Security and military balance in the Black Sea region

This paper analyses the current security challenges and military balance in the Black Sea region. The region, which has been going through vast political and economic transformations since the end of the Cold War, has become a platform for great power rivalry in the last few years. NATO expansion and Russian resistance to it, combined with the existing protracted conflicts, resulted in the first major regional war in a decade. The Russia-Georgia war of 2008 proved that regional actors still perceive the use of force as an acceptable tool of foreign policy. The changing military balance and abrupt increases in military expenditure from some actors suggest that the likelihood of other interstate conflicts in the region is high. Providing security and stability in the Black Sea seems more difficult than the pre-August 2008 war period. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

A novel flexible model for lot sizing and scheduling with non-triangular, period overlapping and carryover setups in different machine configurations

© 2017, Springer Science+Business Media New York. This paper develops and tests an efficient mixed integer programming model for capacitated lot sizing and scheduling with non-triangular and sequence-dependent setup times and costs incorporating all necessary features of setup carryover and overlapping on different machine configurations. The model’s formulation is based on the asymmetric travelling salesman problem and allows multiple lots of a product within a period. The model conserves the setup state when no product is being processed over successive periods, allows starting a setup in a period and ending it in the next period, permits ending a setup in a period and starting production in the next period(s), and enforces a minimum lot size over multiple periods. This new comprehensive model thus relaxes all limitations of physical separation between the periods. The model is first developed for a single machine and then extended to other machine configurations, including parallel machines and flexible flow lines. Computational tests demonstrate the flexibility and comprehensiveness of the proposed models

Logistics service provider selection for disaster preparation: a socio-technical systems perspective

Since 1990s, the world has seen a lot of advances in providing humanitarian aid through sophisticated logistics operations. The current consensus seems to be that humanitarian relief organizations (HROs) can improve their relief operations by collaborating with logistics service providers (CLSPs) in the commercial sector. The question remains: how can HROs select the most appropriate CLSP for disaster preparation? Despite its practical significance, no explicit effort has been done to identify the criteria/factors in prioritising and selecting a CLSP for disaster relief. The present study aims to address this gap by consolidating the list of criteria from a socio-technical systems (STS) perspective. Then, to handle the interdependence among the criteria derived from the STS, we develop a hybrid multi-criteria decision making model for CLSP selection in the disaster preparedness stage. The proposed model is then evaluated by a real-life case study, providing insights into the decision-makers in both HROs and CLSPs

Swift trust and commitment: the missing links for humanitarian supply chain coordination?

Coordination among actors in a humanitarian relief supply chain decides whether a relief operation can be or successful or not. In humanitarian supply chains, due to the urgency and importance of the situation combined with scarce resources, actors have to coordinate and trust each other in order to achieve joint goals. This paper investigated empirically the role of swift trust as mediating variable for achieving supply chain coordination. Based on commitment-trust theory we explore enablers of swift-trust and how swift trust translates into coordination through commitment. Based on a path analytic model we test data from the National Disaster Management Authority of India. Our study is the first testing commitment-trust theory (CTT) in the humanitarian context, highlighting the importance of swift trust and commitment for much thought after coordination. Furthermore, the study shows that information sharing and behavioral uncertainty reduction act as enablers for swift trust. The study findings offer practical guidance and suggest that swift trust is a missing link for the success of humanitarian supply chains

A Divided Government, an IdeologAnatomy of the Transformatioical Parliament, and an Insecure Leader: Turkey's Indecision about Joining the Iraq War

Objectives: On March 1, 2003, the Turkish parliament rejected a government motion that would involve Turkey in the Iraq war and allow U.S. forces to use Turkish territory in an offensive against Iraq. This decision has been considered as a significant departure from traditional Western-oriented Turkish foreign policy. We investigate the reasons behind this rather unexpected foreign policy decision. Method: To systematically examine the decision-making process and the outcome, we utilize the "decision-units framework." We present primary and secondary evidence from government and media sources and utilize interviews conducted with some of the high-level decisionmakers that were involved in decision making at the time. This article combines traditional methodological tools, such as elite interviews and process tracing, with novel approaches in foreign policy analysis studies. Results: The nature of the decision-unit, decision-making rules, the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the AKP (Adalet and Kalkinma Partisi-Justice and Development Party) leadership, and the absence of a strong and decisive leader shaped the outcome. Conclusion: The Turkish parliament's decision on its role in the Iraq war is an interesting and informative case for foreign policy studies. It challenges the conventional wisdom on parliamentary influence in foreign policy making in parliamentary regimes. Under certain circumstances-even when a single-party enjoys parliamentary majority-parliaments can be major players in foreign policy decision making. © 2012 by the Southwestern Social Science Association

Religious discrimination and international crises: International effects of domestic inequality

This paper explores religious discrimination against ethnic groups and foreign policy crisis linkages as part of the broader foreign policy approaches developed by McGowan and Shapiro (1973) and James and Özdamar (2005, 2008). Informed by the literature suggesting that domestic policies of repression and inequality may result in similar patterns of behavior internationally, this study tests whether states characterized by high levels of religious discrimination against ethnoreligious minorities are more likely to initiate or become involved in foreign policy crises with other states in general. A broad range of data sources, including an independently collected religious discrimination index, are used to test the hypothesized relationship between religious discrimination and international crisis during the period 1990-2003. The results suggest that religious discrimination is an important predictor of initiating and becoming involved in international crises. © 2013 International Studies Association