bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Orientation of international organization evaluation units to stakeholders
Authors: Jankauskas Vytautas , Eckhard Steffen
Published: June 2023

Chapter 5 asks whether structural control over the resources of international organizations’ (IOs) evaluation units—as observed in Chapter 4—yields observable consequences regarding their behavior. Drawing on principal–agent theory, the chapter theorizes how stakeholder control may affect evaluation units’ orientation to either member states or IO administrations. The empirical analysis, which is based on interviews with the heads of IO evaluation units, shows that these entities do have strong perceptions as to which stakeholders they prioritize as key evaluation users and sponsors. This varies systematically with stakeholder control, implying that evaluation units—despite their formal independence—informally lean toward that stakeholder which controls more evaluation system resources. These findings imply anticipatory obedience in the orientation of IO evaluation units and constitute an important part of the puzzle of evaluation politics.
About this book
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

‘The Student’s Research Companion is a unique book in its field. Here, we summarize its nature, what it aims to achieve, and how it is structured, and provide definitions for key terms
Why even bother?
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

A final academic project can generate a great variety of returns. Required are your will to invest and your imagination to generate use out of the outcome.
Preparation determines motivation
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

First impressions are key to the initial motivation of those you engage. Sustained positive impressions are key to the stamina of a collaboration.
Follow one trajectory
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

Consider your supervisor a more advanced peer. Many other perspectives are based on common but misleading assumptions about what to expect
Build well-dimensioned bridges
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

Your research ought to link what is known with what is not yet known. Try to develop a sense of how far your project can reliably reach.
Maturing your mind
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

If you allow your project to take a hold of you, the challenge will lead to your mind maturing. It is this maturing that enables you to complete it.
A researcher’s humility
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

Build upon existing knowledge and always remain critical. Rather implement a simpler project reliably than a complex project horribly.
Castle under siege
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

Expect your project to be criticized often and extensively. You will benefit from finding a productive way of processing this
A progressive discussion
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

Take a few steps back and put your findings into perspective. This will require more synthesis, more conscious and active sense-making.
A consolidating conclusion
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

Integrate the key components of your text and outline its implications to research and practice. What are the limitations of your project?
Revise frequently
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

Developing a text and the thought behind it means revising and rewriting. It may seem repetitive, but this is the motion that propels you forward.
Write like a journey
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

Determine a healthy work rhythm and go at your own pace. Be mindful of individual impressions and pay attention to detail. Enjoy the journey.
Take in your accomplishment
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

Realizing what you accomplished by completing your studies takes time and reflection. It’s a more complex achievement than meets the eye.
Do good for yourself and others
Authors: Aschari Omid , Berghaus Benjamin
Published: June 2023

Your education may have come with no strings attached. However, it is useful to consider the expectation that you will apply what you have learned.
The Morality of the Laws of War
Authors: Rudolphy Marcela Prieto
Published: June 2023

Combatants are legally equal during war. They are lawful targets and they can kill each other during battle. Traditionally, philosophers thought this legal symmetry was also true of morality. The opposite is true now: most philosophers think that unjust combatants who kill just combatants are engaged in the murder of the innocent. This position—known as ‘revisionism’—presents an obvious, albeit mostly ignored, challenge to international law. For how can we justify the laws of armed conflict if they allow people to murder the innocent? This book aims to answer this question. It argues that the adoption of the symmetry thesis—but not necessarily its content—can be contingently justified, even if it allows for what sometimes amounts to the murder of the innocent. But it cannot be so justified if all it does is allow for the murder of the innocent—that would make its moral standing too fragile. As a result, the book also sets out to deconstruct the revisionist analogy between murder and unjust combatants’ killings, by proposing an alternative morality of war. But even if the fragility of this justification can be attenuated by proposing an alternative morality of war, an open question remains as to how significant this attenuation is. Ultimately, the book argues, there is no escape from the fact that regulating war constitutes a significant moral compromise.
Combatants and the Privilege to Kill
Authors: Rudolphy Marcela Prieto
Published: June 2023

This chapter argues against the view that International Humanitarian Law only grants combatants an immunity from prosecution and that the existence of an immunity, as opposed to a permission, makes the symmetry thesis easy to justify. First, the chapter argues that combatants are privileged to kill other combatants in three senses: (1) they have a Hohfeldian privilege to kill; (2) they enjoy an exceptional permission to do something which is usually forbidden, which the chapter describes as a Kelsenian positive permission; and (3) they belong to a favoured class of people. Second, the chapter argues that understanding combatants as merely possessing an immunity from prosecution and a weak permission is incorrect. Finally, it concludes by pointing out that an immunity from prosecution, although slightly easier to justify than a privilege, is not easy to justify at all.
Unjust Combatants
Authors: Rudolphy Marcela Prieto
Published: June 2023

This chapter explores the reasons that some unjust combatants may have for participating and killing in an unjust war. It argues that unjust combatants’ reasons for participating in war arise out of certain features of war and out of certain features of our institutional arrangements. First, the chapter discusses duress and uncertainty. Second, it focuses on war’s collective nature and argues that (1) when wars with a just cause are fought unjustly, unjust combatants will have a reason to participate in the war and inflict harm; and (2) that if unjust combatants have reason to believe that they will only make small contributions to their side of the war, this belief will provide no reason not to join when refusing to fight is exceedingly costly for agents. Third, it focuses on the fact that war is risky for those who fight it and argues that (1) non-liable unjust combatants might have agent-relative prerogatives to defend themselves and other, non-liable individuals when they are under attack; and (2) that under certain circumstances, unjust combatants can join an unjust war because refusing to do so would deflect unjustified harm onto other, non-liable, unjust combatants. The chapter concludes by stressing the need for international law and institutions to reduce the costs of surrendering and refusing to fight by providing a privilege to refuse to participate in unjust wars.
Conclusion
Authors: Rudolphy Marcela Prieto
Published: June 2023

The conclusion brings together the different parts of the moral justification proposed throughout the book. While the adoption of the symmetrical legal privilege of combatants can be contingently justified by the instrumentalist justification provided in Chapter III, the morality of war defended in Chapters VII and VIII can attenuate the fragility of the instrumentalist explanation by denying, at least partially, that what unjust combatants do is just like murdering the innocent. Nonetheless, the book ends with a necessary note of pessimism. Even if the arguments presented have successfully attenuated the fragility of the instrumentalist justification, in the end it is still an open question how significant this attenuation is. First, because pacifism might be true, and second because the success of the instrumentalist justification proposed by the book depends on the law’s ability to lead us to peace, and it is unclear whether it has done so. Ultimately, the book stresses that regulating war, rather than eliminating it, is a significant moral compromise. As such, war’s regulation can have important costs—in particular, we may wonder whether regulating war has helped to entrench war itself.
Introduction
Authors: Krieger Heike , Liese Andrea
Published: June 2023

Can a metamorphosis of international law be identified while it is still underway? In Chapter 1, the Introduction, Krieger and Liese set the stage for the interdisciplinary assessment of the effects of the current crisis of the international legal order. They offer fundamental common values as a reference point and yardstick to systematically evaluate and analyse normative changes in international law. After explaining the benefits of interdisciplinary exchange and clarifying the basic concepts from the respective disciplinary perspectives, they develop the book’s conceptual framework for assessing and explaining value change in the international legal order. The Introduction also elaborates on the book’s research design and case selection and summarizes the aims and key contributions of each conceptual and empirical chapter.
Entrenching International Values through Positive Law
Authors: de Wet Erika
Published: June 2023

Chapter 5 by Erika de Wet addresses the overall theme of value change from a legal perspective by analysing the effect of peremptory norms of international law (ius cogens). These norms are hierarchically superior to other legal norms and protect fundamental values of the international community. Taking a critical approach to the concept, she stresses that substantial legal effects of ius cogens have remained limited because states or courts seldom rely on the concept. She, therefore, doubts that ius cogens can shield norms or the underlying values from erosion and offers an explanation why legal norms may erode.
There’s Life in the Old Dog Yet
Authors: Lesch Max , Zimmermann Lisbeth
Published: June 2023

Based on an IR perspective, Chapter 6 by Max Lesch and Lisbeth Zimmermann examines a core value of the post-1945 international legal order: the prohibition of torture. This norm has come under pressure by the practices of torture and ill-treatment prevalent in some states and by state representatives’ reinterpretations and discursive contestations in the context of counter-terrorism. Lesch and Zimmermann study the long-term effects of the respective challenges by Israel and the United States from the 1990s to 2010. In particular, they examine four dimensions: two of which are more practice-oriented—compliance and implementation—and two which are more discourse-oriented—concordance and negative reactions to norm violations. Their analysis finds no indication of a value change. Neither the value’s legal status nor its substance have changed.
Changing Perceptions on the Right of Self-Defence
Authors: Burra Srinivas
Published: June 2023

Chapter 9 by Srinivas Burra analyses from a legal perspective whether state practice and interpretation have transformed the prohibition of the use of force and the related right of self-defence. Burra engages with the UN Charter meaning, application, changing perceptions, and possible critique from a Third World perspective. This focus highlights the contested legality of applying the right of self-defence against non-state actors operating from another state. Concerning the current state of norm transformation, he stresses that the textual position of the right of self-defence has not changed, while interpretative changes by the promoters of norm change currently dominate the debate. Consequently, the finding of a substantial value change is a matter of ongoing contestation.
The Future We Want? Interlinking Global Sustainability Norm Change, Technology Innovation, and Regime Complexity
Authors: Schwindenhammer Sandra
Published: June 2023

Chapter 16 by Sandra Schwindenhammer addresses sustainability norms from an IR perspective. Sustainability norms are defined as a collection of connected but distinct legal norms that protect the value of sustainable development. Starting with the Rio Conference of 1992, they can be seen as having contributed to the rise of international law in the 1990s. Schwindenhammer analyses changes in the value-based legal norms of food security, sustainability, biodiversity, and human health. Her case study of genetically modified insect technology engages with two previously overlooked challenges in sustainability governance: regime complexity and technology innovation. In contrast to many other cases analysed in this book, no central international organization has succeeded in setting coherent norms, prioritizing them, or interpreting them authoritatively. Furthermore, technological innovation creates new normative issues, empowers new (private) norm entrepreneurs, and leads to unequal access to norm contestation. Schwindenhammer claims that sustainability norms are encountering substantial value change or a decline in legal validity as they are being played off against other norms or interpreted restrictively.
Mechanical storage systems
Authors: Schmiegel Armin U.
Published: June 2023

Mechanical storage systems are introduced in this chapter. These kinds of storage systems use either potential energy or kinetic energy to store energy. A key example of a system that uses potential energy is the pumped storage power plant, which is described here. Likewise, the flywheel is described as a contextual example of the storage of kinetic energy. Furthermore, it is possible to use restoring forces. This is done in adiabatic power plants, which are also outlined in this chapter. The additional requirements and system components used for these applications are also discussed. As an application example, a pumped storage power plant is extended with a flywheel so that the aggregated power plant can participate in the power energy market.
New Business Models and the Transformation of Retailing
Authors: Hänninen Mikko
Published: June 2023

This chapter looks at how innovations are diffused from first movers to more traditional industry players in the retail sector, focusing specifically on illustrating how new digital business models, such as multi-sided digital platforms and marketplaces, challenge traditional retailers. The Red Queen Effect is a reality in the retail sector, where the competition from new platforms is forcing retailers to develop new competencies and to rethink their business model in order to survive this new era of digital competition. This chapter examines how multi-sided digital platforms and marketplaces are transforming the retail sector. It provides an illustrative example of Amazon.com to show the implications of these platforms on the industry structures and competitive dynamics of the retail sector. Amazon.com, a global pioneer of e-commerce, is a good example of how digitalization creates new business models in retail, which have the potential for changing the entire competitive landscape of the sector in the long term. Today, Amazon is one of the leading retailers in the world and continues to take over new markets and sectors at a rapid rate.
Impact of the Retail Service Experience on Cross-Channel Customer Loyalty
Authors: Nyrhinen Jussi , Karjaluoto Heikki
Published: June 2023

Although more than 90 per cent of commerce in the retail sector is still conducted in brick-and-mortar (B&M) stores, the rapid growth of online shopping, especially prior to visiting a physical outlet, is transforming the rules of retailing. Both practitioners and scholars are increasingly trying to understand the interaction between online and offline channels. This chapter seeks to examine this interplay from the perspective of both the cognitive and emotional aspects of service experience, including how they build loyalty in the omni-channel retail environment. This study reports the results of a large-scale consumer survey study (N = 880). These results show that, among omni-channel customers, B&M stores still play a crucial role in forming the service experience. Additionally, the findings elucidate how positive experiences enhance a customer’s willingness to share their personal data with retailers. Finally, this chapter examines the relationships between customer loyalty, which are measured as share of wallet and positive word of mouth, in both the online and offline environments.
Managing Organizational Routines to Win the Retail Race
Authors: Paavola Lauri , Cuthbertson Richard
Published: June 2023

This chapter provides an analysis of the field of UK grocery retailing and focuses on specific processes that enable retailers to understand and respond to the behavioural changes of a mass of individual customers. It observes and analyses how different variables behind these specific adaptation processes have resulted in varied performance outcomes and varying paths of development within the field. It shows that the implementation of new technologies and processes is not in itself a solution for organizations. The research in this chapter highlights that the successful management of new technologies and processes requires an understanding of the factors that support their intended outcome. The chapter further argues that an organization can realize the full potential benefits from digitalization only by understanding such factors.
The Future of Retailing
Authors: Cuthbertson Richard , Paavola Lauri
Published: June 2023

This chapter considers the overall implications of this book on the new ways of working in a global, digital, consumer society. With future competition defined by the ability to innovate and change rather than the inherent capacity to grow, firms and their management need to focus much more on themselves (rather than competitors) and their own ability to change and to develop their service system, customer experiences, and business models. This development gives rise to a dynamic within the retail sector that makes it necessary for firms to continue to develop their resources just to remain in a similar competitive position. In this book, this spiral of change has been referred to as the Red Queen Effect. This chapter considers wider questions as a result of such developments. What is the role of public decision-makers in a world of ecosystems, networked routines, and individual customer engagement? Where are the boundaries of competition when commercial firm strategies are collaborative? What are the implications for employment in a networked platform of global and local providers? What is the balance between transport infrastructure and real estate planning to support customer convenience and customer experience? How can public policy best ensure a sustainable, innovative, and competitive service sector?
The Ancient Geomagnetic Field
Authors: Lowrie William
Published: June 2023

When averaged over a long enough interval of time, the Earth’s magnetic field is that of an axial dipole at the center of the Earth. The geocentric axial dipole hypothesis (GAD) forms the basis of understanding the ancient geomagnetic field. Rocks acquire thermal or sedimentary magnetization during their formation that provide evidence of the paleomagnetic field at that time. Rock magnetizations are analyzed, and, assuming the GAD hypothesis, the apparent position of the geomagnetic pole is calculated for the age of the rock. The motion of a continent can be traced from its apparent polar wander path. By comparing the paths of continents that coexisted, paleomagnetism allows the reconstruction of supercontinents. The magnetizations of some igneous and sedimentary rocks show alternating polarities with their age, accompanying changes in the polarity of the Earth’s magnetic field while they formed. Magnetic stratigraphy has revealed the geomagnetic polarity record during the past 250 Myr.
A View from the US Copyright Office: Serving the Public, Congress, the Courts, and More from 2001 to 2021
Authors: Strong Maria
Published: June 2023

The US Copyright Office marked its 150-year anniversary in 2020, and held a year of celebratory events into 2021. This chapter looks at several Copyright Office workstreams, achievements, and trends during the first twenty-one years of this millennium, January 2001 through December 2021. Congress adopted important new copyright legislation and also requested that the Office conduct policy studies and reports, several of which later became law. As a result of legislative activity on copyright, there has been a rise in regulatory activity necessary to implement new laws. In addition, the Copyright Office had been steadfastly committed to its work in administering the Copyright Act, which includes its registration, recordation, and statutory licensing services, all of which are especially important given that the ever-expanding digital environment created new ways for the Office to deliver its services. Finally, looking beyond our borders, international developments, ranging from multilateral to bilateral work, kept the Office busy in its role to advise Congress and the executive agencies on both international and domestic copyright matters.
Perspectives on International Image Rights over the Past Twenty Years
Authors: Mostert Frederick , Cruz Sheyna
Published: June 2023

Image rights enable individuals to stop the unauthorized use of their publicly identifiable attributes, typically their name, likeness, voice, or other personal indicia (in sum, their ‘image’). Unlike widely recognized intellectual property rights like copyright, patents, and trade marks, image rights have developed in a piecemeal, organic fashion, with differences in their nature and scope in various jurisdictions. Nonetheless, we conclude from an evaluation of approaches in the US, Europe, China, and the UK that image rights protection is on a growth trajectory, having undergone an overall expansion in the past twenty years, especially with the advent of the digital era. Turning to the present and future of image rights, we discuss emerging applications of image rights in the context of deepfakes, influencer marketing, digital avatars, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Additionally, online platform guidelines and actions are coalescing into de facto protection of an individual’s persona in an increasingly borderless, digital world. In such an environment, the interrelationships between a person’s autonomy, dignity, privacy, and economic aspects of reputation will require a more joined-up approach which is starting to emerge. We discuss this harmonizing trend as well as the current practical difficulties in enforcing image rights online, and suggest some solutions to these issues.
Lessons from the TRIPS Waiver Debate
Authors: Gervais Daniel
Published: June 2023

The seemingly interminable discussions under the aegis of the World Trade Organization (WTO), on a possible conditional waiver of certain obligations under the TRIPS Agreement, ostensibly aim to increase access to vaccines and treatments to help WTO members address the public health emergency created by the novel coronavirus, the Covid-19 pandemic. While much of the discussions concerning a possible waiver focused on patents, the thorniest legal issues were not about patents, because removing patent protection means that information disclosed in a patent application can then be used, but rather the protection of confidential information, such as trade secrets, because removing that protection does not provide access to such information. Its disclosure must be coerced if not made voluntarily. This chapter examines the legal issues concerning coerced disclosure and discusses whether such disclosure would be effective. It then draws additional lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic on the future of vaccine and other pharmaceutical research.
Patentability of Software in Europe
Authors: Pearce David
Published: June 2023

The EPO’s current approach to patentability of software, or computer-implemented inventions (CII), as decided by an established line of reasoning at the Boards of Appeal, is that to be patentable an invention must have novel features that contribute to the technical character of the invention in a non-obvious way. Attempts have been made to challenge this approach, but to date without any significant movement. Referrals have been made to the Enlarged Board in 2008 and 2019, but both resulted in no significant change in how CIIs are examined at the EPO. This chapter provides a brief review of the development of the lines of reasoning, and the IPKat’s involvement, starting with the referral in 2008.
Standard Essential Patents and FRAND Licensing: The Evolution of the European Approach
Authors: Barazza Stefano
Published: June 2023

The licensing of standard-essential patents (SEPs) on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms has become one of the most significant issues in patent law in the last decade. Already in 2013, three leading economists had called for regulatory intervention to prevent anti-competitive behaviours in SEP licensing—a call to action that has contributed to bringing the issue to the attention of the European courts and legislators. This chapter reviews the evolution of the European approach to SEPs and FRAND licensing, distinguishing three phases: (i) a long-standing soft-line approach increasingly challenged by academic debate (1980s–2009), (ii) a series of competition law investigations that demonstrated the existence of anti-competitive SEP licensing practices (2009–14), and (iii) the increasingly important role played by the courts and the potential for legislative action (2015–present). The last decade has profoundly transformed our understanding of the standardization phenomenon; the next decade appears set to bring about regulatory changes that will shape the future of SEPs and FRAND licensing.
The Doctrine of Equivalents in the UK Following Actavis v Lilly
Authors: Smyth Darren , Vahdat Azadeh
Published: June 2023

This chapter considers the development of the doctrine of equivalents in the UK starting from the first instance decision of Mr Justice Arnold (as he then was) in the case of Actavis v Lilly, and the subsequent appeal to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court decision is analysed its historical context. Further development of the doctrine of equivalents, applying the new Supreme Court case law in later decisions of courts in the UK is also described, and areas of ambiguity left by the Supreme Court decision that remain to be resolved are assessed. The difficulties created for third parties by the new law are indicated, and it is questioned whether the benefit of patentees is achieved at the cost of too much detriment to third parties and potential infringers.
Twenty Years of SPC Case Law: A Long Way to Go in the Quest for Clarity
Authors: Papadopoulou Frantzeska
Published: June 2023

The SPC Regulation has been criticized for being a badly written, vague legal text. Its choice of terminology, attempting to bridge the patent system to that of the marketing authorization, as well as the structure of the administrative procedure, entrusting an important part of the interpretation and application of the regulation to national administrative authorities, created an uncertain legal environment and gave rise to a plethora of CJEU rulings. This chapter reviews CJEU rulings of central importance from the past twenty years, a review of outmost importance taking into consideration that entrance into force of the Unitary patent brings the discussion on the future of the regulation to a critical point.
Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and the Treatment of Intellectual Property
Authors: Wilkof Neil
Published: June 2023

The connection between literature and intellectual property is usually approached by asking how copyright protects literary works. But the question can be asked in the reverse: how does literature treat intellectual property? The works of the nineteenth-century English author, Jane Austen, are especially instructive. Because of the social realism underpinning Austen’s approach to the novel, her fictional narrative is suffused with punctilious attention to the place and time of her period. This chapter will discuss how Austen, in her novel Mansfield Park, sheds light on the state of copyright and the circulating library, and on the then nascent form of commercial reputation.
The Open Source Licensing Phenomenon: Pledge, Transformation, and Lessons Learnt
Authors: Giedrimaite Ieva
Published: June 2023

This chapter discusses the nature of an open source licensing phenomenon, its principles, evolution, and impact. It analyses the typical features pertaining to different types of open source licences, their correlation with the conventional copyright concepts, and certain risks associated with the commercial use of open source software (Section 1). It further overviews open source enforcement efforts, their outcome, and potential ramifications for user compliance (Section 2). This chapter ultimately proposes recommendations for open source considerations in commercial transactions (Section 3). The scope of this analysis excludes the discussion of patent licensing and primarily focuses on the US jurisdiction.
AI Narratives and the French Touch
Authors: Chalmers Madeleine
Published: June 2023

Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French culture explores the birth of the technologies which underpin our contemporary life, from audio-visual recording to industrial automation. This chapter proposes that there is a uniquely French mode of approaching what we would now recognize as artificial intelligence (AI): a mode that is distinct from the fragmentation of Anglo–American modernism or the fascist sex-and-speed machines of Italian futurism. The French touch lies in its meta-reflexive narrative play, which allows it to test out technological and political scenarios. This chapter teases out its specificity by turning to two critically overlooked late nineteenth-century narratives and suggests that looking back to these imaginings of the past can help us to navigate our technological present.
Boys from a Suitcase
Authors: Pervushin Anton
Published: June 2023

This chapter surveys the history of artificial intelligence (AI) in Soviet science fiction from 1924–1991. It identifies three plot trends. First, it investigates the trope of AI as the new proletariat through its use as cheap labour: such machines would consider humankind their oppressors, and eventually attempt to destroy them. This trend was initially adapted from Karel Čapek’s R.U.R. (1921) in the light of the 1917 revolution. Second, it looks at AI as an instrument used by bourgeois society to further exploit the proletariat. This trend supported the Soviet ideology that condemned cybernetics. Third, it explores the idea that people would want AI to acquire emotions and understand human norms and values. This trend emerged during the golden age of Soviet science fiction, which began in 1957 and was influenced by Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot (1950). The TV series The Adventures of Electronic (Приключения Электроника, 1980) shows that these trends consolidated into two stereotypes: the evil robot and the funny robot.
Afrofuturismo and the Aesthetics of Resistance to Algorithmic Racism in Brazil
Authors: King Edward
Published: June 2023

From facial recognition systems to search engines, the embedding of racist biases within software systems in an increasingly networked society has become a focus of attention in recent years. This ‘algorithmic racism’ has been particularly visible in Brazil due to a political climate under far-right President Jair Bolsonaro that has normalized racist discourse, as well as the conjunction of high rates of Internet connectivity through smartphone ownership and low levels of literacy. This chapter explores the use of Afrofuturist aesthetics by artists and activists in Brazil to challenge these biases. Practitioners such as the filmmaker Adirley Quierós and multimedia artist Vitória Cribb propose alternatives to the conflation of digital interfaces and whiteness. Rather than call for ‘inclusion’ within or ‘recognition’ by existing software systems, they use speculative aesthetics and narratives to produce alternative configurations of racialized bodies and technologies.
How Chinese Philosophy Impacts AI Narratives and Imagined AI Futures
Authors: Song Bing
Published: June 2023

This chapter discusses the ideas and practices that may explain the lower levels of anxiety in China than in the West about existential risks from superintelligence. It focuses on two points shared by the three dominant schools of Chinese philosophy: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. First, humanity and nature are integrated in an all-encompassing, holistic worldview that includes AI. Second, the schools emphasize self-restraint, constant introspection, and the pursuit of sagehood, making risks an opportunity to consider lessons learned from social and political history. Consequently, there has been less anxiety in China about AI causing humans to lose power and subjectivity. What the West might consider a crisis engendered by the disruptive power of AI, Chinese philosophy interprets AI as an impetus to reflect on whether the values of modernity can be aligned with the ancient virtues of harmony and compassion.
Intelligent Infrastructure, Humans as Resources, and Coevolutionary Futures
Authors: Lee Cheryl Julia , Matthews Graham
Published: June 2023

Singapore’s status as a world leader in the design and implementation of digital technologies can be largely attributed to the Smart Nation initiative inaugurated in 2014 by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who presented a vision of ‘a nation where people live meaningful and fulfilled lives, enabled seamlessly by technology, offering exciting opportunities for all’. While artificial intelligence (AI) narratives in Singapore problematize this discourse, which simultaneously valorizes and objectifies the human, they also typically eschew the tropes of existential risk common in Western cultural narratives. A survey of Singaporean-authored fiction featuring AI across the four official languages reveal three foci: intelligent infrastructure and human resources (both of which allow authors to explore the potential consequences of techno-social engineering and the ways in which critical faculties risk being short-circuited by technological paternalism) and coevolution, through which authors interrogate the possibilities of imagining new forms of existence alongside technology.
Setting the Stage
Authors: Saksena Priyasha
Published: June 2023

This chapter explores the legal construction of British paramountcy during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by analysing the implications of the extensive treaty-making between the East India Company and South Asian rulers. Although the Company declared itself to be the ‘paramount power’ in South Asia, this claim was met with deep unease within the British state, which remained wary of the extent of power exercised by a private corporation and repeatedly attempted to regulate the Company’s activities. Assertions of British paramountcy also ran up against the recognition of the princes as sovereign rulers by English courts and the jurisdictional claims of the states themselves. Focusing on two key controversies—over whether British subjects could be extradited for trial in the princely states of Pudukkottai and Hyderabad and over the situations in which Company authorities could intervene in the internal affairs of states such as Bharatpur and Awadh—this chapter argues that interactions between the Company and the princely states took place within the context of intense competition for the exercise of sovereign power. In this atmosphere, arguments favouring extensive British imperial authority on account of the alleged superiority of European civilization co-existed with assertions of the binding nature of treaties with South Asian rulers.
Jousting Over Jurisdiction
Authors: Saksena Priyasha
Published: June 2023

This chapter examines constructions of sovereignty by the British government and the princely states in the aftermath of the 1857 rebellion. Although late nineteenth-century international lawyers limited the applicability of international law to civilized European states, colonial officials in South Asia blamed the civilizing mission for the uprising and built a mode of governance that capitalized on relationships with local rulers. This chapter outlines how this governance structure was facilitated by Henry Maine’s definition of sovereignty as divisible and a question of fact. British political officials relied on divisible sovereignty to build a system of precedent through which decisions made by the British government in relation to one state were made applicable to all states. The divisibility of sovereignty enabled the British to entrench their supremacy by claiming that the states were both subject to British paramountcy and allies in the imperial project. In two jurisdictional disputes—the attempts by Travancore and Baroda to exercise criminal jurisdiction over European British subjects in the state and over telegraph lines traversing state territory respectively—the princes and their advisors advocated a different version of sovereignty. They claimed that sovereignty was absolute, exclusive, and territorial to argue that the princely state was the sole sovereign authority within its territory. They used this conceptualization of sovereignty to defend the existence of the states against the increasingly intrusive nature of British colonialism and to forge centralized bureaucracies to curb the power of local aristocrats who undercut the authority of the princes within their states.
The Controversy Over Divisible Sovereignty
Authors: Saksena Priyasha
Published: June 2023

This chapter charts how British and princely officials used the common vocabulary of divisible sovereignty to construct different political projects in interwar South Asia. British political officers justified the division of sovereign rights based on imperial interests to buttress a laissez-faire attitude towards the states that was necessitated by the need to procure princely support in response to the pressures of anticolonial nationalism. This definition of sovereignty furnished a renewed legal basis for the British to claim the authority to intervene in the internal affairs of the states without being bound by precedent, thereby increasing princely protests about British arbitrariness. Since the princes also faced criticism by anticolonial nationalists, they sought to use their relationship with the British as a defence mechanism. Rulers and princely advisors defined sovereignty as divisible but focused on state consent as the basis to divide sovereign powers. Envisaging sovereignty as divisible enabled the states to claim a semi-international status, in terms of which they asserted a direct relationship with the British Crown through the viceroy while being bound to British India through economic and infrastructural links. They also hoped that the focus on state consent would limit arbitrary British interference into state affairs. The key clash of these two versions of divisible sovereignty came before the Indian States Committee, which was appointed in 1927 to investigate the relationship between the states and the British government, and which ultimately delivered a report favouring the colonial conception of sovereignty as being divided based on imperial interests.
An Introduction to Polycentric Governing
Authors: Gadinger Frank , Scholte Jan Aart
Published: June 2023

The opening chapter sets out the overall motivation, context, concepts, and outline of the book. As its motivation, the volume pursues a question both compact in its formulation and sweeping in its implications: namely, how are we being governed today? The chapter notes that this question has over recent decades attracted much creative thought across disciplines and perspectives. However, the various approaches have rarely come into a cross-fertilizing conversation with one another. This book aims to effect such a dialogue around the umbrella notion of polycentrism. We contextualize this concept from its origins in the 1950s to current global governance research. The chapter then distinguishes four broad ways to theorize polycentric governing: institutional, legal, relational, and structural. This fourfold categorization also informs the four-part organization of the book. We suggest to systematize the book’s examinations of the various theories around the themes of techniques, power, and legitimacy. These three issues raise some of today’s most interesting research challenges and provide a useful framework for identifying distinct promises and limitations of each perspective. The introduction ends with a reflection on the book’s methodology of an extended interdisciplinary conversation among its authors around the core idea of polycentrism.
Polycentric Governing and Polycentric Governance
Authors: Thiel Andreas
Published: June 2023

Existing literature has tended to define polycentric governance in the sense developed by the Bloomington School of Political Economy. In contrast, this chapter promotes polycentricity as a lens for analysing governance from an institutionalist perspective. Such an approach can be applied locally (e.g. to metropolitan, water, and landscape governance) as well as globally (e.g. to transnational value chains, marine, or migration governance). Under different names numerous analytical approaches that share the working assumptions of New Institutional Economics work on this basis. The lens of polycentric governance allows one to bring together multiple actors engaged in the provision and consumption of collective goods. The approach analyses the interplay of multiple interdependent but autonomous individual and collective, public, private, and civil society actors operating on and across different scales. Research on polycentric governance wonders to what extent ‘order’ or ‘coherence’ emerges out of these multi-actor multi-scalar dynamics and how this mode of organization fares in terms of other performance criteria such as accountability, effectiveness, equity, and sustainability. ‘Techniques’ from the perspective of polycentric governance relate to institutional processes. ‘Power’ is in this approach conceptualized as the capacity to shape the institutions of governance. ‘Legitimacy’ is conferred upon polycentric governance by citizens and consumers. As a major weakness, this approach has little eye for un-institutionalized politics.
Transnational Governance
Authors: Quack Sigrid
Published: June 2023

This chapter introduces transnational governance as a cross-disciplinary institutionalist perspective that highlights the multiplicity of private, civil society and public actors involved in governing, as well as the blurred boundaries between local, national, regional, and worldwide scales of governing collective global problems. The chapter argues that, at a time of gridlock and crisis in multilateral governance, transnational governance offers an innovative and productive alternative approach. The perspective provides a conceptual framework for the study of global cooperation as emerging from multiple joined-up pathways rather than from an a priori universal approach. The approach also enables an encompassing analysis of recursive interactions between overlapping, competing, or complementary parts of governance arrangements. Particularly with respect to standard-setting and governance by indicators, the analysis of transnational governance enriches our understanding of contemporary instruments or techniques through which power operates in dispersed and distributed ways. The approach also highlights how transnational communities, movements, and activist networks form around the use of such governance modes and how these actors support and resist this regulation. While international regime complexity theory takes the legitimacy of state-delegated authority largely for granted, the transnational governance perspective considers legitimacy as contested and needing to be constituted on a recurrent basis. This process presents both a challenge and a force of innovation in the development of transnational governance.
Transnational Legal Realism
Authors: Liste Philip
Published: June 2023

Law plays a critical role in the making and perpetuation of societal relations, including the distribution of benefits and disadvantages. However, where such power-laden relations transcend jurisdictions, as well as the normative boundaries between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’, it is uncertain what bodies of law are to be applied, by whom, and in what institutional framework. Legal realism traditionally stresses the ‘indeterminacy’ of law: legal decisions on concrete cases cannot just be deduced from certain legal norms. In practice the ‘law in the books’ is interpreted in a societal context characterized by power asymmetries, ideology, various modes of epistemic violence, and an uneven distribution of knowledge. While the indeterminacy of law facilitates external contamination, legal formalism collaborates in this process by lending an aura of neutral and rational practice and, in doing so, renders the ‘political’ moment of law invisible. The ‘law in action’ is not innocent. However, what applies for law within the normative confines of the nation-state, also holds true—if it is not reinforced—for transnational law practised under complex circumstances of inter-legality and polycentrism. From a legal realist perspective, transnational law is a critical technique of power and, at the same time, of making practices of governing legitimate, though against the background of seemingly self-perpetuating transnational inequalities and asymmetrical power relations. Transnational legal realism thus offers an analytical lens that makes visible the workings of power within polycentric law.