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Contrary to the arguments in most of the literature, the central government of China applies diversified rather than homogenous measures to govern its Ethnic Tibetan Autonomous Areas (ETAA). Applying the analytical framework of 'inner and outer peripheries', this research argues that the central government has favoured the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR), particularly in state fiscal assistance, over the other ETAAs, due to its unique governance challenge. This research analyses the central government's fiscal assistance to the ETAAs from 2010 to 2019 and reveals an increasing fiscal gap between them. Not only has the TAR been consistently in the lead but fiscal inequality has also grown among ETAAs in the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai and Gansu. Fieldwork in the TAR, Yunnan, Gansu and Sichuan reveals that the fiscal gap, combined with varied local circumstances, has created multifaceted social and economic unevenness in the ETAAs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study revisits the question of whether China's economic development has brought democratic changes within the country or not. While the modernization theory suggests that economic development should lead to democratization, scholars claim that China has not made democratic progress despite its economic growth. By comparing these two competing perspectives and examining the evidence behind each assessment, I argue that there has been a certain degree of democratic progress in China, in terms of increasing social aspirations for a more open and free society among the Chinese people. I explain why and how scholars reach different conclusions about democratic progress in China, and emphasize the importance of understanding discrepancies between (1) the lack of change in the state's system, (2) oscillation between liberal and illiberal policies, and (3) progressive changes in society. This article draws on previous studies and data from the World Value System, Varieties of Democracy, and Asian Barometer projects. It also discusses how Chinese people's local understanding of democracy affects the assessment of modernization theory's applicability in explaining China's case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of FinanzRundschau is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The inception of Telangana as a state occurred in June 2014, following a long-standing struggle by the region's inhabitants for separate statehood. Since its establishment, Telangana has gradually distinguished itself from its parent state and embarked on its path of development. This paper endeavours to examine the origins and progression of the demand for Telangana's separate statehood, followed by an exploration of the process involved in creating the new state. Subsequently, it delves into the post-statehood narrative of Telangana, shedding light on some of the challenges it has faced since its creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop a theory of the accumulation of state capacity as the outcome of a political competition between elites and (civil) society. State capacity is accumulated by elites, and it is productive as well as useful in controlling society. However, society can fight back and accumulate its own capacity, facilitating collective action. The theory leads to three distinct equilibria depending on initial conditions. One type, a weak state, emerges when society is strong relative to the elite. Another, a despotic state, originates where the elite is initially relatively powerful. A third type, an inclusive state, emerges when the elite and society are more evenly matched. The theory has several important implications; first, variation in state capacity does not require large structural differences; second, inclusive states have the highest levels of state capacity in the long run; third, the effects of shocks or external threats like wars are conditional on the balance of power between elites and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the issue of rescission in the constitutional amendment process. It discusses the erosion of the amendment process and the example of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to illustrate this erosion. It further concludes that permitting state rescission would undermine the careful balance of power between the states and the federal government in the amendment process.

The article addresses legal demands of Navajo or Dinétah statehood in the U.S. Topics discussed include legal significance of statehood, procedural steps and obstacles facing any effort to establish a recognized Dinétah state as the country's 51st state, and arguments for and against statehood.

The article focuses on the Indigenous Peoples in Myanmar and the challenges they face in terms of recognition and rights. It mentions the political divisions within Myanmar, with the country being divided into seven states, seven regions, and one union territory. It discusses eight ethnic groups including Karen, Karenni, and Chin.

We argue patterns of state failure are influenced by variation in how states emerged as independent political actors. In particular, states with positive birth legacies, those whose emergence required relatively high levels of capacity and legitimacy, should be less likely to experience state failure than countries that experienced less auspicious births. We assess this claim on the universe of states in the international system between 1950 and 2002 with multistate duration models that estimate the probabilities states transition into and out of periods of failure. We find that states with positive birth legacies are less likely to experience state failure and that this relationship is driven by states with positive birth legacies being able to more quickly transition from failure back to being functioning states. Our findings offer evidence that state failure is usefully thought of in the context of state-making processes and show that how states emerge as independent actors influences phenomena central to comparative and international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article apply the Grotian Moment theory to the legal criteria of statehood, in an attempt to assess whether an evolution in specific elements of statehood has resulted in such paradigm-shifting Grotian Moments. It mentions Grotian Moment theory, while distinguishing it front other types of customary law formation. It also mentions reconceptualization of the legal theory of statehood and undertaken out of a sense of legal obligation.

We outline the main concerns for grappling with increasing environmental disasters in this Symposium. Our focus is threefold: first, to theoretically investigate what constitutes an environmental disaster and identify the parameters for political responses through the discourse in high level multilateral fora; through the construction of the sovereign state system; and through the promotion of ignorance. Second, we aim to identify contemporary practices of the state that exacerbate the impact of, and responses to, environmental disasters. We show how states promote extractivism based on limited understandings of nature drawn from Western political liberal philosophy. Finally, we highlight the strengths and weaknesses in political and institutional responses at the local level to such disasters by state and non-state actors. This shows how both slow and fast violence of environmental disasters affects communities, but also how vulnerable subjects are predicated on pre-existing capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sovereign States have had to take drastic measures to contain the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including measures severely restricting the operation of businesses in their territory. In addition, and because of, the public health crisis, States will be forced to take a series of measures to stimulate their economies. These measures are likely to affect investments that benefit from international investment protection, leading these investors to contemplate initiating arbitration proceedings against the host State. This article examines whether, when faced with such claims, host States will be able to resort to the doctrine of necessity under customary international law to defend the measures that they have taken. In doing so, it draws on the application of the doctrine of necessity in international investment arbitration so far, including its application to disputes arising out of the Argentine financial crisis. The article proposes a more analytical approach to the doctrine of necessity in customary international law, which will be vital if the doctrine is to remain relevant as a measure of last resort to which States can turn when faced with a crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines state-city conflicts and how they reflect urban-rural polarization. It explores the features of state democratic practice, namely state legislative capture, anti-urban bias and metropolitanism. Topics discussed include the contribution of these features to intrastate and national polarization, and the mechanisms to address the urban-rural divide.

This study investigated the competitiveness index of the fourteen states in Malaysia. It also examined various aspects of competitiveness among states and vital elements that might influence competitiveness by utilizing a three-level hierarchical indicator system encompassing economic, social and environmental factors. An equally weighted index was applied to scrutinize the three dimensions. The index output was based on 24 indicators across six components. The critical components were economic performance, economic structure, marketization and openness, social aspects, domestic security and environmental quality. This study also examined the relationship between the components of competitiveness and economic growth for states in Malaysia by using the panel data estimation approach; a method which utilised data sets for fourteen states over a period extending from 2005 to 2016. Data were then analysed using a panel data regression model. Overall, findings showed that Selangor, where Kuala Lumpur the national capital was situated, was the most competitive state. In 2016, Kuala Lumpur was the best performer in terms of economic performance, social aspects and environmental quality. It was also found that domestic security and environmental quality were significant determinants of economic growth, which had enhanced competitiveness among states in Malaysia. A state’s performance according to the three dimensions varied greatly as there were different factors of specializations for each state. This study has proposed that each state in the federation possessed a significant economic performance, as well as substantial social and environmental development to ensure and sustain their respective state of competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on a study conducted by Claudia Flores and colleagues on laws and policies regarding police use of lethal force to analyze whether these comport with international human rights standards. Topics discussed include the findings of the study, reasons for the difficulty to achieve improvements in law enforcement practices, and the impact of human rights standards that affect law enforcement practices on newly independent states.

Low‐level military operations outside of war are pervasive in the international system. These activities have been viewed as destabilizing by both academics and policy makers, as miscalculations or missteps in conducting low‐level operations can risk escalation to war. I show the opposite can be true: these operations can prevent escalation to a greater war. I examine a type of low‐level conflict that I call "hassling" in the common framework of bargaining and war. The critical feature of hassling is that it weakens a targeted state. I find that when a rising power rules out peaceful bargains, hassling the rising power can prevent a preventive war, with efficiency gains for the involved states. This intuition is formalized in a dynamic model of conflict and is explored through examinations of Israel's Operation Outside the Box (2007), the United States' involvement in Iraq (1991–2003), and Russia's operations in Ukraine (beginning in 2014). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The strategies of subordinate states in hegemonic or asymmetrical relations have been widely studied by international relations scholars. Such works generally focus on how a subordinate state can influence the hegemon's behavior so as to address and further the interests of the subordinate state. The relation between subordinate-state agency and the hegemonic system, the makeup of the hegemonic order, itself receives less attention. Through analysis of two cases of US hegemony in Latin America, this article examines how subordinate-state agency may strengthen or weaken the hegemonic system and, as such, makes a case for subordinate-state agency as an underpinning element of hegemony. It explores Colombian agency in the design phase of Plan Colombia as contributing to US hegemony, while Bolivian agency under the presidency of Evo Morales is examined as a challenge. In both instances, it was the United States, rather than the Latin American states, that took on a passive role, leaving the initiative with Colombia and Bolivia. Therefore, instead of reaffirmations of active one-way US hegemony versus passive subordinate states, the paper proposes to understand both cases as demonstrating the importance of subordinate-state agency in the configuration of the hegemonic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can the secular State respond to a moral protest? Is it physically and politically capable of hearing moral suasion? Beginning with a heretical reading of Hobbes' anatomy of the State in the Leviathan, this essay answers these questions by examining the State as a deaf body. As a result of this reading, the essay conceptualizes the limit of the State in terms of vocal gestures by examining the reality of the Qur'an as a vocal writing. It therefore suggests that one might rethink its untranslatability as the untranslatibility, not simply of a language, but of a vocal gesture. Eventually, the essay deploys an analysis of recent movements of protest as vocal acts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International law and scholarship tend to ascribe certain perceived human attributes to States and to call upon those attributes as a basis for rationalizing how States conduct themselves in the international system and--particularly--to justify international norms and distributive outcomes. Specifically, like humans, States are presumed to be (1) choice-driven, (2) rational, and (3) predominantly autonomous. These, and other anthropomorphic attributions, pervade social science and, as Professor Jean d'Aspremont confirms, are particularly commonplace in international legal scholarship. However, this anthropomorphic conception of the State actor is empirically unsubstantiated and is an incomplete model for understanding why and how States do what they do and for justifying the international legal order. Because much of the international legal order relies on these empirically unsubstantiated ideas, a theoretical discrepancy exists between what international lawyers believe is happening and the actual reality of global law and governance. These attributions are congenital. They played a key role in how modern international law originated, which explains why they are still operative in how contemporary international law functions. To demonstrate this, I propose a historical account of one of the processes through which international law came to incorporate and depend on these attributions. I start with the explicit assertion often made by the early theorists of international law, in this instance Francisco de Vitoria, that international legal actors must--and in fact do--possess reason. I argue that because these assertions were often made in a throwaway manner, mainstream historical works in international law tend to either miss or underappreciate their significance. I show that Vitoria's belief that the legal actor is a rational being is not peripheral but rather central to his account of international law for three main reasons. First, Vitoria suggests that possession of reason or rationality is the sole basis of legal subjectivity in the law of nations. Relatedly, because they possess reason, international legal actors are necessarily autonomous. Second, by arguing that all legal actors are similar because they reason, Vitoria suggests that international law can properly apply to them in a fair and neutral fashion. In effect, the attribution of rationality allows Vitoria to legitimize an overarching normative framework within which relations between the legal actors may be assessed from an objective standpoint. Third--and finally--to reinforce this framework, Vitoria characterizes any opposition to the common normative framework as emanating from the actors' self-interest or bad faith and, accordingly, as inherently inimical to the common interest of all subjects of jus gentium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The anarchic international system is actually heavily structured: communities of states join together for common benefit; strong states form hierarchical relationships with weak states to enforce order and achieve preferred outcomes. Breaking from prior research, we conceptualize structures such as community and hierarchy as properties of networks of states' interactions that can capture unobserved constraints in state behavior, constraints that may reduce conflict. We offer two claims. One, common membership in trade communities pacifies to the extent that breaking trade ties would entail high switching costs: thus, we expect heavy arms trade, more than most types of commercial trade, to reduce intracommunity conflict. Two, this is driven by hierarchical communities in which strong states can use high switching costs as leverage to constrain conflict between weaker states in the community. We find empirical support for these claims using a time-dependent multilayer network model and a new measure of hierarchy based on network centrality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upstate, downstate, and outstate are informal place names, informal in that they do not have locational coordinates or defined dimensions. They are, however, useful designators for the peripheral areas of US American states with dominant urban population cores. Beginning with upstate, this study focuses on the earliest known printed uses of each peripheral term in connection with the 50 states. It looks at how core area newspapers and other critics have deprecated the rural aspect of these peripherals, leading rural residents in some states to argue against further use of the informal name. The study also reports on the results of promotional efforts to capitalize on upstate, downstate, or outstate in naming of enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using new estimates of state-level public opinion, I explore the relationship between support for increased education spending and statewide per-pupil expenditures from 1986 to 2013. In the 1980s, there was a modest, positive relationship between public opinion and actual spending: States with greater support for increased education spending tended to have slightly higher per pupil expenditures. Over the next three decades, this relationship reversed. States with relatively low per-pupil expenditures tended to increase their spending at a slower rate despite steady growth in support for more spending. As a result, public opinion and education spending became inversely related. By the end of the time series, states with greater support for increased education spending tended to spend less per pupil. The changing distribution of local, state, and federal sources of education spending partially explains this pattern. As federal education expenditures rose, some states spent proportionally less from state and local sources, resulting in smaller overall spending increases in those states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses issues on weak and failing states which have been recognized as threats to global security. Yemen is cited as one of the dozens so-called states. Such states are the borderline countries where weak governance and poverty are said to have made them attractive hubs for terrorist groups and criminal syndicates. Several initiatives undertaken by U.S. to confront the issue of failing states are cited which include boosting economic assistance. The global community has also responded to the said concerns.

The article offers information on referring to laws that seek to expand the number of individuals eligible to work in a state, right-to-work laws refer to union-security legislation. Topics include support labor unions, and that companies are more likely to do business in right-to-work states; and benefits derived from union negotiations with employers.

The article focuses on the division of state parties and non-states parties to the Rome Statute as a consequence of the institutionalization of international criminal law through the International Criminal Court, and how this undermines the notion that the international community condemns mass atrocity crimes. Topics discussed are shared values of international criminal law such as rule of law and support for prosecution of criminals and the role of the ICC in international criminal justice.

Given that minority ethno-political organizations are generally weaker than states yet seek to change their policies or remove the ruling regime from power, why would negotiation occur? States prefer to ignore or repress such organizations, which typically have little to offer in return amidst negotiations that can legitimize them while delegitimizing the state. When a challenging organization establishes governing structures and controls movement in part of a state's territory, however, it can easily inflict significant economic and political costs on the state while also possessing a valuable asset to exchange for concessions. An organization with territorial control cannot be ignored, while the state will have a strong incentive to negotiate before the state loses more face, the group gains more legitimacy, neighboring states are more likely to invade, and the international community is more likely to formally recognize any facts on the ground as a new status quo. Our analysis of 118 organizations in the Middle East and North Africa from 1980–2004 reveals that territorial control is the most important determinant of intrastate negotiation. In regards to existing scholarship, this suggests that a certain type of successful violence works—not all violence and not only nonviolence—while certain types of strong organizations—those that control territory—are more likely to reach negotiations with the state than weak ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]