Showing papers on "State (computer science) published in 2024"

Tanzania’s ’68: Cold War Interventions, Youth Protest, and Global Anti-Imperialism

Abstract: Although usually associated with events in Europe and North America, the events of the ‘global 1968’ were global in scope. This chapter shows how Tanzanian youths shared common ground with their contemporaries around the world in protesting against Cold War interventions in Vietnam and Czechoslovakia. In doing so, they drew inspiration from the landscape of radical ideas and texts of revolutionary Dar es Salaam. But in contrast to the dynamics of counter-hegemonic protest elsewhere, the Tanzanian government’s foreign policy meant that it could channel these radical critiques of superpower imperialism into its own nation-building project. The language of anti-imperialism could also be deployed against more immediate threats, as the case of Malawi’s claims to Tanzanian territory demonstrate. While recognising the significance of transnational Afro-Asian and Third Worldist solidarities in these movements, the chapter integrates these dynamics into a national story. The state circumscribed the autonomy of youth activism, especially when it risked upsetting Julius Nyerere’s carefully calculated foreign policy.

Economic Crisis, Informal Institutions, and the Transformation of Islamist Politics in Egypt

Abstract: In Egypt, by the mid-1980s, as a result of a deep economic crisis, thousands of Islamic voluntary associations managed to develop a parallel economy and a parallel welfare system. In some instances, these modes of informal organizations translated into an Islamist-inspired challenge to the state. The rise in political influence of the Islamic Investment Houses dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood aided that organization in its recruitment programs that expanded its membership. Moreover, where radical Islamic groups were able to exploit informal financial networks and procure informal labor contracts for their supporters, particularly in the informal settlements around Cairo, they used these as bases of power and influence. Using private sources to establish social networks in defiance of state regulations, organizations such as the militant Islamic Group (al-jama’at al-Islamiyya) have sought to build, literally, a “state within a state.”

Will they automatically work together? Cooperation Among Non-Fools in Hobbes´s Leviathan

Abstract: Thomas Hobbes´s State of War is commonly imagined as a harrowing condition where hostile interactions are the rule and non-hostile encounters are the rare exception. However, while it is generally true that Hobbes purposely outlined his famed condition of anarchy as a condition of perennial conflict, it is also equally true that cooperative behavior was not uncommon. In fact, by only taking into account cooperative behavior, as presented in Leviathan, the anarchic humans leave the absolute uncertainties of the State of War and create the Commonwealth for their safety and well-being. Over the past fifty years or so, several exits from the State of War via game theory have been proposed in the literature, with mixed results. Most (if not all) solutions consider the likelihood of betrayal, usually through the figure of the Fool. This is a valid approach since the condition of anarchy can be imagined as being rife with dishonesty. However, the issue of non-Fools – as far as the players willful cooperation and the ultimate responsibility for the creation of government is concerned, has not been addressed yet.

State Disaster Response: Systems and Programs

Abstract: In the United States, describe in general the planning, organization and operations at the state level. An important feature for international readers to understand in particular is the way the U.S. federalist system, with many powers reserved to the states, affects emergency management.

Delivering Schools and Clinics in Rural Senegal

Abstract: This chapter employs an original, geocoded dataset of social service investments to estimate the effect of precolonial centralization on a village's likelihood of receiving a new local public good between 2002 and 2012. I find robust evidence that falling within the territory of a precolonial state increases a village’s chance of receiving local infrastructural investments from the local state. This result is robust to a number of alternative explanations and model specifications, affirming the argument that there is something different about how local governments respond to demands for and deliver these public goods in formerly centralized areas even when accounting for similar objective need. The chapter thus documents that we are witnessing the emergence of subnational variation in the spatial logics of local public goods delivery.

Investing in Islamism: Labor Remittances, Islamic Banking, and the Rise of Political Islam in Sudan

Abstract: In Sudan the era of the oil boom resulted in a flood in labor remittances that circumvented official financial institutions, thereby undercutting the state’s fiscal and regulatory capacity and fueling the expansion of the informal foreign currency trade. Initially, developments in Sudan paralleled those in Egypt as the boom witnessed the rise of an Islamist-commercial class that formed as a result of its successful monopolization of informal financial markets. However, in contrast to Egypt, by 1989 Sudanese Islamists were able to take over the levers of the state via a military-coup. This development was made possible by Sudan’s weaker state capacity and the extreme weakness of its formal banking system. As a result, the financial power of the Muslim Brotherhood continued to increase in relationship to the state as they continued to profit from participation in the lucrative speculation in black market transactions and advantageous access to import licenses.

Revisiting the Politics of the Arusha Declaration

Abstract: This chapter explores the debates about the future of the Tanzanian state after independence, which culminated in the Arusha Declaration of 1967. It sets out the contours of elite-level conversations about development in the 1960s, as Tanzania groped for a path forwards that would translate independence into meaningful socio-economic progress. After showing how Julius Nyerere’s decision to embark on a radical programme of socialist reform was motivated by local unrest and the fate of postcolonial regimes elsewhere in Africa, it then revisits the little-understood politics of the Arusha Declaration and its fallout. Offering an alternative dimension to readings of Arusha as a stimulant for national unity, the chapter demonstrates how Tanzania’s socialist revolution created fissures among the political elite. In particular, it pushed Oscar Kambona, a prominent politician, into exile in Britain. The Arusha Declaration represented a critical turning point in Tanzania’s postcolonial history that narrowed space for dissent, while also sowing the seeds for future challenges to the TANU party-state.

The Tale of a Feud

Abstract: This book chronicles the life and times of tribal leader Mujāhid Ḥaydar, scion of a prominent local dynasty, and his agency in highland Yemen’s political conflicts from the 1970s to the early 2000s. When the political elites of the Ṣāliḥ regime murder his father and his elder brothers, he is forced to exact revenge and lead his tribe through dramatic vicissitudes that culminate in the catastrophe of the Ḥūthī wars. Mujāhid’s life is a story of ongoing strife, heroism, resistance, commitment to the defence of honour, loss, and exile. His biography offers nuanced and original insights into how tribal politics in Yemen influence the domain of the state and are often intertwined with it – such that neither can be comprehended independently from the other.

Cities and Other Civic Organisms

Abstract: An overview of the settlements of the Attalid kingdom is presented, and the impact of the Attalid state on rural Anatolia is assessed. In a countryside dominated by small-scale communities, villages, and towns, Pergamene officials interfaced with a wide variety of civic organizations. Unlike the other Hellenistic dynasties, the Attalids rarely undertook coercion-intensive urbanization projects or forced synoicism. Rather, the Attalids tended to leave communities in place and culturally autonomous, instead focusing their efforts on shaping the body politic and improving fiscal legibility by opportunistically fostering civic institutions of any type. As a result, soldier-settler towns with the status of katoikia ascended to polis-like prominence. Their representatives gained access to royal interlocuters without trading an indigenous Anatolian identity for the trappings of the Greek city, while the Attalids gained a host of new subjects in the countryside, including the emergent Mysians. Surgical interventions in the countryside after 188 BCE shored up select towns like Toriaion and Olbasa with polis institutions and territories.

“The House the Boom Built”: The Informal Economy and Islamist Politics in Egypt

Abstract: In Egypt migrant remittances and the flow of petrodollars in the era of the oil boom provided capitalization of Islamic banks and a host of Islamic investment companies that operated outside the system of state regulation. Such bankers drew on the rapidly growing wealth of those businessmen with long-standing connections in the Gulf, including, most importantly, members and sympathizers with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). This boom in labor export and remittance flows also helped shape Egyptian national economic functions, out-migration and the burgeoning informal economy afforded the Egyptian state enough “relative autonomy” to allow it to expand the private sector and begin to decentralize the country’s economic system. It enabled the Egyptian state to relax foreign exchange regulations to stimulate a foreign capital influx. However, the unintended consequences of these policies were opening the door for Islamic financial institutions, which helped finance and popularize the middle class-based Islamic movement.

The President of the Russian Federation as an Object of Public Control: Constitutional and Legal Analysis

Abstract: This article is devoted to the analysis of problems and prospects of the organization and implementation of public control over the President of the Russian Federation. The subject of the analysis is the relevant provisions of Russian legislation devoted to the consolidation of the mechanism of organization and implementation of public control over the activities, acts and decisions of the head of state and the practice of their application. General and private scientific methods are used - analysis, synthesis, analogy, formal-legal, comparative-legal, interpretation of legal norms, sociological, historical-legal, etc. The author formalizes and analyzes the main problems that hinder the organization and implementation of public control over the President of the Russian Federation, and also develops and justifies a system of measures to resolve them. The issues of development and implementation of new forms, methods, types of public control measures in relation to the activities, acts and decisions of the head of state need further scientific understanding are revealed by the author of the article.

Decolonising the Media: Press and Politics in Revolutionary Dar es Salaam

Abstract: What was the relationship between a revolutionary African state and the postcolonial media? This chapter analyses the evolution of the press in Dar es Salaam after independence. By the mid-1970s, Tanzania had just two national daily newspapers, one of which was owned by the party, the other by the state. But this was not the outcome of a teleological slide from an independent to a muzzled media, as liberal Cold War-era conceptions of the ‘freedom of the press’ would have it. This chapter shows how the press became a contested site of socialist politics in Dar es Salaam’s internationalised media world. Stakeholders debated questions of who should own newspapers, who should work for them, and what they should write in them. Even when the government nationalised the country’s only independent English-language newspaper, it placed it under the control of a radical, foreign editor and emphasised the need for it to serve as a critical voice. However, when this editorial independence transgressed Tanzania’s foreign policy, the state moved to bring the press under closer control, justified by Third World trends towards ‘development media’.

Mutual Aid

Abstract: When disaster strikes suddenly, first responders gather their resources, move to the scene, and begin to execute a well-rehearsed response. Personnel, supplies, and equipment arrive at the scene and meet the requirements of the operation, and once completed they are refitted and resupplied for the next calamity. But what happens when the disaster evolves slowly over time and distance, involving many organizations across jurisdictional boundaries? Or when, given the prior scenario of a sudden-impact disaster, local resources become rapidly depleted? Victims of a disaster require a number of resources, and whether in the form of medical attention or a hot meal, these requirements may exceed the local capabilities. Mutual aid is one of the earliest and most organic forms of interagency cooperation and coordination in public safety and health services. Without prearranged mutual aid agreements, events that deplete or exhaust community resources jeopardize the health and safety of not only the victims directly affected by the disaster but also the rescuers and emergency management personnel themselves. This chapter introduces a brief history of the federal plan to support disaster responses as it applies to working with state and local governments. The chapter also covers the basic concepts of developing mutual aid agreements, organizational examples (at the local, state, and federal levels for developing plans), pitfalls, and successful disaster responses that effectively used mutual aid.

State Collapse, Informal Networks, and the Dilemma of State Building in Somalia

Abstract: Chapter 6 details how the collapse of the State in Somalia led to the emergence of severe inter-clan conflicts. These conflicts were rooted in wrenching political conflicts over the monopolization of labor remittances and local currencies and characterized by continued attempts to institute law and order through military and ideological means. In the wake of state collapse, remittances continue to represent the backbone of the Somali economy. These are transferred through informal banking systems and remain untaxed by local authorities. The informal economy’s efficiency in facilitating currency trade, and the extent to which ethnic and religious networks control access to the wages of expatriate Somali labor is determining the political fortunes of local elite’s and variable patterns of state building in different regions of the country. The Somali case calls into question the very principles and analysis of conventional state building and “sovereignty” of nation states in less developed societies.

Introduction

Abstract: Why are some communities able to come together to improve their collective lot while others are not? This book offers a novel answer to this question by looking at variation in local government performance in decentralized West Africa: local actors are better able to cooperate around basic service delivery when their formal jurisdictional boundaries overlap with informal social institutions, or norms of appropriate comportment in the public sphere demarcated by group boundaries. In this introductory chapter, I lay out the main contours of my theory as well as the implications that the argument holds for key debates in Comparative Politics, including the use of narratives as a lens into actors’ political strategies, the social identities we prioritize in our research, prospects for state-building in sub-Saharan Africa, and our understanding of how historical legacies shape contemporary development outcomes.

Francis H. Leslie, Urfa, and the Events of 1915

Abstract: Reverend Francis H. Leslie (1877-1915), a missionary of the American Board (ABCFM), was stationed in Aintab and Urfa at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1911, he was put in charge of the works, begun by Corinna Shattuck (1848-1910) in Urfa. He was also appointed as an American consular agent for the region for a short time in 1915. During the Armenian uprising in Urfa, it is claimed that he was held hostage by Armenians in the mission premises from September 29 to October 15 to defend themselves. After the suppression of the uprising, he was called to the Government House and interrogated many times, and the government confiscated the money and valuables left under his supervision throughout that time. Fearing for his life in a depressed state, on October 30, 1915, he committed suicide by ingesting poison (carbolic acid, phenol). This study is on the writings and role of Francis H. Leslie before and during the Armenian uprising in Urfa

The Politics of Decentralization in Senegal

Abstract: Chapter 3 introduces Senegal’s decentralization reforms in depth, specifying the transfer of authority over basic social services to the local state in 1996. Because it is possible that the very process of delimiting decentralized units allowed more coherent communities to select into shared administrative divisions, I have to take into account the possibility that institutional congruence was not simply an outcome of the precolonial past, but available to any group able to influence boundary construction. Accordingly, the chapter details the politics of subnational boundary creation from the colonial onward. Employing archival and interview data, I demonstrate that decentralization and boundary delimitation were largely top-down processes, suggesting that the emergence of institutional congruence was not driven by endogenous, bottom-up demand.

Introduction

Abstract: From Tanganyika’s independence in 1961 to the collapse of the Portuguese empire in 1974, Dar es Salaam was an epicentre of revolution in Africa. The representatives of anticolonial liberation movements set up offices in the city, attracting the interest of the Cold War powers, who sought to expand their influence in the Third World. Meanwhile, the Tanzanian government sought to translate independence into meaningful decolonisation through an ambitious project to build a socialist state. This chapter explains how the lens of the city reveals the connections between the dynamics of the Cold War, decolonisation, and socialist state-making in Tanzania. It locates this approach among new approaches to the history of the Cold War, decolonisation, and global cities. Scattered across continents, the postcolonial archive offers the potential for exploring the revolutionary dynamics which intersected in Dar es Salaam.

The Awakening of the Hinterland: The Formation of Regional Vinaya Traditions in Tang China

Abstract: This volume explores the dissemination of the Dharmaguptaka Vinaya tradition in Tang China (618–907) in the context of the dispersal of the state bureaucracy throughout the empire and the changing centre–periphery dynamics. The tradition’s development in China during the Tang Dynasty has traditionally been associated with northern China, particularly the capital city of Chang’an, where Daoxuan (596–667), the de facto founder of the “vinaya school” in China, resided. This book explores the dissemination of Daoxuan’s followers and the subsequent growth of interrelated regional vinaya movements across the Tang regional landscape.

Offences against the State

Abstract: The Elgar Encyclopedia of Crime and Criminal Justice stands apart as the most comprehensive global reference title in its field. New entries will be added every month and PDF downloads will be available once the Encyclopedia is complete.

The Role of Social Media in Disasters

Abstract: We discuss the role of social media in disasters, including historical examples, as well as current practice. Social media has evolved from the personal one-on-one interactions between close friends and family to the widespread dissemination of any and all kinds of information, almost in real time. This can have both positive and negative consequences. Large reputable organizations, as well as state and government entities, can use social media to distribute key information during disaster situations. However, without regulation and oversight, anyone is free to do the same, which can lead to far reaching spread of false or inaccurate information. This, in turn, can have a direct impact on the health and wellbeing of a population by significantly affecting morbidity and mortality outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic was an eye-opening event, highlighting the power of social media to influence and alter the course of a public health crisis. The use, and abuse, of social media is constantly evolving, and we must continue to research and learn from the successes and failures to determine the most appropriate use of social media in disasters.