24 research outputs found
Die Russische Föderation im Zeichen der demografischen Krise: Alterung und Maßnahmen zur sozialen Sicherheit
La Federación de Rusia: ante los retos especÃficos del envejecimiento y la polÃtica de seguridad social en una época de crisis demográfica
The limits of the European Union's normative myth in Armenia and Georgia
This chapter seeks to identify several endogenous and exogenous factors that hampered the EU’s democracy promotion in Georgia and Armenia between September 2013 and December 2015. Georgia and Armenia have reacted differently to the EU’s intended norm diffusion. While Georgia adopted some of the EU’s reforms for the price of future integration with the EU, Armenia chose to align with Russia, which was exemplified by its accession to the Eurasian Union. These divergent integrative approaches demonstrate that the effect of the EU’s normative power is challenged by several factors
The fearful symmetry of Arctic climate change: accumulation by degradation
The rapid decline of Arctic sea ice has triggered new rounds of territorial claims making, investment, and development in northern states. This article argues that the physical processes of climate change require a rethinking of the typical mechanics of environmental degradation to account for the renewed possibilities for accumulation emerging in the Arctic, where the effects of historic, large-scale fossil fuel combustion are being organized into new regional production strategies that sharpen and deflect environmental degradationöa process I call `accumulation by degradation'. The region's hyperamplified thermodynamic response to radiative forcing by anthropogenic greenhouse gases allows for strategic maneuvering by nation-states and firms eager to secure various forms of rent and make climate change literally perform physical work for capital. These opportunities for new Arctic energy extraction and shipping are both heightened and complicated by contemporary geopolitics and commodity prices. Nevertheless, the much-heralded possibilities for capital accumulation in the Arctic may be overestimated. The entire conjuncture depends on a precarious coordination of markets, turnover times of capital, regulatory regimes, and fundamentally uncontrollable physical processes across many operational scales. Because the climate is a nonlinear system, emergent physical properties may materialize rapidly and unpredictably, drastically changing the regional operating environment for capital. Such emergence might well be both a result of and an obstruction to Arctic accumulation by degradation