Missing Cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean

Resource discoveries and an emerging maritime arms race in the Eastern Mediterranean have created incentives for an overarching security cooperation framework However, collaboration in the mentioned sectors remains absent and the former regional coalitions have been reconfigured. This article investigates why a lack of cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean persists. In answering this question, Securitzation Theory and Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) serve as a theoretical foundation. Building on the latter theories, seeing the Eastern Mediterranean as a regional security complex leads to the contention that if two or more units of this system securitize each other’s activities within the said complex, this will lead to negative ramifications on regional collaboration. The chosen case is the reciprocal securitization of Turkey and Greece in 2020. Finally, the case study reveals blind spots in RSCT and introduces a new concept to cope with these: the buffer subcomplex.

A Mediterranean Region? Regional Security Complex Theory Revisited

This article argues that the shift from the bipolar structure of the Cold War international system to a more polycentric power structure at the system level has increased the significance of regional relations and has consequently enhanced the importance of the study of regionalism. It makes a case for a Mediterranean region and examines various efforts aimed at defining what constitutes a region. In so doing, it investigates whether the Regional Security Complex Theory (RSCT) can be utilized to define a Mediterranean region and argues that the patters of amity and enmity among Mediterranean states are necessary but not sufficient to identify such a region. It suggests that economic, energy, environmental, and other factors, such as migration and refugee flows should be taken into consideration in order to define the Mediterranean region. It also claims that the Mediterranean security complex includes three sub-complexes. The first is an eastern Mediterranean sub-complex that revolves mainly - albeit not exclusively - around three conflicts: the Greek-Turkish conflict, the Syrian conflict, and the Israeli-Palestinian/Arab conflict. The second is a central Mediterranean sub-complex that includes Italy, Libya, Albania and Malta and which revolves mainly around migration with Italy playing a dominant role due to its historical ties to both Libya and Albania. The third is a western Mediterranean security sub-complex that includes France, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Spain and Portugal. This sub-complex it centered around France, the migration question and its associated threats, such as terrorism, radicalism, and human trafficking. In conclusion, it is concluded that the Mediterranean security complex is very dynamic as there are states (i.e. Turkey) that seem eager and capable of challenging the status quo thereby contributing to the process of the complexs internal transformation.

Galois coverings of one-sided bimodule problems

Applying geometric methods of 2-dimensional cell complex theory, we construct a Galois covering of a bimodule problem satisfying some structure, triangularity and finiteness conditions in order to describe the objects of finite representation type. Each admitted bimodule problem A is endowed with a quasi multiplicative basis. The main result shows that for a problem from the considered class having some finiteness restrictions and the schurian universal covering A', either A is schurian, or its basic bigraph contains a dotted loop, or it has a standard minimal non-schurian bimodule subproblem.

Modeling the Theory-Form: Beyond the Elements of Observational Postulation

We formalize a theory of the subject by sketching a pragmatic functional hierarchy of sapient cognition. Our expanded framework attempts to articulate a normative understanding of discursive cognition by demarcating its functional propriety within a naturalist rejoinder, seeing in the functional development of cognition from pre-discursive to discursive abilities an increase and refinement in representational competence found in non-intentional systems. We therein explain how sapient cognitive systems not only engage in patterns of material and formal inference to map intensional relations between phenomena in nature through theoretical and practical reasonings, but also engage in practices of theoretical construction and systematic integration through techniques of formalization that make the unity of nature and thought progressively intelligible. We trace the development of mind in its representational function from barren discriminatory capacities, shared with inanimate objects, to complex theory-forming systematizing conceptual abilities enabling agents to theoretically map and intervene upon the world of which they are part, and to embed the informational indexes they register from the environment that makes globally explicit the objective modal structure of the world.

Analisis peran ASEAN dalam proses unifikasi Semenanjung Korea

<p class="JOURNALABSTRACT-KEY"><span lang="IN">Setelah Perang Korea berakhir membuat Selatan dan Utara menjadi terpisah. Kedua negara tidak serta menjadi damai bahkan terus terjadi eskalasi tensi di kawasan. Eskalasi tensi di Semenanjung Korea meningkat ketika Korea Utara dengan sengaja melakukan proliferasi nuklir dan adanya peningkatan uji coba rudal Korea Utara. Hal ini kemudian diimbangi dengan adanya </span><span lang="IN">Terminal High Altitude Area Defense</span><span lang="IN"> (THAAD) oleh Korea Selatan. Kerjasama militer dan joint exercise antara Amerika Serikat dan Korea Selatan juga menimbulkan tensi yang kuat di kawasan semenanjung. Tujuan penelitian ini yakni menganalisis dinamika konflik di kawasan Semenanjung Korea <span>dari era </span></span><span lang="IN">Sunshine Policy</span><span lang="IN"> pada tahun 1998 hingga</span><strong></strong><span lang="IN">tahun 2020</span><span lang="IN"> (</span><span lang="IN">New Southern Policy</span><span lang="IN">) dengan pendekatan unifikasi melalui keamanan regional. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah kualitatif dengan desain penelitian deskriptif analisis untuk memberikan gambaran secara tepat mengenai keadaan di kawasan tersebut. Peneliti menganalisis penyelesaian konflik di Semenanjung Korea dengan </span><span lang="IN">Regional Security Complex Theory</span><span lang="IN"> (RSCT). Dari penelitian tersebut, peneliti menyimpulkan bahwa entitas aktor lain di kawasan, ASEAN, dapat menjadi </span><span lang="IN">membantu dan memfasilitasi penyelesaian masalah.</span></p>

Rethinking the Regional Security Complex Theory: A South American view between 2008-2016

With this article, we propose to reformulate the Regional Security Complex Theory, by Buzan and Waever, through a South American vision, with the time frame 2008-2016. To this end, we will analyse South America through Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia, and their forms of intra and extra-regional interaction, highlighting the Colombia-United States relations, and the South American Defence Council, of the Union of South American Nations. This article is divided into a first section marked by an understanding of the Regional Complex Theory, in which we present and discuss its theoretical elements and weaknesses, and propose theoretical changes that will guide our analysis. The second section contains information about the South American Complex in the academic view, focusing on the arguments of Buzan and Waever. In the third section, we present the South American Regional Security Complex restructured, as well as the analysis of its dynamics. The central argument of the article is the need to reformulate the Theory in question for a better understanding of the complexities and unique characteristics of South America.

Justice, Luck, and Pairwise Comparisons

This chapter extends the anti-anti-luckist programme to political philosophy, and to the doctrine of luck egalitarianism in particular. Luck egalitarianism affirms that unchosen relative inequalities between agents are unjust. It condemns inequalities that are due to ‘brute luck’, and upholds inequalities that are due to ‘option luck’. Though it can be easily enough stated, luck egalitarianism is actually a complex theory with two separate components: egalitarianism and anti-luckism. Standard luck egalitarianism’s commitment to pairwise comparisons makes it vulnerable to what Susan Hurley calls the ‘Boring Problem’. The Boring Problem points out that any two agents in a pairwise comparison are bound to lack control over the relevant income gap between them, because each of them controls, at best, only one side of that comparison. Though Hurley herself is relatively dismissive of the Boring Problem, it is contended here that, when it is properly appreciated, it inflicts huge damage on luck egalitarianism, which needs in turn to be re-organized as a ‘baseline-sensitive’ theory that dispenses with pairwise comparisons. Baseline-sensitive luck egalitarianism makes decent progress on a number of critical fronts, particularly Saul Smilansky’s ‘Paradox of the Baseline’. But even this form of luck egalitarianism is still open to a worry about how it understands the relationship between its egalitarian default and its case for permissible inequalities, and it has less to say than it should about the structural aspects of a social system that generate inequalities.

To the Search of Another Model of Difference Between Constitutional Principles and Rules

This chapter presents a model for distinguishing between constitutional principles and constitutional rules, emphasizing that it concerns a legal-doctrinal difference that emerged with modern constitutionalism. In this context, principles are defined as reflexive mechanisms in relation to rules, and the circular connection between them becomes the focus of analysis. It also discusses the performance of principles and rules in the process of constitutional concretization as well as pointing out the requirement of a constitutional principle theory adequate to the complexity of contemporary society, even in the context of transconstitutionalism. This chapter is divided into five sections: locating the problem and conceptual contours; constitutional principles as a result of the positivization of law: principles and rules as an internal difference of the legal system; the circular relationship between constitutional principles and rules; from optimization to competition: limits of ‘balancing’; and intra-principle collision, double contingency, and functional differentiation of society: towards a complex theory of principles.