What Belgium Can Teach Bosnia: The Uses of Autonomy in 'Divided House' States

Belgium and Bosnia can be understood as “divided house” states, which contain proportionally similar groups with opposing views regarding whether the state should be more unitary or more decentralised. The Belgian example demonstrates that even where groups disagree on state structure, a mixture of various forms of group autonomy may facilitate stability and compromise within the state. Belgium addresses this dilemma in two ways: 1) non-territorial autonomous units in the form of the linguistic communities, and 2) exclusive competencies for different units within the diverse Belgian state. In Bosnia, the rights of minorities in different territorial units, as well as refugee returns to areas where they are minorities, might be improved by structures with non-territorial autonomy that are similar to the Belgian linguistic communities. Similar to Belgium, these non-territorial units might hold exclusive competencies for educational, linguistic, cultural, and religious matters, and enable more political representation of minority individuals. In order to advocate working models for Bosnia, analysts should more carefully examine actual examples from states with similarly divided populations

Sherrill Stroschein on the importance of protests: “voting will always harm the interests of a minority”

“Voting is by number, and it will always harm the interests of a minority. A protest is disruptive and reflects intensity – it really shows how much you care about something.” – argues Dr Sherrill Stroschein, Senior lecturer in Politics at University College London

Binary Analysis Framework

The binary analysis of software has become an integral activity for security researchers and attackers alike. As the value of being able to exploit a vulnerability has increased, the need to discover, fix and prevent such vulnerabilities has never been greater. This paper proposes the Binary Analysis Framework, which is intended to be used by security researchers to query and analyze information about system and third party libraries. Researchers can use the tool to evaluate and discover unknown vulnerabilities in these libraries. Furthermore, the framework can be utilized to analyze mitigation techniques implemented by operating system and thirdparty vendors. The Binary Analysis Framework takes a novel approach to system-level security by introducing a framework that provides for binary analysis of libraries utilizing a relational data model for permanent storage of the binary instructions, as well as providing novel ways of searching and interacting with the parsed instructions

Discourse in Bosnia and Macedonia on the Independence of Kosovo: When and What is a Precedent?

Bosnia and Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 and 1992, and subsequent referenda legitimised these declarations, but unitary state actors did not emerge. Rather, Bosnia and Macedonia each contain groups with divisive views regarding the nature of the state in which they live. Kosovo is regularly invoked as an example in their contentious discussions. In this essay, I present a framework for understanding this discursive contention in which Kosovo provides the focus for disputes between extremists and moderates of different groups. Within the two states, groups differ over the recognition of Kosovo's declaration of independence and the question of whether this might constitute a precedent. A political, rather than simply a legal, view on these discussions helps us to better understand not only these dynamics, but similar contestations unfolding elsewhere. © 2013 Copyright University of Glasgow

Reconfiguring state-minority negotiations for better outcomes

This chapter focuses on collective remedies for minorities, in the form of autonomy as advocated by the Lund Recommendations. It provides first an overview of the territorial and non-territorial autonomy structures proposed in the Lund Recommendations, and then outlines the ways in which majority-minority claims are framed within an institutional framework of territorial autonomy. Next, it contrasts this with the framing of majority-minority disagreements and accommodation in terms of NTA. It demonstrates how NTA removes the zero-sum nature of disputes between majorities and minorities, such that better outcomes become possible for each than under conditions of territorial autonomy. NTA reconfigures disputes between states and minorities, by emphasizing governance as a menu of functional competencies that can take place according to a personal, rather than a territorial, principle. This shift can transform majority-minority disputes to avoid conflict between groups

What Belgium can teach Bosnia: the uses of autonomy in 'divided house' states

Belgien und Bosnien können als Staaten mit einem 'geteilten Haus' bezeichnet werden, bestehend aus etwa zwei gleich starken Bevölkerungsgruppierungen mit unterschiedlichen Vorstellungen über die politische Verfassung ihres Gemeinwesens. Das Beispiel Belgiens zeigt jedoch, dass selbst bei einem Dissens über die staatliche Struktur Formen einer relativ stabilen Autonomie der Bevölkerungsgruppen bei 'friedlicher Koexistenz' entwickelt und institutionalisiert werden können. Belgien löst dieses Problem auf zwei Wegen: (1) nicht-territoriale autonome Einheiten in der Form von Sprachgemeinschaften und (2) exklusive Kompetenzen für die Einheiten innerhalb des diversifizierten belgischen Staats. Der Artikel zeigt nun, dass diese Konstruktion auch für das bosnische Minoritätenproblem von Nutzen sein kann. Ähnlich wie in Belgien, sollten die nicht-territorialen Einheiten exklusive Kompetenzen in bildungspolitischer, linguistischer, kultureller und religiöser Hinsicht erhalten. Der Autor empfiehlt weiterhin auch andere Länder mit ähnlich gespaltenen Populationen hinsichtlich ihrer Vorbildfunktion für Bosnien zu prüfen. (ICAÜbers

“The Hungarians” and the Presidential Election in Romania

Klaus Iohannis (or Johannis? Spelling does matter, in this case): Sibiu mayor, ethnic German, known to keep order in a nice town, a Transylvanian. It should not come as a surprise that the Hungarian minority voted for him. And yet, the whole picture is more complex: Sherrill Stroschein disentangles the riddle behind the Hungarian ethnic vote in Romania. To find out more about the Romanian elections, come to our panel debate on Monday, 1 December

Populism, Nationalism, and Party Politics

Recent political events have forced an examination of ideologies of populism and nationalism in politics. In this piece, I examine literature on the post-2016 political context to illustrate why the rise of identity-based politics has surprised analysts. An understanding of identity-based parties requires a focus on both the forms by which they navigate electoral and party systems, and the content of their rhetorical appeals to publics. I consider the electoral and party systems literature, and indicate some reasons that majoritarian electoral systems are more likely to foster the dominance of identity-based politics. In such systems, large parties might become weaponized by extremist elements, and lack the potential for checks from new parties. In addition, presidential systems lack a mechanism for no confidence votes, and might also have weak checks on an extremist executive. In terms of content, populism and nationalism might draw differing boundaries to include or exclude perceived elites. However, they can otherwise align in terms of their stances against “Others,” and against individualistic or technocratic stances that may fall under the label of “liberalism.” Nationalism and populism are not simply ideologies, but can be used as strategies by elites who can successfully deploy these mobilizing rhetorical appeals

Institutional change and identity shift: the case of Scotland

Many studies of state fragmentation and secession emphasize the importance of institutions in these dynamics. Devolved or federal institutions may be intended to placate national sentiments at the regional level, but they often provide a foundation for attempts at secession or independence. Much of the literature on these dynamics emphasizes the material and network resources and infrastructure that sub-state institutions can provide for independence movements. Their discursive and symbolic resources have been less examined. This contribution outlines how the 1997 devolution for Scotland has provided an institutional resource for the Scottish National Movement. However, the institutions of devolution did not only serve as material and infrastructural resource. They also provided a symbolic and ideational context for rhetorical and discursive disputes with the Conservative-Liberal Democrat British government established in Westminster in 2010. The Scottish case is particularly useful to illustrate both the possibilities and limits of these discursive contestations. The Scottish example shows how identities are solidified in the process of contention (Tilly 2008) – thus, whatever the referendum outcome in 2014, Scottish-ness is strengthened by these events

A Malware Analysis and Artifact Capture Tool

Malware authors attempt to obfuscate and hide their code in its static and dynamic states. This paper provides a novel approach to aid analysis by intercepting and capturing malware artifacts and providing dynamic control of process flow. Capturing malware artifacts allows an analyst to more quickly and comprehensively understand malware behavior and obfuscation techniques and doing so interactively allows multiple code paths to be explored. The faster that malware can be analyzed the quicker the systems and data compromised by it can be determined and its infection stopped. This research proposes an instantiation of an interactive malware analysis and artifact capture tool