Distributing Responsibility—State Compensation and State Punishment

This chapter considers two implications for public international law of the model developed in chapter 5 for distributing state responsibility. First, it critically examines the landmark United Nations Compensation Commission, which extracted compensation from Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf War. It shows that this scheme was not sufficiently sensitive to Iraq’s authoritarian regime characteristics and imposed unfair burdens on ordinary citizens. It then examines solutions that should have been used instead. Second, it assesses the implications for the idea of state punishment. Focusing on two influential justifications of punishment—the expressive view and the duties to victim’s view—it demonstrates how the proposed framework should shape the way we punish states.

What Kept the Boat Afloat? Sustainability of Employment in Knowledge-Intensive Sectors Due to Government Measures during COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed new aspects of sustainable entrepreneurship and the resilience of SMEs in the conditions of individual countries. This empirical study contributes to entrepreneurship sustainability literature and business resilience literature by estimating the impact of various utilized internal crisis management tools and state compensation measures on retaining the pre-crisis levels of employment after two waves of the pandemic on the conditions of a V4 country. The study adopts an econometric approach towards assessing the influence of key factors of mitigating the problems caused by the pandemic, and the results suggest a crucial role of digitalization, internal policies optimizing variable costs, and utilization of direct governmental supportive measures to compensate for restrictions in force for employment retention in knowledge-intensive SMEs. According to the results, knowledge-intensive SMEs appears to have increased resilience towards economic shocks due to the capability to swiftly change the management of ventures to adapt to a crisis.

Suspension 2.0: Segregated Development, Financial Speculation, and Waiting among Resettled Peasants in Urban China

Since the late 2000s, many rural-to-urban migrants in China have lost their rural land to development plans, resettled in designated areas, and acquired formal urban residency. They stopped migrating, and have apparently ended their life of "suspension," namely protracted mobility. While most existing research literature on this population foregrounds the issue of land dispossession, this article argues that, following resettlement, these former migrants' lives can be more accurately characterized as a state of suspension instead of dispossession. Many resettled young adults, while having secured livelihood thanks to state compensation, are excluded from the technology- and capital-intensive developments to which they have lost their land. Some of these young people instead became petty speculators and rentier capitalists by liquidating their compensated assets through mortgages, private lending, rent, and other financial means. They are constantly waiting for the next investment opportunity and windfall gain. Although physically settled down and economically secure, they remain anxious and unsettled. They continue to orient their lives towards an elusive future rather than striving to transform the here and now, thus living in a state that I call "suspension 2.0."

Die Vermögenswirtschaft der Stadt im Zeitalter des Dualismus

In the annuel budgets of the city of Pécs between 1872 and 1914, revenues from city property were divided into five groups. The first group included revenues from the city’s property – the hundreds of acres of Megyer-puszta, urban pastures, urban factories, and urban buildings. The second group included revenues from the city’s 4,262 cadastral hungarian acres forests. The third group included interest on the city’s cash and securities. The fourth group included excise, duties and fees levied by the city with the permission of the state. The most important of these were incomes from the sale of spirits, wine, beer, the holding of markets and fairs, and the use of roads and railways. The fifth group included the income that arose after the pub law was acquired by the state in 1890: state compensation and various city tax supplements. Overall, revenues from urban property in the years 1870-1880 approached, and sometimes even exceeded, 60% of budget revenues. In the 1890s, their proportion fell below 40%, increased to nearly 50% by the turn of the century, and then gradually decreased to about 30% by 1914. The result of urban wealth management has been future urbanization and infrastructure investiments, with the inevitable indebtedness at a disadvantage.

State compensation as rape justice: are public attitudes a legitimate foundation for reform of the UK’s Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme?

The British state’s mechanism for compensating victim-survivors of sexual offences has been critiqued as retraumatising. However, a recent review preliminarily rejected calls to loosen the eligibility rules, stating that the current criteria reflect public attitudes. This article outlines the first empirical study of public opinion on the UK Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (CICS), drawing on data from over 2,000 survey participants. The findings show ambivalence among members of the public, but also reveal the current rules are not strongly supported and are in some cases highly unpopular. The article then examines some difficulties with relying on public opinion for criminal justice reform, and ultimately argues that there are stronger justifications for reforming the CICS than popularity with the public. Specifically, loosening the eligibility criteria would create more legitimate policy through the protection of core societal values such as fairness and dignity.<br /><br />Key Messages<br /><ul><li>Contrary to the British Ministry of Justice’s rhetoric, there is not strong public support for the current eligibility rules on the UK Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme (CICS) for sexual offence victim-survivors.</li><br /><li>Women and younger people are more critical of the current CICS eligibility rules, but social grade did not impact public opinions.</li><br /><li>Relying on public opinion for CICS reform is problematic, as widening the eligibility is justifiable regardless of lay popularity.</li></ul>