China will maintain commitment to climate action

Significance The China-US joint declaration to enhance climate cooperation, made on the final day of the summit, gives cause for optimism, despite bilateral relations worsening overall. China’s low profile at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow last November should not be taken as indicating that the country is wavering on its commitment to climate action. Impacts There will be strong political pressure within China to meet climate targets ahead of time. China’s announcement that it will no longer finance overseas coal projects is a clear signal of support for the greening of BRI investments. Beijing will continue pushing for developed countries to meet climate finance commitments to developing countries.

Entangled political histories of twentieth-century West Africa: The case of Guinean exile networks

Following independence in 1958, hundreds of Guinean soldiers, students, and politicians fled their home country in order to build an opposition to President Sékou Touré in exile. This article examines how these exiles built regional and global networks in order to effect political change. In turn, West African states sought to manage exiles in order to apply political pressure on regional rivals. Despite their liminality in a region increasingly dominated by national politics and international organizations, exiles were at the centre of political contestations surrounding citizenship, sovereignty, and human rights that emerged in the three decades following decolonization. Their history underscores the importance of regional frameworks in shaping the post-colonial order in West Africa.

Vorinsolvenzlicher Restrukturierungsrahmen für Deutschland unter dem Einfluss der EU-Restrukturierungsrichtlinie

Under the political pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic, the German legislature implemented the EU Restructuring Directive at record speed with the StaRUG, thus creating for the first time a legal framework for corporate restructuring outside of insolvency proceedings. This study examines the highly topical transposition act in terms of its practical suitability and, on the basis of remaining regulatory gaps, develops an alternative doctrinal and structural approach that initiates further reform debates in the upcoming evaluation process. The author concludes that, de lege ferenda, German restructuring law should be enriched by a minimally invasive contractual framework that offers SMEs in particular a quick and cost-effective alternative.

Contested Internationalized Statism in the US

This chapter examines debates about openness towards Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) investments in the United States. Although the US is often seen as economically liberal and open, there has been powerful political pressure to restrict overseas investment. Congress has sought increased restrictions on grounds of national security. In contrast, traditionally the executive has favoured openness on grounds of free trade and foreign policy, although recent presidents have also supported greater controls. The outcome of these contending views has been low but directed internationalized statism as the legislative framework has become increasingly restrictive and discriminated against state investment. The case of the US shows the importance of executive and legislative interests and powers in influencing the level and form of internationalized statism. It also points to the need to go beyond labels of ‘liberal’ or ‘statist’ in analysing policies towards overseas states entering domestic financial markets.

Maritime Digital Twin architecture

Digital Twins (DTs) play an important role in current digitalization trends across industries. As maritime markets are particularly affected by recent global tendencies such as increasing delivery costs or political pressure for decarbonization, DT solutions could provide important support for shipbuilding and shipping companies to master recent and upcoming challenges. This paper provides a brief insight into the current state of the maritime industry and shows possible use-cases for DT Ship applications throughout the entire product lifecycle. To further advance the general understanding of DTs and their implementation, the concept of a Maritime Digital Twin Architecture (MDTA) is proposed to structure practical DT features.

Washington will rethink its foreign chip strategy

Significance Follow-on action from Washington and responses from foreign actors will shape the US government’s adversarial policy towards China in semiconductors and other strategic technologies. Impacts The Biden administration will likely conclude that broad-based diversion of the semiconductor supply chain away from China is not feasible. The United States will rely on export controls and political pressure to prevent diffusion to China of cutting-edge chip technologies. The United States will focus on persuading foreign semiconductor leaders to help develop US capabilities, thereby staying ahead of China. Washington will focus on less direct approaches to strategic technology competition with China, notably technical standards-setting. Industry leaders in the semiconductor supply chain worldwide will continue expanding business in China in less politically sensitive areas.

Settling Treaty Claims: The Formation of Policy on Treaty of Waitangi Claims in the Pioneering Years, 1988-1998

<p>For the past quarter-century the New Zealand government has negotiated with Māori groupings to find ways of compensating for the Crown’s historical breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi. The negotiations take place between mandated claimant negotiators and officials who represent the executive arm of government; the resultant settlements are then endorsed by legislation that declares them to be ‘full and final’ resolutions of historical grievances. This thesis analyses the way New Zealand governments conceived, introduced and implemented policies to address the claims during the pioneering years 1988–1998. The foundational policies worked out in this decade bedded-in the Treaty claims settlement processes which are now nearing their end. Through examining official archives, the thesis finds that these processes initially emerged as policy-driven responses to a combination of factors, such as the broad context of the ‘Māori Renaissance’, social shifts in understanding the past, legal cases and political pressure from iwi. The thesis goes on to explore several years of experimental negotiations and policy formulation which culminated in the Crown’s presentation in 1994 of both a suite of draft policies intended to offer a comprehensive approach to the negotiations process and a notional quantum of $1 billion to settle all historical claims (the ‘fiscal envelope’). It demonstrates that while this package was introduced to shape and contain the emergent settlement mechanisms and their outcomes, policies continued to be modified in highly significant ways. The major settlements negotiated with Waikato-Tainui and Ngāi Tahu, in particular, led to new developments which established the broad shapes of Treaty settlements, and key aspects of them, from the end of the twentieth century onwards. Over 1988–1998, then, the Treaty settlements process transitioned from ad-hoc development of policies and arrangements into an entrenched system, yet one that was flexible enough to change in the course of negotiations with new claimant groups.</p>

Settling Treaty Claims: The Formation of Policy on Treaty of Waitangi Claims in the Pioneering Years, 1988-1998

<p>For the past quarter-century the New Zealand government has negotiated with Māori groupings to find ways of compensating for the Crown’s historical breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi. The negotiations take place between mandated claimant negotiators and officials who represent the executive arm of government; the resultant settlements are then endorsed by legislation that declares them to be ‘full and final’ resolutions of historical grievances. This thesis analyses the way New Zealand governments conceived, introduced and implemented policies to address the claims during the pioneering years 1988–1998. The foundational policies worked out in this decade bedded-in the Treaty claims settlement processes which are now nearing their end. Through examining official archives, the thesis finds that these processes initially emerged as policy-driven responses to a combination of factors, such as the broad context of the ‘Māori Renaissance’, social shifts in understanding the past, legal cases and political pressure from iwi. The thesis goes on to explore several years of experimental negotiations and policy formulation which culminated in the Crown’s presentation in 1994 of both a suite of draft policies intended to offer a comprehensive approach to the negotiations process and a notional quantum of $1 billion to settle all historical claims (the ‘fiscal envelope’). It demonstrates that while this package was introduced to shape and contain the emergent settlement mechanisms and their outcomes, policies continued to be modified in highly significant ways. The major settlements negotiated with Waikato-Tainui and Ngāi Tahu, in particular, led to new developments which established the broad shapes of Treaty settlements, and key aspects of them, from the end of the twentieth century onwards. Over 1988–1998, then, the Treaty settlements process transitioned from ad-hoc development of policies and arrangements into an entrenched system, yet one that was flexible enough to change in the course of negotiations with new claimant groups.</p>

Political Stress and the Sustainability of Funded Pension Schemes: Introduction of a Financial Theory

This study introduces multiplayer game in the modern pension market. Particularly, this study claims that low earners and high earners have different interests when playing in funded pension market scheme. This differentiating is enabled by avoiding the entire society as a single earning cohort. This study using financial position, demonstrates a socio-economic anomaly in the funded pension system, which is in favor of high-earning cohorts at the expense of low-earning cohorts. This anomaly is realized by a lack of insurance and exposure to financial and systemic risks. Furthermore, the anomaly could lead to a pension re-reform back to an unfunded scheme system, due mostly to political pressure. This study found that a minimum pension guarantee is a rebalance mechanism for this anomaly, which increases the probability of a sustainable pension scheme. Nowadays when countries try to balance between social expenses and awaking financial markets, one may find this theory highly relevant. It is obviously one of the cases where social targets meat financial equilibrium and here they are in the same side. Specifically, it is argued that implementing the guarantee with an intra-generational, risk-sharing mechanism is the most efficient way to reduce the effect of this abnormality.

Trolls, Pressure and Agenda: The discursive fight on Twitter in Turkey

Censorship, banning, and imprisonment are different methods used to suppress dissenting voices in traditional media and have now evolved into a new form with bot and troll accounts in the digital media age in Turkey. Is it possible to construct a bloc with counter-trolls against the escalating political pressure on the media in the post-truth era? Are counter-trolls capable of setting the agenda? This article discusses the possibility of constructing a bloc against the escalating political pressure in Turkey on the media through counter-trolls in the context of communicative rationality. First, it observes the ruling party’s troll politics strategy on Twitter, then examines the counter-discourses against political pressure today; thereafter it analyzes the discourse in hashtags on the agenda of the Boğaziçi University protests. Firstly, 18,000 tweets are examined to understand the suppress-communication strategy of the AK Party trolls. Secondly, the agenda-setting capacity of counter-trolls is observed between January 1, 2020, and February 5, 2021, and 18,000 tweets regarding Boğaziçi protests are examined to analyze the communication strategy of the counter-trolls. The study shows that the populist government instrumentalizes communication in social media, and Twitter does not have enough potential for the Gramscian counter-hegemony, but the organized actions and discourses have the potential to create public opinion.