Judicial diplomacy: international courts and legitimation

Observers of international courts (ICs) note that several ICs carry out a broad range of non-judicial activities, ranging from legal training workshops and public seminars to visits with public officials. Despite the growing prominence of these activities, they have received little attention from scholars. Seeking to fill this gap, this article examines these activities as a form of 'judicial diplomacy', asking how and why ICs employ judicial diplomacy. The article argues that ICs use judicial diplomacy as a means of legitimation. They seek to boost institutional legitimacy through their judicial diplomacy by targeting the public and communicating norm-referential narratives about their processes and outcomes. This argument bears out in case studies on the judicial diplomacy of the African Court of Human and Peoples' Rights and the Caribbean Court of Justice. Both courts are shown to have judicial diplomacy that is public-oriented and people-centred. This argument has important implications for literature on international courts and the legitimacy of international institutions

Machine Learning-based GPS Jamming and Spoofing Detection

The increasing reliance on Global Positioning System (GPS) technology across various sectors has exposed vulnerabilities to malicious attacks, particularly GPS jamming and spoofing. This thesis presents an analysis into detection and mitigation strategies for enhancing the resilience of GPS receivers against jamming and spoofing attacks. The research entails the development of a simulated GPS signal and a receiver model to accurately decode and extract information from simulated GPS signals. The study implements the generation of jammed and spoofed signals to emulate potential threats faced by GPS receivers in practical settings. The core innovation lies in the integration of machine learning techniques to detect and differentiate genuine GPS signals from jammed and spoofed ones. By leveraging the machine learning capability of the Support Vector Machine (SVM) algorithm to classify signal attributes as nominal or abnormal and an Artificial Immune System (AIS) framework to create an optimized Health Management System (HMS), the system adapts and learns from various signal characteristics, enabling it to make informed decisions regarding the authenticity of the received signals. After conducting training, validation, and fault detection, the model successfully returned an average 95.3% spoofed signal detection rate. The proposed machine-learning-based detection mechanism is expected to enhance the robustness of GPS receivers against evolving spoofing techniques

Could Covid-19 herald the renewal of international cooperation?

The COVID-19 crisis has exposed what some scholars of international organizations have been noticing in recent years: a retrenchment from international cooperation and multilateral approaches to problem-solving. While the Trump administration’s admonishment of the World Health Organization is a political manoeuvre to brandish a scapegoat for the administration’s abysmal failures, it also a telltale sign of broader efforts to withdraw from and undermine international cooperation. However, could COVID-19 herald the renewal of international cooperation,asks Theresa Squatrito (LSE)

DESIGN-DRIVEN INNOVATION OF BIO-BASED CIRCULAR MATERIALS

In recent years, design has turned its attention toward the Circular Economy where material issues are central. More and more companies and designers are turning their research towards ‘circular materials’ from the recycling of ‘technical materials’ or created from an organic base of processing/production or consumption waste and reintegrating into the biological cycle. The paper focused on ‘bio-based circular materials’, presents the first phase of research in progress, with the aim of mapping and systematizing the strategies used for the conception, development, design, production, and distribution of new materials and related products

Democratic memberships in international organizations: sources of institutional design

Domestic regime type has emerged a powerful explanation of multiple phenomena in world politics. This article extends this argument to the design of international organizations (IOs), where a profound development in recent decades is growing access for transnational actors (TNAs). While earlier research has shown that democracy in IO memberships helps to explain IO openness, we know little about the mechanisms that drive this effect. This article unpacks the relationship between democratic memberships and IO design by theorizing and assessing the impact of three different constellations of democracies on the openness of IOs. Empirically, we conduct a multivariate analysis of TNA access to 50 IOs from 1950 to 2010, combined with a case study of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Our main findings are three-fold. First, democracy’s effect on openness is primarily a product of the combined weight of democracies within IOs and their resulting capacity to secure support for their polity preferences. Second, in contrast, we only find limited support for a specific influence of new democracies and democratic major powers on IO openness. Third, decision rules that allow for openness reforms to be adopted by a majority of member states facilitate and strengthen the influence of democracies, by reducing the ability of autocracies to block change. The findings have implications for our understanding of institutional design in global governance and democracy’s effects in world politics

Expanded Design between Design Activism and Collectible Design

The last three decades have witnessed in Europe an increasing interest from institutions, and creative communities in independent research connected to crafting, DIY, maker culture, and design activism. A new generation of designers has focused on the experimentation of processes, materials, and technologies used as a vehicle for socio-political and environmental messages and as the starting point of solid narrative projects. This paper aims to analyse this phenomenon inside the niche of Collectible Design, a field in recent years of great interest by galleries and institutions for its ability to embrace material and technological research as well as craftsmanship and art. We investigate the phenomenon, through a series of interviews with designers such as Shahar Livne, Eugenia Morpurgo, Pleun van Dijk, Tellurico, and Standard 404, selected for their ability to use experimental materials and technologies, as communicative media for reflections on systemic issues

L’expression de la tristesse dans " L’Enfant et la rivière" d’Henri Bosco

This work is supported by the observation of the frequency of use of the word « sadness » and all its synonymic network in Henri Bosco’s work L’Enfant et la rivière. Examining manifestations of sadness in a children’s book, linguistically as well as thematically, means choosing to analyze a constant in Henri Bosco’s literary production outside the works where it is present in a more obvious way, it means also understanding that this attitude of regret and melancholy – found in the rest of his literary production – has been already present in this work in a clear and manifest way Finally, it means trying to delineate the universal traits that standardize and make unique the Henri Bosco’s hero.Keywords: Henri Bosco, L’Enfant et la rivière, Children’s and Young People’s Literature,emotions, sadness.Este trabajo se basa en la observación de la frecuencia de uso de la palabra « tristeza » y de toda su red de sinónimos en L’Enfant et la rivière de Henri Bosco. Examinar las manifestaciones de tristeza en un libro para jóvenes lectores, tanto lingüística como temáticamente, significa elegir analizar una constante en la producción literaria de Henri Bosco más allá de los lugares en los que se manifiesta de una manera más obvia, significa comprender que esta actitud de nostalgia y melancolía encontrada en el resto de su producción literaria, ya ha sido dibujada aquí de una manera clara y manifiesta y significa, finalmente, tratar de describir las características universales que estandarizan y hacen que el héroe de Henri Bosco sea únicoPalabras clave: Henri Bosco , L’Enfant et la rivière, literatura juvenil, emociones, tristeza.Ce travail est soutenu par la constatation de la fréquence d’emploi du mot « tristesse » et de tout son réseau synonymique dans L’Enfant et la rivière d’Henri Bosco. Examiner les manifestations de la tristesse dans un récit de jeunesse, au niveau linguistique aussi bien que thématique, signifie choisir d’analyser une constante de l’oeuvre bosquienne au-delà des lieux où elle se manifeste d’une manière plus évidente, comprendre que cette attitude de regret et de mélancolie qu’on retrouve dans le reste de sa production littéraire, s’est déjà dessinée ici d’une manière claire et manifeste, et essayer de délinéer les traits universels qui uniformisent et rendent unique le héros bosquien.Mots-clés: Henri Bosco, L’Enfant et la rivière, littérature de jeunesse, émotions, tristesse

Why international organizations commit to liberal norms

Recent decades have witnessed the emergence and spread of a broad range of liberal norms in global governance, among them sustainable development, gender equality, and human security. While existing scholarship tells us a lot about the trajectories of particular norms, we know much less about the broader patterns and sources of commitments to liberal norms by international organizations (IOs). This article offers the first comparative large-N analysis of such commitments, building on a unique dataset on IO policy decisions over the time period 1980-2015. Distinguishing between deep norm commitment and shallow norm recognition, the analysis produces several novel findings. We establish that IOs' deeper commitments to liberal norms primarily are driven by internal conditions: democratic memberships and institutional designs more conducive to norm entrepreneurship. In contrast, legitimacy standards in the external environment of IOs, often invoked in existing research, mainly account for shallower recognition or "talk" of norms