Power Transition Research Articles

Driving the clean energy transition in Cameroon: A sustainable pathway to meet the Paris climate accord and the power supply/demand gap

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2021 report has noted the perceived rise in severe weather phenomena such as heat radiations, hurricanes, flooding, and droughts and the rising scientific evidence attributing these events to anthropogenic sources of climate change. Cameroon as a nation is equally exposed to these climate vulnerabilities, and contributing to global climate efforts is imperative. She has earmarked the integration of 25% renewables in its electricity production mix and a 32% emission reduction, all as part of her commitment to global climate action. The fresh commitments coupled with a rapidly growing power demand have paved the way for a revolutionized approach to electricity generation in Cameroon. However, the imminent changes, as well as their implications, remain uncertain. This study explores how these emission reduction targets can be achieved through the adoption of a more sustainable power transition, which provides realistic solutions for emission reduction, escaping high carbon pathways. The assessment of the level at which long-term electricity generation scenarios in Cameroon could be renewable energy intensive was done using the Low Emissions Analysis Platform (LEAP) tool following a backcasting approach. The study noted that there is an implementation gap between earmarked policy ambitions and existing measures. The study recommended several opportunities in aspects, such as suitable share of technologies, administrative reforms, and required adjustments within the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which the government could exploit in the electricity sector to sail across the challenging trade-offs needed to become a sustainable economy in a carbon-constrained world. It equally examines actions that could help close the gap between earmarked policy ambitions and existing pathways and proposes cost-effective methods that were identified as priorities.

Mohammed Bin Salman’s Rising to Power. Chances for Transition in Saudi Arabia?

The aim of this paper is to present the outline of planned and already implemented social, political and economic changes in the context of gradual transition of power in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The main thesis put in this paper relates to Mohammed bin Salman’s leading project – “Vision 2030” which assumed gradual multi-dimensional transition in Saudi Arabia. Many of changes implemented already, including the limitation of clergy’s activity will not bring about quick social-political transition due to long-lasting and deeply rooted alliance between Saudi ruling clan and radical movement of Wahhabis, that determines conservative regime in the country. Basing on the main thesis Author tries to give the answer to research questions correlated with the thesis and touching the issue of possibility for implementation political, economic changes in Saudi Arabia by Mohammed bin Salman.
 In the paper following research methods has been applied: historical method, which refers to analysis of historical process of shaping and development Saudi monarchy; documentary analysis - relating to governmental project “Vision 2030” particularly; elements of systemic approach in which system is constituted by political regime of Saudi Arabia; elements of statistical method employed in the context of variable economic or social data and elements of predictive referring to the model of Saudi Arabia’s development under the rule of Mohammed bin Salman.

American Engagement with Nepal: Concerns of China and India


 How did the United States of America’s active engagement with Nepal become a strategic concern for our neighbors? The USA’s Nepal policy is changing because the new world order appears to be multipolar consonantly; it is believed to be bipolar between the United States and China strategically. The US strategic entry into Nepal and the intense rivalry over the MCC and BRI projects are a reflection of these two countries' growing competition in world politics. It put Nepal at the center of strategic calculations. At the other end, China and India believe that achieving regional and global hegemony requires first establishing their own regional supremacy. That is why they are considering strategic space in South Asia and Nepal. Furthermore, India and U.S. also have strategic alliances in the Indo-Pacific strategic and QUAD. Both of them perceive China as a threat in the Indo-Pacific region. In this tri-lateral rivalry during the global power transition, Nepal may become a geopolitical flash point, serving the strategic interests of those powers. In this scenario, the significance of Nepal's nonalignment foreign policy will be examined through a comparison of Ukraine's and Nepal's geopolitical locations. Nepal shares borders with two Asian behemoths, much like Ukraine does with NATO countries and Russia. The Ukrainian crisis stems from both domestic and foreign policy failures. Politicians are frequently divided into pro-Russian and pro-Western sides, and they fail to recognize their powerful neighbor's sensitivity. In this study, the qualitative method has been used, and secondary data was collected from reliable books, journal articles, and some authentic websites. Explorative research techniques have been used for this research.

Beyond deterrence: Uncertain stability in the nuclear era

This paper identifies profound contradictions within and across nuclear deterrence strategies that evolved in response to the proliferation and modernization of nuclear weapons. To reconcile theory with practice, we summarize the theoretical assumptions and implications of nuclear strategy. Informed by these discussions, we develop a decision-theoretic model of deterrence based on power transition theory. We explore conditions for the stability of deterrence and link outcomes to policy decisions. The conditions for conflict emerge when a dissatisfied nuclear nation is threatened with conventional loss, when conventional and nuclear parity is achieved and if dissatisfied non-state actors acquire even minimal nuclear capabilities.

Building a more robust framework on revisionism: a reply to Lawson and Legrenzi

AbstractThe comments by Lawson and Legrenzi to our RISP/IPSR article ‘Tracing the modes of China's revisionism in the Indo-Pacific: a comparison with pre-1941 Shōwa Japan’ contribute to moving the debate on revisionism in international politics a step forward. Their notes on the several issues affecting the International Relations understanding of the phenomenon are on the same page as ours and we appear to share similar doubts and a like-minded curiosity on the subject. While grasping some key topics and shedding light on crucial shortcomings in the literature on international change, power transitions and international order, however, their observations do not come unproblematic. In this reply to their timely remarks, we highlight the perks of their argument but also stress how this falls through in providing a complete framework to understand revisionism in international politics.

The diffusion deficit in scientific and technological power: re-assessing China’s rise

Virtually all scholars recognize that scientific and technological capabilities are becoming increasingly important factors in a nation’s overall power. Unsurprisingly, debates over a possible U.S.–China power transition highlight China’s rise as a science and technology superpower. These discussions overwhelmingly center on national innovation capabilities, reflective of the bias in assessments of scientific and technological capabilities toward the generation of novel advances. This paper argues that these assessments should, instead, place greater weight on a state’s capacity to diffuse, or widely adopt, innovations. Specifically, when there is a significant gap between a rising power’s innovation capacity and its diffusion capacity, relying solely on the former results in misleading appraisals of its potential to sustain economic growth in the long run. I demonstrate this with two historical cases: the U.S. in the Second Industrial Revolution and the Soviet Union in the early postwar period. Lastly, I show that, in contrast to assessments based on innovation capacity, a diffusion-centric approach reveals that China is far from being a science and technology superpower.

Revisiting psychiatric support for the National Socialist Agenda in Germany: Implications for medical and residency training

The transition of power from a failing Weimer Republic to the National Socialist (Nazi) government was characterized by many economic and politically-motivated changes. Economic crises and the overcrowding of psychiatric hospitals in Germany were the setting for these events. The eugenics movement, although not unique to Germany in the 1920s, would eventually culminate in the compulsory sterilization, euthanasia, and extermination in concentration camps. Historical accounts tend to focus on political and military leaders with the role of medical professionals often overlooked or forgotten. Additionally, there are connections between these programs and medical research. This article aims to elucidate the factors that influenced their role in this historical tragedy and their current implications on how physicians train, learn, and practice role of the medical professionals.

Soft Power in the Foreign Policy of Pakistan: Prospects and Potentials

Transition and diffusion of power are changing the political context and have made soft power more relevant than ever. The Government of Pakistan has started taking some initiatives to harvest soft power through its foreign policy. These include providing development assistance, signing bilateral and multilateral agreements, promoting culture, providing scholarships to international students, contributing to global peace and providing humanitarian assistance. This study aims to describe how soft power operates within the foreign policy of Pakistan. It also aims to explain how far the integration of soft power in foreign policy benefitted Pakistan and what new strategies are there to explore. The study borrows the conceptual framework of soft power proposed by Joseph Nye, follows the qualitative research design and uses primary and secondary data.

Networked frame contestation from authoritarian to Western democracy – A case of China's (failed) Twiplomacy in contesting coronavirus narrative in the UK

Transnational political communication today is being reconfigured by digital technologies and global power transition. Authoritarian state actors such as China are increasingly active on global social media platforms such as Twitter to directly advance their preferred frames with foreign publics in Western democracies, most notably in what could be called Chinese Twiplomacy contesting narrative globally over contentious issues. This paper problematises such Twiplomacy from authoritarians to Western democracies as ‘networked transnational frame contestation’, arguing that the political and cultural distance between the sending and target countries, the networked affordance of social media, and the national prism of the target countries, all contribute importantly to the complexity of such frame contestation. Through a case study on China's Twiplomacy in contesting coronavirus narrative in the UK, this paper further provides empirical evidence on how ‘networked transnational frame contestation’ works between politically and culturally distant countries. Using a mixed-method approach combining social network analysis and discourse analysis, this study finds that China's emotion-evoking discursive strategy draws traction but the authoritarian nature of the highly centralised networkedness and that of its discursive strategy, together with the strong cultural discordance with British publics, lead to networked recontextualisation of its intended frames in Britain. British publics, heavily relying on British political elites and press for foreign affairs, invoke shared cultural reference to recontextualise Chinese frames into culturally resonant counterframes. This study proposes a paradigm of ‘networkedness within cascades’ to understand frame contestation between politically and culturally distant countries.

The ionosphere: Undermining Britain's imperial power: Wireless and its impact on geopolitics and naval operations (1919–1927)

The transition of sea power from the battleship-dominated Royal Navy of the First World War to the carrier-dominated United States Navy of the Second is a much discussed topic in current historiography. This article investigates a small but important part of that transition, elements of which have been previously researched but where important connections have not been made and where, in current British historiography, the full picture has perhaps been hidden behind the achievements of one man – Guglielmo Marconi. The contribution of wireless to the transition of sea power had its roots in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. This research reveals that it involved a somewhat clandestine effort by the United States Navy to undermine British dominance in global communications, at that time based on submarine cables. It reveals how Britain's imperial obligations and a post-war need for greater control over their communications by Britain's colonies also contributed to undermining the Royal Navy position. By a thorough review and new interpretations of existing historiography, plus some additional archive material, this work identifies connections between geography, economics, technology and political will that were key in the United States Navy attaining a superior post-war position in wireless technology. It shows how these connections enabled the United States Navy to benefit from Marconi's discovery of the practical use of short-wave radio.

US-China Rivalry in Trade and Economic Relations with Latin American Countries

This article is devoted to the analysis of trade and economic relations between the United States and China with Latin American countries. This region is a sphere of competitive confrontation between the two countries not only for foreign policy ties, but also for trade and economic ones. The authors in this article show the peculiarities of the bilateral relations between China and the United States with Latin America and describe the process of changing US policy towards Latin America after 2017, when it radically changed after the Trump administration came to power, and Beijing, taking advantage of this opportunity, began to compete with Washington in this region. Also, in this article, the authors provide a comparative analysis of the indicators of trade and economic relations between China and the United States with the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. The scientific novelty of this work lies in the fact that, using the example of the transition of leading positions towards China, the authors, within the framework of the theory of "power transit" (Power transition theory), describe the competitive struggle of states in this region in trade and economic terms, which is inextricably linked with political relations. The main conclusions are that the United States is still an external force that cannot be ignored in Latin American international relations, while China has every chance of gradually displacing the United States from the foreign market in Latin America thanks to its economic projects with the introduction of leading Latin American countries in the economic sphere. The United States of America, in turn, is trying to maintain its position in this region by easing its economic and financial constraints and, thereby, inclining the political leadership of Latin American countries to its side.

Energy Transition in Power, Heating and Transport Sectors, based on the Majority of RES and Energy Storage

Energy Transition in Power, Heating and Transport Sectors, based on the Majority of RES and Energy Storage

Weaponization during Power Transitions: The International Source of Domestic State-Business Alignment

Weaponization during Power Transitions: The International Source of Domestic State-Business Alignment

The profile of Nicaragua’s economic elite. The limits of political influence during the presidency of D. Ortega

The article studies the dynamics of Nicaragua’s economic elite which helps to define it and assess its ability to influence political process of the country. The analysis of the evolution of Nicaraguan big business reveals its high adaptability to ever-changing social conditions. As a result, the reaction of economic elite to the Sandinista revolution demonstrates its strategy and tactics concerning restructuring of the assets. The authors pay special attention to the Supreme Council of Private Enterprise (Consejo Superior de la Empresa Privada, COSEP) which serves as a main representative of collective interests of the Nicaraguan capital. The article examines the relationship between the left-wing radical partisan Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, FSLN) and national elite as well. It has transformed from hostile confrontation at the end of 20th century to a tactical alliance in the 2010s. The article concludes with an analysis of existing tensions between Sandinistas and big business as well as the prospects for the transition of power in Nicaragua.

Политизация ислама в Казахстане в контексте формирования модели светскости

Under the conditions of the transit of power in the political sphere, the issues of interaction between state and public institutions become more relevant. Religion occupies a special place among the latter. The article presents the author’s vision of the political aspect of the problem of the formation of the Kazakh model of secularism. Historically, Kazakhstan has experienced several models of secularism, which are directly opposite to each other in content and form. The transition from one model to another was the result of a change of political regimes and was directly related to severe upheavals in the spiritual life of society. Today, the nature of the external regulation of religious life by the state creates a special dynamic network of relations between politics and religion, politicizing the latter. The formation of a model of secularism that meets national interests depends on the state’s policy in the field of religion and the quality of its implementation. Based on the analysis of state-confessional relations, the author made an attempt to show the place and role of the politicization of Islam as an essential element of the emerging Kazakh model of secularism. The article identifies reasons and conditions determining the politicization of Islam, as well as factors whose development may lead to its hyper politicization and/or depoliticization.

The Self-Learning AI Controller for Adaptive Power Beaming With Fiber-Array Laser Transmitter System

In this study we consider adaptive power beaming with a fiber-array laser transmitter system in presence of atmospheric turbulence. For optimization of power transition through the atmosphere a fiber-array is traditionally controlled by stochastic parallel gradient descent (SPGD) algorithm where control feedback is provided via a radio frequency link by an optical-to-electrical power conversion sensor, attached to a cooperative target. The SPGD algorithm continuously and randomly perturbs voltages applied to fiber-array phase shifters and fiber tip positioners in order to maximize sensor signal, i.e. uses, the so-called, “blind” optimization principle. By contrast to this approach a prospective artificially intelligent (AI) control systems for synthesis of optimal control can utilize various pupil- or target-plane data available for the analysis including wavefront sensor data, photo-voltaic array (PVA) data, other optical or atmospheric parameters, and potentially can eliminate well-known drawbacks of SPGDbased controllers. In this study an optimal control is synthesized by a deep neural network (DNN) using target-plane PVA sensor data as its input. A DNN training is occurred online in sync with control system operation and is performed by applying of small perturbations to DNN’s outputs. This approach does not require initial DNN’s pre-training as well as guarantees optimization of system performance in time. All theoretical results are verified by numerical experiments.

Vertically Polarized Planar Transition for Hollow-Dielectric-Waveguide-Based 5G/6G High-Speed mm-Wave Interconnect

Hollow dielectric waveguide (HDW) is a highly anticipated solution for extremely low-loss and high-speed millimeter-wave (mm-wave) interconnect. However, the method for endfire power transition from HDW to planar backplane systems is limited to horizontal polarization in the literature. That is, the potentially available capacity of the HDW within the other polarization is idle and wasted. In this letter, the first vertically polarized (V-pol), endfire transition from tubular HDW to the printed circuit board (PCB) is proposed. The experimental result shows that the minimum calibrated transition loss is only 0.48 dB. And a wideband transition can be designed to achieve a fractional bandwidth of 20%. And a maximum data rate of 34 Gb/s over the proposed 1-m interconnect is demonstrated with 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (16QAM). For the endless race of data rate in 5G/6G communication, this technique provides a new direction for a low-loss and high-speed HDW-based interconnect between planar backplane systems.

МАСШТАБНЫЙ ТРАНЗИТ ВЛАСТИ В КАМБОДЖЕ КАК РЕЗУЛЬТАТ ПАРЛАМЕНТСКИХ ВЫБОРОВ 2023 Г.

This article analyses the results of the July 2023 parliamentary election in Cambodia, election manifestos, and the structure of political forces. The author shows that a confident electoral victory of the Cambodian People’s Party accelerated the process of power change and the retreat of previously dominant politicians headed by Hun Sen. Key positions are now occupied by the younger generation led by Hun Manet. The article concludes that a clan-based, familial mechanism of power transition has been formed in Cambodia.

The Belt and Road Initiative and China’s Pursuit of Agenda-Setting Power

The US-led, rules-based order enables China to pursue a peaceful international power transition by leveraging the agenda-setting power. The agenda that China proposes is development, and the lever to promote the agenda is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI helps China publicize the development agenda, co-opt the existing US-led system, showcase China’s material success, legitimize its creation of new international institutions, and attract supporters of its calls to revise the current US-led order. Since Washington wants to avoid its competition with China turning apocalyptic, the most sensible US countermeasure is keeping China inside this rules-based order and competing to set its agenda.

The economics of pandemics and the future course of populism

The relevant literature shows that populists come to power through various rhetorics by exploiting the incumbent orders and the problems they have caused. However, failures and disappointments in fulfilling their promises push them to employ increasingly authoritarian measures to silence society to stay in power by gradually changing the system, manipulating citizens through controlling media, and undermining fundamental institutions.By emphasizing the overall performance of populist governments during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, this article explores the future course of populist politics and governments after the pandemic. The paper concludes that although the pandemic has clearly shown the limits and capacity of many populist governments, the political and economic conjuncture in the post-pandemic era, coupled with the high tension of power transition, might bring new “opportunities” for the use of populists. With several defects and structural weaknesses of the existing liberal multilateral order, populism is here to stay with different implications for the multilateral liberal order and globalization.