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The multiple crises that have plagued Lebanon since 2019 have created an unprecedented socio-political and economic landscape that continues to challenge the country, its citizens, and residents. The increased poverty and vulnerability revived an already ongoing debate on social policies and security. However, the presence of international stakeholders, has shifted the framework of the debate from social policy and security to social protection. This shift in the discourse mirrors the current situation in the country, in which social protection programmes promoted and funded by international actors have become more prevalent. Despite the ongoing debate concerning the necessity of a social policy framework in Lebanon, no recent academic studies have explored the transition from a social policy and security system implemented by the government and endorsed by experts and academics to a social protection system advocated by international actors and donors. This article examines the existing social protection model and how this paradigm undermines the development of an overarching social policy and security framework in Lebanon. Drawing on a qualitative methodology, this study questions the international community’s role in impelling a social protection paradigm, and argues that foreign interference can create dependency on donor-oriented assistance programmes that undermine national social policy framework and exempt governments from their responsibility towards citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research points towards an overall intensification of parenting expectations including newer expectations for fathers' involvement in caregiving. At the same time, the ideal worker norm persists, and employers continue to expect men's full and uninterrupted work commitment. This article explores what these competing expectations attached to work and parenting mean for single fathers. To do so, the article draws on 30 in-depth interviews with a sample of working single fathers with primary caregiving responsibility in the United States and differentiates between those with white- and blue-collar jobs. The study finds that both white- and blue-collar single fathers prioritize caregiving and resist the ideal worker norm and, as a result, experience work–family conflict. Resolving this conflict becomes single fathers' individual responsibility, and the resources to resolve it are primarily available to white-collar men in the form of understanding supervisors and access to workplace flexibility. Blue-collar single fathers need to be more creative and resourceful in reconciling their caregiving and breadwinning roles. Inability to resolve work–family conflict can lead to job penalties such as reduced income and/or a job loss, which are found across different job types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research assessing blame attribution in third-party governance views public service performance as a function of efficiency and effectiveness but overlooks equity. We address this gap in the literature by asking two questions: (1) Does contracting out lessen the blame assigned to the government for inequitable service provision? and (2) Is the public less critical of inequitable service provision when told it results in greater efficiency? To answer these questions, a survey experiment was conducted using a representative sample of United States residents (n = 1034). The results show that, while the government still bears responsibility for inequitable service provision, contracting out diminishes some of the responsibility placed on the government, shifting it toward the contractor instead. In addition, citizens' blame attribution patterns do not change when told inequitable service provision results from efforts to improve efficiency, which suggests that the public does not excuse inequitable service provision even when told it saves money. The findings of this study contribute to the understanding of blame dynamics in third-party governance and bring implications to democratic accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant arrangement for governance in many States which are party to international human rights treaties is decentralisation. This puts implementation of human rights in the hands of institutions which are geographically closer to intended beneficiaries. Decentralisation to different levels of government introduces complexity, risk and opportunity to the governance of human rights. In response, UN Treaty Monitoring Bodies focus on State responsibility for implementation of human rights. The Committee on the Rights of the Child has emphasised the State as the coordinating body responsible for children's rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). In this paper, Wales is used as an example of a jurisdiction where decentralisation is a feature of children's rights, which has enabled a progressive approach to implementation. It explains the principled Children's Rights Approach which provides public authorities in Wales with a coherent framework to give effect to international children's rights policy planning and service delivery. As the contours of decentralisation in Wales are typical of arrangements in many States parties to the CRC, insights from Wales will be transferable to other jurisdictions. This experience is also relevant to other areas of human rights implementation in the context of decentralisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractAs Global North countries act to obstruct unwanted asylum seeker arrivals, the expenditure of immense amounts of financial capital is crucial to achieving their policy goals. The funding is directed toward securing the cooperation of third country governments and privatizing the operation of offshore facilities by non-state for-profit actors. We argue that in addition to the cooperation of host states, infrastructure, and service provision, the immense levels of funding purchases attenuated governance. Attenuated governance is a notion that describes policies that enable governments to evade responsibility and accountability for direct human harms and poor social outcomes caused by refugee externalization policies. What looks like financial mismanagement is, in fact, the government achieving its goals of attenuation. Australia’s policy of offshore processing is an emblematic case, where significant financial investments to PNG and Nauru, and the private corporations operating the detention centers, has contributed to a weakened accountability structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research presents a critical theoretical and practical re-examination of the link between human rights' issues and politics at national and international levels. The study of human rights is an inherently multidisciplinary enterprise. The paper provides an insight into the relations between diplomacy and human rights and discusses how the latter are exploited for political and commercial aims. This study focuses on the case and constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), and the problem of hostage taking. An internationally-oriented study and based on theoretical arguments and an empirical research approach-notably by using several real cases of ordinary individuals of foreign and dual nationalities who became hostages and the subject of political games and financial conflicts between Iran and the Western countries-the paper highlights the issue of hostage taking of individuals by a state as a political policy and prisoner swaps involving financial and commercial deals. The paper provides evidence of the substantial suffering of the hostages and their families. The paper makes an academic contribution to the literature-the unlawful act of hostage taking involving a state has rarely been discussed -and addresses the legal vacuum in international law and human rights conventions regarding the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses ideas of causation and responsibility for long-term, structural harm perpetuated through settler colonial institutions. Examining the case of a human rights complaint over discrimination of First Nation children in Canada's child welfare system, the article looks at challenges of accommodating such complex harms in the framework of legal liability emphasizing immediate causation and impact. In 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled that the federal government's funding policy of child welfare services on First Nation reserves leads to disproportionate removals of children from their homes, and in 2019 it ordered the government to financially compensate children and caregivers impacted. According to the government's defense no direct connection could be proved between the funding policy and the removals, and harm resulting from the removals could only be assessed individually. The article traces how the decisions challenge these arguments by extending the scope of the harm at stake from individual removals to historical and ongoing formation of circumstances that make them happen. Setting the case in the historical context of intergenerational harm caused to First Nation kin and community relations by colonial policies, I suggest, the decisions challenge discourses that locate responsibility for such harms in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referendums in 1979 and 1997 asked if an elected Assembly should be created in Wales to oversee some government responsibilities. The proportion of voters supporting devolution grew from 20.3% in 1979 to 50.3% in 1997. Growth was concentrated within Welsh identifying Labour voters, but the literature lacks a multicausal explanation of this shift. This article compares the circumstances surrounding both referendums to make two arguments. One is that three factors reversed: the dominant industrial role of the UK state receded under Conservative Governments to prompt deindustrialisation; the growing profile of Wales-specific governance structures exposed their control by Conservative politicians lacking a direct electoral mandate; and, voters were more positive towards Labour in 1997 than 1979. The other is that these factors impacted most on Welsh identifying Labour voters clustered in deindustrialising areas, who no longer trusted the UK state to represent their interests. Their class-based political identity evolved to include a greater sense of Welshness, increasing their support for devolution when offered by a trusted Labour Government. This sequence was prompted and sustained by deindustrialisation, echoing Tomlinson's arguments that it undercut political assumptions and structures to provide the best underpinning narrative for late twentieth-century Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper aims at widening political ecology research on business' responsibility and public governance conditions in cases of violation of Environmental-related Human Rights (ERs), by adopting a quantitative perspective. We focused on a subset of socio-environmental conflicts (SECs) that directly connect with the violations of ERs. We propose a quali-quantitative analysis to explore the country distribution of the incidence of violations of ERs leading to SECs (VERCs) worldwide; the extent to which these can be associated with the involvement of business companies; and the general governance conditions spatially associated with the emergence of VERCs, regardless of the involvement of businesses. Through statistical regression analysis, we showed that the evidence of business' implication in VERCs and of the lack of adequate public governance conditions suggest the need to complexify our perspective with a more nuanced understanding of the patterns of liability and complicity between diverse actors involved in SECs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is developing, yet strong, evidence that judicial officers are seriously affected by exposure to traumatic material. The risk and prevalence of psychiatric injury to judges is now increasingly recognised. In the light of growing recognition by the High Court of Australia of the likelihood of psychiatric harm arising in people whose work exposes them to traumatic material in Kozarov v Victoria ('Kozarov'), we investigate through legal analysis the possibility that judicial officers may be entitled to compensation for such harm. This might seem straightforward after the High Court decided in Kozarov that the State was liable in negligence for trauma-related psychiatric injury to an employee lawyer caused in the court-related work environment. We argue in this article that, while there are strong arguments which support liability in negligence for judicial officers as non-employees, nevertheless such claims will be complex and will face a range of hurdles and barriers including those arising from judicial independence and judicial immunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Avia Pasternak argues that intentional citizens who are genuine participants of their state should share the liability for state wrongdoings. In real-world states, how prevalent is intentional citizenship? This commentary concerns the application of the theoretical model. I argue that there are two problems with Pasternak's proposal of testing intentional citizenship in reality. First, the difficulty of distinguishing citizens' ambiguous internal attitudes towards their citizenship is underestimated. Second, the objective aspect of citizens' status in society, namely, the way they are treated by their state, is more important than their subjective attitudes, but this aspect is neglected by Pasternak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introduction, I provide a brief overview of the main arguments defended by Avia Pasternak in her book, 'Responsible Citizens, Non-Responsible States' and summarise the critics she will confront from four political and legal theorists who work in the area of individual citizens' responsibility for state wrongdoings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union is the only international organisation that has a parliament where taxation is debated and legislated on. Along with foreign affairs and defense, however, taxation is also one of the few policy areas that is subject to unanimity voting among member-states. This creates a responsiveness-responsibility dilemma that the European Commission has tried to navigate by constructing responsiveness to public demands for tax justice as a political imperative. In this article, I apply the concept of 'political work' to analyse EU tax policy between 2014 and 2019 and show the ways in which the politics of responsiveness partly eroded the institutional constraints of responsibility vis-à-vis member states. As I document, the Commission's political work was initially successful but then lost momentum, as a handful of governments managed to veto efforts in the Council and push the issue to the OECD, where it was stalled by the United States until the election of Joe Biden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and the Global Compact on Refugees (GCM) were adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2018. After nearly five years, it is time for a critical reflection on the geopolitical interests that motivated the negotiations, agreements, and implementation. The purpose of this special issue was to critically examine how states used the Global Compacts to achieve their strategic interests using migration diplomacy. Each article attempts to question and problematise the assumptions, logics, and rhetoric put forward in the Global Compacts and resulting implementation by states and international organisations. The special issue also highlights the emerging norm of state responsibility for well-managed migration within the Global Compacts, and the notable silences around non-refoulement, internal displacement, and climate migration. The authors in this special issue worked to understand the gaps, hypocrisy, and contradictions in the implementation, now five years after the adoption of the Global Compacts. This introduction article lays out the driving questions for the special issue, along with our main themes, concepts, and contributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite proven effectiveness in reducing motorist crashes involving wildlife, systematic inclusion of wildlife-mitigation measures during highway planning and projects continues to vary by jurisdiction in the United States and Canada. Some agencies invest significant resources to reduce wildlife–vehicle collisions (WVCs), while others invest few or no resources. Various factors have been identified as relevant in explaining why some jurisdictions are more proactive than others in addressing WVCs. This analysis builds on existing literature by comparing select legal decisions in the United States and Canada regarding public authority liability for failures to remediate known WVC hot spots, with the goal of assessing the potential role of liability in creating incentives for government decision makers to systematically address motorist crashes involving animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a five-year project, 'Underwater Archaeological Chart of the Azores', which ran from 2004 to 2009 and has not been published previously. This project involved systematic surveys under the responsibility of the Government of the Azores, which undertook its task as the public entity responsible for archaeological heritage. To understand this project, it's necessary to provide a framework for all previous projects. In order to contextualize the results of the underwater archaeological programme it's also important to consider the principles of UNESCO, which guide the normative framework that takes into account the importance of protection, research and enjoyment of underwater cultural heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of the sport policy landscape in the Gambia. The formation of the National Sport Council (NSC) 27 years after the Gambia National Olympic Committee (GNOC) was formed meant a significant shift of power and responsibility to the government agency. Using government documents, newspaper articles and radio outputs, this article presents the sport landscape of the Gambia in three main ways: (1) highlights the power play between the NSC and the GNOC in the quest to insert authority; (2) the role of civil society in the local sport landscape and (3) demonstrates how international sport organisations disrupts policy priorities in developing countries. This article demonstrates that powerful individuals in unitary systems of government do significantly change the course of sport policy priorities. In addition, the large dependence on state resources to build sport infrastructure and implement events renders the ambitious policy documents insolent in a poor country like the Gambia. Though some of the government institutions share similar aims in their policy documents these are hardly put into practice in reality and sometimes lead o duplication of responsibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the example of Dyarubbin (Nepean River), an urban river in Sydney, Australia, to illuminate how community engagement facilitates the expression of diverse river values. Combining Indigenous water justice, critical planning scholarship, and a scalar approach to values, and drawing on qualitative research conducted in 2021, we discuss how diverse community values have been represented in strategies for the river and consider which values are overlooked in these processes. We conclude by arguing that values for Dyarubbin are contested and diverse, however the rigid nature of engagement frameworks and the scalar nature of government responsibilities have reduced engagement's influence on planning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, laws regarding soil pollution were limited in China. However, due to rapid industrialization and urbanization, soil pollution has become a major environmental issue. Thereby, in order to address the emerging threat, different measures have been introduced and implemented by Chinese government. The paper, in this regard, examines the role of government measures to reduce soil pollution, eco-innovation, and environmental sustainability on soil pollution in China. secondary data from the World Development Indicators (WDI), Chinese Soil Database, the global economy, and the environmental performance index (EPI) has been collected from 1985 to 2020. Autoregressive distributed lag model is used in the study to check the relationship among constructs. Findings reveal that government expenditures to reduce soil pollution, eco-innovation, and environmental sustainability have a negative association with soil pollution in China. The results also revealed that industrialization and population growth have a positive linkage with soil pollution in China. Having these evidences, the study recommends that fiscal policies should be formulated to increase the budget for soil reduction projects so it can save soil from pollution. Likewise, policymakers must behave to encourage eco-innovation at economic and societal levels to reduce soil pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christine Hobden's Citizenship in a Globalised World puts forth an innovative account of citizens' collective responsibility for state injustice. While this account adjusts the burden of rectifying collective responsibility in accordance to capacity, influence, and benefit, it nonetheless holds that everyone, regardless of their differentiated circumstances, is equally part of the collective that is morally responsible for the injustices that their state perpetrates. Furthermore, being responsible puts one on the moral hook for being blamed, included in collective punishment (wherever justified), and being asked to apologize and bear the burden of rectifying the injustice(s). This response paper questions whether a view that takes into account unequal positionality should or can endorse equal collective responsibility, and argues in the negative. Instead, I suggest that marginalized citizens' responsibility to correct for state injustice may be more plausibly construed as a responsibility to each other as subjects of common oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israel, as an occupying power, has the obligation to protect Palestinians against all acts of violence. This article examines Israeli settler violence from the lens of this obligation and of the law of state responsibility. In doing so, it first provides examples of settler attacks against Palestinians, with particular emphasis on acts of violence that are backed up or facilitated by state security forces. Second, in an analysis of these acts of settler violence, it argues that these belong to the category of state-backed crimes. Third, it outlines what constitutes state responsibility for wrongful acts, as codified in international law, and demonstrates that acts of settler violence are crimes that are attributable to the state, which trigger state responsibility. Settler violence against Palestinians, which is often lethal and always injurious, is not and has never been a matter of domestic law enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the role of NGOs in asylum policies in the 2010s in Ukraine – a country often considered merely of transit for migrants. Which dynamics characterised the relationship between NGOs and the administration in a context of relative retreat of the state and low politicisation of asylum issues? While in Western Europe the state is frequently responsible for a large part of the funding of NGOs providing services to it, asylum NGOs in Ukraine received funding exclusively from international organisations and foundations. Better funded than the Ukrainian administration and following the norms of their donors, these NGOs took over tasks traditionally considered to be the responsibility of states. NGOs used their resources to gain access to the administration, with the aim of supporting some asylum seekers and more broadly to influence administrative practices in line with international asylum norms. While these resources seemed to place NGOs in a strong position, NGOs sought to maintain consensual relations with the authorities, depoliticising their work and avoiding to publish their criticism. By highlighting the ambivalent place of NGOs between influence and dependence on the administration, this study contributes to research on the role of NGOs in national and international migration regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Canada, small craft harbors (SCHs) are a federal government responsibility under Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO). SCHs are economic centers for many rural coastal communities in Canada. By studying the role of SCHs on livelihoods one can delineate their importance to the users and community. The pilot study utilized semi-structured telephone interviews to speak with 19 participants from Nova Scotia, Canada. Participants included users and harbor authorities on whether the SCH they use or manage impacts their livelihood or community. Results indicate SCHs provide an essential avenue for users and communities to support their livelihoods. However, the degree to which they were essential varies between SCHs. SCH users have sufficient capital assets (financial, natural, human, social, and physical) to use the facilities. However, several participants indicated they lack funds from the federal government to maintain their SCHs. Therefore, two critical hindrances in supporting prosperous livelihoods were funding from the federal government and SCHs that lack access to a harbor authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pandemic crisis, responsible for increased levels of financing with public debt and contingent liabilities, may trigger another debt crisis across the European Union. Our research indicates that member states are increasingly willing to use public guarantees and other off-budget instruments, which are classified as "hidden debt" or "hidden expenditure". Simulations have shown that if public guarantees have to be covered by the budget, an unprecedented increase in a public debt may occur across the euro area countries and the entire EU as a whole. Therefore, the authors recommend the introduction of uniform rules for estimating fiscal risk due to contingent liabilities, as well as standards for their reporting, allowing for their constant monitoring at the EU level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI) represent a crucial governance challenge for policymakers. This study contributes to the understanding of how states plan to govern AI with respect to the role they assume and to the way they develop AI in a responsible manner. In different policy instruments across 22 countries plus the European Union, there is considerable variation in how governments approach the governance of AI, both regarding the policy measures proposed and their focus on public responsibility. Analysing a set of policy instruments we find multiple modes of AI governance, with the major difference being between self-regulation-promoting and market-based approaches, and a combination of entrepreneurial and regulatory governance approaches. Our analysis also indicates that the approach to public responsibility is largely independent of the chosen policy mix of AI governance. Therefore, responsibility seems to be a cross-cutting issue that cannot be tied to a specific approach of states towards technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a transdisciplinary wicked problem whose effects are causing widespread economic setbacks, jeopardizing fundamental human rights, and threatening people's lives and livelihoods. In addition to mitigation and adaptation, countries must frequently deal with another important aspect of climate change: loss and damage. Although losses and damages resulting from climate change have been increasing in the past years, countries continue to refrain from encompassing human rights in climate discussions and negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). By neglecting a broader framework, nation states weaken the response to loss and damage through the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM), in turn creating a gridlock in its finance scheme. Building on scholarly literature that sheds light on the necessity to encompass human rights as a response to loss and damage, this article explains how existing treaties and State obligations under international human rights law provide a base argument to overcome this gridlock and enhance the effectiveness of the WIM, without creating new obligations. Additionally, this article shows that a change in discourse may open an avenue to get funds to support the WIM. Rather than framing liability and compensation exclusively within climate law, States should bring a human rights rationale into climate talks, using existing obligations to comply with human rights treaties and to effectively respond to loss and damage. The WIM finance scheme is not fully operational because developed States avoid liability discussions, causing the current gridlock in climate talks. Many activities contribute to climate change and generate transboundary environmental impacts that limit the human rights of people outside of the territory where the impact originated. Developed countries are historically responsible for the majority of cumulative greenhouse gas emissions and have extraterritorial jurisdiction regarding human rights obligations. Consequently, they bear responsibility for losses and damages derived from climate change, which is caused by their emissions. An interdisciplinary approach in climate talks, which incorporates existing human rights obligations, has the potential to overcome the gridlock, enabling an operational finance channel within the WIM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims at deepening the understanding of how central governments enact meta-governance. Drawing on meta-governance and policy network theory, a heuristic analytical framework of meta-governance strategies was applied on two contrasting Dutch education policy cases. The results show that the use of meta-governance strategies differs according to the degree of formal responsibility of the central government. Creating nodes in a policy network turns out to be a specific strategy, and the effectiveness of different meta-governance strategies is interrelated. Lastly, the lack of involvement of education practice impinge on the adequacy of meta-governance practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Republic Act (R.A.) 10,349, otherwise known as the Revised Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Modernization Program, is a recapturing of the AFP's initial efforts at modernizing. Successor to R.A. 7898, the document reorients the priorities and the fiscal responsibilities of the Philippine government in ensuring the modernization of the armed forces into the twenty-first century. The concept of modernization 25 years onward has matured but it has barely deepened in implementation much to the detriment of AFP itself. Despite warnings of external security threats, the study has found nominal evidence hinting at the defence budget's continuous prioritization of internal security threats. The study has likewise found that modernization funds set forth by R.A. 10,349 are not utilized to "modernize" the armed forces in the truest sense of the word. The study recommends addressing this issue of prioritization before any further attempt at military modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water conservation campaigns (WCC) are a common tool for mitigating droughts and water scarcity by encouraging reductions in household consumption. This paper moves beyond examining the impact of WCCs on consumption to look at the ways in which these campaigns discursively construct notions of water resilience. By analyzing eight televised WCCs produced by the Israel Water Authority from 2008 to 2018 in response to recurring droughts, this paper shows how discourses of resilience are audio-visually and symbolically constructed and represented to the public. The results indicate that a variety of opposite and competing discursive strategies were used in these campaigns: motivational, instructive or informative, fear/hope, nationalistic/individualistic and eco-centric/anthropocentric. The longitudinal comparison reveals how the discourse of water resilience evolved over the years from resilience by resistance to transformation and adaptation, confined to depolitical ethical-individual behavioral change while ignoring government responsibility, systemic social-environmental causes of the problem, and climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politicisation of the EU renders blame avoidance for unpopular EU policies an essential task for governments. This article looks at one particular blame avoidance strategy, which governments have at their disposal in the EU policy process: the threat of non-compliance. In order to gauge its effectiveness, we present two competing arguments. According to the blame avoidance hypothesis, non-compliance enables governments to shift responsibility for unpopular policies to the EU, because the public lacks knowledge about EU policy-making. Conversely, the blame attraction hypothesis posits that threats of non-compliance will backfire and blame will stick with the government, because non-compliance mobilises constituents favouring compliance with EU rules. We test these hypotheses by analysing blame attributions in the news media covering the Italian government's threat not to comply with the EU budget provisions in 2018. The findings support the blame attraction hypothesis, suggesting that domestic compliance constituents can impede governments' blame-shifting attempts. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1909938. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legal immunity of the UN has focused the peacekeeping literature on individual accountability and the political willingness of States to prosecute their own. UN immunity applies to peacekeeping operations only when the UN is in effective control. When a State is exerting effective control over its contingent, either solely or jointly, the actions of peacekeepers will be attributed to that State. When States are in effective control, they cannot rely on UN immunity for breaches of their obligations. Once a State is exercising effective control, it must warrant that sufficient mechanisms are undertaken to fulfil its obligations under the law, specifically the extra-territorial nature of international human rights law. The Mothers of Srebrenica case highlights that peacekeeping accountability is not limited to the prosecution of individual peacekeepers. Although UN immunity limits specific avenues of legal recourse, it does not prevent victims from seeking accountability from Troop Contributing Countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The corporate account of responsibility argues that incorporated groups are agents, yet begs this question: if states are corporate agents, then why should citizens be liable to pay for its past mistakes and injustices? Several theorists supplement the corporate account to argue that democratic citizens agree to take on the liabilities of the state through authorization or intentionality. I argue that this route is mistaken, that citizens are obliged to pay for many of the state's obligations without citizen agreement. Yet I also suggest that motivating citizens to pay for a state's past mistakes will often be hard to do, partly for reasons that Jeremy Waldron explains. Still, I argue that Waldron is too quick to suggest that the passage of time means that states do not have an obligation to repair any past injustices. I argue that states may have an obligation to redress historical injustices, but that there is often a motivational gap for doing so. Both states and citizens have a bias to the present and future, which is difficult, though not impossible, to overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The core feature of parliamentary democracy is government responsibility to the legislature. The most important instrument by which parliament can express its lack of support for the government is the vote of no confidence. This mechanism remains significantly under-studied, and research on votes of no confidence calls out for systematic attention. It is also timely because parliamentary democracies are making it procedurally harder for parliament to terminate the government. Through developing and conceptualising a series of indicators that affect the relative ease with which parliament can challenge and terminate government, this study proposes the first ever framework for analysing votes of no confidence. It then empirically locates countries in the framework and discusses those that have shifted over time. The goal of this study is to begin to fill an academic lacuna concerning, arguably, the defining feature of parliamentary democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper situates peasant struggles in a larger context to unravel the consequences of the accumulated agrarian distress in Punjab. The Punjab peasantry has a rich legacy of resistance against the injustice of the statecraft. The all-inclusive character of the present peasant movement, to engage people across castes, classes, creeds, gender, regions, religions and ethnicity is an outcome of this legacy. Beyond these features, the significance of the movement also lies in the understanding of the protesting people about the importance of land, food sovereignty and the responsibility of the democratic state to ensure food security for the marginalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing research demonstrates that evaluations of policies affect political trust. However, two limitations to the extant literature require us to reassess the micro-level foundation of the dominant trust-as-evaluation approach. Empirically, the common test of the evaluation-trust link relies on comparisons between individuals, an approach that suffers from endogeneity problems. Theoretically, the evaluation-trust link should be conditional on perceptions of government responsibility. Yet, this moderator is not included in most studies. We address these limitations in tandem. We study the conditionality of the evaluation-trust link on perceptions of government responsibility, using an innovative application of the Random Effects Within-Between (REWB) model, which simultaneously analyses variation between and within respondents. While our findings provide specific support for the (conditional) evaluation-trust link, we conclude that the literature has been overly optimistic when relying on between-respondent analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has established that a majority of Americans will support the use of nuclear weapons and violate the principle of noncombatant immunity when American lives are on the line. Some scholars contend, however, that these hawkish American attitudes are an outlier and that other Western democratic publics have more fully internalized the nuclear taboo, as well as the prohibition on deliberately killing civilians. To investigate cross-national attitudes on these important norms, we conducted a survey experiment of American, British, French, and Israeli citizens. We find that American attitudes are not exceptional. Rather, Israeli respondents display the most hawkish preferences; French and American citizens are roughly equally hawkish; and the British public is consistently the least supportive of nuclear use or targeting civilians. Categorical prohibitions—against nuclear use and targeting civilians—do little to shape public opinion in these four countries. Instead, public opinion in each state follows the same consequentialist logic: a majority or near majority of respondents are willing to support using nuclear weapons when they are more effective than conventional options, but support declines when collateral civilian deaths rise. Respondents' preferences for compatriots over foreign civilians and respondents' retributiveness help explain individual-level variation in attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Who bears responsibility when social media platforms are used to incite genocide? Although courts and scholarship have recognized the role of mass media in past mass atrocities, social media poses a unique challenge. Its transnational nature, with companies and infrastructure often located in different jurisdictions from where the crimes are committed, makes determining responsibility challenging. This article argues that the prohibition of genocide obligates home states—those in which companies are headquartered—to act in such cases. In particular, home states may be obligated to restrict social media access in the state in question and are permitted to do so under the laws of state responsibility. Finally, the article discusses how possible domestic or international arrangements may be used to realize these obligations and the relative merits of each. A discussion of Myanmar demonstrates how these domestic and international options may function and emphasizes the urgency of the question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government contracting is crucial for defining the quality of government and public services because it amounts to about 29% of government spending. However, regional quality of government indicators, especially for public spending, are largely missing. We assess the quality of public spending by transparency, competition, efficiency and corruption using a novel database of 4 million contracts from the EU-28 between 2006 and 2015. We find that public spending quality is associated with gross domestic product (GDP)/capita, the European quality of government index (EQI) and public sector meritocracy. We confirm large within-country regional variations, but also find considerable change over time: the steady deterioration of performance in old European Union member states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how the term Heimat was used in legal and literary responses to one of Germany's first large-scale emigrations in 1816/17 and the management of returning migrants. It shows how r/emigration challenged Southwest German governments to define responsibilities of Heimat, especially in the light of people considered homeless. In response to the inconsistent and restrictive ways the governments handled the 1816/17 emigration, Heimat also became a recurrent term in political theory, reformist writing, and literary fiction. These texts examined not only why and how people r/emigrated, but also how Germans should be dealing with r/emigrants. Reading literary approaches alongside non-literary discourses about r/emigration in the writings of Hans von Gagern, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Ludwig Gall, M. Oesterlin, Friedrich Rückert and Adolph von Schaden, this article discusses how Heimat was used to beckon readers to denounce emigration and to propagate values of Heimat related to land, family ties, and community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the results of a survey experiment designed to evaluate the effects of social media exposure on perceptions of personal health and job risks during the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico. Our framing experiment treats respondents to positive and negative partisan messages from high-level politicians. Descriptive findings show divergent evaluations of how the government is addressing the crisis by supporters of the government and opposition parties. Results show that respondents are sensitive to negative frames regardless of the political color of the messenger. Further, supporters of the incumbent are more likely to deflect government's responsibility when treated with a negative frame by a politician from the opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis of Chinese government accounting standards focuses on liabilities. The merger of budget accounting and financial accounting in a single information system is a major achievement of the current reform. The current liability standards generally do not push for the early recognition and disclosure of provisions and contingent liabilities. They require deepening and effective implementation to facilitate fiscal risk analysis and management. This paper endorses the integration of government accounting with the fiscal budget and government finance statistics. IMPACT While accountants cannot decide how much government borrowing is too much, this paper endorses some international performance benchmarks for holding Chinese government accountants responsible for supplying reliable information. This paper aims to increase the appreciation of the outside world about the complexity of Chinese public finances and the efforts made by the Chinese government to improve the quality of financial information. The paper explains why technocrats charged with designing government accounting standards and systems need to keep pace with changing financial practices and to co-ordinate with their counterparts in domestic and international budgeting and statistical organizations to ensure consistency of data sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed additional weaknesses of the already troubling "flag of convenience" practices under international law; the passenger cruise industry was especially impacted. Most cruise ships under distress from the pandemic received little aid from their flag states, and many vessels were denied entry into ports of nonflag states (regardless of whether an outbreak had been documented onboard). States and vessels lacked clear guidance around their rights and responsibilities under the extraordinary circumstances, resulting in a less efficient response to a dangerous situation. This article reviews the current status of international law concerning port and flag state duties to distressed vessels, and suggests the creation of flag state medical liability to help clarify decision-making during future health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the plausibility of submitting disputes concerning activities in undelimited maritime areas to United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS) compulsory procedures in order to invoke the state responsibility of the coastal state for breaching its obligations pending maritime delimitation. Key to this question is the establishment of an UNCLOS tribunal's jurisdiction over the dispute. By examining the claims on the basis of Articles 74(3) and 83(3) of UNCLOS, and of other UNCLOS provisions that are not in themselves excluded from UNCLOS compulsory dispute resolution procedures, this article discusses the respective strengths and weakness of the two avenues toward the UNCLOS dispute settlement mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Greece and North Macedonia's parliamentary ratifications of the Prespa Agreement. Given the decisive role of national parliaments in the process of the agreement's success, the article investigates to what extent this specific institutional setting influenced the dispute concerning the bilateral agreement. The article poses the following question: which factors explain support and opposition towards the agreement within the two national parliaments? We found that two conflicting models of parliamentary representation characterized the type of support for or opposition to the agreement: the trustee and the representative models. Drawing on an analysis of the vote outcomes and a qualitative discourse analysis of the plenary debates, the article demonstrates that whereas the governing parties in both states adhered to the trustee model – prioritizing their international responsibility and the state's collective interests – opposition parties acted as representatives of specific sub-groups of voters and their particularistic interests or identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grant funding sought by academics for research or service activities can facilitate societal transformation and the development of community resilience. Grant funding, for the purpose of this paper, will refer to funding from govern- mental sources. Funding can be an agent for transformation and resilience for individuals and communities but has both positive and negative consequences. Previous work has failed to address why, even when a grant provides funding for the development of measures with seemingly positive impact, those measures may not be accepted or sustained, or may be perceived in a negative way by the community they are meant to benefit. We have found that the key to maintaining the positive effects (and potential resilience) of any community-focused grant-funded activity is to engage the community during proposal development in goal setting and activity planning, and in the dissemination of the research or programme findings. These measures aid in community acceptance of the grant objective and enhance the sustainability of the outcome, thus having a positive impact on resilience. Involving the community in early planning and throughout the process enhances capacity and facilitates stronger relationships between the academic grantee and the community that can potentially allow for further transformative activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intergovernmental Relations are conventionally defined as important interactions between governmental units of all types and levels. In the process of universalization of rural preschool education, intergovernmental relations act as an increasingly significant role in facilitating the operating mechanism of vertical institutions at national, provincial, and local levels. This study investigated the policy evolution of intergovernmental relations in the rural preschool educational management system since the founding of the People's Republic of China. It reveals the developmental tendency of government accountabilities "from involvement to withdrawal and finally to leading", the focus of government responsibilities "from grassroots institutes to higher-level governments". The study also explores the influencing mechanisms that affect profound changes in the intergovernmental relations of rural preschool education, and proposes principles of "dominant role of governments, responsibilities heterogeneous at different levels, and appropriate match between administrative power and financial power" to further promote the reform of educational management system in a systematic and sustainable way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from a 2008 nationwide survey in China, this study explores the relationship of perceived local-level corruption to government trust in an established authoritarian regime. With nearly two thirds of respondents considering cadre corruption to be a 'serious problem,' the authors find that perceptions of serious corruption are significantly and negatively related to trust in officials at all levels of government, including the central level. Contrary to extant findings that the Center is shielded from blame for well-intended policies that fail, the findings of this study suggest that when it comes to assigning blame for continued corruption, Chinese citizens – and especially urban Chinese – do not let Central officials off scot-free. Pushing further in an attempt to understand why some urban Chinese citizens seemingly hold the central government partly responsible for cadre corruption while others do not, analyses cast the spotlight on the level of education. As anticipated, education level is by itself negatively related to trust in the central government, but there is also unexpected evidence that among urbanites who perceive corruption to be a serious problem, it is actually the most highly educated who are most trusting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the process by which civilians ascribe blame, praise, and intentionality to governments in conflict is key to formulating a successful counterinsurgency strategy. We conducted survey experiments with Palestinian civilians to examine perceived intentionality of Israeli forces for the outcomes of riot control methods with various consequences. We extend a psychological theory, the side-effect effect, to examine how individuals evaluate actors within conflict. Consistent with expectations, civilians assign more responsibility to state actors with regards to negative (versus positive) outcomes of an action. Additionally, we find a moderator: individuals exposed to violence assign even more responsibility for negative outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This new book considers sovereign debt from the perspectives of English and US law. In addition to conflict of laws and jurisdiction, the author covers a whole panoply of issues, such as the "champerty defence", collective action clauses, and sovereign immunity. The author also makes a number of innovative policy proposals, for instance on the interpretation of pari passu clauses. Given the wide range of cases and literature used and the depth of analysis, this will certainly become an authoritative book of reference on sovereign defaults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]