Mafia Filter

2020 ◽  
pp. 63-81
Author(s):  
Danilo Mandić
Keyword(s):  
South Ossetia ◽  
Host State ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Separatist Movement

This chapter compares the organized criminal filtering of regional smuggling opportunities (in drugs and arms) into separatist movement benefit. For separatists, it is preferable to have transnational smuggling in their region than not. This is trivial, almost axiomatic. Movements are denied formal channels for various resources they sorely need — money, arms, fighters, and propaganda channels. What they cannot procure within host state borders, they must smuggle across them. When separatists have the fortuitous circumstance of regional smuggling routes, it is only natural they exploit it. But the advantage does not come automatically. Mafia capacity and predisposition in these rackets at critical junctures — 1999 in Kosovo and 2008 in South Ossetia — enhanced and stagnated separatism, respectively.

Smuggling Kidneys and Uranium

2020 ◽  
pp. 82-102
Author(s):  
Danilo Mandić
Keyword(s):  
Damage Control ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
South Ossetia ◽  
The Public ◽  
Host State ◽  
Enriched Uranium ◽  
Separatist Movement

This chapter examines the exposure of two nefarious criminal episodes — organ smuggling in Kosovo and highly enriched uranium (HEU) smuggling in South Ossetia — which tested the resolve, organization, and patriotism of specialized mafias. Caught red-handed, the traffickers tainted separatists' legitimacy as the public scandals provoked repression from international military authorities (in Kosovo) or the host state (in South Ossetia). Damage control was necessary — but only one separatist movement managed it. The chapter compares three dimensions of mafia capacity: infrastructure, regarding control of borders and sites; autonomy, concerning the ability to leverage separatist ideology and instrumentalize movement institutions; and community, apropos levels of fear, discipline, and clan-based solidarity. Nefarious crime harmed Kosovo's separatists less because mafia capacity was greater, thereby containing the damage.

The Third Man

2020 ◽  
pp. 39-62
Author(s):  
Danilo Mandić
Keyword(s):  
Organized Crime ◽  
Black Market ◽  
South Ossetia ◽  
Host State ◽  
The Third ◽  
Formal Economy ◽  
Similar Pair ◽  
Separatist Movement

This chapter traces host state, separatist movement, and mafia relations in Serbia and Georgia (1989–2012). Kosovo and South Ossetia are the most similar pair of separatist stories in the ex-Yugoslav and ex-Soviet spaces. Their unique mix of wars (foreign and civil), separatist mobilizations (some successful, others less so), and mafia roles (sometimes tearing states, sometimes consolidating them) offers precious lessons on the agency of organized crime. In Serbia and Georgia, war was mafia as much as state business. Borders were made and unmade by smugglers. The black market was not an anomaly; the formal economy was. What separatists achieved depended tremendously on whether organized crime was multiethnic or not, violent or not, strong or not. Different mafia roles gave different results. Though organized crime in both countries began as a rejoicing third, the mafia's role in Kosovo evolved into a divider and conqueror, while in South Ossetia it evolved into a mediator. These differing trajectories account for the greater success of Kosovo's separatist movement.

The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Laurence
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Muslim Immigrants ◽  
European Democracy ◽  
The Government ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Integration Problems ◽  
Muslim Minorities

This book traces how governments across Western Europe have responded to the growing presence of Muslim immigrants in their countries over the past fifty years. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews with government officials and religious leaders in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Morocco, and Turkey, the book challenges the widespread notion that Europe's Muslim minorities represent a threat to liberal democracy. The book documents how European governments in the 1970s and 1980s excluded Islam from domestic institutions, instead inviting foreign powers like Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Turkey to oversee the practice of Islam among immigrants in European host societies. But since the 1990s, amid rising integration problems and fears about terrorism, governments have aggressively stepped up efforts to reach out to their Muslim communities and incorporate them into the institutional, political, and cultural fabrics of European democracy. The book places these efforts—particularly the government-led creation of Islamic councils—within a broader theoretical context and gleans insights from government interactions with groups such as trade unions and Jewish communities at previous critical junctures in European state-building. By examining how state–mosque relations in Europe are linked to the ongoing struggle for religious and political authority in the Muslim-majority world, the book sheds light on the geopolitical implications of a religious minority's transition from outsiders to citizens. This book offers a much-needed reassessment that foresees the continuing integration of Muslims into European civil society and politics in the coming decades.

Sphagnum mosses (Sphagnaceae, Bryophyta) of South Ossetia (Caucasus)

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 232-241 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Ya. Doroshina ◽  
E. Yu. Kuzmina ◽  
I. A. Nikolajev
Keyword(s):  
The South ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
South Ossetia ◽  
Sphagnum Mosses ◽  
Botanical Institute ◽  
Ecological Conditions ◽  
Komarov Botanical Institute ◽  
The World ◽  
First Time

Information on the Sphagnum mosses of the South Ossetia is generalized, the resulted list is presented. Nine species of Sphagnum are included in the list, whereabouts data and references to the publications are given, and the presence of a sample in the Herbarium of the Komarov Botanical Institute RAS (LE) is noted. The species Sphagnum platyphyllum (Lindb. ex Braithw.) Warnst. rarely occurring in the Caucasus is reported in the South Ossetia for the first time. The species was found in the Caucasus, South Ossetia, at the side of the Ertso Lake (42°28ʹN, 43°45ʹE), 1720 m a. s. l., among sedge thickets at the margin of the overgrowing lake. The peculiarities of its occurrence and ecological conditions are considered. Its distribution in the Caucasus and in the world is discussed.

Time in International Organizations and International Organizations in Time

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugénia C. Heldt
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
Incremental Change ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Pressure Time ◽  
Multilateral System ◽  
System Time ◽  
Over Time

Time plays a central role in international organizations (IOs). Interactions among actors are embedded in a temporal dimension, and actors use formal and informal time rules, time discourses, and time pressure to obtain concessions from their counterparts. By the same token, legacies and innovations within and outside IOs can be examined as a dynamic process evolving over time. Against this background, this chapter has a twofold aim. First, it examines how actors use time in IOs with a particular focus on multilateral negotiations to justify their actions. Drawing on international relations studies and negotiation analysis, this piece explores six different dimensions of time in the multilateral system: time pressure, time discourse, time rules, time costs, time horizons, and time as a resource. Second, this chapter delineates the evolution of IOs over time with the focus on innovations that emerge to adapt their institutional system to new political and economic circumstances. This piece looks particularly at endogenous and exogenous changes in IOs, recurring to central concepts used by historical institutionalism, including path dependence, critical junctures, and sequencing. This allows us to map patterns of incremental change, such as displacement, conversion, drift, and layering.

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