteristics of emerging market small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) decision makers in their entry to exporting. What prior experience is significantly related to an export orientation? How influential are factors that would both aid and inhibit exports? What about the decision to not initiate exporting.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 319 surveys were collected from managers in South India for quantitative and qualitative analysis. Structural equation modelling was used to test the model.FindingsFluency in English was the only significant managerial characteristic associated with a positive perception of export benefits. Education and export experience were not significant strategic factors. SMEs who only serve their domestic market were not averse to exporting but were satisfied with the performance of their home markets. Once deciding to export, use of export intermediaries helped them to move towards presence in multiple markets. None of the inhibiting costs or constraints involved with exporting, other than labour, transportation differentials and export controls, were significantly influential in the export decision process. However, exports were favourably influenced by perceptions of the firms’ quality, pricing, selection and business relationships.Practical implicationsThe value of export intermediaries and government agencies is clearly indicated from this study. Such providers could use these findings to target decision makers and assist in overcoming objections to branching out beyond a domestic-only strategy. One strategy option is to establish a strong market presence in the home state and then “export” to adjoining states. The findings might be generalised to other emerging markets as well.Originality/valueExport entry decision-making is an under-researched area in emerging markets.

INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT ARBITRATION – AN OUTLOOK FROM CROATIA

Since Croatia’s establishment as a sovereign country in the early 1990s, foreign investments have been identified as a strategic priority of its economic policy. Croatia seeks to provide a stable legal environment for foreign investors through its domestic rules, EU law or bilateral investment treaties. Providing legal protection in international investment disputes is a challenging task, and requires careful balancing between protecting private investor interests and the public interest in the State of investment. Entrusting this task to ad hoc arbitration tribunals, which adjudicate based on a specific body of investment law, and its open concepts, has been under increasing criticism, leading to a conclusion that the characteristics that distinguish arbitration from court proceedings are, at the same time, its greatest shortcomings. On the trail of this reflection, and following the Achmea case, there is increasing advocacy for establishing a special EU court for international investment disputes. This paper focuses, however, on the investment dispute resolution before ICSID involving Croatia either as the respondent or the home state in the last half decade.