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This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

In July 2021, the European Commission has proposed a set of conjunct initiatives to reform the antimoney laundering/countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) regulatory regime in Europe with the main aims to (i) harmonize the AML/CFT regulation and (ii) centralize the authority to a higher degree at European Union (EU) level. This paper aims to assess the reform in light of the EU subsidiarity principle.

The paper uses a benchmark approach to compare the proposed EU money laundering reform against Article 5(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

The paper confirms that more centralized decision-making at EU level in this policy area is justified, mainly because (i) the policy area is not an area where the EU has exclusive competence, (ii) EU centralized action is necessary and (iii) it also adds value, for instance, for level playing field and efficiency considerations as long as local information advantage will not be lost. As such, the subsidiarity principle can be applied and is an adequate tool to legitimize EU centralized action in the field of money laundering combat.

As the EU AML regulatory reform has not yet been sufficiently discussed in light of the subsidiarity principle, the article is of innovative nature.

This paper aims to discuss the adequacy of restrictive measures. Providing a synopsis of a global movement toward the imposition of target restrictive measures. Questioning the success of targeted restrictive measures in obtaining behavioural change. Identifying a reversion to the implementation of wide ranging sectoral restrictive measures in an attempt to encourage immediate behavioural change. Accessing the success of using restrictive measures to encourage democratic regimes in Africa.

This study is a desktop research that examines European Parliament and Council issued Regulations for the jurisdictions of Iran, Russia and Belarus. Academic research is also used in identifying a pendulum swing by global legislatures with respect to the imposition of targeted measures to requiring the imposition of additional wide ranging sectoral measures.

Targeted measures can be circumvented using non-hostile third countries. Academic research identifies that wide reaching sectoral sanctions encourage regime change. Therefore, where targeted measures fail to give rise to their desired persuasive objectives. The legislator moves to introduce additional measures, also comprising of sectoral sanctions. Sectoral sanctions have been applied by the European Union in Iran, Russia and Belarus. The USA has taken measures to limit Russia ability to use Turkey as a transshipment hub. The African continent case study identifies the importance of creating an architecture founded on upholding positive governance and human rights standards. Failure to do so leads to a revolving system of authoritarian regimes, sanctioned by restrictive measures.

This paper is a desktop review composed by the author.

This study aims to define a “technological statecraft” concept to distinguish tech-based measures/sanctions from an array of economic measures ranging from restrictions of rare earth elements and natural gas supplies to asset freezes under the wider portfolio of economic statecraft. This concept is practically intended to reveal the USA’s “logic of choice” in its employment of technology as an efficient instrument to deal with China in the context of the great power rivalry.

This study follows David A. Baldwin’s statecraft definition and conceptualization methodology, which relies on “means” rather than “ends.” In addition to Baldwin and as an incremental contribution to his economic statecraft analysis, this study also combines national political economy with statecraft analysis with a particular focus on the utilization of technological measures against China during the Trump administration.

The US rationale for choosing technology, namely, emerging and foundational technologies, in its rivalry against China is caused at least by two factors: the nature of the external challenge and the characteristics of the US innovation model based largely on radical innovations. To deal with China, the USA practically distinguished the role of advanced technology and followed a grammer of technological statecraft as depicted in the promulgated legal texts during the Trump administration.

Despite a growing volume of literature on economic statecraft and technological competition, studies focusing on countries’ “logic of choice” with regard to why and under what conditions they choose financial, technological or commodity-based sanctions/measures/controls are lacking. Inspired from Baldwin’s account on the “logic of choice” from among alternative statecrafts (i.e. diplomacy, military, economic statecraft, and propaganda). This study will contribute to the literature with a clear lens to demonstrate the “logic of choice” from among a variety of economic statecraft measures in the case of the US technological statecraft toward China.

Through the case of Blanca Sinchi, the following analysis presents valuation criteria that have resulted in the invisibility of social actors and cultural patrimony (cultural heritage) elements, and some contradictions in their acknowledgment process. In addition, the paper explains how architecture, among other historic assets, has made women and their contributions invisible.

Bibliographic analysis and semi-structured interviews were carried out to theorize about the thermodynamic system of lime to propose a matri-lineal system category and expand the understanding of the participation of women in the receipt, management and transmission of what is called patrimony.

In heritage places, such as Cuenca (Ecuador), cultural richness extends from the Historic Center to the rest of the territory and its actors. However, there are intrinsic elements, such as unknown, but fundamental, oral or family traditions associated with the role of women. The case of Blanca Sinchi and lime is evidence of this, as it shows the typical scenario affected by gender and by disparate power dynamics that do not consider desirable attributes (authenticity, integrity, identity, bequest, option, existence, among others) in the conservation of architectural patrimony. A deep redefinition process, or even a change in the valuation system, is needed. Also, the history behind built heritage items must be explored to find the contributions made by women.

Proposing a matri-lineal system category to expand the understanding of the participation of women in the receipt, management and transmission of what is called patrimony, allows redefining and rewriting local and global history, acknowledging the role of women. In this way, the proposal questions not only the hegemony of the term “cultural patrimony” pigeonholed in paternal legacy but also the term “cultural heritage” as a synonym and framework that, while expanding material values, it does not effectively include, at least for Ibero-Romance language territories, the broad set of tangible and intangible values, as well as the know-how and skills of artisans.

The purpose of this research is to explore how one unsanctioned community sport organization (CSO), AM Hockey, sought to acquire legitimacy in a highly institutionalized minor hockey marketplace at various points in its organizational life cycle.

This study was guided by instrumental case study methodology. Twenty (20) AM Hockey stakeholders from a variety of roles (e.g. executives, program directors and coaches) were interviewed. Document analysis was also utilized to supplement the interviewees. Internal and public documents reflective of the CSO's creation and growth were obtained.

Findings revealed that the CSO had to navigate distinct phases of evolution including the Building, Growth, Competition and Stabilization phases. Although the four life cycle phases identified in this study share similarities with the phases identified by Lester et al. (2003), findings indicated that institutional work mechanisms must be understood in their context as they can vary over the life cycle of an organization. Therefore, start-up sports organizations must approach the pursuit of legitimacy as a continual process rather than something acquired and defended through maintenance work.

Developing legitimacy remains a central challenge for CSOs that seek to deliver alternative sport programming, yet it continues to be understudied. Ultimately, the long-term viability of an unsanctioned CSO in a federated sports system relies, in part, on its ability to continually determine the actions needed to achieve legitimacy within its environment.

Narratives about racism and equity in schools have been documented in varying degrees of detail and accuracy in the news media (Farhi, 2012). Thus, race is front and center in the news reports, demonstrating how education policies are detrimental to the Island while also contending that policy drivers of Ley de Reforma Educativa de Puerto Rico (LREPR) are ignoring the racialized consequences of these neoliberal policies.

To examine the implementation of LREPR in education discourse in the media, a content analysis on texts in the Puerto Rican media was conducted. To conduct the analysis, an original dataset of texts from the four major newspapers in Puerto Rico: El Nuevo Dia, El Vocero, Primera Hora and The San Juan Daily Star (n = 119) was created.

The study shows how the collective resistance of Puerto Ricans towards LREPR suggests racialized consequences for this “post”-colonial Island as they engage in dialogues about property rights and dispute policy discourse. Data suggests the alarming effects of neoliberalism as perceived by Puerto Rican citizens, while highlighting shared concerns aligned with elements of critical race theory such as colorblindness and property rights.

This study breaks ground by identifying a new intellectual pursuit of charter schools purchasing land or buildings in marginalized communities. It argues that the news coverage demonstrates how Puerto Rican citizens have illuminated the purchase of land for charter schools, viewing it as an act of colonialism veiled as market competition and economic improvement for the Island. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

The findings from this research contribute to how critical race theory is used and conceptualized in the educational leadership field. Additionally, the study contributes to the field of research by conducting a content analysis of newspaper articles in Puerto Rico, looking through the CRT lens to illuminate systemic racism that is present in media accounts of education.

Conventional wisdom suggests that war in the host country makes it unattractive for foreign firms to invest. To see if this is true for US firms on the aggregate, this paper aims to examine the veracity of a “permanent war economy” hypothesis, that foreign direct investment (FDI) may, in fact, increase in the host country not despite, but because of, war, i.e. one that lends credence to the idea that, in the USA, “defense [has] become one of constant preparation for future wars and foreign interventions rather than an exercise in response to one-off threats.”

The authors test the hypotheses using Generalized Method of Moments estimation, with Heckman Selection, on US FDI data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and war data from the Correlates of War2 Project, the Uppsala Conflict Data Program/International Peace Research Institute data set, the International Crisis Behavior Project and the Center for Systemic Peace Major Episodes of Political Violence data set. The final sample consists of 351 country-year observations in 55 host countries from 1982 to 2006.

The findings indicate that overall US FDI in a host country in a given year decreases if the host country is engaged in wars with multiple countries and if the US Government is involved in the war. Most notably, the results show that US involvement in multiple host country wars is actually correlated with increased US FDI into the host country, providing empirical support for the “permanent war economy” hypothesis.

While other studies have focused on war and FDI, the authors have sought to show the impact of the involvement of arguably the most influential country, i.e. the USA, in the sovereign matters of a focal host country. By studying FDI from the USA as a function of US involvement in wars overseas, over the years with the greatest use of private military companies by the USA and the largest portion of global FDI accounted for by the USA, this work motivates a research agenda on home-host-"other” relations in the context of war and FDI, with the “other” being the supranational “elephant in the room.”

This study aims to convey the understanding of the ecosystem – how “hundi” works on the border trade between Myanmar and northern Thailand, which is an informal transfer system and is widely used as an alternative banking system. Even though the role of hundi is unable to declare the sources of money under the standard settlement of formal banking system, a failure to operate of its official mechanism are carrying using hundi, as a financial platform across the border between Thailand and Myanmar. This study surveys the best practice mechanism for the regional and international cooperation.

This paper draws on relevant literature, open-source reporting, and interviews with more than 30 interviewees on the border between Thailand and Myanmar. Interviewees includes border-trader, money changer, money transfer operators, business leaders, hundi operators, immigrant labors, government officials and commercial banking staffs.

This study provides a unique insight of hundi system, which work as the alternative mode of formal banking. It is an informal fund transfer payment platform used on the border between Thailand and Myanmar in the past five decades. It insists that hundi plays a significant role in both substitution and complementary on the trade and payment across the border of Myanmar–Thailand. Even though confronting with the barriers of financing of terrorism (anti money laundering AML/combating the financing of terrorism CFT) risk, the competition with the expanding and modernizing formal banking sector, and the introduction of Fintech and mobile money services. In the short term, these are unlikely to eliminate the hundi system completely, but may instead push hundi operators towards adopting these networks and technologies in their own operations.

This paper will be a useful source for academics, development professionals, policymakers, law enforcement agencies and business actors who are seeking to understand Myanmar’s informal payment system, hundi.

This is the latest work for border trade payment or trade financing role of hundi which has hidden under the informal market of the border for several decades. It has few research of hundi on border trade and payment, particularly after the military coup in 2021 which made hundi return to be on the spotlight and simultaneous mechanism of border trade and payment ecosystem of Myanmar. This paper will be a useful source for academics, development professionals, policymakers, law enforcement agencies and business actors who are eager to understand Myanmar’s informal payment system, hundi, especially during the hardship.

The total defence (TD) concept constitutes a joint endeavour between the military forces and civil defence structures within a TD state. Logistics is essential for such joint collaboration to work; however, the mismatch between military and civil defence logistics structures poses challenges for such joint collaboration. The purpose of this paper is to identify logistics concept areas within the TD framework that allow for military and civil defence collaborations from a logistics operations perspective.

Pattern-matching analysis is used to compare patterns found in the investigated case with those prescribed from the literature and predicted to occur. The study seeks to identify logistics concepts within TD from the literature and from the events describing the Swedish response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Pattern matching thus allows for the reconciliation of logistics concepts from the literature to descriptions of how the response was handled, albeit under a TD framework.

Findings show quite distinct foci between the theoretical and observational realms in terms of logistics applications. While the theoretical realm identifies four main logistics concepts, the observational realm identifies five logistics conceptual themes. This goes on to show an incongruence between the military and civil parts of the TD.

This study provides basis for further research into the applications and management of logistics activity within TD and emergency response.

Logistics applications within TD have not, until now, received much attention in the literature. Given this knowledge gap, this study is of original value.