State Use Research Articles

To call a spade a spade: use of force depriving a people of their right to self-determination as violation of Jus Contra Bellum

ABSTRACT This article argues that a use of force which deprives a self-determination entity (‘SDE') of its right to self-determination is prohibited under both Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and customary international law, even if there may not be sufficient practice accepted as law (opinio juris) to establish that such forcible deprivation of an SDE's right to self-determination constitutes an armed attack that entitles the SDE to the right of self-defence. The article also argues that a State's use of force to occupy or subjugate an SDE to permanently prevent an armed attack from emanating from that SDE does not qualify as lawful self-defence in the absence of an actual or imminent armed attack. Furthermore, a State's use of force against attacks emanating from an SDE that could have been averted by the State’s relinquishing control over the SDE does not satisfy the necessity requirement to qualify as lawful self-defence.

Regulation of Digital Platforms and the State's Use of Platform Technologies in China

Regulation of Digital Platforms and the State's Use of Platform Technologies in China

Legitimacy of government and governance

Abstract This paper highlights scholarly neglect of political legitimacy, the idea of a state's use of power in ways acceptable to its citizens. We argue that political legitimacy affects a state's ability to formulate and implement its policies, thus affecting governance. Our paper provides the first empirical evidence of the positive relationship between political legitimacy and governance. We combine novel cross-sectional data on political legitimacy and several governance indicators from 66 countries. Our results show that a one-standard-deviation increase in the legitimacy score increases the rule of law indicator by about one-third standard deviation. These results are robust across OLS, an instrumental variable method, and several other governance indicators. Moreover, our results reveal that in the presence of greater trust, political legitimacy has an enhanced impact on governance.

THE ROLE OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF PUBLIC MANAGEMENT OF ADVERTISING ACTIVITIES AND COMMUNICATION POLICY FOR THE FORMATION OF STATE SECURITY

The influence of digitalization on the communication and advertising policy of the state in the context of increasing public influence and the formation of the security system is studied. It was emphasized that it is important to systematically monitor the effectiveness of communication and advertising strategies and measures used by the state to interact with the public and form a positive social influence and the appropriate level of the state. We believe that studying the impact of advertising in official publications (in particular, Internet advertising) on the public allows us to assess how government communication affects the public, its awareness and perception. Identification of insufficiently transparent or unreliable practices of communication policy, which can help identify cases of misinformation, unreliable communication and contribute to the improvement of communication policy, increasing public trust in the actions of the state. In this context, the current legal framework of Ukraine in the field of advertising and communication activities was analyzed. It is recommended to use new technologies and communication tools, improve transparency, ensure access to information and increase activity in interaction with the public and increase your influence on society through the introduction of effective strategies and measures of advertising and communication policy. It was determined that the state's active use of advertising, mediatization, mass media and social networks, establishing relations with journalists, publishing press releases on websites, as tools of communication with the public, ensures participative management, involvement of the public in dialogue.

Civil war violence and competing legitimacy claims: Evidence from district level courts cases in Nepal

Internal armed conflict is the ultimate instantiation of two actors – the state and a non-state group – challenging the legitimacy of one another. The state primarily responds violently to those who challenge, either violently or non-violently, its legitimacy. To what extent does the violent suppression of rebel activity erode state legitimacy? How does the potential for the use of violence by non-state armed groups and the offer of parallel governance erode state legitimacy? This research develops an argument specific to contested territories where both sides cannot offer model governance but use violence for opposing reasons, namely the rebel group to delegitimize the state and the state to regain its monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Because the use of violence from either side creates a demand for judicial remedies, I conceptualize the degree of legitimacy in terms of the utilization of the state court system in the face of increased violence by the state or non-state armed groups. In line with theoretical expectations, empirical analyses of criminal and civil cases filed in Nepal's district courts during the Maoist insurgency suggest a statistically significant negative impact of the rebel use of violence and their offer of alternative governance on state legitimacy. Similarly, the state's use of violence had a negative and significantly detrimental effect on state legitimacy.

“Wars without Gun Smoke”: Global Supply Chains, Power Transitions, and Economic Statecraft

Abstract Conventional wisdom holds that conflict is highly likely during a power transition between declining and rising powers. The spread of global supply chains has provided new economic weapons for great powers waging these conflicts, but the businesses that constitute global supply chains can make it harder or easier for them to do so. A structural theory of business-state relations shows how power transitions affect a state's ability to exercise economic statecraft. As a dominant power and a rising power approach parity, they face structural incentives to use economic statecraft to decouple their economies. The resulting threat to businesses’ profits changes business-state relations: high-value businesses within the dominant power tend to oppose their state's use of economic statecraft, whereas low-value businesses within the rising power tend to cooperate with their state's use of economic statecraft. The Anglo-German power transition from 1890 to 1914 and the U.S.-China power transition since 1990 illustrate the theory. The findings shift scholarly debates on the use of economic statecraft in modern great power competition and have policy implications for weaponizing supply chains against rising powers like China.

Outcomes of State Targeted/Opioid Response Grants and the Medication First Approach: Evidence of Racial Inequities in Improved Treatment Access and Retention.

Since 2017, Missouri has increased access to medication for opioid use disorder (OUD) within the State's publicly-funded substance use specialty treatment system through a "Medication First" approach. Results from a statewide assessment of the first year of State Targeted Response implementation showed increases and improvements in overall treatment admissions, medication utilization, and treatment retention. The current study, which focuses on the St. Louis region, the epicenter of Missouri's overdose crisis, examines whether improvements were experienced equally among Black and White clients. This study is a retrospective analysis using state-level billing records for individuals with OUD receiving services through publicly-funded substance use treatment programs between July 1, 2016, and June 30, 2019, with claimed services updated through November 1, 2020. Comparisons across time periods, treatment groups, and Black and White clients were assessed using chi-square tests of independence and multivariate negative binomial regressions. White individuals in St. Louis experienced larger increases in treatment admissions and utilization of medications for OUD than Black individuals, and Black clients were retained in treatment for shorter lengths of time than White clients. In Missouri, rates of drug overdose deaths are more than three times higher for Black people than White people. Racial inequities in OUD treatment utilization and retention must be intentionally targeted and corrected as one component of reducing this sizable disparity in fatalities.

Recasting “Fundamental ‘British’ Values”: Education, Justice, and Preventing Violent Extremism

AbstractSocieties concerned with preventing acts of violent extremism often target the ideas that are thought to motivate such acts. The state's use of educational institutions is one mechanism by which those ideas are subjected to challenge. Teaching liberal democratic values to students is one method. Here, David Stevens argues that this model is misguided. First, commitment to violent methods is not primarily driven by the attractiveness of radical ideas themselves, but by material facts and circumstances. Second, an education that ignores the teaching of various socioeconomic values, such as a commitment to a certain degree of material equality and welfare provision, is inadequate as a conception of citizenship. These criticisms are related. Citizens are owed certain resources and commitments as citizens, and grounds for dissatisfaction and violence are reduced when citizens receive the holdings to which they are entitled, and when their fellow citizens recognize and endorse this. Consequently, it is the role of education to teach directively toward the adoption of such socioeconomic values and commitments.

The Use of Amharic Language in Anywaa Nationality Zone, Gambella People’s National Regional State and Its Socio-Economic Effects on the Anywaa Nationality, Ethiopia

This study's major goal is to evaluate the socioeconomic impacts of the anywaa Nationality of the Abobo and Gog district in the Gambella People's National Regional State's anywaa Nationality Zone's use of the Amharic language. Both quantitative and qualitative methodologies have been employed to complete the study's stated objectives. In order to achieve the aforementioned objective, the study used qualitative data collection techniques like interviews, observation, and focus group discussions to collect primary data from a number of informants in the Anywaa Nationality zone of the Abob and Gog district. There were 129 informants in the study overall. The secondary data source was assembled from published and unpublished sources, including books, journals, and other research initiatives. This study also employed non-probability and probability sampling techniques to reach its objectives. Simple random procedures and purposive sample strategies were utilized in probability sampling techniques. The findings of this study demonstrate that no new employment opportunities for the local populace were created, and Amharic was not employed as an official working language. Amharic was neither spoken nor written in the majority of the communities in the study area. The study also points out the serious drawbacks of using Amharic as the only working language for local development. One of the primary barriers preventing individuals from visiting the study region is the majority of agriculture agencies' poor Amharic proficiency. As a result, it posed a sizable barrier to community growth and had an impact on the socioeconomic status of the studied region both directly and indirectly.

Mobilizing religious differences and terrorism, negotiating civil rights in Egypt

AbstractThe Egyptian state's publication of its first National Human Rights Strategy 2021–2026 (NHRS) (2021) on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks came at the crossroads of Western pressure to improve human rights and the state's use of counterterrorism to silence voices. The recent arrests of Coptic activists, dubbing them “terrorists” on the pretext of disturbing public peace and instigating sectarianism, follows the regime's capitalization on Egypt's history of battling Islamic radicalism and sectarian strife. The regime has additionally used societal instabilities post the 2011 revolution to demonstrate Egypt's unique case of human rights. This paper analyzes the ways in which the language of the NHRS entangles terrorism to negotiate the interpretation of civil rights and social justice. In doing so, the thesis of NHRS posits civil rights and social justice to be the responsibility of the collective in general, and religious institutions in particular, as preservers of public peace and national unity. While the publication of the NHRS is inscribed in the feigning of democratization to Western donors, assigning Coptic activists as terrorists, as this paper argues, plays up religious differences, broadens the purview of counterterrorism, and expands state power.

Introduction

Introduction Dayo F. Gore (bio) and Christina B. Hanhardt (bio) In 2020 the Movement for Black Lives, drawing on what it describes as an "ecosystem of over 170 organizations," relaunched its 2016 Vision for Black Lives platform to build "political will and power" (Movement for Black Lives 2020). Two aspects of the platform stand out to us: first, that an intersectional analysis is at the center of all demands; and second, that "the state" is theorized as a source of punishment that activists reject and as a set of resources that activists might make claims upon. Given our respective research on twentieth-century U.S. social movements (Christina on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activism, and Dayo on Black women's radicalism and the U.S. Left) and investments in contemporary left movements, these issues have long preoccupied our work on and engagement with political organizing. In the last three years the stakes have only intensified. Social and economic conditions in the United States and around the globe demonstrate the necessity of addressing categories of difference while confronting state power, its resources, and institutional reach. From abolitionist demands to "defund the police and invest in communities" to calls for protecting rights such as access to abortion and health care, these years of pandemic, protests, and legal mandates have laid bare the power of the state to shape everyday life and survival. This is especially the case in the context of the recalibration of neoliberalism and white nationalism. Counter to claims on the left and right that identity politics stand in contrast to class politics, or that movements named by single-identity frames are necessarily delimited, many activist responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and leadership during the Black Lives Matter uprisings of the [End Page 11] summer of 2020 treated race, gender, sexuality, and class as tightly interwoven social categories that are essential to building justice movements and radical change. In addition, many of these movements have directly engaged the state, be that in supporting socialist- and progressive-identified political candidates or demanding economic resources for state health infrastructure, even as they have also participated in local mutual aid networks and called for the end of carceral systems, borders, and even the U.S. nation-state itself. We have been struck by how these organizing efforts speak to histories that we have studied of political movements that center identity and economic politics and also urge a revisiting of the ways states mobilize power and belonging through interconnected systems of benefits, discipline, and violence. In considering this special issue we were inspired by important debates about the state that have long animated social movement organizing as well as left and feminist scholarship, such as the place of liberal reforms in radical strategy, the value or limits of centralization and seeding electoral power from below, the challenges of forging new visions on an international scale while sustaining local engagement, and how to recognize the state's co-optation of radical terms without ceding discursive and political ground. We also sought to highlight scholarship and activism emerging from feminists of color that have long made visible the capitalist state's use of social locations beyond class to structure resource distribution. We seek in this issue on State/Power to provide productive insights and provoke further conversation. The articles that follow reroute expected histories and dominant discourses about state power and track how people, particularly Black and other racialized communities, have organized in response. They also take up some precise issues from recent years that have been at the forefront of discussions about the state, such as practices of mutual aid and collective care, the expansion of state punishment alongside the retraction of public resources, and the relationship between local, federal, and global power. Throughout, they explore what directly engaging the state might offer and restrict, and they do so with an attentiveness to identity and difference. The first two articles approach these issues through an analysis of the place of bodily regulation in the operation of the carceral state. In "'The Potential That Was in All of Us': Carceral Disability and the Japanese American Redress Movement," Adria L. Imada looks at how...

Conservation violence: Paradoxes of “making live” and “letting die” in anti-poaching practices

Wildlife poaching has been and continues to be of significant concern to environmental sustainability. While descriptions of poaching often include vivid details about the animal victims and the heroics of those fighting to conserve biodiversity, ambiguity still surrounds ‘the poacher.’ Clarifying the identity of a poacher is necessary to expose a societal tendency to enforce stereotypes on others that perpetuate violence and inequality. Without knowing the identity of a poacher, it becomes easy for society to impose unsubstantiated beliefs upon them that legitimize unjust and violent policies. This research examines how (1) the media and (2) conservation actors construct the identity and context of the poacher to understand how and why violent protected area policies like shoot-to-kill have become accepted conservation strategies. Through a systematic analysis of news articles and primary interviews with conservation actors, we demonstrate how poachers are anonymized, dehumanized, and placed in a space of exception to become legitimate and justifiable targets of violence. We conclude by examining a central paradox that emerges from the state's biopolitical use of violent anti-poaching policies: how does a form of authority that is fundamentally justified in its claims to protect life condone the use of deadly force on its own subjects?

Fear and Violence, Loyalty and Treason: Settlement of Status in Syria

Abstract This article examines the arbitrary and oftentimes violent nature of loyalty and belonging in the case of Syria but with applicability to other authoritarian or high-surveillance contexts. It shows how the new “settlement of status” process is an extension of the governmentality of violence used by the Syrian regime to delineate loyal citizens from traitors. However, the article argues that this process is Janus-faced and actually serves to undermine the regime in the long run by destabilizing its surety around who is considered loyal and who is a potential threat. This uncertainty has the potential to sow the seeds for greater dissent and with it, act as one possible catalyst for the regime's eventual collapse. The Syrian case offers broader insights into the various social and political permutations of a citizen's relationship to the state and how that relationship can be impacted over time by the state's use of fear and violence as mechanisms for social control.

STATE POLICY DIRECTIONS IN THE FACE OF WAR CHALLENGES

The article explores the process of directing representatives of public administration in the direction of humanitarian-oriented development of the state in an era of challenges and changes during martial law. The modern world order is in a state of intensive transformation, which involves the redistribution of leverage and control over planetary resources, a globalized financial and economic system, the energy sector, the acquisition of new territories, the regulation and dominance of high-tech communications, the acquisition of control over models and mechanisms of an effective international security system. Emphasizing the problems of the orientation of the national policy of the state in the face of the challenges of war, we realize that there is a war of civilization with anti-civilization, we think that it is a balanced, responsible and effective – functioning policy requires a humanitarian and ethical basis, taking into account the best world and European experience in solving these issues. Hence the main questions that determine the effectiveness of the state's use of objective potencies of human potential a) that and in what way society, the state, the authorities can and can give people of different age categories who have fallen into difficult life circumstances as a result of the loss of home, property, life losses of relatives and friends; b) how to develop the moral and ethical worldview of citizens, and especially the younger generation, which is actively involved in defending the independence of the country in order to motivate society to rebuild the country after victory, reduce tension and aggression in the public environment. The orientation of the state policy is considered in the direction of a successful life start of young people, their personal self-determination and the realization of professional potential for the benefit of society, the state as a whole. A comprehensive solution of these and other issues is possible under the condition of a holistic, clearly verified purposeful policy of the state, the purpose of which is to coordinate the activities of all subjects of the country, to create the most favorable conditions for social adaptation of people in conditions of challenges and threats with the prospect of civilizational development of the country, humanistic changes.

An overview of the sugarcane expansion in the state of São Paulo (Brazil) over the last two decades and its environmental impacts

The state of São Paulo is the leader in the sugarcane production in Brazil. However, the expansion of this culture has been associated with environmental impacts. In this scenario, the determination of growth vectors contributes to establishing areas of higher vulnerability and risks. This research assesses the development of sugarcane cultivation in the state of São Paulo between 1999 and 2019 from an environmental point of view, reviewing its environmental impacts associated with processing. Maps generated compiled information from different Brazilian databases, and the SWOT matrix (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) was considered for the areas. The state's land use maps showed the pasture conversion, with a 53.5% reduction in pasture areas and a 143.8% increase in sugarcane cultivation. Sugarcane cultivation and mills are located mainly in the Northwest and West of the state of São Paulo, especially in the administrative regions of São José do Rio Preto, Barretos, Franca, and Ribeirão Preto, which agrees with the state's Agro-environmental Zoning that guides agricultural land use. Such areas are the most susceptible to the immediate environmental impacts of sugarcane cultivation and processing in sugarcane mills and should be priorities for environmental management. The SWOT matrix highlighted the potential for sugarcane production in the state, considering the perspectives to overcome most weaknesses and threats. However, better land-use practices should be applied to sugarcane crops towards outweighing their limitations.

“Hominids with an Infected Brain” Engage in Viral Debate: Agamben and Žižek on the Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Human Relationships

“Hominids with an Infected Brain” Engage in Viral Debate: Agamben and Žižek on the Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic on Human Relationships

Bricks and Bombs versus Bullets and Batons: Protest and Regime Violence as Generational Experience in Communist Poland

This article discusses the relation between state violence and public disorder under authoritarian rule in Poland. Focusing on the major crises and protests of the communist era, it examines regime violence through a double perspective – on the one hand, the way the regime resorted to physical violence to uphold its survival and, on the other hand, as a generational experience of those who suffered from it. Despite the state's use of physical violence until 1989 becoming more rationalised, modernised and efficient, it also turned less effective over time. This evolution contributed to a decreasing risk factor for protesters vis-à-vis the state. Since the bulk of those who participated in protests and riots were young people, the focus lies on the youthful dimension of public disorder and in particular the activity and experience of then students and young workers.

Jihadi Audiovisuality and Its Entanglements: Meanings, Aesthetics, Appropriations

Jihadi Audiovisuality and Its Entanglements: Meanings, Aesthetics, Appropriations

Low-Skilled Migrants and the Historical Reproduction of Immigration Injustice.

Low-skilled migrants in wealthy receiving states are routinely subordinated across a range of social contexts. There is a rich philosophical literature on the inferiorizing effects of “crimmigration”—that is, the growing criminalization of unauthorized migrants and the state’s use of uniquely harsh law enforcement methods against them. Yet there is less interest in the existing racialized division of migrant labor. Low-skilled Latino/a/x migrants disproportionately perform “dirty” and “difficult” work that citizens do not wish to perform. Theoretically, this division of labor is compatible with a more permissive immigration system that legally admitted far larger numbers of low-skilled migrants to continue “doing the dirty work.” Indeed, many have assumed the desirability of such a system. Against this, I argue that “crimmigration” and the racialized division of migrant labor cannot be conceptually disentangled. Rather, they are mutually constitutive in reproducing background conditions that constrain the social equality of low-skilled migrants, as well as others perceived to be such. “Crimmigration” has not only excluded migrants, but enabled states to include them on socially unequal terms: as an instrumental and fungible source of cheap labor. Drawing on Alasia Nuti’s (2019) valuable observation that “banal” historical mechanisms like stereotypes and social scripts can play a crucial role in maintaining present-day injustice, I show that stereotypes of migrants as workers in low-skilled occupations, as well as the expectation that they continue to take on those jobs, also profoundly undermine immigration justice.

Measuring the Sciences Contribution to Socioeconomic Development: Russian Approaches in the Global Space of Ideas

Purpose: this review aims to present the ‘state-of-the-art’ on the theory and practice of measuring the contribution of sciences to socioeconomic progress and trace the Russian approaches in the global space of ideas.Methods: for studying a multidisciplinary sample of academic publications and gray literature includes multifactor systematization, critical analysis, and synthetic generalization in a large context («helicopter view»).Results: a brief history of the subject is presented in the context of the state's use of science for socio-economic development. The review outlines the focus areas of scientific thought, the conceptual frameworks state, current approaches to measuring the contribution of sciences, the limitations and risks of the evaluation practice.Conclusions and Relevance: key areas of scientific thought in the subject under review for 100 years: (1) development of econometric approaches for measuring the «profitability» of science; (2) attempts to identify and measure the societal impacts of science; (3) scientific support of government experiments to use the evaluation technologies for increasing the return of budget investment to science; (4) conceptualizing and universalizing the terms. There are no indisputable solutions in any of these areas. Disappointment with the catch-all indicators and universal metrics encourages the development of case-oriented methods and process-oriented approaches.Russian research covers the full range of issues, but their world recognition (except some achievements of Soviet time) is low. The lack of institutional memory leads to the rediscovery of the ideas of the 20th century. Establishing the equivalence of terms and conceptual approaches used by scientists from different countries and periods will help to effectively use the scientific heritage, avoid duplicate research, provide a fair place to the Russian achievements in world science.