Lessons From Rojava for the Paradigm of Social Ecology

This essay addresses two related questions raised by the editors of the research topic for “Beyond the Frontiers of Political Science: Is Good Governance Possible in Cataclysmic Times?” In particular, it explores: 1) how we can identify new tools and perspectives from which to address the multiple and mutually reinforcing problems accumulating around climate change; and 2) what institutional alternatives to the nation-state need to be created and empowered to tackle such complex problems. It does so through an in-depth treatment of the paradigm of “social ecology” and the associated political project of “democratic confederalism.” It begins with an overview of the argument, first advanced by Murray Bookchin and subsequently adopted and adapted by the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, that building an ecological society requires an assault on hierarchy in all its forms, and the construction of alternative, direct-democratic institutions capable of transcending the system of the capitalist nation-state. It sketches the institutional architecture of popular assemblies central to this project, both emphasizing their potential to contest capitalist social-property relations and hierarchies intrinsic to the nation-state and pointing out some sources of resilience of the existing system. It hones in on the experience of the revolutionary forces in control of the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES), who have been directly inspired by Öcalan’s ideas. It highlights both the AANES’s achievements as well as the significant obstacles it has encountered in the attempt to bring into being a radically-egalitarian, ecological society. It concludes by drawing lessons from these difficulties.

The importance of addition, competition, collisions of law principles for enforcement and other types of legal activities

The subject of this research is the problem of combining (interrelation) of various principles of law used in the framework of law enforcement and other types of legal activity.The purpose of the study is to confirm or refute the hypothesis that the principles of law can not only complement each other, but also "collide" with each other when they are used in the framework of legal activity.The research methodology includes dialectics, systems approach, specific sociological methods, culturological and theoretical-sociological analysis, formal legal method. The author describes the degree of scientific elaboration of the problem in foreign and Russian studies, including works devoted to such related topics as the functions of the principles of law and the system of principles of law, as well as the opinions directly on the issue of R. Dworkin and A. Barak.The main results, scope of application. The author substantiates the presence of at least three ways of combining (interconnecting) the principles of law: (1) addition – the concerted action of several principles; (2) competition – limiting the operation of one principle to another; (3) collision – direct contradiction of one principle to another, their mutual exclusion. The definition of factual circumstances, the choice of applicable rules and their interpretation by court or other enforcement official can be influenced by ideology underlying the prevailing practice or the enforcer's own position. The specificity of a particular ideology is correlated by the author with the use of one or another combination of principles of law when making a law enforcement decision. It is shown in the article with specific examples of so-called "complex cases" from the practice of Russian higher courts. Complementing the principles of law is the predominant way of their relationship, used in law enforcement. It contributes to the preservation of the unity of the system of law. At the same time, the consistent implementation of one principle can limit the possibilities for the implementation of others. It leads to the fact in the process of law enforcement that it is often necessary to make a choice in favor of one of the principles within the framework of their competition. This choice is determined by several factors, including not only the established practice (law enforcement customs and precedents), but also the current social context, the position and interests of the law enforcement officer and the participants in the case. Finally, in some cases, situations are possible when the principles of law are mutually exclusive, come into conflict with each other. This, in particular, can occur when the principles of law belong to different systems (subsystems) of law or reflect the peculiarities of the legal ideology of different historical periods. The article identifies certain patterns of combining the principles of law, examines the importance of this topic for studying the issues of legal monism and legal pluralism, shows the importance of complementarity, competition and conflict of principles of law not only for the law enforcement process, but also for the knowledge of law, criticism of law, lawmaking, powerless implementation rights.Conclusions. Although within the framework of the traditional approach for domestic jurisprudence, the essence of law is associated with the interests and property relations reflected in the law, legal ideology has a relatively independent meaning nevertheless. A certain duality is inherent in legal activity, as a result of which the problems of combining interests are expressed precisely through various options for combining the principles and norms of law. It is proved that the system of principles of law is a complex system in which the same principles can be used in various combinations with each other.

Cation disorder and thermoelectric properties in layered ternary compounds MBi2Te4 (M=Ge, Sn)

Atomic-scale understanding of the microstructural properties of thermoelectric (TE) materials is critical for exploring the structure-property relations and enhancing the macroscopic performance of TE materials. Here, we demonstrate direct evidence...

Teaching Land Law: Controversy and Land Policy in Hungary from 1948 to 1968

Topic of the study. During the harsh Stalinization from 1948 agriculture had to be collectivized while land was not nationalized by decree as the Bolsheviks did in Russia in 1917. The Soviet legal system was a pattern for jurists but the differences made the transition to “socialism” more rugged and controversial. The legal scholars had to interpret a situation which had to develop further to full “socialization”. In order to do that, a “cooperative law” and a “land law” had to be created and taught as part of “agricultural law”. Research questions and methods. Land law consisted of regulations regarding private farmers and collective agricultural producers (cooperatives, state farms etc.), theoretically in the whole research period. How did the agrarian, cooperative and land policy affect legal theory on land tenure system? What kind of scientific dispute emerged on this matter and how did the attempts of codification of land law affect legal education? Various types of sources were evaluated, for instance protocols of council meetings of the faculty of law of two universities, archival sources, articles and studies from authors who taught land law and took part in its debate and codification. Results and conclusions. Law was used as a tool to boost transformation, and the lawmakers and jurists faced a paradox situation in which there was a need of codification of land law and to make it independent from other branches of law. On the one hand, jurists argued like Gyula Eörsi and Miklós Világhy that civil law had primatus in the legal system and property relations had to be included in that part of legislation during the “transition period”. On the other hand, many jurists, for instance Iván Földes, Imre Seres claimed that cooperative law or/and land law were separated branches of law despite the fact that mass collectivization was not completed until the spring of 1961.

Asian Retailers in Glasgow: A Glimpse of Commercial and Property Relations in the Early Eighties

As noted in the paper published in the last issue of this journal, shopkeeping and retail have been one of the important ways of entry into the host economy in the case of some prewar migrating communities such as the Jews and the Italians and the post-war migrants such as the Asians (mostly Panjabis from India and Pakistan) to Glasgow in Scotland. We explore how the two major sets of theories the ethnic customer niche and middlemen minority theory apply to this group and explore the unchartered area of the nature of ‘property relations’ of retailers, i.e.in terms of the acquired commercial and housing property. Specifically, we explore the similarities and differences between the commercial and residential markets and their relationship and possible interdependence for entrepreneurial and asset building and the phenomenon of segregated property markets. We begin by exploring the background of retailers and their possible influence on entry into the business. We also compare some key aspects of Glasgow’s retail economy with other Asian retail localized economies using the studies of the period for comparative perspective purposes. The paper adds to the very sparse literature on asset ownership or on ethnic commercial property markets and explores if the high ownership of housing and the presence of ethnic origin national banks helped with both ethnic enterprise and asset creation. It also explores the extent to which the ‘ethnic niche’ model and the ‘middle minorities’ model applies to the Asians in Glasgow in addition to the hypothesis if the agricultural background which requires some sense of business and related skills, and the notion of success and the status of property may be the crucial cultural and experiential drivers of asset acquisition and enterprise.

Public Property and Its State Form: Contradictions and Potential of the USSR

The article shows that in the USSR, the development of associated social creativity (including such a phenomenon as “enthusiasm”), based on public property, was opposite to the opinions of most economists one of the important sources of development of this economic system. At the same time, the opposite content was hidden behind the form of public property in the USSR – ​the alienation of workers from the functions of management and appropriation of public wealth due to the bureaucratization of state property, which was the main brake on the development of the economy in which these property relations dominated. The analysis of this contradiction shows that public property most fully realizes its potential either as a state property (in such extreme conditions as wars, global catastrophes, etc.), or to the extent it is based on associated social creativity. The potential of public disposal and appropriation based on social creativity is especially great in the field of production of public goods (education, health care, art), where public ownership of the results of creative work can take the form of “everyone's ownership of everything”, which makes it possible to remove the restrictions of intellectual private property.