Transnational security threats are among the most pressing and complicated problems facing both governmental and non-governmental actors in today's world. Human trafficking is one example of contemporary transnational security threat that is relatively less studied compared to other transnational security threats. Because transnational security threats such as human trafficking exist above and outside the boundaries of state control, it may be supposed that a greater degree of supranationalism in the policy responses to them would yield better results in combatting these modern-day ills. Anti-trafficking efforts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the European Union are examined to assess the impact of degree of supranationalism present in the respective policy responses to determine if any advantage is gained from aligning supranational policies to transnational problems. This question is not answered conclusively due to a lack of supranationalism present in key areas of EU governance responsible for law enforcement efforts.

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This article deals with the growing importance of Non-Governmental Organisations in the South as partners for international development cooperation. It focuses on the innovation potential of NGOs in tackling poverty and in promoting social, economic, and political development in cooperation with donor agencies. It is argued that NGOs face critical challenges when opting for increased professionalism and expansion in size. Many NGOs run the risk of loosing their valuable potentials and advantages in the name of professionalism by transforming themselves into government-like bureaucracies or profit oriented enterprises. Drawing from significant experience in developing countries and with donor agencies, the author offers an ambitious theoretical analysis of NGOs in the south which goes beyond typical approaches of looking at the performance of individuals or merely specific types of NGOs.

In the current globalized market, multinational corporations are experiencing heightened external social and environmental pressures to operate more responsibly. Transnational activist groups and advocacy NGOs are successfully framing normative expectations on corporate social responsibility and using tactics to name and shame socially and environmentally controversial corporations to pressure them to change their practices. An international norm of corporate social responsibility is increasingly shared by states, intergovernmental organizations and the private sector itself, and visibly emerging in the market place. Corporations engage with NGOs to demonstrate their conformance to the norm. The study explains why corporations engage with NGOs in different ways. It argues that corporations weigh the material incentives associated with the social and environmental consequences of their activities, and conform to the norm accordingly. They thus use the norm to further their material interests. Given that corporations are exposed to different levels of normative external pressures, there are different engagement strategies. In order to explain the terms under which corporations are likely to choose a particular kind of engagement strategy, a three-level concept of vulnerability is introduced. The more a corporation is vulnerable to the external normative pressures, the deeper it is willing to work with NGO/NGOs to ease that pressure. Hence, in NGO-business engagements, actors collaborate in order to gain the anticipated positive rewards of cooperation. They perceive those advantages greater than if they had pursued their goals separately.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed July 9, 2008). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 368-404).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 283-316).

Since Hong Kong's reunification with China, there has been more cooperation between Hong Kong and the Mainland in tertiary education, with Hong Kong-Shenzhen partnership being particularly active. This dissertation examines cooperation in tertiary education between Hong Kong and Shenzhen from the perspective of collaborative governance. It is found that the initiation of the collaboration is driven by leadership of the HKSAR Government, the Shenzhen Municipal Government and the Central People’s Government, interdependence between the cities in educational resources, productivity and information as well as consequential incentives for the Hong Kong institutions. To look into how the cooperation may advance to the next level, the plan for the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) to establish campuses in Shenzhen are analyzed in details, taking into account their early stage of development. Recommendations on how similar setups can be done in the future have been come up, and they include putting formal memorandum of understanding and agreements in place, having long-term commitment to the project, identifying shared objectives with the counterparts, retaining a large share of discretion, adopting suitable approaches to managing the policy networks and managing risks. It is considered that such recommendations may be taken as reference for other means of cooperation in tertiary education between the two cities as well as that between Hong Kong and other mainland cities. / published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Public Administration

In this dissertation, I present three essays which examine questions in the field of public economics using a game theoretic approach, and I derive hopeful results and helpful rules for international negotiation. In my first chapter, I examine minimum participation constraints. In the presence of heterogeneity, a minimum participation (MP) clause in a public goods arrangement can serve as a device to create a more homogeneous group. When coalitions are restricted in what they can bargain over, exclusion of some agents from the bargaining process can be Pareto improving. This paper gives a general set of sufficient conditions for such an exclusion result to hold, and presents examples of when exclusion does, and does not, improve upon unanimity. In the second chapter, I discuss the problem of determining which externality situations merit international cooperation. I create a general framework of linearized parameters to examine a general externality problem, and then I provide the sufficient conditions for a parameter to move non-cooperative and cooperative solutions in opposite directions under certain circumstances. I argue that situations which behave in this manner and which have a higher parameter value have more benefit to cooperation through the increased range in actions to bargain over. The third chapter extends upon the second chapter and applies the framework developed to an externality problem. I present a particular story of correlation in fish growth and a corresponding model which gives an example of an increasing action gap. I describe the method of use of the framework, and using the linearized parameters developed in the second chapter, I attempt to show the divergence of non-cooperative and cooperative actions in this setting, demonstrating the need for negotiation among sovereign entities. / text

Many factors such as increase of the international crime rate, establishing of the free movement amongst the countries and others have been determining the importance of the international cooperation in the penal field, the aim of which is to administer justice in the penal actions, where the legal help from the foreign countries is needed. The competence of the law-enforcement officers is limited by the territory of the Republic of Lithuania thus in such cases when investigation data, witnesses or suspect himself are located in the other country, crime was committed by the country citizen abroad, convict is hiding in the foreign country etc. the authorities of the other country are addressed for legal assistance in penal action. The grounds for legal assistance are multilateral and bilateral treaties. Sending the requests and carrying them out according the national law fulfill it. Despite the fact that the communication between the two country's authorities is regulated in many acts of legislation, there are still many gaps. For instance, there are no laid down rules (except the rules regarding the European arrest warrant) when the requests for legal assistance should be send via the Office of the Prosecutor General and in which cases – via Ministry of Justice. This and many other issues are being solved in the practice relations that arise while communicating with other countries. The analysis of communication practice can be also useful as it often uncovers the... [to full text]

A fundamental driving factor to contemporary international terrorism is the role of religion. Since the 1980s, there have been not only a rise in the number of Islamist terrorist incidents but also of a more globalized and intense dimension. The casualties have risen to unprecedented levels. Africa, and the Horn of Africa, in particular, has experienced its fair share of terrorist activities. For instance, in December 1980 terrorists sympathetic to the PLO bombed the Norfolk Hotel, owned by an Israeli, in Nairobi, Kenya, killing sixteen people and injuring over a hundred. The 7 August 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were more deadly: 240 Kenyans, 11 Tanzanians and 12 Americans died, with over 5,000 Kenyans and 86 Tanzanians injured. There was yet another terrorist attack on another Israeli-owned hotel in Mombassa and an attempt on a passenger plane on the runway at the Mombassa International Airport, Kenya. Both incidents happened in November 2002. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the 1998 and 2002 attacks. With rising terrorism in the Horn of Africa and the reality of the Somali state failure, there is a growing concern that the Somali environment is supporting terrorist activities in the region. The activities of the al-Itihad al-Islamiya (AIAI) and later the Islamic Courts Union (ICU), the Somali Islamist fundamentalist organizations, with their feared international connections and the security implications, are of concern not only to the region but also to global security monitors. There is not much debate regarding the level of collapse of the Somali state and the possible security implications of the territory as a congenial terrorist safe haven. Most experts have presented Somalia as a clear example of a completely failed state. Rotberg (2002:131) describes Somalia as “the model of a collapsed state: a geographical expression only, with borders but with no effective way to exert authority within those borders". Jhazbhay (2003: 77) quoted Ali Mazrui as saying that "the situation in Somalia now is a culture of rules without rulers, a stateless society‟. Menkhaus (2003: 27) has singled out protracted and complete state collapse, protracted armed conflict and lawlessness as aptly representing the Somali situation. “Somalia‟s inability to pull together even the most minimalist fig-leaf of a central administration over the course of twelve years places the country in a class by itself. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.