A quest for significance: Gulf oil monarchies' international 'soft power' strategies and their local urban dimensions

This paper documents how the GCC oil monarchies have been using their oil wealth to buy the accoutrements of ‘good citizenship’ and ‘progressiveness’ in the international arena through costly policy projects that involve urban interventions like the building of international museums, universities and ‘zero-carbon cities’ – urban enclaves with an audience that is almost exclusively international. The paper explains how these projects reflect a desire to comply with Westerndefined ‘liberal’ international norms and tastes to gain international recognition, shows how they reflect broader patterns of segmented state building in the Gulf, and explores some of the social tensions they create locally

EU External Energy Policy in Natural Gas: A Case of Neofunctionalist Integration? ZEI Discussion Paper C241/2017

The energy policy of the European Commission has deepened integration of EU natural gas matters. Energy cooperation at EU level and policy mechanisms for cooperation with third countries are harmonized to a large extent. The author concludes that integration strategies of the EU Commission follow the spillover-logic as set out by the theory of Neofunctionalism - a concept first developed by Ernst Bernard Haas to explain the post-war creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) as peace-preserving institutions. According to this theory, integration in one sector creates further integration in related policy sectors out of inherent necessity. The EU Commission has used spillover-strategies in the EU-Russia Energy Dialogue, in the Trilateral Gas Talks, in the Energy Community and in major pipeline projects such as the "Southern Gas Corridor". These platforms offer opportunity structures for supranational action which enable the realization of the "Energy Union". Intergovernmental backlashes ("Spillback-Effect") as observed in the 'gas crises' of 2006 and 2009 as well as the contractual state-to-state reality of Intergovernmental Gas Delivery Agreements present the most significant obstacles for a coherent EU external energy policy in natural gas

Florida: Round 1 - State-Level Field Network Study of the Implementation of the Affordable Care Act

This report is part of a series of 21 state and regional studies examining the rollout of the ACA. The national network -- with 36 states and 61 researchers -- is led by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York, the Brookings Institution, and the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.Florida's governor and legislative leadership declined to participate in setting up an Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchange and, indeed, refused or returned federal grants awarded to facilitate exchange planning. Instead, the state provided funding for an existing state-funded exchange for small business and individuals unrelated to the ACA that opened with limited services in spring 2014. Florida led the way in opposition to the ACA. Its then attorney general, Republican Bill McCollum, filed suit against the Obama administration aiming to have the law blocked as unconstitutional in both its individual mandate and its requirement for Medicaid expansion

‘Axis of evil or access to diesel?: spaces of new imperialism and the Iraq war’

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was waged by the so-called ‘Coalition of the Willing’. This paper will examine how the war was a space in the ongoing geographical extension of global capitalism linked to U.S. foreign policy. Was it simply the decision by a unitary, hegemonic actor in the inter-state system overriding concerns by other states? Was it an imperialist move to secure the ‘global oil spigot’? Alternatively, did the use of military force reflect the interests and emergence of a transnational state apparatus? In this paper, we argue that the U.S. needs to be conceptualised as a specific form of state, within which and through which national and transnational capital operate to establish the interests of a national fraction of an Atlantic ruling class. It is these processes of class struggle and their relation to wider struggles over spaces of imperialism, which need to be at the centre of analysis

Relational governance of territorial resources in post-colonial Africa – A new analytic framework

Current political sociology scholarship suggests that limited state autonomy from societal organisations undermines state enforcement capacity throughout the national territory, and therefore does superficial separation of the state from civil society (or formal from informal institutions) in the conceptualisation of what effective state system ought to be. These conceptions contradict realities in post-colonial Africa where societal organisations have evolved to bear ‘state-like’ qualities in resource governance, especially in remote locations where the state has no promising alternative to accommodating inputs from revered institutions or charismatic actors to complement its functions. Colonial experiences in Africa have produced institutional pluralism and a consequential split loyalty to the state in the post-independence era. Apparently, limited state autonomy sometimes refract or obstruct state visions; the resultant co-governance regime does not imply ‘wishy-washy’ state leadership. This is because state formation processes have produced an intermeshed governance of people, places, and resources through a complicated interplay between entities which have become indistinct in terms of functions, and hence cannot be simplistically categorised as either formal or informal, state or non-state. In this sense, the activity of regulating affairs in the post-colonial regime is characterised by relational governance – a form of governance sutured via reciprocal relation(s) between multiple actors across differentspatial scales and milieus. Drawing on an empirical study of biofuel projects in Ghana, we believe a relational governance approach provides an analytic framework to challenge this orthodoxy in governance studies and refresh discussions on the nature of state-society relations required for effective governance of territorial resources in postcolonial regimes characterised by institutional pluralism

US grand strategy and Central Asia: merging geopolitics and ideology

After the demise of the Cold War, US strategic planning gradually adjusted to the new security environment, aiming to maintain its dominant global position while increasingly emphasizing regional security, governance issues and threats from non-state actors. The George W. Bush administration greatly accelerated these trends. US grand strategy today is one of global primacy, characterized by a dual focus on preventing the rise of any regional hegemonic powers while addressing regional security issues stemming from transnational and non-state threats. Current US grand strategy exhibits, as it has for decades, two fundamental components: geopolitical reasoning and ideological interests. The geographical focus of US strategy has gradually shifted to a broad arc stretching from Western Africa to Southeast Asia, an area rich in vital strategic resources and widespread political and social instability. Located at the center of this unstable arc, Central Asia contains many of the global challenges facing the US: regional powers, unstable and authoritarian states, energy resources, terrorism, proliferation threats and international criminal networks. With its regional strategy, the US seeks to shift the political center of gravity away from Russia and China by encouraging economic and political linkages between Central Asia and the region's southerly neighbors. This study reveals that the geopolitical and ideological elements in US strategy create both surprising synergies as well as classic conflicts of interest for policymakers. The challenges facing the US in Central Asia offer lessons for US strategy in other regions around the globe

From Public Participation to Place-Based Resistance: Environmental Critique and Modes of Valuation in the Struggles against the Expansion of the Malpensa Airport

Through an analysis of the 40-year history of conflicts triggered by the repeated attempts to expand the Malpensa airport in northern Italy, this paper seeks to show the heuristic strength of using the concept of modes of valuation of the environment to discuss the transformations of environmental critique over time in their relation to social change. I argue that, beyond empirical specifics, the trajectory witnessed in this case - from public participation to place-based resistance - reflects more generalized dynamics that can be found in many other conflicts over large infrastructural projects in contemporary Europe. The article is organized as follows: in the first section I briefly introduce the concept of modes of valuation of the environment, which is inspired by recent work in pragmatic sociology. In particular, I distinguish between universal, local, and emplaced modes of valuation. In the second and third sections I provide an analysis of the struggles against the Malpensa airport expansion from 1970 to 2014. Here, I distinguish three phases of mobilization, which I discuss in terms of the transformations that can be observed in the arguments that actors develop to fight or support the airport expansion. I argue that these transformations are articulated not only with changing action repertoires but also with evolving social and sociotechnical imaginaries that convey specific understandings of the environment as a matter of political concern. This analysis shows that, far from being simply a case of citizens’ resistance to change, the mobilization against the Malpensa airport has contributed to producing the cultural basis of an increased collective reflexivity about the many values that the environment takes on among community members in the airport region. In the final section I discuss some hypotheses concerning what modes of valuation of the environment reveal about the emergence of a new radicalism in environmental struggles

New Media Art/ New Funding Models

Investigates the current state of funding for new media artists, with an emphasis on the support structures for innovative creative work that utilizes advanced technologies as the main vehicle for artistic practice