Hybrid Actors Research Articles

Innovative competences in public administration: The path to sustainable development, financial efficiency and strengthening of national security

The article claims that modern transformation processes in the system of international relations have led to the emergence of a new set of security problems threats, challenges, and risks of a non-traditional series, differing from traditional, military-strategic threats in the parameters of their impact on modern states and their transboundary nature. Hybrid dangers have an increasing impact on societal domains. To further their political, ideological, or commercial goals, hybrid actors take advantage of the weaknesses found in intricately interconnected communities. Research makes an attempt to outline innovative competencies of public administration in the domains of national security and sustainable development within this complex environment.

Humanitarian diplomacy and the countries of the Global South: Trends and discourses

In recent years, discussions about the essence of humanitarization and humanization of international relations have intensified due to the aggravation of economic, social, and ethical problems against the background of a sharp deterioration in the international situation, particularly in the Global South. This paper aims to identify the specifics and provide a comparative analysis of the approaches of both the developed and developing states of the North and the South to the formats, content and purpose of humanitarian diplomacy in contemporary world politics. The first section examines academic discussions on the issues of humanitarian diplomacy. The authors highlight two main approaches in foreign and Russian international political studies to addressing the humanitarian problems of the Global South — an objectal and a subjectal ones. The former is typically associated with the developed countries of the Global North and is rooted in the practices of the colonial era. The latter gained prominence in academic research in the 21st century with the emergence of the ‘new donors’, which promoted joint development programs led by the countries of the Global South and built on regional financial institutions. At the same time, the authors note that academic research tends to focus primarily on the dynamics of aid flows and conditions for development assistance, while a number of current trends in the humanitarian diplomacy remain understudied. These trends are examined in the second section of the article. The authors emphasize the growing trend towards transnationalization and privatization of humanitarian diplomacy, active involvement of non-state and hybrid actors. The third section outlines the key features of humanitarian diplomacy of the leading countries of the Global South (China, India, Turkey), as well as that of the ASEAN states and Arab monarchies. The authors identify several general principles of humanitarian diplomacy shared by the countries of the Global South: a broad, pluralistic understanding of the humanitarian agenda to include cultural, scientific, academic, and youth policy issues; commitment to the ideas of solidarity and humanitarian cooperation (instead of the donor-recipient model); normative neutrality of the humanitarian policy; adherence to the principles of state sovereignty.

Selective Attention to Environmental Justice by International Cooperative Initiatives for Biodiversity and Climate

Abstract The relevance of environmental justice in global biodiversity and climate governance has increased as stakeholders’ unequal affectedness by environmental action is becoming ever more obvious. International Cooperative Initiatives (ICIs) play an ever increasing role in addressing global environmental change and biodiversity loss. Yet, the consideration of demands of environmental justice by these non-state or hybrid actors is still under-explored. Informed by a three-pillar environmental justice framework comprising distributive, procedural, and recognition justice, we use content analysis to identify if and how these different pillars are presented on the websites and in the key publications of a sample of 53 ICIs. A majority of these ICIs include references to environmental justice and its different pillars in their description of their work. But environmental justice seems to be neither a central concern nor are the references very nuanced. Distributive justice receives the most attention, whereas aspects of procedural and recognition justice receive less attention. To better anchor environmental justice within global biodiversity and climate governance, we encourage ICIs to thoroughly integrate environmental justice in operational work and to integrate and establish ongoing dialogues with marginalised groups.

The cycleborg: everyday performances of solidarity and hope of the cycling female

ABSTRACT This article weaves together autoethnographic accounts, feminist readings of technology, agency, and performance, and historical points of reference to address the current gender gap in urban cycling in the UK. Through the lens of everyday performance, I examine how females on bicycles are marked as both highly visible spectacles and invisible ‘others’. In developing the feminist promise of the mechanically monstrous cyborg, I offer a new revolutionary figure of hope – the cycleborg – who puts her otherness to use. In doing so, she calls attention to the need re-think hegemonic attitudes towards mobility, agency, and environmentally conscious action. My argument for the performative and revolutionary potential of the cycleborg reconciles everyday gendered performance with environmental consciousness, and is analysed through two contemporary performances: Katie Mitchell’s Atmen (2013) and Hanna Cormick’s The Mermaid (2020). By examining the use of hybrid actors in these performances as tools for promoting social responsibility and radical statements about climate change, I propose, with a romantic, feminist, and fierce hope, that the cycleborg both offers a contemporary vehicle for environmental change and opens possibilities to claim a new kind of space in the world.

The Sociability of Narrative: Freedom, Vulnerability, and Mediation in the Intercultural Novel

From the 1980s to the early 2010s, intercultural novels were often characterized by a liberal impulse to question prejudices and free characters from victim positions as well as cultural and identity-political constraints. This process has been analyzed and sometimes celebrated by scholars in countless literary studies claiming that hybrid actors and multivoiced narratives have replaced passive tales of suffering. More recent novels replace the heterogeneity and freedom of narrative agents with their experiential vulnerability and perceptions of discrimination. The central thesis of this essay is that this shift from freedom to vulnerability closely correlates with the disappearance of figural effects of mediation. The disappearance of a mediating function, which according to Georg Simmel is what makes face-to-face interaction social in the first place, fundamentally changes the intercultural narrative situation, the structure of encounter, and ultimately the forms of sociability in postmigration society. For the future of diversity-oriented and interdisciplinary research in German studies, it will be crucial to grasp this change precisely to develop new theories of inter- and transculturality from these insights.

International Recognition Meets Areas of Limited Statehood: Practices and Effects on Hybrid Actors in Post-2011 Libya

ABSTRACT This article examines the impact of international recognition on intrastate conflict contexts and areas of limited statehood. We conceptualise international recognition-through-interaction in social-relational, process-oriented, non-dualistic and performative (practice) terms. We theorise plural effects beyond the government vs. rebels and conflict causation vs. transformation binaries. Based on two case studies on post-2011 Libya’s security/armed and migration governance actors, including original interviews, we show that the most distinctive power of international recognition-through-interaction lies in drawing (sovereignty) lines. Material empowerment effects are prominent, though only contextually subject to formal international recognition. Identity transformation remains partial and political legitimacy is influenced in complex ways.

Hybrid Actors: Armed Groups and State Fragmentation in the Middle East

This book examines seven armed groups emerging in the MENA region as a case study and adds the term hybrid actors to the definition of non-state actors based on its findings. This book, authours ends with advices to political decision makers.

European Foreign Policy Towards Hybrid Actors in the Middle East and North Africa: An Exploration of Diplomatic Practices

ABSTRACT Diplomacy increasingly demands taking into account a large variety of polities, featuring not only state but also non-state actors (such as IGOs and NGOs) and ‘hybrid’ actors. Particularly in the broader Middle East and North Africa region, hybrid actors are important players in local, regional and international order. The European Union and its Member States have a distinct interest in gaining influence in the geopolitics of the region and are increasingly confronted with these actors in their external actions. Yet, little is known about how European foreign policy practitioners and diplomats deal with hybrid actors in practice. By providing a rich empirical account based on 37 interviews in the context of fieldwork in Brussels and Beirut, this research goes beyond existing analyses of official European policies and discourse towards hybrid actors. Building on recent advancements in practice theory and insights from political geography, the article emphasises the influence of space and the ubiquity of oblique routes shaping European foreign policy practices.

Identification and characterization of potential change agents among agri-food producers: regime, niche and hybrid actors

The multi-level perspective has been criticized for being functionalistic and paying little attention to actor-based perspectives. Nevertheless, for the identification and assessment of potential change agents in a sustainability transition, a clear conceptual and methodological approach is necessary. This paper, thus, develops a multi-dimensional typology of niche, regime, and hybrid actors, which is conceptually grounded in transition studies and empirically illustrated by a cluster analysis based on a survey of pig and poultry farmers in Germany, France, and the Netherlands. Animal husbandry is chosen as a case study because a significant share of the environmental impact within the agri-food system is attributed to this sector and there is evidence for resistance to change by mainstream actors. Conceptually, the paper provides a framework of constitutive elements for different kinds of actors and contributes to an extension of the niche–regime dichotomy by adding the group of hybrid actors. The empirical results show that cluster analysis is a suitable approach to identify conceptually meaningful differences among interviewed farmers. Among pig and poultry farmers, the regime actors are by far the largest group. The smaller group of hybrid actors, however, has large potential to act as boundary spanners. A particularly interesting finding is that several larger farms are among the group of niche actors which hints at the possibility that larger farms are not necessarily resistant to change.

Overcoming urban frontiers: Ordering Favela tourism actor-networks

This paper examines the multiple and heterogeneous, current and potential, relations between hybrid actors of tourism in Favela Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro. It seeks to elucidate the legitimizing potential of tourists acting as “connectors” that reach beyond formal politics’ hindrances. This work applies assemblage theory epistemological framework, and Actor-Network Theory ethnomethodological tools, to explore the issues and roles questioned, altered, made visible, or transformed through favela tourists’ practices and performances. Hence, avoiding the ethical dilemmas and representational concerns from slum tourism researchers in the past. Our fieldwork engages with two favela tours. We follow tourists as they stitch hybrid actor-networks that create multiple orderings in such assemblages, and their material and semiotic configurations. Our research reveals that such tours could be related to different shifts in the favela’s political, social, economic, cultural, and material dimensions.

Terrorist organizations as hybrid actors of the international political process: a new challenge to the transatlantic community

The subject of the study is to identify the place and role of terrorist organizations in the system of international relations and global security from the point of view of strategic approaches of the Western expert-analytical community and official political institutions of nation states, the EU and NATO. Globalization, the growing influence of non-State actors, including armed groups, as well as changing views on the nature and essence of the State have contributed to the hidden or explicit subjectivization of many participants in the international political process. Special attention is paid in the article to the new concept of "hybrid actor", which is widely discussed among experts and scientists at the present time. For the first time, the paper attempts to compare the positions of the United States and its European allies on interaction with hybrid actors. Thus, in recent decades, non-State actors have evolved in terms of political, social and military capabilities. This trend is evident in the Middle East and North Africa region, where the combination of weak State institutions, the presence of conflicts and instability has provided fertile ground for the actions of armed groups. Non-State armed groups in the Middle East are extremely diverse and include local, tribal and communal formations, transnational criminal organizations and networks, classic rebel opposition groups and so on. Within this broad category, a number of non-State armed groups have evolved to perform political, social and managerial functions.

Sociotechnical reality of the digital space of contemporary politics: structure and features

The main purpose of the article was the analysis of experts' ideas about the digital space of modern politics. The authors put forward a hypothesis about the formation of an independent ontological space of modern digital politics, which has its own principles of functioning. The intensive introduction of digital technologies into the modern practice of socio-political management, the active development of the global digital infrastructure lead today to the formation of a new type of sociotechnical reality and an independent phygital space of politics within which virtualized constructs, values, meanings are formed and communication interaction is transformed. In the digital space of politics, there is an algorithmization of power, with the help of which political institutions actively borrow corporate techniques of predictive analytics, ranking, filtering information to study target audiences, manage the political agenda and correct public sentiment; new hybrid actors with serious power potential and the ability to form the design of modern politics for their own purposes and interests appear in current political practice. To confirm the working hypothesis, the authors conducted an international expert survey, which allowed to study the views of experts on the features of the digitalization of modern politics and the characteristics of the emerging sociotechnical reality. The results of the study confirm the hypothesis, however, experts assess the speed and trends of the formation of this new type of policy in different ways. Based on the results of theoretical and empirical research, the authors highlight the key trends in the formation of the modern socio-technical space of politics.

Atsakomybės subjekto steigtis technikos amžiuje: Hansas Jonas ir Bruno Latouras

This article opposes the attempts to marginalize ethical issues and defend the thesis of technosphere as an autonomous phenomenon in the Anthropocene. The author points out that by evading the question of ethical perspective and responsibility, the technological activity and its trace are naturalised, and any ethical decision is therefore turned into a technical decision. The comparison of the positions of two philosophers of technology (Hans Jonas and Bruno Latour) enables us to reflect on how technology mediates the constitution of the subject of responsibility in the tension of global and local perspectives. The article shows that Jonas’ “heuristics of fear” leads to the conscious practice of asceticism and the collective control of technical power, while Latour leaves open a possibility of talking about the shared action of a multitude of hybrid actors, in which both the ethical solution is already “contaminated” with the technical and the technical solution retains the trace of the ethical. By using the example of the reverse vending machine, it is shown how ethical motivation is inscribed into technical media, which uses the technological accumulation to link global and local perspectives for environmental purposes.

Admission Control in Home Energy Management Systems Using Theatre and Hybrid Actors

The goal of a Home Energy Management System (HEMS) is that of purposely shaping the cumulative energy consumption curves of domestic appliances by imposing suitable monitoring and control policies. The development of HEMS, like the development of general Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs), is challenging, as it requires the exploitation of suitable methodological approaches which are able to deal jointly with the continuous and discrete behaviours of a CPS. In this paper, a methodological approach for HEMS is advocated which relies on the use of the Theatre actor system with hybrid actors. As a key feature, Theatre enables the same actor model to be used during the analysis, design, prototyping and implementation phases of the system. For property assessment, a Theatre model is reduced to Uppaal hybrid timed automata for analysis by statistical model checking. As a significant modelling example, a HEMS is proposed which implements an admission control strategy able to maintain the in-home energy consumption under a given threshold. Instead of reacting to an overload condition, the strategy is able to prevent an overload upfront by predicting the effect that the admission of a new load will have on the consumption curve of the whole system.

ANALYSIS OF THE VULNERABILITIES OF UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES TO CYBER ATTACKS

Recently, the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, has increased significantly and the technical advencements in the field have led to new possibilities in several fields, both military and civilian. Air drones help reduce human life risks and costs, and can be used to carry out dangerous and costly missions by replacing human operators. Unmanned aircraft have a wide range of use, from entertainment for enthusiasts to military operations. Large investments, especially in the field of robotics, electronic miniaturization, sensors, network communication, information technology and artificial intelligence help to accelerate and diversify areas of use. The operation of unmanned systems and the applications that use these systems depend, to a large extent, on the cyber systems that are used for data collection, storage, processing and communication. However, these systems also have certain vulnerabilities, which has led various (state or non-state) hybrid actors to develop methods of conducting cyber attacks on drones.

Coexistence of Cooperative Models as Structural Answer to Lock-Ins in Diversification Pathways: The Case of the Walloon Dairy Sector

Drawing on an analysis of the Walloon dairy sector, this paper aims at bringing novel insights on the coexistence issue in agrifood transition studies. Whereas most studies explore the coexistence of farm models, our study focuses on value chains, in particular on cooperatives. In the Walloon Region, new dairy cooperatives emerged, as substitute or as complement to the incumbent vertically integrated dairy cooperatives. This paper focuses on the coexistence of dairy cooperative models as enabler of transition toward product diversification. Dairy cooperatives are hybrid actors: economic agents on the market on the one hand, structure of collective agency on the other hand. Williamson's framework ofNew Institutional Economicsacknowledges that the allocation of resources by cooperatives depends on governance processes and on the wider institutional context in which the cooperatives evolve. Within the broader frame of theMulti-Level Perspective, this approach allows to consider the socio-technical coherence in which the cooperatives evolve, the effects of this coherence on their pathways of development, and the complementarity of the cooperative models. This qualitative analysis builds on semi-directed interviews with actors of the Walloon dairy sector. The results outline distinctions between the new cooperative models and mainstream dairy cooperatives in market approach, definition of milk quality, distribution of added value, governance, and interactions with partners. Both models evolve within a distinct socio-technical coherence, holding, in the case of the mainstream dairy cooperatives, lock-ins to diversification related to the relationship with the farmer-members and the milk they produce in the industrial vertically integrated model. The new cooperative models circumvent these lock-ins through de-integration and externalization of initiatives, remuneration, and risk. They allow specific groups of actors—still related or unrelated to the mainstream dairy cooperative—to explore new market pathways in accordance with their potential, and to mutually agree on criteria qualifying milk. This research draws the picture of a possible reconfiguration of the dairy landscape toward a more diversified ecosystem of actors and invites to consider structures of governance in collective action as a cornerstone issue, because of their significant role in terms of enablement, coexistence, and complementarity throughout the transition process.

EU foreign policy and hybrid actors in the Middle East: ready for geopolitical contestation?

ABSTRACT The 2019 European Commission recognizes a need to learn the language of power and geopolitics for the EU to become a stronger player in a contested world. Yet the EU experiences difficulties in navigating the geopolitical scene in its immediate neighbourhood, the Middle East and North Africa, characterized by fast-changing alliances among international and regional powers but also a wide array of non-state and hybrid actors. Policy recommendations urge the EU to include the latter in its foreign policy calculus. This article investigates how the EU accounts for a specific set of actors by exploring its foreign policy discourse. Specifically, it analyses how two hybrid actors, Hamas and Hezbollah, are discussed within the European Parliament, Commission and Council. It is argued that internal contestation over the terrorist nature of these actors poses challenges for the EU to join the geopolitical game in its Southern neighbourhood.

Hamas and Hezbollah: hybrid actors between resistance and governance

Abstract This analytical review essay discusses five recent books on Hamas and Hezbollah, which see the groups as peculiar yet increasingly important actors in the Middle East and in international relations more broadly. The books illustrate a growing attention to these actors, not merely as armed spoilers, but as legitimate incumbents in national elections and providers of local governance. They also highlight the challenges this approach creates for traditional International Relations (IR) frameworks, in which such actors are not easily situated. Together, the books provide a rich actor-centred perspective on these cases and display various complementary social scientific theories, methods and data with which they can be approached. This review aims to tease out the novel insights these works and cases have to offer for recent debates on norm contestation in IR. Rather than evaluating these actors' discourse and behaviour against western normative frameworks in IR and international politics, the books contribute by exposing a wealth of different norms, and different approaches to interpreting and applying norms, beyond those frameworks.

“Green” effects of hybrid actors through carbon trading: Cases in Beijing

The global climate change is resetting the regime complex and mindsets of countries and cities. To provide global public goods of climate governance, multilevel, multidisciplinary, public and private actors interact through “trial-and-error” experiments. Local institutions and mechanisms are likely to be innovated during such interactions. Carbon trading mechanism has been a key unlocking China's low-carbon practices, placing “caps” to pilot cities like Beijing. The first Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) project of China started at Anding Landfill Plant in Daxing District, which was the miniature for provincial CDM Centers in China. Since 2011, Beijing was chosen as a pilot city to carry out cap-and-trade mechanism to mitigate carbon emission. In 2013, China Beijing Environment Exchange (CBEEX) was established, enabling more diverse carbon trading projects to be carried out. After the Paris Agreement was reached in 2015, more stringent emission cap was imposed. On the basis of CDM experiences, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games provided various industries to fulfill their “Green” corporate social responsibilities. Challenged by the international questioning about the wind power projects and carbon footprint tagging criteria, domestic voluntary carbon market standard, “Panda Standard” was given birth to; and the independent intellectual property right of electricity-saving refrigerant was invented. Public and private actors became an integral part of China's Innovation-driven and Sustainable Development Strategies. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) derive into hybrid networks with local voluntariness. This paper focuses on the stages reflecting the development of “voluntary hybridity”, by analyzing several cases in representative industries in Beijing.

Faking Alternative Journalism? An Analysis of Self-Presentations of “Fake News” Sites

Scholars have come to understand fake news as content packaged to look like mainstream news but which is deceptive and low in facticity. This study focuses on the textual self-representations of 50 prominent sites labelled ‘fake news’ following the 2016 US election campaign, with an eye to understanding their stated values and how such sites might mimic other journalistic forms. Findings from a qualitative textual analysis reveal an open commitment to ideological, activist and value-driven reporting by the sites. Outlets openly disclose their biases, attack the mainstream media and privilege truths from subjective perspectives, appealing to partisan audiences disillusioned with the mainstream press. In light of our analysis, we argue that fake news producers should be understood as hybrid actors mimicking features of both mainstream and alternative journalism in a manner that results in interpretive partisan news communities.