State Power Research Articles

Magnetic-temperature coupling analysis of a multi-drum dual-coil magnetorheological fluid brake

The coupling analysis of the magnetic field and temperature field of a multi-drum dual-coil magnetorheological (MR) brake is presented in this article. Firstly, the structure of the multi-drum dual-coil MR brake is introduced, and a prototype is manufactured. Thermal analysis of the designed brake is carried out, and a torque correction factor is proposed in order to reduce the error between simulation and experimental results. Then, a coupling analysis model of the magnetic field and temperature is established to study the temperature analysis of the brake under steady-state and transient condition. Simulation results show that the allowable slip power in steady state is 23.68 W. The highest temperature occurs in the fluid gap, and the lowest temperature occurs at the shaft. Under the transient state, the brake can work for about 1200 s under 75.08 W slip power. Furthermore, the temperature characteristics of MR brake under the normal braking, emergency braking, and intermittent braking have been studied. An experimental platform is built to study the torque and temperature characteristics. Results show that the simulated temperature is in good agreement with the experiments, indicating that the proposed magnetic-temperature coupling model can accurately simulate the temperature characteristics of the MR brake.

Probing the humanitarian securitisation approach to great-power wars: from Bush’s ‘war on terror’ to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

ABSTRACT How do great-power leaders instrumentalise humanitarianism in sustaining the institutional and public mandate demanded by their war agendas? We examine the ‘humanitarian securitisation’ approach adopted by powerful state leaders as the domestic credibility and popularity of their war efforts become increasingly more difficult to guarantee over time. We define humanitarian securitisation as a discursive-hermeneutic process through which powerful initiator states frame the humanitarian crises arising from the terrorism and internal conflicts confronting less powerful target states as existential threats to the former’s own survival to bolster and justify their agendas further. Using Bush’s ‘war on terror’ and Putin’s Ukraine invasion as empirical cases, we argue that the humanitarian securitisation resulting from the artificial insertion of humanitarianism into the securitisation process becomes a double-edged sword that reinforces the legitimising and mobilising powers required by great-power leaders to pursue their narrow self-interests, but at the risk of being entangled into long drawn-out wars that damage genuine humanitarian efforts. In framing these ‘extraterritorial’ humanitarian crises as collective borderless existential threats that all parties affected must decisively defeat, this ad hoc and predatory process of humanitarian securitisation alters the form and substance of contemporary humanitarianism in a way that ultimately exacerbates existing power hierarchies.

Introduction to the digital welfare state: Contestations, considerations and entanglements

This article introduces a special issue of the Journal of Sociology focused on critical analysis of the digital welfare state. The digitalisation of welfare policy, institutions and service delivery has led to increased scrutiny, social sorting and surveillance of welfare recipients and other marginalised groups. This collection of papers contributes to current debates about digital welfare using sociological approaches which foreground the role of power relations and human agency in shaping these dynamics. We provide introductory insights into themes explored within the collection, including the connection of digitalisation with ‘the social’, the role of digital technologies in truth-making, and the importance of humans and their labour in operationalising digital welfare. In addition, we highlight the value of sociological research in revealing the various processes and relationships through which state power is constituted and expressed digitally.

State-Civilization: Cultural Aspects of Political Theory

The paper examines the current state of the theory of the state‑civilization, a new concept of the form of the state for both domestic and foreign historical and political science that is based not only and not so much on the legal recognition of its constitutional and legal status, but rather on the cultural identity of its founding community. The author analyzes the current ideas of Russian scholars and researchers regarding the main features of the state‑civilization, and compares them with the traditional concept of «national state.» Using the methodology of historical and cultural analysis, the author considers the stages of the Russian statehood formation. It is postulated that the State as a system of political institutions and management practices is one of the elements of civilization. The specifics of the system of state power and administration practices are the result of conscious human activity at a certain stage of the development of society on a par with other achievements of social and spiritual cultures. The conclusion is made about the variability of the form and content of the state in its political and legal meaning, which prevents the concept of the state‑civilization from being opposed to the concept of a national state, despite the existing views of a number of researchers on this subject. However, the author notes the immutability of such phenomena of civilization as space, people and culture, customs and traditions, ways and values, which suggests that the concept of «state‑civilization» should be considered in relation to the study of law and politics in its cultural significance.

Legal Nature of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR under the Constitution of the USSR of 1924

The paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the role and status of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (CEC of the USSR) in the context of the dynamic constitutional, legal and institutional development of the Soviet Union. The author provides the reader with a deep dive into the essence of the CEC of the USSR, providing a brief but meaningful historiographical description of the collective body of state power. The main attention is paid to a detailed analysis of the status of the CEC of the USSR before and after the adoption of the Constitution of the USSR in 1924, to identify and highlight key differences in its structure and functioning due to innovations introduced with the adoption of this legislative act. The paper examines the key areas of activity of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR in detail both in the period before the adoption of the Constitution (1922–1925) and in the post‑constitutional period (1925–1938), forming a categorical layer of the problematic issue. The paper highlights and explains the stable position of the CEC of the USSR in the political sphere of the USSR and gives a brief assessment of its activities and development. The paper is of interest to researchers of the history and law of the Soviet period and is an important contribution to understanding the organizational and regulatory aspects of the functioning of the CEC of the USSR in the broad context of constitutional construction in the first decades of Soviet history. The main emphasis is placed on the formation of a comprehensive framework for the perception of the CEC of the USSR as a body that is simultaneously characterized by isolation in the system of state bodies of Soviet power and close connection with other such bodies. Such an emphasis allows the reader to form a wide categorical and conceptual spectrum of opinions & sententiae on the problem of defining and analyzing the legal nature of the CEC of the USSR, which is important for Russian historiography.

Проблемные вопросы реализации государственных полномочий, переданных органам муниципальной власти

The article is devoted to the transfer of state powers to municipal authorities and the problems that arise during the implementation of this procedure. The author demonstrates the difficulties that arise when delegating such powers to local selfgovernment bodies on specific legal relations. According to the author, the significance of the above-mentioned issues lies not only in the inadequate financial implementation of the powers transferred by the state and in the mixing of subjects of competence, but also in the fact that this takes place in the conditions of new constitutional and legal realities, when municipal power, like state power, becomes part of a single public authority. In this regard, the author suggests ways to overcome the problems that have arisen during the transfer and implementation of state powers by municipalities.

Piezoelectrically tunable, narrow linewidth photonic integrated extended-DBR lasers

Recent advancements in ultra-low-loss silicon nitride (Si3N4)-based photonic integrated circuits have surpassed fiber lasers in coherence and frequency agility. However, high manufacturing costs of DFB and precise control requirements, as required for self-injection locking, hinder widespread adoption. Reflective semiconductor optical amplifiers (RSOAs) provide a cost-effective alternative solution but have not yet achieved similar performance in coherence or frequency agility, as required for frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) LiDAR, laser locking in frequency metrology, or wavelength modulation spectroscopy for gas sensing. Here, we overcome this challenge and demonstrate an RSOA-based and frequency-agile fully hybrid integrated extended distributed Bragg reflector (E-DBR) laser with high-speed tuning, good linearity, high optical output power, and turn-key operability. It outperforms Vernier and self-injection locked lasers, which require up to five precise operating parameters and have limitations in continuous tuning and actuation bandwidth. We maintain a small footprint by utilizing an ultra-low-loss 200 nm thin Si3N4 platform with monolithically integrated piezoelectric actuators. We co-integrate the DBR with a compact ultra-low-loss spiral resonator to further reduce the intrinsic optical linewidth of the laser to the Hertz-level—on par with the noise of a fiber laser—via self-injection locking. The photonic integrated E-DBR lasers operate at 1550 nm and feature up to 25 mW fiber-coupled output power in the free-running and up to 10.5 mW output power in the self-injection locked state. The intrinsic linewidth is 2.5 kHz in the free-running state and as low as 3.8 Hz in the self-injection locked state. In addition, we demonstrate the suitability for FMCW LiDAR by showing laser frequency tuning over 1.0 GHz at up to 100 kHz triangular chirp rate with a nonlinearity of less than 0.6% without linearization by modulating a Bragg grating using monolithically integrated aluminum nitride (AlN) piezoactuators.

Animal geographies III: Relational and political

Animal geography is inherently relational. At its core is curiosity for relations between humans and nonhuman animals. As in other fields, relational approaches are increasingly adopted as conceptual framework and methodology. Two current relational themes of the field are care, killing and ethics; and how humans and nonhuman animals create space, particularly the home and the city. Animal geographies tackle diverse political elements of animals’ lives (and deaths), operating at multiple scales, through a variety of approaches. Major current themes include biopolitics, colonialism, state power and (in)justice. Relationality and politics are by no means separate. Relations have political outcomes – notably, in the form of value and commodification – and relationality can open possibilities for reframing political problems; a fitting goal for this time of conflict and dramatic change.

Modern Slavery and the Punitive–Humanitarian Complex

Abstract This paper provides a critical analysis of modern slavery (MS) policy, legislation and discourse in the United Kingdom. Challenging the suggestion that recent attempts to dilute protections and guarantees in the original MS framework represent a fundamental shift from a more humanitarian to a more punitive orientation, it argues that these two moments ought to be understood as products of a single, underlying articulation, the ‘punitive–humanitarian complex’. We first explore the context and discourse of the MS agenda, exposing an ambivalence within its core tenets, primarily manifested through the dichotomy between victims (slaves) and offenders (slavers). The paper then examines how the punitive–humanitarian complex engenders moral and affective economies and reflects on how it reveals the vulnerability of contemporary state power.

Introduction: mutual attrition of citizenship, democracy and the rule of law in South and Southeast Asia

ABSTRACT This special issue critically examines the interplay between the law and politics of state trans/formation, status precarity and the abuse of law. Globally, governments have exercised state power to undermine citizenship status, democratic well-being and the rule of law. This introduction makes the case for this focus and highlights the range of the special issue's intervention. Firstly, it shows how the contributions in the special issue build upon scholarship that tackles these three values independently and offers a more comprehensive analysis of contemporary challenges of the law and politics of citizenship. It studies the mutual attrition of citizenship, law and democracy by adopting a focus on South and Southeast Asia, especially India, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Secondly, it emphasises the special issue’s methodological contribution by drawing from the theory-generative capacities of focusing on Asia and the Global South more generally. Thirdly, the introduction highlights the cross-cutting substantive contributions of the articles, especially status liminality and statelessness, securitisation and authoritarian politics, bureaucracy and paperwork, and minority and human rights.

The Business of Governing Penang: Workarounds as Remedy?

The state of Penang, including city councils for island Pulau Pinang (with urban-core George Town) and mainland Seberang Perai, has negotiated at least a degree of political marginalisation since independence. Ruled previously by a secondary partner in the ruling Barisan Nasional (National Front), and since 2008, by the Democratic Action Party and its coalition partners, the economically powerful state has negotiated constrained autonomy and resources. While to some extent, these governing challenges are common to all states in Malaysia's highly centralised federation, in other ways, they reflect Penang's specific political position. Penang's leadership has sought in particular ways to circumvent inertia or divided loyalties among bureaucrats from the federal, rather than a state-level, civil service. Central to that solution has been reliance on an array of state government-linked corporations, facilitating administration, but at possible cost to clear accountability, transparency, and promised empowerment of civil society.

Citizenship thinking—with, against, and bypassing the state

AbstractThis short commentary argues for the utility of a suitably expansive idea of citizenship, one that opens complex terrains for analysis: where citizens work with, against, and alongside the state, and where state power is enabled and sidestepped through multiple embodied processes. I consider the nature of the citizen‐state encounter in each article in AE’s “Citizenship, Solidarity, and Nonbelonging” forum to explore local experiences of sovereignty and state power.

Implementasi Kebijakan Bagi Masyarakat Dalam Memilih di Indonesia

General elections or what can be called people’s democratic parties are one of the main parameters for measuring the success of implementing democracy in a country. This research discusses the relationship between society and the state in voting, characterized by Indonesia being a country that adheres to a democratic system, where state power is in the hands of the people, as regulated in the 1945 Constitution of the Republic of Indonesia. The aim is to know and understand how to implement it. Public policy in voting in Indonesia. Method was carried out using a literature approach. The results of the research are to understand the public policy system in voting in Indonesia and how the government behaves in dealing with problems wisely during elections, and democracy can run well in accordance with its principles and objectives. The results of this research show that whenever there are problems when voting, the right policies will be able to minimize the problems that occur. The policies that need to be implemented are in accordance with government regulations and the principles of democracy itself.

Discursive and dialogic interfaces, panoptic power and “penetrative technologies” in Denis Villeneuve’s “Blade Runner 2049”

Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 (2017) is a culture text that, in many scenes, creatively uses visualisations of futuristic machine interfaces designed to scan and penetrate realms inaccessible to humans. Many of these devices can be interpreted from the perspective of Vilém Flusser’s research on discursive and dialogic technologies. The former, according to the philosopher, serve to enslave individuals, while the latter as emancipatory gestures. The universe presented in Villeneuve’s film has the characteristics of a panoptic dystopia, in which knowledge is an element of strengthening corporate and state power. The discursive technologies associated with panoptic power, and their interfaces and functionaries, are here vested with the mission of finding and archiving data lost in a catastrophic incident to reinforce the oppressive order. The agent of telemetric upheaval, on the other hand, is the main character – the posthuman, who turns out by the end of the plot to be the personification of the idea of a dialogical interface – which can serve the homo sapiens with his cognitive abilities to discover inaccessible truths, enabling them to find a symbiotic way of humanity’s existence with its technological creations and opening up to the Other.

Navigating Faith and Politics: The Evolution of Islamic Education and NGOs in the Balkans

This study employs a multi-dimensional approach to analyze the impact of Islamic education on the Balkans’ religious, educational, and socio-political landscapes. Using descriptive, historical, and analytical methods, it examines the evolution and influence of Islamic educational institutions under Ottoman rule and their continued development through the 20th and early 21st centuries. The research evaluates the curricula, teaching methods, and societal roles of these institutions, exploring their contribution to Islamic knowledge dissemination and community building. Further, it investigates the complex interactions between these institutions, Middle Eastern NGOs, state power, and societal changes, aiming to provide a nuanced understanding of their legacy and relevance today. This study addresses the critical role of these institutions and NGOs in shaping Islamic religious education and their broader implications for the Muslim communities in the Balkans.

Military Agricultural Reclamation: Strategic Land-Use Change to Remake Unruly Desert Borders

This article outlines the social, political, and environmental conditions under which states engage in strategic agricultural development along desert borders and what these developments achieve for the state. We focus on how national governments employ state-led agricultural reclamation, expansion, or intensification in deserts to produce and territorialize borders and discuss how these projects fall short. We apply theories of state power and legibility to analyze three military agricultural sites on the China–Kazakhstan, Egypt–Sudan, and Israel–Egypt–Gaza borders, each of which exemplifies strategic desert borderland agricultural development. These sites have geopolitical significance due to their history of territorial disputes, potential for ethnic conflict, and access to strategically important natural resources. By drawing on commonalities between these sites, we find that these developments achieve multiple goals for states, including demarcating territorial boundaries, increasing legibility of peripheral borderlands, and demonstrating control over difficult terrains. We also outline how these projects fall short of totally remaking borderlands due to social, political, and environmental limitations.

Основные тенденции функционирования системы местных Советов БССР периода «развитого социализма» (1965–1984 гг.)

The article examines the main trends in the functioning of the system of local Soviets and their executive committees as constitutionally fixed bodies of state power and management in their administrativeterritorial territories. It is noted that the changes in the organizational structure of the executive committees were bureaucratic in nature, and the practice of implementing an official course to increase the role of Soviets was limited only by a slight expansion of their financial capabilities. The qualitative composition of the executive staff of the executive committees of the Soviets met the needs of the existing centralized planned model of development of soviet society.

Biopolitical Strategies in Media Discourses: Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Russia, Germany, and France

The objective of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis of how media outlets in Russia, France, and Germany reported on events during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis was carried out in three stages: comparing the actors of biopolitics, examining the ideologemes of biopolitics, and analyzing the spheres in which biopolitics were implemented. The theoretical and methodological framework of this study is grounded in Michel Foucault's theory of biopolitics, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky's propaganda model, and Didier Bigo's concept of (in)securitization. Texts related to the COVID-19 pandemic were categorized into four «waves» (January 2020 – March 2022) and retrieved using the keywords «pandemic», «covid», and «coronavirus» from the archives of «Rossiyskaya Gazeta», «Kommersant», «Novaya Gazeta», «Le Figaro», «Le Monde», «Le Parisien», «Süddeutsche Zeitung», «Die Zeit», and «Die Tageszeitung». The total volume of analyzed material amounts to 67.62 million words. The results reveal that state power consistently emerges as a key subject of biopower and biopolitics across all the media studied, following Foucault's traditional framework of biopower subjects. This includes a focus on the actions and decisions of government officials and institutions. Additionally, the study found that all examined media outlets participated in promoting vaccination campaigns orchestrated by the governments of Russia, Germany, and France, indicating a widespread alignment with state-led biopolitical strategies.The analysis also shows that the insecuritization of public life during the pandemic affected various sectors including social relations, the economy, healthcare, and education. Media discourse in all three countries highlighted these areas of impact, often framing them within the broader context of public and existential security.Furthermore, the study identifies notable differences in how the media in each country portrayed biopolitical themes. In Russia, media coverage placed a strong emphasis on the central government's role, while in Germany, there was a more pronounced delineation between federal and regional authorities. In France, media outlets often focused on the personal leadership of President Emmanuel Macron. Despite these differences, there were shared themes across all three countries, such as the emphasis on the importance of vaccination and the portrayal of government measures as necessary for public safety.

Privacy’s Sky-High Battle: The Use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems for Law Enforcement in the European Union

Benefiting from the rapid advancements in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) technology with enhanced tracking and data collection capabilities, law enforcement authorities re-discovered air as a dimension where state power can be exercised in a more affordable, accessible, and compact way. On the other hand, during law enforcement operations, UAS can collect various types of data that can be personal or sensitive, threatening the right to privacy and data protection of the data subjects. Risks include challenges related to data security, bulk data collection, the diminished transparency and fairness resulting from the inconspicuous nature of UAS, as well as ethical concerns intertwined with privacy and data protection. Upon examination of the legal framework including the General Data Protection Regulation the Law Enforcement Directive, various Aviation rules, and the new proposal for the Artificial Intelligence Act, it becomes apparent that the EU legal framework’s adequacy in safeguarding privacy and data protection against law enforcement use of UAS is context-dependent, varying across use cases. The current framework lacks clarity, leading to arbitrary application and limited protection for data subjects. Enforcement of safeguards is insufficient, and the Aviation Regulations, applicable to law enforcement UAS, require member states' opt-in, which has not occurred as of the authors’ knowledge. The Artificial Intelligence Act addresses UAS operations but focuses on market risks rather than obligations imposed on law enforcement authorities. Consequently, the existing framework is rendered inadequate for medium to high-risk law enforcement operations, leaving individuals vulnerable and insufficiently protected against intrusive UAS surveillance. Rectifying this involves addressing the enforcement gap and making the necessary amendments to relevant regulatory aspects. Additionally, the implementation of specific technical measures and steps to foster effective cooperation among stakeholders in UAS deployment for law enforcement is imperative.

Cybernetic States: Communication, Control, and State-Space in the Advanced Research Projects Agency

While political geographers have researched state restructuring extensively over the past forty years, few have explored the role of cybernetics in this process. Conversely, although a wide spectrum of scholars outside of geography have shed light on aspects of cybernetic governance, they have yet to incorporate insights from political geography. In both cases, the political geography of cybernetic state power remains largely unexplored. To bridge this gap, the article explores the nexus of cybernetics and state restructuring in the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), a Cold War US defense research agency, circa 1958 to 1969. It analyzes Congressional testimonies by ARPA-sponsored scientists and engineers alongside their academic publications and other papers to grasp how they conceived of and actively sought to transform state-space. The article makes two arguments. First, while geographers treat state restructuring as a function of neoliberalization or War on Terror securitization, the process was set in motion near the start of the Cold War. It was then that ARPA's appeal to cybernetics to resolve geopolitical conflicts cemented the logical, organizational, and technical foundations for neoliberal and War on Terror state mutations. Second, the main thrust of ARPA responses to Cold War crises involved restructuring state-power in the mode of a cybernetic feedback control system. These efforts bring into relief a distinct object of analysis, the state control system (SCS), which offers geographers fresh perspectives on state restructuring and opens new pathways for interdisciplinary research.