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Over the past decades, the growing proliferation of international institutions governing the global environment has impelled institutional interplay as a result of functional and normative overlap across multiple regimes. This article synthesizes primary contributions made in research on institutional interplay over the past twenty years, with particular focus on publications with International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics. Broadening our understanding about the different types, dimensions, pathways, and effects of institutional interplay, scholars have produced key insights into the ways and means by which international institutions cooperate, manage discord, engage in problem solving, and capture synergies across levels and scales. As global environmental governance has become increasingly fragmented and complex, we recognize that recent studies have highlighted the growing interactions between transnationally operating institutions in the wake of polycentric governance and hybrid institutional complexes. However, our findings reveal that there is insufficient empirical and conceptual research to fully understand the relationship, causes, and consequences of interplay between intergovernmental and transnational institutions. Reflecting on the challenges of addressing regulatory gaps and mitigating the crisis of multilateralism, we expound the present research frontier for further advancing research on institutional interplay and provide recommendations to support policy-making.

This thesis asks how we can make sense of the popular characterisation of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) as a state-making project despite explicit rejections that this is the case from the Administration, who claim instead to be crafting an alternative, nonstatist vision of governance based on ‘democratic autonomy’. Through discourse analysis of key political theoretical texts and political practices within the AANES, I show how adherents of democratic autonomy reject three key statist discourses: the centralisation of authority and the necessity of monopolised legitimate force for stability; liberalism (secularism, Western feminism); and capitalism. Using my translations of Abdullah Öcalan’s works of political theory, and of articulations by female fighters and activists in the region, the thesis argues that AANES discourses on non-state armed groups and foreign fighters, on sectarian and gendered violence, and on political economy and the environment, all propose compelling challenges to the widely presumed requirements for order and democracy. Nevertheless, the thesis argues that the power of external discourses that recognise AANES as ‘state-like’ help to constitute it as such, both by making possible the activities that have rendered AANES more state-like over time, and by narrowing the space from which alternatives to statehood may be articulated. The thesis therefore provides an account of why ‘nonstate’ revolutions, such as that in AANES, may be short-lived, by demonstrating the disciplinary role played by a statist international order, which re-enacts itself by re-shaping non-state polities in states’ image.

This article quantifies the aggregate potential of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions in 2030 from the assumed full implementation of major international cooperative initiatives (ICIs). To this end, a methodology is proposed to aggregate emission reduction goals of the most significant and potentially impactful global initiatives. We identified the extent to which reductions are additional to national policies, assuming these actions do not displace climate actions elsewhere, and accounted for overlap ranges between the ICIs. The analysis was conducted for 17 initiatives, selected from an original list of over 300 with a series of testing criteria, across eight sectors and ten major emitting economies. These initiatives include cities, regions, businesses, and other subnational and non-state actors, cooperating with each other and sometimes working in partnership with national governments or other international organizations. Our analysis shows that the combined achievement of initiatives’ reduction goals could reduce global emissions in 2030 by 18–21 GtCO 2e/year in addition to current national policies (total of 60–63 GtCO 2e/year), down to 39–44 GtCO 2e/year. If delivered fully, reductions from these 17 initiatives would help move the global emissions trajectory within the range of a 2°C-consistent emission pathway by 2030, although a significant gap would remain to reduce emissions to a 1.5°C-consistent pathway. Key policy insights We propose a transparent and robust methodology to aggregate GHG mitigation potential of ICIs, accounting for overlaps between ICIs. If major initiatives meet their goals and do not change the course of other existing climate actions, they could make large contributions by 2030 towards global efforts to stay within the range of a below 2°C-consistent emission pathway by 2030. The full suite of existing initiatives beyond those in this analysis could further increase ambition towards achieving the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals. Cities and regions, businesses and forestry initiatives account for significantly more than half of all possible emission reductions from ICIs; implementation of their goals should be a key policy focus.

With an ongoing pivot toward great power competition, there may be a temptation to reduce counter-proliferation efforts against violent non-state actors (VNSA) to a peripheral mission for U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). However, the current and emerging threats of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) acquisition and use by VNSA are increasing through the ubiquity of various technologies, materials, and internet access. This research analyzes the use of chemical weapons (CW) by VNSA and the unique challenges of detecting and combating CW at the strategic, operational, and tactical levels. This research first implements regression models using chemical incident data from 1995–2017 to identify which strategic and operational environments are associated with VNSA CW adoption, and uses the outcomes to create a template for predictive intelligence methods for chemical threats. Next, the researchers conduct social network analysis to investigate commonalities among VNSA with chemical programs, and to determine if these CW tactics are geographically migrating. Then, lessons learned from the case study involving al-Qaeda in Iraq yield a proposed disruption model tested in a plausible, near-future scenario. Finally, policy recommendations are provided for USSOCOM and other relevant entities to improve counter-WMD efforts as they relate to the prediction and disruption of the chemical programs of VNSA. http://archive.org/details/achemicalromance1094564173 Lieutenant, United States Navy Lieutenant, United States Navy Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Modern times and the post-Soviet era, especially the post-9/11 period, has brought a significant change in the nature of conflict – more and more non-state actors have been entering the stage of war. As the character of such actors has changed throughout the last decades, their tactics, strategy, means and weapons have transformed as well. Being a non state side of a conflict, they also lean towards more unconventional methods such as guerrilla warfare or terrorism which seem to be one of the most characteristic elements of an asymmetric conflict. The conflict of islamist terrorism (in this case – islamist fighters in Iraq) vs. international coalition seems to be a perfect example of asymmetric warfare. The following paper discusses the concept of asymmetric conflict and the way it has been addressed in some European and American publications, listing at the same time the most distinctive features of such conflict. However, most of all, a question addressed in the text is what typical features of an asymmetric conflict might be observed in the above mentioned conflict. Fighting islamist fighters, including the Islamic State (a terrorist organization which claims to be a state) by the western countries coalition, has been given here as an exemplification of an ongoing asymmetric conflict. As a source of knowledge about this conflict, apart from available publications and articles, the author has taken the in depth interviews carried out personally with the ex-soldiers from the Polish special force unit who fought in Iraq in years 2003–2016.

This thesis investigates Albanian organized crime with a focus on the transnational crime of trafficking cannabis cultivated in Albania. It argues that the illicit cannabis market has flourished due to a difficult transition from communism to democracy, and efforts to combat the market, until recently, have been largely an afterthought by government officials. Additionally, organized crime has infiltrated portions of Albanian politics and its economy, which has had significant negative effects on Albania, its citizens, and its candidacy toward European Union (EU) membership. http://archive.org/details/internationaleff1094561277 Outstanding Thesis Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Several developing nations are grappling with the phenomenon of ungoverned territories, which are believed to be harboring insurgent, terrorist, and other armed violent groups. This study investigates how a developing nation can use its resources to reduce violent activities and, consequently, ungoverned spaces from within its sovereign territory. The study uses geo-referenced violent events data as a measure of violence and spatiotemporal data for law enforcement agencies (LEAs), social services, and economic infrastructure as measures of state authority. All data is specific to Uganda. Using multi-regression models (negative binomial and matched wake analysis), the study employs interpolated spatiotemporal data to estimate the effects of state authority factors on violent events over space and time. The findings show that LEAs, including police, prisons, courts, and border protection, are the most effective in reducing violence and therefore ungoverned territories. Save for schools and local governments, social services like health centers, and economic infrastructure like roads, tend to be associated with increased levels of violence. The policy implication for developing nations is therefore to consider directing their resources toward building their LEAs before or concurrently with socioeconomic services in order to reduce violence emanating from ungoverned spaces. http://archive.org/details/ungovernedspaces1094545911 Major, Uganda People’s Defense Forces Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

What factors drive governments’ decisions to intervene in local conflicts within their borders? Communal conflict – that is, organized violence between non-state groups that are mobilized along a shared communal identity – kills thousands each year and severely impacts local livelihoods, at times threatening to spread and affect entire regions. Given the state’s assumed monopoly over the legitimate use of force, we should expect the concerned governments to be critical actors of the overall effort to restore peace in cases of local communal conflict, but empirical evidence indicates that central states tend to only intervene in some cases but not in others. This phenomenon has so far been understudied and the variations in states’ efforts to manage these conflicts remain unexplained. This article presents the first quantitative study of state intervention in communal conflicts. Building on existing scholarly work, I argue that state intervention is explained by a combination of strategic interests and state capacity, and that interests related to ethnic constituencies and land control play an important part in explaining governments’ strategies. These propositions find support in a statistical analysis covering sub-Saharan Africa from 1989 to 2010.