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On 12 October 2021, the International Court of Justice (ICJ or Court) issued its judgment on the merits in Maritime Delimitation in the Indian Ocean (Somalia v. Kenya). The judgment raises questions of significance in respect of two issues upon which this comment elaborates. First, the Court failed to distinguish adequately between the notions of acquiescence and tacit agreement, which were at the basis of Kenya's claim for an agreed boundary running along a parallel of latitude. Second, in drawing the boundary as requested by Somalia, the Court departed from its usual approach concerning the adjustment of the provisional equidistance line established in the first stage of its three-stage delimitation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International migration is a subject claimed by and studied in many disciplines. This makes it an interesting and also a challenging subject often throwing open new frontiers for research both within a discipline and also across disciplines. Scholars and researchers have looked into various aspects of international migration: types of migrations, factors that initiate and perpetuate migration, migration management, social costs of migration, and so on. In fact, so much has been written on migration, it is now said that there is a 'mobility bias in migration research' (Schewel, 2019) much to the neglect of the other side of this coin, that is immobility. This charge of 'mobility bias in migration research' forms the basis of the present study. It takes up the issue of immobility and looks into the causes of one kind of immobility, that is, 'involuntary immobility' that aspiring emigrants who try to migrate through legal channels have to suffer, The paper attempts to investigate its causes and impact on aspiring migrants and their families and society at large with particular reference to Punjab (India). This paper also recommends measures to enhance the development potential of international migration both for the sending and the receiving country and migrants too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The inclusion of direct and reversed items in scales is a commonly-used strategy to control acquiescence bias. However, this is not enough to avoid the distortions produced by this response style in the structure of covariances and means of the scale in question. This simulation study provides evidence on the performance of two different procedures for modelling the influence of acquiescence bias on partially balanced multidimensional scales: a method based on exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with target rotation, and a method based on random intercept factor analysis (RIFA). Method: The independent variables analyzed in a simulation study were sample size, number of items per factor, balance of substantive loadings of direct and reversed items, size and heterogeneity of acquiescence loadings, and inter-factor correlation. Results: The RIFA method had better performance over most of the conditions, especially for the balanced conditions, although the variance of acquiescence factor loadings had a certain impact. In relation to the EFA method, it was severely affected by a low degree of balance. Conclusions: RIFA seems the most robust approach, but EFA also remains a good alternative for medium and fully balanced scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often hailed as "the poster child of Europe" for its discipline and compliance in managing austerity despite the severity of the cuts meted on its population, Dublin presents an interesting case in austerity governance. This article focuses on the specific mechanisms whereby such compliance and public acquiescence have been achieved. Drawing on field research conducted from 2015 to 2017, it identifies three key practices of austerity governance: a collectivization of blame and shame; a cutting, shaping, and disciplining of civil society; and a reconstruction of the citizen-subject. It then goes on to uncover a diverse range of public responses to these practices that, oscillating between resistance and resilience, are playing a key role in rebuilding solidarity and community across neighborhoods throughout the city. The findings presented here respond to recent calls for a re-insertion of the political into contemporary urban research and highlight the importance of dispersed networks of resistance and resilience in contemporary urban political struggle and transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While every year the people of the United Republic of Tanzania witness the new anniversary of the Union between the former Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, this paper intends to examine how strong its legal foundation stands. The union was established by the two leaders; Nyerere for Tanganyika and Karume for Zanzibar. After their signatures, the agreement was required for ratification at Zanzibar and Tanganyika legislative bodies. Only Tanganyika ratified. Surprisingly, even though Zanzibar did not ratify, the union was made. On this background foundation, the union legality has been repeatedly criticized. While those who question the legality of the union stick on the point of ratification, those who consider its legitimacy, assert that the question of validity has waned due to the period the union has survived. The findings in this article argue otherwise, in fact, the issue has grown to such extent that it haunts everyone in Tanzania. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article retraces the role of sub-imperialism in the formation of the Australian state as a subject of international law. The discourse of sub-imperialism developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a means of characterising the British self-governing Dominions’ uncertain status in the international order, and drew explicitly on the United States Monroe Doctrine. The article revisits the significance of sub-imperialist posturing at two critical junctures in the historical formation of the Commonwealth of Australia. The first is the formalisation in the early 1880s of the movement toward federation of the Australasian colonies as a response to perceived British acquiescence to German imperialism in the Western Pacific. The second is the Commonwealth government’s attempt during the Versailles negotiations of 1919 to annex to its territory the occupied German Pacific territories of New Guinea and Nauru. The principal argument made in this article is that attempts to establish an Australian sub-empire in the Western Pacific were fundamental both to the federation movement and the recognition of Australian sovereignty in international law. The article concludes that Australian sub-imperialism warrants greater attention both in accounts of the history of Australia’s transition from self-governing Dominion to sovereign status in international law, and in accounts of contemporary Australian foreign policy in the Pacific region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the importance and impact of a set of actions through which bakers manipulate laws and regulations that seek to organize and regulate how they do business. It builds on eighteen months of fieldwork conducted in Jordan, twelve of which were spent working in three different bakeries in the capital, Amman. Moving away from the idea that public policies are simply imposed, the article looks in detail at the social relations through which they are enacted. By honing in on the bakery, and examining arrangements between bakery owners, workers, consumers and ministerial employees, it illuminates modes of political agency that escape conventional binaries of domination/resistance, state/society and legality/illegality. I argue against seeing these practices as easily categorized forms of resistance or frivolous acts of corruption. Nor are they simply reinforcements of hegemonic control. Instead, 'tactics' at the bakery subvert the order of things to serve other ends. Foregrounding them in this analysis seeks not only to challenge views of power relations as strictly binary but to elucidate some of the ways in which citizens inhabit and engage with the neoliberal and authoritarian logics that pervade everyday life in Jordan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estoppel is a principle of international law recognized by the International Court of Justice, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and other courts and tribunals. And international courts and tribunals are generally consistent in setting out the requirements for invoking this principle. Nevertheless, international lawyers still doubt "its incidence and effects" and sometimes get confused with its relationship with other concepts. This article further clarifies the requirements of estoppel based on past jurisprudence. On this basis it argues that acquiescence can be regarded as a special form of estoppel. Estoppel and tacit agreement, unilateral declarations and bilateral custom are similar legal regimes but they should be distinguished from each other to avoid fragmentation. Estoppel properly defined can contribute to mutual trust and stability in the international community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comment analyses how the European General Court in its recent decision in Tronios Group International BV v EUIPO (T-77/15), of 20 April 2016, assessed the issue of whether actual versus constructive knowledge may satisfy the burden ofproof for proving acquiescence under art. 54 of Regulation 207/2009 (now art. 61 Regulation 2017/1001), with some final considerations on national Italian law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to its simplicity and efficiency for evaluating product attributes, check-all-that-apply (CATA) questions have been widely used. Yet, CATA questions have been reported to lack discriminability of subtle product differences and suffer from the problems of response bias from satisficing and acquiescence behaviors. In the present paper, a novel two-step rating-based ‘double-faced applicability’ test was developed as an extended response format of CATA, to improve its sensitivity for product discrimination and for stabilizing subjects’ evaluative criteria. In the ‘double-faced applicability’ test, each attribute was ‘double-faced’, meaning that two descriptors (a pair of semantic-differential descriptors) are separately presented in the questionnaires representing both sides of each attribute. For performing the two-step rating on each attribute in the questionnaire, subjects are instructed to first respond ‘Yes (does apply)’ or ‘No (does not apply)’ and then to answer a 3-point sureness rating (how sure they were about their Yes or No response). The performance of the two-step ratings in this new method was compared to a simple one-step applicability rating test method as well as the forced-choice Yes/No questions without the sureness rating in terms of sensitivity in sample discrimination. The results showed that the ‘double-faced applicability’ test provided better product discrimination and showed the potential to reduce acquiescence response bias when using existing variants of CATA response formats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past Chinese policy has proved deficient in managing the Sino-American relationship. Your administration should break with past assumptions, cease allowing China to set the agenda, be aware of specious Chinese claims based on distortions of history, avoid using meaningless or misleading terms in speaking of the relationship, be cognizant of the tendency of some China specialists to self-censor, establish clear guidelines for the limits of U.S. tolerance of Chinese behavior, and be prepared to respond forcefully if they are transgressed Be aware that failure to do so will be regarded as acquiescence to Chinese claims and an invitation to advance future claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article ascertains whether Japan's possession of the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands has a legal basis that is opposable to China. It departs from the traditional approach that focuses on historic titles and ancient maps. It applies an alternative approach that is based on the status quo post bellum or the relative legal position of the parties at the end of armed hostilities. This approach is warranted by the practice of China, Japan and the Allied powers of defining the status quo in the East China Sea as a frame of reference for the future disposition of the islands. Primary records of their conduct in the period 1945-1952 reveal consensus that: (i) the islands are part of Nansei Shoto rather than of Formosa; (ii) they remained under the residual sovereignty of Japan and (iii) they were being claimed by Japan but not China. The conduct of the parties proximate to 1945-1956 indicate that there was no prior existing title to the islands that would contradict the status quo. Rather, during the period 1952 up to the critical date of 1970, the positive acts of the Republic of China and the acquiescence of the People's Republic of China confirmed the status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes Qing Empire of 1644-1911 as a multiethnic empire ruled by the Manchu as an ethnic minority. It states that the transition from the Qing Empire to the Chinese nation is far from complete and uncontested. The succeeding Kuomintang (KMT) regime founded the Republic of China and grounded its territorial claims on the geographical coverage of the Qing Empire at its largest extent in the late eighteenth century.

This article explores divergences between the legal perception on dignity held by the Kopaonik School of Natural Law, which is compliant to the Draft of Serbian Civil Code and the legal discourse that is effective at the level of the Council of Europe and/or the European Union. The main feature of the former is the recognition of the dignity status only to persons, and not beyond that formal category. Suchlike position on human dignity has been examined from the perspective of contemporary legal theory; the regional legal texts in Europe which emphasize the instruments referring to the field of biomedicine; the case law of the European Court on Human Rights (hereinafter: the Court); and the case law of the European Court of Justice (hereinafter: ECJ). The objectives of the research are to demonstrate that insular understanding of the agents of dignity is not tenable. The conclusion reached through the discussion is that restrictive normative tendencies on dignity agents cannot escape a criticism that includes the lack of an adequate definition; elitist undertones; discriminatory foundations; and the incompatibleness with international obligations of Serbia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their catastrophic proportions, the Congo Wars have received little attention from international relations scholars. At the heart of these conflicts were alliances between rebel groups and neighboring rulers. What are the origins of such transnational alliances, which have been a major feature of nearly all civil wars in post--Cold War Africa? Recent scholarship on external support for rebel groups does not offer a clear answer, either providing long lists of the goals that state sponsors may have or avoiding the question of motives altogether. A focus on political survival reveals that African rulers form alliances with rebels in nearby states to reduce the threats of rebellions and military coups that the rulers themselves face at home. Transnational alliances serve either to weaken a ruler's domestic enemies by undermining their foreign sponsors or to ensure the continued allegiance of key domestic supporters by providing them with opportunities for enrichment. Case studies of the alliance decisions made in the two Congo Wars by the rulers of Angola, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe show that their struggles for political survival account for why they sided either with their Congolese counterparts or with Congolese rebels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Trade Organization (WTO) stands at the center of an emerging structure of global economic governance. Its rules affect important aspects of everyone's lives--how much people pay for the products that they purchase, what types of employment are open to them, and which medicines they can access. And yet, while the WTO was conceived as a "negotiating machine" that would develop rules in sync with an increasingly dynamic global economy, negotiations on a new set of global trade rules have now been deadlocked for over a decade. This impasse is all the more surprising in light of the fact that the multilateral trade regime was, up until the establishment of the WTO in 1995, one of the most productive engines of international lawmaking. The present Article explores why multilateral trade lawmaking used to work, and why it is no longer working today. A key part of the answer is that before the establishment of the WTO, the multilateral trading system worked as a "club," which allowed the major trading powers to manipulate the circle of participants in trade negotiations depending on how these powers weighed the costs and benefits of the participation of additional states. The Article identifies three factors that led the major trading nations to adopt this approach: (1) the greater practicality of negotiations among a smaller group of countries, (2) the insiders' greater influence on the outcome of the negotiations, and (3) the chance to subsequently compel outsiders to join the agreement on the insiders' terms. The Article shows how the major trading powers were able to implement the club approach to multilateral trade lawmaking throughout the pre-WTO era--an ability that accounts for much of the legislative dynamism of that time. The Article then argues that the founding of the WTO, while itself an example of the successful employment of the club logic, has made the use of the club approach in the multilateral trading system much more difficult, if not impracticable. As a result, the pace of lawmaking in the multilateral trading system is now circumscribed by the need to seek the support, or at least acquiescence, of all WTO members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The doctrines of estoppel and acquiescence, which derive from the general principle of good faith, are well established in certain spheres of public international law, such as disputes over territory. This article examines whether they have a role to play in disputes over the jurisdiction of an international court or tribunal. Can it be said that a respondent has acquiesced in the jurisdiction of a tribunal, or is estopped from denying its jurisdiction? That question is contentious because it is sometimes said that the consensual nature of international jurisdiction excludes the operation of those doctrines. This article submits that the doctrines may be invoked in the establishment of a tribunal’s jurisdiction. While acquiescence is an expression of consent (through silence or conduct), estoppel precludes a respondent from denying that it has consented to the tribunal’s jurisdiction. Both doctrines have a legitimate role to play, and reinforce, rather than undermine, the consensual nature of international jurisdiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan and the Republic of Korea (ROK) are said to have been in a "quasialliance" since the Cold War period, drawing closer at times during doubts over U.S. security commitment to Asia. In recent years, however, this status quo appears to have changed. Despite anxieties of U.S. retrenchment, the relations between the two states have hit an all-time low because of arguments over how the history of Japanese imperialism should be remembered, and they show no signs of improving. Does this mean that the quasi-alliance has ended? This article examines this question, and concludes that the quasi-alliance between Japan and South Korea has broken down because of escalating arguments over the "history issue." Japan-ROK bilateral relations are dogged by misunderstandings of each other, and that this is needlessly distancing the two states from one another. The termination of the Japan-ROK quasi-alliance because of the "history issue" is, on balance, a negative development for the security of the Asia-Pacific and a demonstration of short-term political judgement. If the two states are serious about resolving this deadlock, both need to overcome mutual stereotypes that are "taken for granted." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – This paper aims to establish a relationship between trade openness and economic growth in the context of the developing countries. This study has proposed a new measure of trade openness to the literature, as the available measures are flawed. Design/methodology/approach – Empirical analyses are carried out with the help of panel econometric techniques. Findings – The main finding of the paper is that the relationship between trade openness and economic growth is positive and statistically significant for developing countries. Besides trade openness, other determinants of economic growth such as investment and labour force are also significantly related with economic growth and carry expected coefficients. Further, it is found that frequent fluctuations in prices are detrimental to long-run economic growth. Practical implications – Therefore, the developing countries are suggested to speed up the process of trade liberalization and also pay favourable attention to other determinants of economic growth to achieve high economic growth. Originality/value – The authors have used a new measure of trade openness apart from the conventional trade volume measure of trade openness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geopolitics is about power and hegemony, with its dual components of domination and consent. Controlling space requires dominion. Organizing and administering space at reasonable costs demands authority and acquiescence. This conceptualization of geopolitics pertains to the underlying causes behind current instabilities in the Middle East as they link with broader geopolitical and strategic interests of great powers, particularly the US. Geopolitical theory helps offer deeper insights into how American decision makers are likely to think and act in the post-Cold War era, and in explaining, understanding, and possibly reading and forming expectations about US policies. It allows for more clarity in observing continuities in US strategy and in shaping expectations about tactics and policies in the service of its durable strategic international and global interests. The main argument of this paper is that the American ruling establishment, together with its supporting intellectual and military structures, persists in observing the emerging global venture geopolitically. In those terms much of what is occurring in the Arab region, more specifically in countries such as Syria among others, can be understood. It is also in those terms that one can conceptualize the American approach toward regional and world powers such as Iran, China and Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the ICJ's original 1962 Decision in the case of the Temple of Preah Vihear, examining its legacy in the light of the 2013 Decision. The 2013 Decision, when read in isolation from the 1962 Judgment, does not provide any indication that the original Judgment was controversial. In contrast to the unanimous Decision of the Court in 2013, in 1962 three of the judges appended Dissenting Opinions. They dissented because they could not agree with the majority that the Temple was located in Cambodia. The 1962 Judgment was controversial because it relied on an inaccurate sketch map and deduced Thai acquiescence from a single photograph of a brief meeting between a dead Thai prince and a dead French official. The unanimous decision of the 2013 Court therefore appears to be to a conscious decision by the Court to reinforce a Judgment that was, in retrospect, evidentially weak. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies often assume that empty sanction threats inflict reputation costs on senders. However, target response to senders' previous decisions whether to back down or impose sanctions remains unexamined. In this paper, I argue that the target of sanction threats looks to the sender's actions against prior resistant targets. When the sender has backed down recently, the target, inferring that the sender is prone to making empty threats, is less likely to acquiesce. Conversely, when the sender has recently imposed sanctions against a resistant target, the current target infers that sanction imposition is likely to follow resistance, and therefore, it is more likely to acquiesce, all else equal. In statistical tests of US sanction threats spanning 1971-2000, I find strong evidence that the target is less likely to acquiesce when the United States recently backed down from a sanction threat. I find somewhat weaker evidence that the target is more likely to acquiesce when the United States recently imposed sanctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The General Court held that requests under Articles 54(2) (acquiescence) and 57(2) and (3) (proof of genuine use) of the Community Trade Mark Regulation (CTMR), made for the first time before the court and the Board of Appeal, were inadmissible, as out of time. Assessing the likelihood of confusion between an earlier national mark and a Community trade mark, the court provided useful guidance on how to assess visual, phonetic and conceptual differences, with particular regard to the relevant public's perception of names of foreign origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been an outburst of studies aiming to advance our understanding of how actors do work to create, maintain and disrupt institutions. Drawing on work on the Holocaust, a largely neglected event in organization theory, we explore types of institutional work through which actors first maintain domination and grant acquiescence to oppression and, second, target oppressive systems through acts of resistance. This approach offers an opportunity to study a familiar set of processes and phenomena on fresh terms and to focus on key elements that existing studies on institutional work have neglected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study which models the network of alliances to capture the effects of covariates. It is informed that the models account for the complex dependencies inherent in the network. It is demonstrateed that how alliance decisions are interdependent and define the problems associated with the regression analysis of nonindependent dyads.

This article offers both a conceptually valid measure of the relationship benefits derived from the relationship marketing, networks, services marketing and strategy literature and demonstrates the concept's effect on business-to-business bonds. Four types of relationship benefit labelled cost, service, flexibility and image benefits are identified and their measures tested for reliability and validity. A structural model incorporating associations between a second-order relationship benefits construct and other salient relationship concepts is also tested, with significant direct associations between relationship benefits, trust and relationship investments evident, together with indirect associations between relationship benefits and instrumental, affective and normative commitment, absence of conflict, acquiescence, satisfaction and switching. The article calls for further refinement of the concept and evaluation of its associations in other contexts and in light of noted shortcomings in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper attempts to assess how mathematical formalism is used in economics based on the dual perspective of epistemology and ethics. The demonstration principally concerns Popper's critical rationalism, an epis-temological posture widely adopted in economics. Economic science uses Popper's proof of refutability, although only as a shield against the factors of internal limitation against which economic knowledge finds itself confronted. Acknowledging and giving meaning to these limitational factors would be a proof of scientific rigour and fruitfulness in economics, particularly in the science's claims to an ethical dimension. Re-founding the ethical ambition of economics is something much called for today, with a view to restoring the much-battered relationship between man and nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Administrative Law is different. It is a code based system, normally without any role for legal precedent as found in the common law. As such, when the decisions of an administrative agency are reviewed by a court, friction can result if the court creates a legal precedent which the agency does not follow, as it is not part of the agency's rules or regulations. This result is called non-acquiescence, where the administrative agency ignores the precedential value of a court's ruling. This Article suggests that, based on the Social Security Act and the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, there are very few instances in which the Social Security Administration should alter its rules or regulations to accommodate a circuit court ruling. Following a brief introduction, Part II of this Article describes the standard adjudication of a Social Security Disability Case to provide an example of administrative workings. Next, Part III further articulates the problems created by non-acquiescence. Finally, Parts IV and V discuss the impact of non-acquiescence from a policy and legal perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The China Auto Parts case is a historic one set in the broad context of the political economy and hard-line development policies of China. Through this case, trade policy makers in Beijing learned the lesson of the golden rule of international trade law, which is helping the Chinese Communist Party overcome domestic interest group pressure and get on with the job of reform. China could also learn that World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement provides a good channel through which trade disputes among superpower countries could be solved with efficacy and alacrity. A shift toward consistent non-discriminatory behaviour will help one of the fastest-growing developing countries emerge into a responsible stakeholder on the world economic stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how silence, the concept of acquiescence, of states plays a significant role in the state relationships among other states. Topics discussed include use of silence as an application in the settlement of disputes by international tribunals; confusion of international courts in the treatment of silence; the tribunals' concern on voluntarism debate regarding the legal value of state silence; and materialisation of the legal concept of acquiescence.

Free trade zones have been championed by policy makers as important mechanisms for the “economic liberalisation” and “globalisation” of the Middle East. While a growing number of political economists have begun to investigate the performance of these projects, few have considered why states voluntarily limit their sovereign powers by establishing these liberalised territories. To address this question, this paper studies the Jebel Ali free trade zone in Dubai (UAE) and the Kish free trade zone in Iran, two of the earliest such projects in the region. Rather than being products of neoliberal ideology or pressure from advanced industrial economies, the essay argues that paradoxically these zones were developed by the Iranian state and Dubai emirate to project territorial sovereignty in turbulent geostrategic settings and moments as well as nodes to circulate rent to domestic and international members of ruling coalitions. The geostrategic and state-building logics informed when, where, and how these projects were developed. More generally, this analysis illustrates that the Middle East is neither absent from the process of globalisation, nor does it simply respond passively and reactively to this complex process. Free trade zones are an example of local strategies working in consort with international processes to fashion new forms of economic and political interconnectedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses political assassinations in post-civil war Lebanon. Targeted assassinations intensified during the transitional period from war to peace (1989-91), and peaked after the murder of former prime minister Rafik Hariri in February 2005. From 1989 to the present, 35 major attacks killed and maimed politicians and journalists in addition to innocent bystanders. No Middle Eastern country has such a grim record of political assassinations, the large majority of them unsolved. This article is a first step in examining the timing, scale and context of assassinations in Lebanon over longer timescales to account for violence in 'post-war countries'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information of the closed panel system derived from China and its application to tribunal formation. The closed panel system is considered as the Chinese point-of-view towards globalization and the parties can designate arbitrators for its commission, but it is also accepting the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) Model Law standards.

This article presents a rebuttal to a previous essay by Judith Blau and Alberto Moncada on human rights violations and the potential to strengthen international law in that area. Blau and Moncada argued that there is little reason to distinguish between violations of human rights and of humanitarian law. The authors are skeptical of their purely legalistic solution. They counter that international law will be an ineffective tool for such a purpose, as it is currently unable to achieve even minor reforms.

A primary function of auditor independence regulation is to ensure that any financial incentives auditors may have to approve misleading or inaccurate accounting are outweighed by market and regulatory deterrents to compromising an auditor's independence. This article is an inquiry into the current state of this incentive equilibrium in the United Kingdom: the possible costs and benefits that may be incurred by auditors if they elect to acquiesce to management's demands to accept problematic accounting. It argues that the equilibrium position currently incentivizes a rational auditor to acquiesce. On the one hand, the article demonstrates that the recent evolution of audit firm revenue streams has provided auditors with a substantial incentive to compromise their independence and provided management with credible sanctions to pressurize them to do so. On the other hand, the article shows that regulatory and market costs of acquiescence do not counterbalance the benefits of acquiescence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On those rare occasions when scholars of international organizations (IOs) consider the issue of change, they typically highlight the centrality of states. Although states are important for understanding when and why there is a change in the tasks, mandate, and design of IO, IOs themselves can initiate change. Drawing from sociological institutional and resource dependence approaches, in this article we treat IOs as strategic actors that can choose among a set of strategies in order to pursue their goals in response to changing environmental pressures and constraints that potentially threaten their relevance and resource base. We delineate six strategies—acquiescence, compromise, avoidance, defiance, manipulation, and strategic social construction, and suggest that the strategic choice by IOs is contingent on the level of both organizational insecurity and the congruence between the content of environmental pressures and organizational culture. We emphasize how IOs must make a trade-off between acquiring the resources necessary to survive and be secure, on the one hand, and maintaining autonomy, on the other. We apply this framework to the case of Interpol, investigating how different calculations of these trade-offs led Interpol staff to adopt different strategies depending on its willingness to accept, resist, or initiate changes that demand conformity to external pressures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boundaries between States have long been a major source of international conflicts, and international law has adopted the principles of acquiescence and estoppel in stabilising and adjudicating upon any such frictions. Whilst the principles have generally served their purpose, the International Court of Justice failed to apply them correctly in Temple of Preah Vihear, a decision that will be scrutinised herein against the essential elements of acquiescence and estoppel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the ways in which Richard Rorty's pragmatist political thought defuses or dissolves the apparent dilemma about acquiescence in political thought. Moral and political progress envisaged by Rorty in terms of the universalization of the liberal-democratic model; Analysis of pertinent topics and relevant issues; Implications on studies of social and political theory.