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In the violence trap framework, ruling elites use rents to control contending elites who pose a violent threat. Political development results in transitions from a fragile state, wherein rents are tentative and personalized, to a basic natural state, and then a mature natural state, through standardization of elite privileges, consolidated state control of the political-military apparatus, and the enactment of a credible contracts regime. Accordingly, the institutional logic of fragile states is rooted in the incentives that undergird elite bounded rationality, transacting under highly personalized, tentative patronage networks. The paper addresses the question of why fragile states fail to develop into basic natural states. In doing so, it applies the violence trap analytical framework to illustrate the logic of the fragile state through a most different systems (MDS) comparison of Afghanistan and South Sudan. The main finding is that the institutional logic of the fragile state in the two cases is rooted in a lack of three necessary conditions: institutional incentives for broadening elite consensus, credible patronage agreements among different elite groups, and a consolidated state with specialized political and military functions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of compact nation-states out of multi-ethnic empires in the Balkans was accompanied by bouts of ethnic cleansing. Critical histories of the emergence of the modern Balkan states have consequently tended to focus on ethnic violence. However, state violence often targeted the ‘dominant’ ethnic group as well, as its centralizing and modernizing agenda put it at loggerheads with traditional sources power and autonomy. Conscription was perhaps the most important dimension of state-building, as it sought to buttress the state’s military machine, all while demanding significant coercive power to register, draft, and discipline young men. Conscription thus came up against intense popular resistance, especially in the decade of total war of the 1910s. In Greece, this spiralled into episodes of virtual civil war. This article focuses on resistance to the draft during the first recruitment drive of the National Defence Government in Greek Macedonia, with special emphasis on the Chalkidiki revolt of 1916–17. It uses this case study to explore broader trends about the formation of the modern Balkan nation-states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the postwar period of 1918–1919, specifically focusing on the situation in Lebanon and the Levant following the Allied occupation of Ottoman territories. The aim of the article is to reexamine the situation in the former Ottoman territories that became modern Lebanon, and assess the nationalistic wishes as expressed by their people. To do this, the global and regional political context is established, before homing in on the establishment of the “1919 Inter-Allied Commission on Mandates in Turkey,” more commonly known as the King-Crane Commission. This fact-finding mission provides a uniquely direct understanding of the wishes of the Lebanese people, so its work, as well as the complementary writings of its members, are analyzed contextually to determine what accurate results can be derived. By doing so, the article sheds further light on Lebanese popular will after World War I. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the case of Canaan – a massive informal settlement that emerged in the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti – in order to examine the often-forgotten aftermath of international aid programming in an urban, fragile-state context. Originally categorized as an (informal) internal displacement site, Canaan continued to expand in the years following the quake, reaching an estimated population of 300,000 by 2016. Using a qualitative case study of Canaan conducted nearly 15 years after its creation, the paper makes two interrelated arguments: first, that the ways in which the United Nations' "durable solutions" framework is frequently understood and applied may be unrealistic and even deleterious for state–society relations in some fragile urban contexts. Second, even calls to shift (urban) internal displacement programming to a more development footing is far from a panacea if these interventions are not designed to be more politically nuanced, context-sensitive and modest about what can be achieved in such complex environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 terminated the country's democratisation. The crisis was more an outcome of the two-decade-long flawed state-building and democratisation, and the escalation of the insurgency than an overnight change in the country's politico-military landscape. This paper examines Afghanistan's failed democratization from 2001 to 2021 by focusing on five variables including stateness, welfare, rule of law, political regime, and political community. The paper explains how flawed progress in the five areas gradually eroded the democratisation process resulting in state collapse and the restoration of the Taliban's Islamic Emirate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Markets require rules, made and enforced by governments, and modern market-making has therefore unfolded as an intrinsic part of state-building. While the European Union is not a state, it has not been immune to these processes. Over the last three decades it has expanded its Single European Market and created a currency while constructing European political authority and deepening its institutional capacities. The EU has done this through supranational market-making largely centred on neoliberal precepts of competition and openness. Today, however, the EU is breaking with that tradition by pursuing a visibly interventionist European industrial policy and geopolitical market strategy. I suggest a theoretical framework to illuminate how this policy turn may reconfigure the EU's political authority and build it as a polity. After briefly identifying the contours of the new European industrial and geoeconomic policy, I outline a research agenda to probe how the new market activism may reformulate societal interests and coalitions, increase the politicisation of the EU's governing institutions, raise the stakes for democratic legitimation, and project the EU as a geopolitical actor. The conclusion notes how this new market-making translates into significant policy challenges for both the EU and the international economic order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Decisions the EU took in response to Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine have been assessed in scholarship as 'unprecedented' and 'unthinkable before'. The Union's response to the 2022 full‐scale invasion has thus been much stronger than the one linked to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The difference between the 2014 and 2022 responses can be attributed to many factors, particularly differences in the nature and scale of Russia's attacks and the US co‐ordination efforts during the Russian pre‐war military mobilization on Ukraine's borders. We show that, though these factors undoubtedly matter, it has been the path‐dependent dynamics of EU–Ukraine co‐operation on association relations, Ukraine's resilience‐building and the EU's socialization with Ukraine from the Euromaidan Revolution (2013‐14) to the 2022 invasion that contributed to the strength and promptness of the EU's response to Russia's full‐scale invasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most significant institutional developments in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the last war (1992-1995) was the establishment of the state-level Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its relevance increased when, as part of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia’s exit strategy, it was decided that a War Crimes Chamber would be established in the Court to continue the trial process. It should be noted that the very existence of an integral state of Bosnia and Herzegovina (one of the reasons for the war) is still in question today. Thus the creation of the Court was interpreted as a bid to strengthen state capacities. For this reason, since its very establishment, and even more so for its task of judging the war, it has been resented by the political leadership of one of the country's entities, the Republika Srpska, which has even tried to eliminate it. Against this background, the aim of this paper is to analyze how the Court itself perceives its actions (through statements of its presidency and official publications), especially the adjudication of war crimes, in the context of the debates on what the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina should be. The focus is on the period 2004-2017, when the presidency of the Court was held by Meddžida Kreso, particularly active in promoting her institution and in helping to identify it as an expression of the state.

As of 2024, the use of alternative dispute resolution is becoming increasingly relevant caused by the complicated access to justice due to martial law. The purpose of this study was to analyse the historical experience of using negotiations in Ukraine from the Middle Ages to the present day and to identify the vectors for further development of this institution. Both general scientific and special scientific methods were employed: formal legal and comparative legal methods. It was found that the term “negotiation” can be used in several meanings: 1) the process of reaching an agreement; 2) the stage of court proceedings; 3) the stage of mediation, conciliation, or other methods of alternative dispute resolution; 4) a separate method of alternative dispute resolution. As the times of Kyivan Rus, the Ruska Pravda prescribed an analogue of negotiations – the replacement of blood revenge with a payoff; in the 16th-century Lithuanian statutes, the negotiation process was called “unity”. The “Rights by which the Little Russian people are judged” of the mid-18th century defined two forms of documents drafted as a result of negotiations: a conciliation agreement (without the participation of mediators) and a conciliation verdict (with the participation of mediators). During the Soviet era, legislation tended to establish the right to judicial protection depending on the previous use of alternative dispute resolution. However, since Ukraine’s independence, this trend has changed, and the law now prescribes the right of everyone to choose how to protect their rights. Further vectors for the development of the institution of negotiations in Ukraine may include the introduction of various types of platforms for remote participation in the negotiation process, as well as the development of the legal framework towards detailing negotiation procedures. The findings of this study can be used in teaching disciplines of the historical and legal cycle in higher education institutions of Ukraine, as well as for further forecasting the development of this institution and its improvement

This article analyses taxation practices in colonial, post-colonial rebel-led, and independent South Sudan and argues that the ethos of taxation in the region has been and remains primarily oriented around predatory and coercive strategies of rule. This overarching pattern endures because the fundamental structure and rationale of revenue-raising practices, which collectively constitute South Sudan's revenue complex, have not changed since at least Anglo-Egyptian occupation of the region in 1899. The paper explains how tax collecting as predation began when the first colonial administration deployed taxes to acquire loyalty from customary authorities such as chiefs and sheikhs, who personally benefitted from their taxation powers. From the early 1960s to 2005, armed groups in the region periodically fought against Khartoum-led rule, and rebels extorted taxes from the population to help fuel their war efforts. Taxes in today's South Sudan, which acquired independence in 2011, are not collected to raise revenue except to pay off the individuals collecting them, and they continue to generate predation. The rise of international aid and windfalls from oil revenues have further diminished taxation's financial significance for the national government and have altered local authorities' coercive demands for payment. The portrait that emerges from the practices of South Sudan's successive war-makers and state-makers is one of taxation wielded as a technology of rule, one of coercion and often extortion, to fulfil the self-interests of tax collectors. The article is based on archival research in Sudanese and South Sudanese national archives, British colonial archives, and 205 interviews conducted in South Sudan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constituting a central historical link between war and long-term fiscal capacity, war taxes are generally perceived to be a thing of the past. This article corrects the picture by presenting new, global data on war taxes, 68 in total, introduced between 1960 and 2020. Far from having been abandoned, war taxes have remained a crucial war-time fiscal instrument, leaving long-term imprints on tax systems across the contemporary world. Serving the twin imperatives of revenue maximisation and generation of taxpayer consent, I argue that the use of war taxes is conditioned by the relative intensity and the perceived legitimacy of a war, be it civil or inter-state. The proposed logic aligns with case evidence, further supported by macro-quantitative analysis. The results speak to the large literature on war and state-building, challenge the standard disintegrative view of civil wars, and provide new empirical insights into the political economy of conflict-affected countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The likelihood of success criterion makes armed humanitarian action politically and morally prohibitive. Yet, the just war tradition is designed to confront egregious moral evils. To help reconcile these tensions, this essay questions the applicability of the success principle to armed humanitarian intervention. This questioning provokes reflection on how the just war theory's high threshold for success can rarely be achieved in the direct aftermath of humanitarian interventions. A low likelihood of success post bellum leads to the suggestion that the full demands of just war theory's tranquilitas ordinis definition of peace ought not to be required in the aftermath of armed humanitarian intervention. Guaranteed failure may be a more useful criterion than likelihood of success for interventions aimed at ending acute state-sponsored human rights atrocities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This summary discusses a special issue of Irish Political Studies that focuses on the reassessment of the early years of independent Ireland. The articles in this issue cover various aspects of the new Irish state, including the role of Fianna Fáil and its founder Éamon de Valera, the development of the civil service and state bureaucracy, the law-and-order rhetoric of the new state, the economic and financial dynamics, and the impact of partition. The goal of this reassessment is to deepen understanding of the origins and development of the Irish state. The authors of the summary, Mícheál Ó Fathartaigh and Mel Farrell, commend the contributors and editors of the special issue and provide their own credentials as historians. [Extracted from the article]

IntroductionOn August 15, 2021, in a strategic shock, the Taliban entered Kabul to seize power after a cascading crisis triggered by the Western military withdrawal and the reluctance of the Afghan government and its national security forces to engage in military conflict. The question arises as to where the roots of this unexpected political event lie. At the beginning of the 21st century, the September 11 attacks and the American government’s decisive analysis of the Taliban’s role set the stage for a military invasion led by an international coalition. Under U.S. leadership, Afghanistan became the frontline for implementing the strategy of war against terrorism. However, America’s sustained involvement in Afghanistan cannot be understood simply as an effort to eliminate Al-Qaeda terrorist groups. This objective appeared to be of secondary importance to the coalition forces, particularly the United States. The primary focus of their policies was the establishment of political and social stability within Afghan society. American security theorists believed that terrorism was a consequence of bankrupt governments and the social environment, which they saw as manifestations of chaos that had persisted for years. As a result, state-building in Afghanistan became a key focus of U.S. security policy. With the support of other nations and various international organizations, the United States pursued a policy aimed at forming a powerful government and a stable society in Afghanistan. This effort involved several steps, including drafting the constitution, holding presidential and parliamentary elections, building political institutions, and granting political and social freedoms to civil society institutions and political activists. The Karzai administration even invited the Taliban to join the government and renounce violence in hopes of establishing political stability and forming an inclusive government. The 2014 presidential election was therefore expected to be an important opportunity for the institutionalizing of a democratic government and the peaceful transfer of power in Afghanistan. However, many successive crises in Afghanistan seem to stem from the limitations and obstacles of the international state-building project. The governments have struggled to incorporate all political factions and effectively manage conflicts. Both the Karzai and Ghani administrations faced growing political and social instability and significant crises (e.g., crises of authority, influence, and legitimacy), ultimately losing the support of the Afghan people.After nearly two decades of democratization rhetoric supporting the international state-building initiative in Afghanistan, the modern state and democracy, with their inherent positive attributes, have yet to take root among the Afghan people. Moreover, political security and stability has remained elusive, becoming a rare and expensive commodity for both the elites and the general populace. In this respect, the present study aims to address the central question of what led to the failure of the political reconciliation process and the subsequent re-establishment of Taliban control in Afghanistan in August 2021. The research is based on the hypothesis that this political failure primarily stemmed from the unique nature of the international state-building project in Afghanistan. For the process of political settlement and the successful advancement of the state-building project to be effective, stability must be achieved on two levels: 1) horizontal stability and 2) vertical stability. To address the research question, the article first examined the political settlement among the elite and statesmen (horizontal stability), and then explored the legitimacy of the new political order within various segments of Afghan society (vertical stability).Materials and MethodsThe current study relied on a qualitative, causal-explanatory approach, as well as the data collected from library and internet sources. Following a pathological perspective, the research used a theoretical framework based on state-building and political stability to examine the Western efforts in state-building and political reconciliation in Afghanistan. It also sought to identify the reasons behind the failure of these policies, which ultimately led to the Taliban’s return to power within Afghanistan’s complex sociopolitical landscape during the period of 2014–2021.Results and DiscussionAccording to the theoretical framework of state-building and political stability, Afghanistan’s National Unity Government can be considered a point of weakness in the country’s state-building process. The National Unity Government consistently failed to control power centers, both directly and indirectly and was unable to establish its authority and legitimacy in dealing with these centrifugal forces. Formed with external support through a political agreement brokered by the United States, the government was a temporary solution intended to address the crisis through a short-term coalition. However, it faced numerous challenges, including internal political divisions, increasing financial dependence on foreign countries (particularly the U.S.), failed peace talks with the Taliban, a rise in suicide operations, the Afghan National Army’s inability to counter the Taliban and establish security, administrative corruption, and political and economic crises. These issues severely undermined the legitimacy and authority of Ashraf Ghani’s administration, making it increasingly fragile and unable to provide the necessary political stability during the transition period. According to the theoretical model, for the process of political settlement and the successful advancement of the state-building project to be effective, stability must be achieved on two levels: 1) horizontal stability characterized by political agreements, officials’ respect for their obligations, and adherence to the rules of the political game; and 2) vertical stability referring to the constructive and mutual interaction between the government and society, including the domestic legitimacy of the government and non-interference of external forces. In Afghanistan, however, the international state-building efforts led by the Western alliance failed to establish the necessary consensus at both the horizontal and vertical levels. ConclusionThe current study aimed to address the central question of what led to the failure of the political reconciliation process and the subsequent re-establishment of Taliban control in Afghanistan in August 2021. In the international war against terrorism, fragile states like Afghanistan became the focus of Western security discourse, leading to the proposal of international state-building through the theory of liberal peace as a solution to create political stability and a powerful central government in the country. This approach shaped the Western agenda in Afghanistan. However, nearly two decades later, the international state-building project failed to deliver the expected outcomes for both Afghan society and the international community. This article argued that the failure of national reconciliation and the peaceful political transition over the past two decades—especially after 2014—stems largely from the nature of the international state-building project. This project imposed a linear, mechanical, supranational–subordinate approach to state-building and political stability, failing to account for the internal dynamics and unique logic of intervened societies like Afghanistan. Therefore, the international state-building project struggled, as the liberal values of the West would contradict the traditional sociopolitical context of Afghan society. This fueled corruption, inefficiency, and the weakness of the quasi-government, which was heavily reliant on foreign support. Ultimately, the Taliban unexpectedly capitalized on anti-American sentiment among Afghans and regained power, plunging Afghanistan’s peaceful political transition into deep uncertainty.

The Turks are one of the oldest nations of the world, and there is evidence that they had established states very early in their history. The masses of the Turks living a nomadic life in the steppes had formed political structures diff erent from the state systems of settled societies, and we can call these "steppe states". The most important feature of the steppe states was that they did not have fi xed centers and ruled over expansive territories using their well-trained armies. Nomadic steppe states were unions of tribes. They were established not by settled states or cities, but by the gathering of nomads who had the power of war. A family with authority to rule ("kut" in ancient Turkic), which was received from God and could be held by legitimacy, established the state. The strength of the centralized structure depended on the ability to intervene in the remote corners of the state; otherwise, the dynamics of the steppe would bring about the rebellion of the connected tribes. The Turkic state existed in tribes formed by families connected to each other by blood kinship, and the state emerged from the tight, disciplined cooperation among these tribes. This gave the state a military character. Since the soldiers, horses and weapons were always ready for war, the expansion of the state was inevitable. Starting from the Huns until the 9th century, the center of these great states, which had a nomadic structure before Islam came onto the scene, was Ötüken, which was originally thought to be in the Orkhun Valley. After the 9th-10th centuries, Turkic states were established by Muslim horse warriors who combined urban and nomadic steppe traditions, making rich trade networks their political centers.

After the end of World War I, Eastern Europe entered a period of upheaval. The continental empires dissolved and new nation-states emerged. Following the ideas of Woodrow Wilson, democratization became the dominant political concept. But the meaning of “democracy” was unclear, and many different political groups claimed sovereignty over its interpretation. In this article, we want to take a closer look at the border regions between the newly emerg-ing nation-states of Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, which were characterized by a high degree of ethnic, religious, and social diversity. These border regions were also charac-terized by different experiences with politics, especially with voting rights and political parties. Despite their relative geographic proximity, Upper Silesia, Teschen Silesia, and Orava had very different political histories, being part of Prussia, the Austrian Crown Lands, andthe Kingdom of Hungary. While voting rights in the Kingdom of Hungary were severely restricted, the Austrian Crown Lands had universal male suffrage since 1907. In many cases, the concept of national belonging was very different from the political centersand often had a strong regional connotation—with regionalist movements claiming the idea of “self-deter-mination” for themselves. Thus, the regional conceptions of democracy and nationality that emerged in the brief period of 1918/19 are often unique and overlooked.

Why and how do African states become peacekeepers? Through a single-case study, this article accounts for a transformation in peace and security: how Ethiopia became the world's prime source of blue helmets in the early twenty-first century, having largely shunned peacekeeping in preceding decades. We propose that peacekeeping came to serve as an unexpectedly useful technology to pursue state-building agendas. Historically, regional proxy wars undermined state-building efforts in Ethiopia and mismanagement of ethno-linguistic diversity rendered it vulnerable to externally supported rebellions. In the 2000s, an evolving approach to peacekeeping dovetailed with the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front's (EPRDF) vision for recalibrating political order domestically and in the Horn of Africa. EPRDF became convinced that changing Ethiopia required changing its surrounding region. Regional intervention as peacekeeping was supported by global powers and helped bind neighbouring states to Ethiopia in new ways. This entailed the crafting of deep political ties in Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan that mitigated historical fears of Ethiopian hegemony and shielded EPRDF state-building from outside destabilization. Moreover, as Ethiopia's increasingly prominent role in United Nations and African Union missions improved the external environment for the EPRDF developmental state, it also expanded Ethiopian National Defence Force's role in the political economy, buttressing the party-state's hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Upon election in 2013, the first governors of the 47 counties created by Kenya's 2010 constitution assumed responsibility for the construction – in some cases, especially in the historically marginalized north of the country, essentially from scratch – of the local administrative apparatuses needed to perform devolved government functions and manage county budgets. In this article, I draw on government, news media, and interview data to examine the local electoral drivers of the substantial variation in the new county administrations' capacity and performance. A paired comparison of Turkana and West Pokot counties in Northern Kenya shows that threats to political survival posed by electoral opponents incentivize vertically accountable local leaders to substitute clientelism for state-building. To secure reelection in 2017, the governors of both counties needed to satisfy constituent demands for improved access to state resources. Faced with weak electoral rivals, the Turkana leader did so by extending public service delivery, which required the construction of a capable county government. In contrast, his West Pokot counterpart's vulnerability to electoral competition prompted reallocation of county resources to clients at the expense of investment in administrative capacity and public goods provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State-building process in Africa appears in different conditions to those experienced on other continents. It is primarily characterized by the presence of fixed borders. The article repurposes evolutionary and identitarian theories on the development of political communities for the African realities. It highlights the necessity to develop policies creating territorial division between the population of the state and the external environment and utilizing armed forces for the protection of the state against such an environment for the state-building process to succeed. In cases of Eritrea, Senegal, and Burkina Faso, three hypotheses are being tested with an outcome that state-building process connected to the creation of Nomos does not have to be violent but requires a connection of the armed forces to the society. Once the division between the Nomos and the hostis develops inside of the state, such entities are not able to develop power projection capabilities inside their borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1940s the Afghan dynasty in Kabul and newly independent rulers in Pakistan did not meet the challenges of building enduring representative political institutions and sustainable national economies. The dynamics of post-war globalized political and economic relationships undermined perceived elements of colonial-era stability. Borderland individuals and communities buffeted by post-war uncertainties and traumas from the Partition of British-India in August 1947 often ignored or resisted state-building efforts too often seen as lacking political legitimacy or local benefit. State institutional failures of governance in the 1970s that preceded subsequent decades of regional instability were foreshadowed in the 1940s. By 1950, the working of global capital, including in the form of American corporate interests, complicated any state notions that foreign funded economic development schemes might substitute for substantial structural political and social reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay applies existing research in new institutional economics to early modern European political theory so as to offer an interpretive proposal. Using Hobbes, Hume, and James Madison as examples, the essay proposes that understanding early modern European political theorists as inhabitants of developing countries (in a particular sense of that term) can benefit contemporary readers in interpreting some of these theorists' normative prescriptions. Early modern political theorists faced significant risk of large-scale violence, political instability, and state repression in polities that still struggled to accomplish goals such as implementing rule of law, protecting property rights, and widely distributing material resources using impartial criteria. By contrast, many contemporary readers of these writers live in the developed and liberal-democratic West. Contemporary readers are thus liable to normalize their own conditions and to underestimate the political-economic constraints under which early modern political theorists wrote, thereby misreading some of the latter's normative prescriptions. By interpreting early modern political theorists as writers who faced institutional constraints that have significantly receded in today's West, contemporary readers can enrich their understanding of these writers' objectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU is still fragile after its long decade of crises since 2008, and its durability remains an open question. New capacities were created during this time. But it is not clear how robust they are and whether developing them further will encounter insurmountable obstacles, including resentment by citizens. Over time, tensions and disagreements unleashed three foundational conflicts: conflicts over sovereignty (who decides), solidarity (who gets what when and why) and identity (who we are). The crisis politics that was deployed to deal with such tensions has often constrained policy responses in scope and effectiveness. Against the odds, however, the destructive spiral stopped short of driving the Union into self-destruction: a circumstance that calls for an explanation. We summarize empirical research that shows three ways in which this unexpected resilience can be explained: public rhetorical action, externalization strategies, and the paradoxical strengths of a weak centre in achieving polity maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blockchains have been hailed as a game-changing institutional technology. Most of the analysis of blockchains focuses on their uses in the Global North. Though there is increasing consideration of their uses in the Global South, few studies consider the uses of blockchains in fragile states. In this paper, we consider the potential for blockchain deployments by governments, international organizations, and citizens in fragile states. We find that government deployments are unlikely in fragile states, though blockchains can be useful through their increasing use by aid organizations and by providing people with opportunities, such as access to cryptocurrencies. Blockchains may be revolutionary, but the extent to which they have improved the lives of people in fragile states is questionable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike Eastern Ukraine, the territorial belonging of Western Ukrainian lands was determined by contractual agreements between European states. Reforms in Austria, and later in Austria-Hungary, as opposed to Russia, were based on the principles of Enlightenment ideology and values such as freedom, human rights, constitutionalism, and parliamentarism. In the medium-term perspective, this led to the Western Ukrainian community developing a sense of national consciousness, political organization, and the values of European civilization by the end of the 19th century. In this article, based on a comparative analysis of the historical experience of the Ukrainian community within two empires – the Russian and the Austro-Hungarian – the evolution of the process of national identity is examined. The study was conducted using general methods of scientific knowledge, in particular, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, abstraction, specification, and formalization. During the study, the author analyzed the peculiarities of the state and legal mechanisms for forming the ethnic identity of Ukrainians in the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. The prerequisites of Ukrainians’ ethnic self-identification are considered. The author analyses the historical and cultural foundations of establishing the Ukrainian nation with the modern state-building process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disagreements between European Union (EU) member states constrain the Union's capacity to manage conflicts such as Kosovo-Serbia. While Kosovo has long received EU support, five EU member states do not recognise its independence. How does the EU manage to work around member states' vetoes and mitigate contestation? In contrast to previous scholarship, the analysis of the EU enlargement process and visa liberalisation, the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue and the EULEX mission illustrate how institutional, technical and diplomatic solutions have allowed the provision of support to Kosovo, despite internal disagreements. EU member states have delegated to EU institutions the responsibility of overseeing day-to-day conflict management and integration policies concerning Kosovo and Serbia. EU institutions also use technical and constructively ambiguous language to manage conflicts and navigate the absence of political consensus regarding Kosovo's statehood. Additionally, the EU has fostered diplomatic collaboration with the United States (US) and with actors from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to navigate through the Kosovo-Serbia conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay (re-) introduces the concept of the migration state and its significance for migration studies in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, discussing its intellectual history and relationship to Hollifield's wider body of work. The authors lay out the main features of the ideal-typical liberal democratic migration state before discussing the extent to which it can be used to describe and theorise a wider variety of migration states, paying attention to the particularities of state development across different cases and regions, but also looking forward to how imperial and colonial legacies may shape future state responses to managing migration and mobility. Drawing on the individual contributions to this special issue, we suggest three theoretical and conceptual moves that can enrich our understanding of contemporary migration states: historicisation, decolonisation, and disaggregation. We discuss how the articles in this special issue engage with the migration state concept in ways that incorporate developments in migration studies over the past twenty years, using the concept to push the field in new temporal and comparative directions that open up the possibility of a more global approach to understanding migration. The essay concludes by looking at the future of the migration state and suggests areas for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid collapse of the Afghan state did not come as a surprise to those who are well-versed in the chequered history of the Law and Development Movement. While the Movement's one-size-fits-all modernization project has been largely rejected, such misguided efforts continue under the aims of "building the Rule of Law" or "improving governance." The fallout from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is a stark reminder for states and multilateral organizations not to overlook the lessons of the Movement that may have been obscured by the different banners under which state- and market-building efforts have been pursued. From the Movement's sincere yet naïve efforts of state-building between the 1950s and 70s, to its swing to build and support markets under the Washington Consensus paradigm in the 80s and 90s, and a later emphasis on good governance through state institutions from the 2000s onwards, it is clear that top-down state-building efforts have had limited success. The paper argues that the failure of the Afghanistan mission may have been avoided if the U.S. had turned to the lessons learned from the law-and-institutions-building enterprises of the past 70 years. Instead, the failure to heed these lessons led to the building of a state akin to a house of cards. By overlooking the importance of embedded cultural institutions, the legitimacy of the state as perceived by its people, and the dynamic interaction between formal and informal institutions, the state-building project in Afghanistan was bound to fail. Following the takeover by the Taliban, the small gains made in Afghanistan over the past two decades on the issues of hunger, poverty, health, and education have seen rapid deceleration and require urgent attention. The critiques outlined in this paper, informed by the experience of the Law and Development Movement, are meant to inform, not discourage, global engagement in advancing the human development agenda in Afghanistan and other fragile contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the potential of artificial intelligence technologies in teaching foreign languages and translation. It explores the advantages and possible challenges of using such technologies in language education and provides practical examples. The article also discusses perspectives on the future development and use of interactive artificial intelligence tools in the field of language teaching and translation. The integration of artificial intelligence into higher education has ushered in a new era of transformation in educational processes, reforming various aspects of the educational experience. The advantages of introducing artificial intelligence into higher education are numerous, ranging from personalized learning paths to intelligent assessment tools. The tools are classified into categories for students, teachers, and the education system. It identifies key results of such processes and examines various technologies, including Linguatech Learning Assistant, Linguatech Translation Tool, and Linguatech Language Lab, which help students improve their language and translation skills. The research examines the effectiveness of interactive tools in education, comparing their use in classroom and distance learning formats. The article's conclusions are significant for the development and improvement of language and translation education programs that use innovative artificial intelligence technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I offer a conceptual framework for ethnographic and theoretical investigations into the importance of the body of Christ (corpus mysticum) in shaping societal formations. Addressing gaps in the anthropology of Christianity, particularly its focus on individual connections to God, I turn attention to collectives formed through participation in the body of Christ. Examining evangelical practices on Malaita, a key island in the Solomon Islands, I explore how spiritual bonds with biblical Israel shape perceptions of the nation as a unified mystical body. The study highlights the importance they attribute to Moses sealing the covenant, revealing that nation-building extends beyond individual experiences through the mystery of the body of Christ. To conceptualise this, I draw on Ernst Kantorowicz's medieval notion of the mystical body, urging a re-evaluation of political theology within the field of the anthropology of religion to encompass theological mysteries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the end of World War I, Eastern Europe entered a period of upheaval. The continental empires dissolved and new nation-states emerged. Following the ideas of Woodrow Wilson, democratization became the dominant political concept. But the meaning of "democracy" was unclear, and many different political groups claimed sovereignty over its interpretation. In this article, we want to take a closer look at the border regions between the newly emerging nation-states of Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, which were characterized by a high degree of ethnic, religious, and social diversity. These border regions were also characterized by different experiences with politics, especially with voting rights and political parties. Despite their relative geographic proximity, Upper Silesia, Teschen Silesia, and Orava had very different political histories, being part of Prussia, the Austrian Crown Lands, and the Kingdom of Hungary. While voting rights in the Kingdom of Hungary were severely restricted, the Austrian Crown Lands had universal male suffrage since 1907. In many cases, the concept of national belonging was very different from the political centers and often had a strong regional connotation with regionalist movements claiming the idea of "self-determination" for themselves. Thus, the regional conceptions of democracy and nationality that emerged in the brief period of 1918/19 are often unique and overlooked. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hostilities that have been taking place in Ukraine since 2014 have made sociopolitical transformations related to the fateful issues of the future of the Ukrainian people and nation and their state-building processes particularly acute. In such circumstances, classical socio-philosophical issues come to the fore, as they allow us to comprehensively understand human social activity, its potential, and internal and external forces, and to assess the importance of the individual as a cultural and creative being. This issue is closely related to the anthropological one in the training of philosophers since future specialists must realize that man is the center of social and socio-political processes, that he is a microcosm in which the entire macrocosm is concentrated, as H. Skovoroda argued. The philosophical symbolism of the thinker's work is directly related to wisdom, akin to work, seeing the great in the small, revealing the mystery through the symbolic world. This is the way to a happy life. To be a human being is to be a philosopher, says Hryhorii Savych and the fate of each person is inseparable from the fate of the nation, and this unity lies in the world of freedom, which many do not understand, because it requires fighting the whole world on the principles of love, not hatred. This is the classical Ukrainian philosophy founded by H. Skovoroda. Its task is to awaken the main slogans of the Enlightenment (honor and dignity, freedom, justice, solidarity, morality) and to practically direct them to achieve both one's freedom and the freedom of an open society. The development of such a society in Ukraine is the goal of the modern national state-building process, and the realization of the value principles is the goal of philosophical education. Future philosophers, studying H. Skovoroda's creative heritage, can trace the evolution of the human spirit: internally devastated, without certain life guidelines, a person gradually adapts to life in society; overcomes contradictions between the individual and the general, finds a compromise in relations with the environment. Of course, not everyone will be able to successfully go through the path of their spiritual formation, since this process requires a significant strain of internal and external forces, unity and struggle of mind and feelings, worldly wisdom, and a desire to join in finding out the causes of human cruelty and arbitrariness, identifying the sources of humanity in man and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Syrian conflict was characterized by intense political contestation and violent clashes among various actors with contrasting views of statehood, a phenomenon termed ‘state-diffusion’. Within this landscape, Islamists, Kurdish separatists, and Ba'thists embody distinct perceptions of the Syrian state and nation. This study aims to measure the extent of “state-diffusion” in post-conflict Syria by exploring the outcomes of an independent public opinion survey. Specifically, it focuses on Syrians’ acceptance/rejection of the Assad regime by comparing regions that witnessed significant conflict-induced leadership changes with those that did not. The results reveal that regions under opposition’s governance exhibit a higher tendency towards ‘state-diffusion’; indicating a leaning towards rejecting the Syrian state-building and national unity initiated by the Assad regime. This rejection seemingly stems from the emergence of an alternative state and nation distinct from the existing Syrian nation-state. However, Assad’s legitimacy was more likely to be recognized in regions where the regime regained control after the conflict, perhaps due to their bitter experience of the devastating war and prolonged political turmoil. Thus, the ‘victory’ of the Assad regime does not necessarily promise the end of the conflict. Syrians are having a difficult time accommodating the resurgence of ‘Suriyya al-Asad’ or ‘Authoritarian Conflict Management’, leaving concerns about the future of political stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adaptation to the norms of nation-states has always been one of the most important issues for Southeast Asian countries. This paper takes Aceh and Western Papua as examples to explore their interaction with the central government of Indonesia and try to answer why local authorities have different responses after implementing the indirect rule. This study mainly uses process tracking methods to test the interaction between the central and local governments in Indonesia. This study believes that trust is the fundamental factor that determines whether the local authorities and the central government can have a positive interaction. This reason will change the central government in the process of State-building. The study found that Aceh and Western Papua had different feedback to the central government. The key lies in whether they form a "trust" interaction, rather than whether they adopt an inclusive system (democratic system). This study concluded the feedback difference between Aceh and Western Papua as a classic case shows that, as a country, it is not only represented by the central government but also needs the "trust" of the central government and local authorities to form good governance, as well as national development effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines four mechanisms for establishing federal spending programmes despite tough opposition based on identity or ideological politics, as well as disputes between haves and have-nots. It contrasts the use of clocks (time limits), caps, compartments (special justification for spending that would otherwise have been rejected), and carve-outs (exemptions to federal spending programmes to buy off objecting veto players) to secure political support for national-level programmes, and asks under what conditions those limits might be breached. We look at the EU, Canada, and the US. These tactics are most successful at “getting to yes” for federal authorities when they can isolate individual objections. As long as those objections persist, the limits will persist as well.