Articles de revues sur le sujet « Power resources – government policy – united states »

Political action has affected postwar income distribution in the United States mainly through policy-induced variations in macroeconomic activity and government transfer benefits in proportion to total income. We present a small dynamic model of the connections among the partisan balance of power, macroeconomic fluctuations, transfer spending trends, and income distribution outcomes. The model is based on the premise that the parties have different distributional goals, and it is designed to identify how shifts in party control of the presidency and the strength of the parties in Congress have affected the distribution of after-tax, after-transfer income by influencing cyclical economic performance and the flow of resources to transfer programs. We therefore extend the “partisan theory” of macroeconomic policy to the domain of income distribution outcomes.

Studies of lobbying try to determine the influence and power of non-governmental actors on public policy. Although influence is very difficult to measure empirically, many continue to push for better research design to solve the problem. Through case studies of business-government relations in the United States and the European Union, this article argues that the difficulties with power and influence concern not only their operationalisation, but they also reflect conceptual confusions. Trying to determine the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of a policy issue can be misleading, since power also structures apparently harmonious exchange relationships. The perceived success of business lobbying in the cases studied depended on the governments' receptiveness to their demands, which in turn depended on strategic advantages they saw for themselves in international negotiations. Even when business appears to lead the dance, it is more promising to look at resource distribution and the interdependence of both sides, instead of assuming the domination of business power over policy outcomes.

The global debt problem influences the foreign-policy capabilities of the United States through its impact on the government's “linkage strategies” in foreign affairs. In some circumstances policy makers are forced to make connections between different policy instruments or issues that might not otherwise have been felt necessary; in others, opportunities for connections are created that might not otherwise have been felt possible. The Polish debt crisis of 1981–82, the Latin American debt crisis of 1982–83, and the IMF quota increase in 1983 are suggestive in this regard. Linkage strategies bred by the debt issue are more apt to be successful when the interest shared by the United States with other countries in avoiding default is reinforced by other shared economic or political interests. They will also be more successful to the extent that the government can supplement its own power resources by relating bank decisions to foreign-policy considerations. Power in such situations, however, is a wasting asset, even when employed indirectly through the intermediation of the IMF.

The mass franchise led to more responsive government and a more equitable distribution of resources in the United States and other democracies. Recently in America, however, voter participation has been low and increasingly biased toward the wealthy. We investigate whether this electoral “class bias” shapes government ideology, the substance of economic policy, and distributional outcomes, thereby shedding light on both the old question of whether who votes matters and the newer question of how politics has contributed to growing income inequality. Because both lower and upper income groups try to use their resources to mobilize their supporters and demobilize their opponents, we argue that variation in class bias in turnout is a good indicator of the balance of power between upper and lower income groups. And because lower income voters favor more liberal governments and economic policies we expect that less class bias will be associated with these outcomes and a more equal income distribution. Our analysis of data from the U.S. states confirms that class bias matters for these outcomes.

Xi Jinping’s rise to power has heralded a new foreign policy that is more assertive and uncompromising toward China’s neighbors, the United States, and the rest of the world. This change presents challenges for the United States and Taiwan in particular which must be addressed with a sense of urgency due to Xi Jinping’s ambitious objectives and his firm grip on the levers of power which increase the likelihood that the Communist Party and government of China will seek to achieve them without delay. This paper reviews changes to Chinese foreign policy in the Xi Jinping era and argues how the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) over time has increased the threat to Taiwan, with concurrent risks for the United States. Taiwan and the US can address the challenge presented by China by strengthening their relationship to adapt to the new era under Xi Jinping’s leadership. According to CIA (2018), China’s economy now stands at approximately US$12 trillion, second only to the United States (CIA [2018]. World fact book). Unlike in 1978, China’s economy today is dependent on access to globally sourced raw materials, and access to overseas consumer markets for its industrial and consumer goods. This dependency on overseas markets has increased China’s global presence and interests, driving the need to protect them. The Chinese Government’s now ample resources have been allocated to both hard and soft power means toward this purpose. The PLA has greatly benefitted from economic development and the expansion of the Chinese economy, transforming from a backward institution focused on private-sector moneymaking into the sharpest tool of China’s power and influence. Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China’s foreign policy and strategy have undergone a dramatic shift away from Deng Xiaoping’s focus on increasing domestic productivity and avoiding potentially costly overseas entanglements. The confluence of accumulated national wealth, diplomatic, economic, and military power, and the will to use those levers of power, has dramatic implications for the United States and China’s neighbors. A more assertive China, confident in its wealth, power, and international status, is increasingly unafraid of overt competition with its neighbors and the United States, unwilling to back down or compromise in the face of disputes. This dynamic has resulted in a new paradigm in the Indo-Pacific region that is unlike previous challenges of the past 40 years. The shift in China’s foreign policy and the PLA’s modernization threaten to challenge the credibility of US security assurances and alliances in the region, making the cultivation and strengthening of the US–Taiwan relationship, and the network of US bilateral alliances in the region an urgent imperative.

China is currently the world’s largest installer of wind power. However, with twice the installed wind capacity compared to the United States in 2015, the Chinese produce less power. The question is: Why is this the case? This article shows that Chinese grid connectivity is low, Chinese firms have few international patents, and that export is low even though production capacity far exceeds domestic production needs. Using the tools of Austrian economics, China’s wind power development from 1980 to 2016 is documented and analyzed from three angles: (a) planning and knowledge problems, (b) unproductive entrepreneurship, and (c) bureaucracy and government policy. From a theoretical standpoint, both a planning problem and an entrepreneurial problem are evident where governmental policies create misallocation of resources and a hampering of technological development.

This paper considers prevailing environmental policy in the United States with the emphasis on liberty, markets, utilizing information, entrepreneurial discovery, and the economic analysis of political decisions (public choice). The general discussion is illustrated by the concern over global warming and policies for addressing this concern. The political incentives to confront environmental problems directly with mandates, restrictions, and subsidies ignore the power of liberty and market incentives to solve problems by fostering an impressive network of information transfer, increasing innovation, and expanding prosperity. Indeed, most environmental policies systematically suppress liberty, censor the communication of information, and retard innovation and prosperity, with the result that they provide less environmental quality at greater cost than is possible. While such flawed policies might be justified in cases where pollution problems pose clear, serious, and immediate threats, we argue this is not true of global warming, and the most effective response to concerns over carbon emissions may be limiting the discretionary power of government to take direct action and rely on the indirect effects of liberty and market incentives to move us beyond the petroleum age more quickly and efficiently than will result from the direct action of government.

Nowadays, the world is increasingly recognizing the limitations of non-renewable energy resources such as oil and fossil fuels. The continued reliance on these finite resources poses a significant risk of energy shortage in the future. As a result, there is a growing emphasis on promoting renewable energy sources like wind energy, solar energy, and other non-polluting alternatives. In this article, the focus is on the development of the photovoltaic (PV) industry in China and the United States, with a specific emphasis on photovoltaic energy. The aim of this study is to analyze and compare the current state of the PV industry in both countries, taking into account various factors such as PV power generation, installed PV capacity, and policy support. By conducting a comprehensive assessment of these aspects, the research findings reveal that the PV industry in China has experienced remarkable growth and has surpassed the United States in terms of competitiveness. China has emerged as a global leader in the PV industry, with significant advancements in technology and manufacturing capabilities. The country's PV power generation has witnessed substantial expansion, contributing significantly to its renewable energy targets. Moreover, China's installed PV capacity has experienced rapid growth, supported by favorable government policies and incentives that have stimulated investment and innovation in the sector. In contrast, the United States, while still a prominent player in the PV industry, has faced certain challenges in keeping pace with China's progress.

Sustainable Health Equity (SHE) is a progressive national initiative that promotes the health of individual citizens and communities by modifying socio economic and environmental factors that correspond to social determinants of health. The sustainable health equity focuses on modalities to engage policy actors, stakeholders and decision makers to conceptualize an actionable public health policy. The collaborative national initiative is multifaceted which is principally to provide consistent health care that does not vary according to demographics like gender, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic and geographical location. Cultural congruent and universal health care are the pillars to health equity in the United States. The Stakeholders include government, researchers, civil societies, health care professionals, providers and the public. An actionable SHE policy will advance public confidence in the executive, judiciary, legislators and public officials. Multidisciplinary and multilevel engagement is essential in addressing health disparity in the United States. Strategies to foster political power, create awareness, advocate for high-quality health care progress evidence- based practices, research and equal allocation of material and resources. SHE prospective is inherent with the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services unequivocal resonance in public service, and exemplary leadership.

The purpose of this article is to correlate Indonesia’s global maritime fulcrum (GMF) as Indonesia’s middle power strategy to its responseto the two geopolitical strategies of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) of China and the Free andOpen Indo-Pacific (FOIP) of the Quad (the United States, India, Japan and Australia). This article used the process-tracing method to examine the information sourced from journal articles, news media outlets, government press releases and other resources. The article unfolds in four sections. The first explains the background of why the global maritime fulcrum was chosen as Indonesia’s middle power strategy response tothe BRI and FOIP. The second explains how Indonesia usesthe GMF as its middle power strategy. The third part explores how the middle power strategy through the GMF policy responds tothe BRI. The last part elaborates on Indonesia’s strategy when responding to the FOIP. It concludes that it is prevalent that Indonesia usesthe GMF as its middle power strategy when responding to the BRI and FOIP.

The Caspian region came into the focus of attention of the Caspian and non-regional states even prior to the collapse of the U.S.S.R. The increased global attention to this region was associated with the presence of proven and potential reserves of hydrocarbon resources, which increased the region’s geopolitical significance. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Caspian region found itself in the center of geopolitical rivalry. From that time on, the subject of energy acquired a new meaning in the Caspian region. Western oil and gas companies and government agencies began to demonstrate an increased interest in the hydrocarbon resources of the Caspian region. Moreover, for decades the West has maintained a close focus on the Eurasian space, in particular, on the problems associated with the production and transportation of hydrocarbon resources. The most acute geopolitical standoff occurred between Russia and the United States, which supported various pipeline projects. For Russia, the key task was to preserve its regional dominance, which had been growing over the course of several centuries. The United States supported the geopolitical turn of the new Caspian states, advocating the creation of new hydrocarbon supply routes that would bypass Russian territory. The key task for the Caspian states was to increase hydrocarbon production and provide reliable routes for their export to foreign markets. Based on these goals, the Caspian states built their own foreign policy, including intraregional policy. Thirty years later, the results of geopolitical rivalry are visible. The Caspian countries, which rely on financial resources and political support from non-regional actors, have implemented large-scale hydrocarbon export projects. The new pipeline architecture has changed the balance of power in the Caspian region, increasing the involvement of the Caspian states in the energy policy of Turkey, China, and the EU. At the same time, the regional states have managed to solve the problem of the international legal status of the Caspian Sea in a five-sided format. A new trend of the last decade has involved projects related to the construction of coastal infrastructure and expansion of shipping. The Caspian countries are growing increasingly more interested in participating in international transport projects, considering them as an important component of their foreign policy. Despite the attained agreements and solutions to key problems, competition between the Caspian states, which is greatly influenced by non-regional actors, is intensifying.

The article explores potential, resources and strategy of Spain in the United Nations from the moment when the resolution of the socalled Spanish question was adopted and Spain joined this influential intergovernmental international organization in 1955 to the present date. The author focuses on key problems which directly deal with national interests of Spain, including: a dispute with the United Kingdom about the ownership of Gibraltar, perennial problem of the Western (Spanish) Sahara conflict management, the initiative and the UN programme Alliance of Civilizations, co-sponsored by Spain, Kosovo issue and the danger of internationalization of the political and institutional conflict in Catalonia, efforts by the Spanish central government to achieve sustainable development goals. By analyzing foreign policy resources of Spain, initiatives and activities of the country in the United Nations and its various specialized agencies over the years using the UN information materials, the author suggests that successful democratic transition and the country’s accession to the European Economic Community in 1986 strengthened the profile of Spain in the United Nations. However, the political and institutional transformations in the European Union, creation of political union of the Member-States and establishment and development of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy mean that Spain may carry out its foreign policy in a ‘truncated’ form, taking into account the EU position as a special strategic partner of the UN and its expanded Observer status. The economic and foreign policy potential of this country weakening its competitive advantages under the influence of negative consequences of the global financial and economic crisis do not raise an issue about permanent membership of Spain in the UN Security Council. However, the ‘soft power’ resources based on its postimperial identity allow for a fairly high appreciation of possibilities of Spain with regard to monitoring, prevention and management of conflicts and crisis situations in developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, providing international assistance for development and facilitating intercultural dialogue of the Western and non-Western civilazations.

The article explores potential, resources and strategy of Spain in the United Nations from the moment when the resolution of the socalled Spanish question was adopted and Spain joined this influential intergovernmental international organization in 1955 to the present date. The author focuses on key problems which directly deal with national interests of Spain, including: a dispute with the United Kingdom about the ownership of Gibraltar, perennial problem of the Western (Spanish) Sahara conflict management, the initiative and the UN programme Alliance of Civilizations, co-sponsored by Spain, Kosovo issue and the danger of internationalization of the political and institutional conflict in Catalonia, efforts by the Spanish central government to achieve sustainable development goals. By analyzing foreign policy resources of Spain, initiatives and activities of the country in the United Nations and its various specialized agencies over the years using the UN information materials, the author suggests that successful democratic transition and the country’s accession to the European Economic Community in 1986 strengthened the profile of Spain in the United Nations. However, the political and institutional transformations in the European Union, creation of political union of the Member-States and establishment and development of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy mean that Spain may carry out its foreign policy in a ‘truncated’ form, taking into account the EU position as a special strategic partner of the UN and its expanded Observer status. The economic and foreign policy potential of this country weakening its competitive advantages under the influence of negative consequences of the global financial and economic crisis do not raise an issue about permanent membership of Spain in the UN Security Council. However, the ‘soft power’ resources based on its postimperial identity allow for a fairly high appreciation of possibilities of Spain with regard to monitoring, prevention and management of conflicts and crisis situations in developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, providing international assistance for development and facilitating intercultural dialogue of the Western and non-Western civilazations.

The article explores potential, resources and strategy of Spain in the United Nations from the moment when the resolution of the socalled Spanish question was adopted and Spain joined this influential intergovernmental international organization in 1955 to the present date. The author focuses on key problems which directly deal with national interests of Spain, including: a dispute with the United Kingdom about the ownership of Gibraltar, perennial problem of the Western (Spanish) Sahara conflict management, the initiative and the UN programme Alliance of Civilizations, co-sponsored by Spain, Kosovo issue and the danger of internationalization of the political and institutional conflict in Catalonia, efforts by the Spanish central government to achieve sustainable development goals. By analyzing foreign policy resources of Spain, initiatives and activities of the country in the United Nations and its various specialized agencies over the years using the UN information materials, the author suggests that successful democratic transition and the country’s accession to the European Economic Community in 1986 strengthened the profile of Spain in the United Nations. However, the political and institutional transformations in the European Union, creation of political union of the Member-States and establishment and development of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy mean that Spain may carry out its foreign policy in a ‘truncated’ form, taking into account the EU position as a special strategic partner of the UN and its expanded Observer status. The economic and foreign policy potential of this country weakening its competitive advantages under the influence of negative consequences of the global financial and economic crisis do not raise an issue about permanent membership of Spain in the UN Security Council. However, the ‘soft power’ resources based on its postimperial identity allow for a fairly high appreciation of possibilities of Spain with regard to monitoring, prevention and management of conflicts and crisis situations in developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, providing international assistance for development and facilitating intercultural dialogue of the Western and non-Western civilazations.

With the use of a liberal/rational framework as a baseline, this article examines whether economic asymmetric interdependence can yield political influence. More specifically, it examines exogenous gas supply to the EU and develops a theory that provides testable hypotheses aiming to answer whether the export of gas provides political advantages for the sender state. The outlined hypotheses, and more, are tested in a cross sectional time series dataset, where votes in the United Nations (UN) Assembly are used as the dependent variable, as a measurement for the policy preferences of states. The empirical findings support the prediction made in the theory section. Gas dependence has a conditional effect on policy behaviour. The sender government has to be a sizeable international power, whilst the recipient government should have low military capabilities and be dependent on foreign support.

This paper addresses the role of the government as a producer of regimes to govern natural resource use. The regime for hydrocarbon exploration and exploitation in the Outer Continental Shelf of the United States serves as an empirical illustration. The efficiency of this regime is evaluated applying criteria derived from economic theory (natural resource and property rights theory). The claims put forward by powerful political groups are contrasted with empirical evidence on the performance of the oil and gas industry. The fact that these claims were able to substantially influence the making of the regime in spite of their actual irrelevance is analysed from a public choice perspective.

Relevance. Relations between states, due to either energy cooperation or confrontation, have entered the most acute phase since the beginning of the XXI century, since competition in this industry has become a leading element of the foreign policy of world powers. The purpose is to consider the stages of formation and development of the US energy strategy in the current conditions of world politics.Objectives: to study the activities of us presidents in the context of the implementation of the country's energy interests; to study the legal framework of the US energy dominance in different countries and continents: highlight the significant tactical steps of the US government in the field of realizing the country's energy interests.Methodology. The application of the method of document analysis made it possible to identify the strategic priorities of the policy of the US governments in their dynamics. The retrospective method of analyzing US policy made it possible to prove the idea of the purposeful participation of the US military departments in ensuring the national security of the country in the economic sector.Relevance. The dynamics of the US energy strategy is analyzed on the example of the activities of its presidents from the end of the twentieth century to the present, which showed the transformation of the country's energy strategy from regional dominance, from the position of a net importer of energy resources to global dominance and transformation into a net exporter of energy resources through economic (development of shale deposits), military (expansion of NATO bases in the regions of oil and gas production) and diplomatic (summits, sanctions), etc.Conclusions. Thus, the energy boom leads to a change in the geopolitical alignment of forces in the world, a decrease in the influence of OPEC countries on the formation of oil prices. The shale revolution is at the heart of a fundamental shift in the balance of power. All this makes it possible for the United States to reduce dependence on energy imports and expand freedom of action in Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia.

Energy regulation in the United States is now at a crossroads. The EPA has begun the process to officially repeal the Clean Power Plan and currently has no plan to replace it with new rulemaking to regulate carbon emissions from the U.S. energy sector. Even though the Clean Power Plan is more or less at its end, its regulatory structure stands as a model of the way decision-makers in the United States regulate the energy sector and the environment. Since the beginning of the modern environmental legal system, decision-makers have chosen to silo the system. Statutes and agencies focus on just one media or one issue. Tackling the climate crisis will inevitably require an integrationist model of lawmaking. The Clean Power Plan took the same problematic route as past regulation. While the Clean Power Plan rightfully addressed rising carbon levels, it failed to account for another growing problem associated with climate change: quickly depleting water resources. Although the consequences of the energy-water nexus are clear, U.S. decision-makers continue to ignore the need to integrate energy and water decision-making. Continuing to compartmentalize environmental problems, rather than addressing climate change impacts in a holistic manner, will not bring about the results that are desperately needed. The tools needed to integrate decision-making exist throughout the three branches of government. Congress can and should step in to pass a new statute, which establishes a legal mandate on agencies to fully consider the implications of energy policy and energy regulation on water resources. The federal courts can read a legal requirement into the Clean Air Act or the Administrative Procedure Act that would require federal action in the energy sphere to account for impacts on water resources. Finally, the President can use his power to force federal agencies to consider water resources more thoroughly than in the past. While some of these mechanisms may be hard to envision given the current political atmosphere, implementation is necessary to ensure water and energy security in the face of a growing climate crisis.

Abstract The World Bank today faces parallel challenges to its operations and governance. The institution has since its founding provided financing on favourable terms to developing country governments to support national development efforts. Alongside these country demands, there are now calls for a new set of mandates and activities associated with global public goods. Advocates would have the Bank allocate large sums toward climate mitigation, pandemic response and preparedness, and other activities that may or may not align with national priorities in developing countries. The ability of the World Bank to strike an appropriate balance between country demands and global goods depends on the institution’s shareholders. Yet, the deterioration in the bilateral relationship between the United States and China now threatens to undermine effective governance at the institution. This paper considers the challenge of competing demands on World Bank resources and the degree to which a resolution could depend on an agreement between the United States and China, one that sets the strategic direction of the institution and addresses the growing impasse on the question of China’s shareholding in the Bank.

I wish to consider the possibility that a good part of the opposition to the main lines of American foreign policy is based on deep-seated objections to the political and economic systems of the United States. This is not to say that existing policy is necessarily wise or that there may not be good and sufficient reasons for wishing to change it. Indeed, at any time and place, the United States might well be overestimating the threat from the Soviet Union or using too much force. What I wish to suggest is that across-the-board criticism of American policy as inherently aggressive and repressive, regardless of circumstance – a litany of criticism so constant that it does not alert us to the need for explanation – has a structural basis in the rise of a political culture that is opposed to existing authority.To the extent that this criticism is structural, that is, inherent in domestic politics, the problem of fashioning foreign policies that can obtain widespread support is much more difficult than it is commonly perceived to be. For if the objection is to American ways of life and, therefore, “to the government for which it stands,” only a transformation of power relationships at home, together with a vast redistribution of economic resources, would satisfy these critics. If the objection is not only to what we do but, more fundamentally, to who we are, looking to changes in foreign policy to shore up domestic support is radically to confuse the causal connections and, therefore, the order of priorities.

The actual effectiveness of the American anti-war movement from 1964-68 and its attempts to sway the policy of President Johnson's administration on the topic of the Vietnam War is debatable. While popular myth has exaggerated the role of protestors in stopping the war, the movement failed to alter state policy on the war in any serious fashion. The anti-war movement could not develop a universal policy of their aims, differing from a gradual exit from Vietnam to a complete anarchist overthrow of the American system, and as such were unable to lobby the government effectively. Within the war itself, however, the Johnson administration and the United States Military encountered a stronger stimulus to reconsider their involvement: the inability to adapt to a guerilla war, the immense man power and resources required to ensure victory, and ultimately the communist Tet offensive of 1968 pushing American forces back. When President Johnson did seek to negotiate with North Vietnam at the end of his term, it was because America had simply failed to beat the Vietcong.

With the advancement of economic globalization, in today's society where peace and development are the themes of the times, the influence of hard power, such as economic and military power, has gradually diminished. While soft power, represented by culture, political values and foreign policy, has become more and more important. The explanatory power of traditional realist theories has become increasingly weak. Against this background, Joseph S. Nye, a famous master of international relations theory and a representative of the neo-liberal school, first proposed the concept of "soft power" in 1990 in response to the "decline of the United States". "Since then, the concept of soft power has begun to attract academic attention and has gradually entered the public discourse, and has been adopted by scholars and politicians in various countries. Nye made a clear binary division of the concept of power, dividing it into hard power and soft power. According to Nye, hard power manifests itself as tangible material power, a form of control, while soft power is an intangible force of attraction and assimilation. In Nye's idea of soft power, culture, political values and foreign policy are the main resources that constitute soft power, which relies on solicitation rather than coercion and is characterised by intangibility, diffusion, non-monopoly and non-coercion. Since the mid-1990s, Chinese political and academic circles have identified the potential of soft power and have made attempts to highlight its importance. With the rise of China and related events, theories such as the 'China Threat Theory' and the 'Thucydides Trap' have emerged in the international community, suggesting that China's rise could lead to a destabilising and dangerous international situation. The soft power theory has therefore been welcomed by China as a rebuttal to these theories and an attempt to shift the world's focus to the "peaceful rise of China". This paper will reformulate and analyse China's soft power policy through Joseph Nye's concept of soft power, and will focus the discussion on China's rich cultural resources, political values and soft power resources for foreign policy. It is important to note that China's soft power policy can be successful in enhancing China's image, but given the conflicting interests of developing and developed countries. China's policy needs to be carefully crafted and well thought out. At the same time, excessive government guidance and control can enhance soft power, but according to Joseph Nye's theory, civil society should take more responsibility in building soft power.

This essay will argue that agricultural policy in the United States has led to both the enhancement of efficiency through “productive policies” and the transfer of wealth and income to special interests through redistributive or “predatory policies.” These two activities can be labeled as PESTs and PERTs. PEST policies, or political-economic-seeking transfers, are meant to redistribute wealth from one social group to another and are not explicitly concerned with efficiency. In contrast, PERTs, or political-economic resource transactions, are intended to correct market failures or to provide public goods; these policies have neutral distributional effects, at least in design. A review of the history of public policy in agriculture reveals not only tension between the PERT and PEST roles of the public sector, but also some coordination between these two types of activities. As different interest groups pressure the political process, the government trades off PESTs and PERTs in its attempts to acquire, balance, and secure political power. At times this has led to combinations of programs that appear incoherent. In such a world, the challenge for economists is to design and advocate policies that are both economically productive and politically sustainable.

Indonesia's decision to procure 4.5 generation Rafale fighter jets has been approved to replace obsolete aircraft, namely the US-made F-16 and the Russian-made Su-27 and Su-30. The selection of Rafale was based on Indonesia's defense relationship with France which had existed for a very long time, besides that it was also based on the foreign policy adopted by Indonesia, namely the free and active policy shown from several defense equipment owned by Indonesia, not only from a particular country. This study aims to examine government policies in the plan to procure Dassault Rafale fighter aircraft for Indonesia. This study uses a descriptive qualitative approach through literature review from reputable national and international journals, ebooks, and online media by exploring or explaining more broadly the government policy issues in the plan to procure the Dassault Rafale fighter aircraft for Indonesia. The findings of this study indicate that Indonesia is still lagging behind Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore in terms of the number of first-tier modern combat aircraft that are ready for combat. In addition, purchase of the Dassault Rafale aircraft must provide effectiveness to improve national defense and security by using a definitive combination of "high-low" that can be adopted from the USAF (United States Air Force), and also Indonesia must be realistic in responding to the regional balance of power (ASEAN) through the realization of the MEF towards IEF. One important factor that needs to be considered in the procurement agreement is the existence of a strong policy and commitment from the government that emphasizes the transfer of technology (ToT) by sending human resources to study and do internships in the development industry.

Executive SummaryThreats to the security of the UK are evolving with the changing nature of conflict and balance of power in the world. They are multiple and fragmented, and domestic and online as well as overseas in nature: principally state-based threats such as posed by Russian activity; terrorism; cyber-attacks; and serious organised crime. To respond, the United Kingdom will need flexible capabilities aimed at fostering infrastructural and societal resilience as much as conventional defence. Above all, the UK needs to focus on maintaining, promoting, and defending the international rules-based order, as represented by the UN and NATO among other institutions.The UK possesses significant assets to these ends, including its continuing status as one of eight acknowledged nuclear powers – a status that it should not abandon unilaterally; permanent membership of the UN Security Council; membership of the ‘Five Eyes' intelligence community; and its internationally respected armed forces.But effort and resources are required to support these commitments, for example in helping to encourage other European states to spend more on defence; in contributing to UN peace-keeping operations or other collaborative overseas actions; and most of all in ensuring that army and navy manpower is rebuilt. Two per cent of GDP is no longer sufficient for the proper defence of the nation. Even allowing for the demands of other parts of government, the target for defence spending should be raised in the next review to 2.2 per cent.The principal focus will need to be on efficiency and redeployment of resources as the current equipment-heavy procurement cycle comes to an end. In particular, investment needs to continue to be rebalanced towards new capabilities such as drone technology, offensive and defensive cyber and intelligence manpower.But, to avoid any weakening of the country's security, priority should be given to negotiating a new agreement on security and intelligence cooperation with its European allies to replace the arrangements it had within the EU.

The issue of climate change and its impact on the sustainable development of countries and entire continents has become a key "agenda" in recent years. At the site of the United Nations (UN), international documents have been adopted, which are supported by the majority of states. They rely on them in the preparation and implementation of the national environmental policy, paying considerable attention to communication with the key subjects of the relationship. The purpose of this study is to analyze the place and role of environmental communications in the formation and implementation of environmental policies of states. To do this, the author uses the method of comparative analysis of the environmental policies of countries included in the implementation of the modern climate agenda (USA, EU, China, Russia). Results: in the practical part of the study, the author studies government strategies and laws on climate change issues, considering environmental policy from the point of view of the communication process. The key message, the main subjects of communication, mechanisms for achieving goals, tools and management structures are explored. Conclusions: Consideration of government strategies shows that climate change is at the forefront of environmental policy. And its model is formed as a reaction to the pressure of various social groups and is a consequence of eco-competitive struggle. Environmental policy is the object of environmental communication. The latter, in turn, contains two key components: regulatory and strategic, which are reflected in official documents. Achieving the strategic goals of environmental policy is possible if there are three components: economic resources, social organization and political power. The result of communication goals is to legitimize environmental policy through its approval by society. A high capacity for public participation is essential for the acceptance, credibility and sustainability of environmental programs.

US foreign policy is the important driver of many events and policies at the regional and international levels. Perhaps the importance of US foreign policy towards Iran comes from the great importance of both countries. Many other regional and international policies, as well as Iran, which is an important and influential player in a large number of issues, especially at the regional level, in addition to the most prominent issue through which it interacts with a large number of major powers, led by the United States of America, as is the case with the Iranian nuclear program. And the US foreign policy towards Iran came with the assumption of (Joe Biden) government different from that of his predecessor (Donald Trump). From toughness and imposing more sanctions and tightening the noose politically and economically on Iran to a new policy with a completely different view and awareness (which from the point of view of the new administration did not bring any real results about stopping the Iranian nuclear program and thus achieve the American interest), among the new directions that it adopted (Joe Biden) that more sanctions and tension in relations with Iran have not worked, or at least do not serve the American interest, as the existence of hostile or tense relations with Iran with all the elements that Iran possesses of geopolitical and political power and important natural resources may push it to be Companies and cooperation with other parties that represent a threat to American exclusivity, as is the case with Russia and China.

Movement-countermovement pairs develop in opposition to one another as they battle for position, influence, and survival in a shifting political and cultural context. While theoretical work on countermovements and the political context posits a rough symmetry between opposing movements, our analysis demonstrates significant asymmetries in the fight over gun policy in the United States. Drawing on news accounts, government records, public opinion polls, and organizational-capacity data for twenty-six gun control and twenty-nine gun rights groups, we show that both sides grow during policy fights and after focusing events, but the side with more stable revenue sustains growth longer. The gun rights movement’s financial advantages made it far less dependent on attention-grabbing moments. This imbalance reflects resource differences that affect each side’s capacity for responding to political opportunities and threats. Our findings highlight the need for more research on the implications of resource and power imbalances for effective organizing.

The Taliban victory in Afghanistan in 2021 has not only raised geopolitical concerns but has also sparked questions about the state’s policies and strategies concerning its rare earth elements reserves. The main objective of the presented article is to indicate how the current political change in Afghanistan may affect the raw material policy regarding the extraction of rare earth elements, taking into account geopolitical factors. Rare earth elements are a group of critical minerals that are of great importance to modern technologies, ranging from electronics and renewable energy to defence systems. Afghanistan is known to possess significant deposits of these valuable resources, which have the potential to play a crucial role in global supply chains, especially in the face of ongoing rivalry between the People’s Republic of China and the United States of America. The research problem of the considerations undertaken in this article is to assess the key challenges and opportunities in harnessing Afghanistan’s rare earth element resources after the Taliban’s return to power. The research conducted shows that despite having a significant amount of rare earth elements, Afghanistan lacks the infrastructure necessary to extract and process these valuable minerals. After the Taliban victory, the newly established government sees the potential benefit in extracting rare earth elements and is willing to align itself with China to exploit them.

The article examines the attempts of the United States in 1947 to involve Poland in the Marshall Plan. The motives of Washington's foreign policy in this direction, as well as the views of President Truman on the development of integration processes in post-war Europe, are investigated. After the failure of attempts in the first post-war years to bring to power a government oriented towards Washington and London, the American leadership, actualizing the traditional foreign trade relations of the Poles and taking advantage of the split in the Polish establishment, hoped to make a smooth turn of Warsaw's political course towards the West. The victory of the pro-Soviet party in the Polish leadership and, as a result, Poland's refusal to participate in the Marshall Plan led to a deterioration of Polish-American relations and Washington's attempts to reverse the situation by exerting economic pressure on the Polish leadership. However, it did not come to a complete rupture of economic relations between Washington and Warsaw, since Western Europe at that time was interested in Polish natural resources, and the State Department feared that this would only lead to an increase in Poland's dependence on the USSR. U.S. attempts to involve Poland in the Marshall Plan in 1947 resulted in the acceleration of the formation of two separate centers of European integration, which contributed to the formation of a bipolar confrontation between the USSR and the United States.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created significant obstacles to the implementation of national foreign policies, including the reduction of the resource base. This article analyzes the schemes and forms of government activities that can reduce the negative impact of the pandemic factor. The object of the study is the Federal Republic of Germany, which is currently at a turning point in its development: the end of A. Merkel’s «era» (autumn 2021) is accompanied by a large number of unresolved foreign policy tasks that prevent Germany from establishing itself as a world power. The article provides a detailed overview of these tasks and the ongoing efforts to solve them, presented on a problem-geographic principle. Issues related to the restart of relations between Germany and the United States under the Biden administration, the FRG’s involvement in building up the political and military potential of the EU, as well as the dynamics and nature of the FRG’s dialogue with the leading European NATO member states – Great Britain, Italy and especially France – are analyzed in the context of the ongoing pandemic crisis. Particular attention is paid to the problems associated with deepening cooperation within the framework of the German-French tandem. The paper also explores the difficulties that have appeared during the pandemic and new opportunities for expanding the political and military presence of Germany in Libya, «G5 Sahel» countries, Syria and Iraq. The consequences that a decision of the United States to carry out the «deal» with the Afghan Taliban may have for Germany are analyzed. The FRG’s attempts to strengthen its positions in the post-Soviet space and the Far East are presented in the context of deteriorating relations with the Russian Federation and China. In conclusion, an assessment of Germany’s activity in the sphere of security and defense during the first year of the pandemic is given.

Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came into the helm of affairs, he has stressed the role of the Indian Diaspora in Indian foreign policy making because he had realized the importance of the Diaspora in his development strategy. More than 25 million members of the Indian Diaspora are scattered around the world, which includes more than 3 million Indian origin Diaspora in the United States (US). According to the Ministry of Indian Overseas Affairs [This Ministry has been scrapped during National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government], the Indian Diaspora is the second largest in the world after China. Thus, it is imperative to give importance to Indian foreign policy framing. This trend is new in Indian policy making as India had hardly focused on its Diaspora to tap their resources, potential and assets that they have. In 2015, former Indian Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin said that ‘India’s soft power diplomacy now goes beyond books, culture and cinema’. Mr Modi made a total of 49 foreign trips by May 2017 to woo the Indian Diaspora. In almost every meeting during his foreign visit, he urged the Indian Diaspora to be a part of Indian development by investing in the Indian economy, by donating to the clean river Ganges program, and participating in Indian rural development programmes as well. In this context, this article expounds the role of the NDA government’s cultural diplomacy in Indian foreign policy making. This article also seeks to answer what the Indian government’s strategy to tap the ‘resources’ of the Indian Diaspora is. Finally, the article examines the role of the Indian Diaspora in the development strategy of India.

In the early 1980s, when the debt crisis threatened to disrupt the pattern of trade and investment flows that had evolved since the end of World War II, central bankers faced the challenge of maintaining public confidence in the commercial banks that were at the heart of the international payments system. Although the central bankers agreed that a run on one international bank could lead to a global catastrophe requiring massive government intervention, they did not initially agree on a policy project to strengthen the international payments system. In analyzing central bank cooperation and the processes leading to the adoption of a single international capital adequacy standard, this article argues that agreement on a uniform standard was due to a combination of political power and shared purpose on the part of the United States and Britain. While the article does not argue that the central bankers were an epistemic community as defined in this issue, it further explores the conditions under which epistemic communities are likely to arise.

In this paper, we explain why the U.S. government chose multilateral security arrangements in Europe and bilateral ones in Asia in the 1940s and 1950s. After reviewing the inadequacies of a number of universal and indeterminate explanations, we put forward three explanations—great power status, efficient responses to threats, and regional identity—which rely on the combination of material and social forces for their explanatory power. Starting with common rationalist explanations that focus on material capabilities and institutional efficiency to explain the forms of international cooperation, we add to them the important effect that America's collective identity had on the formulation of its foreign policy goals. U.S. policymakers believed that the United States was a natural part of the North Atlantic community but that Southeast Asia was part of an alien political community. This difference helped drive the U.S. government to adopt divergent policies in two regions that, far from being natural, were constructed politically only in the 1940s. We conclude by pointing to the advantage of eclectic combinations of rationalist and constructivist insights, with an extension to the politics of regional collective identity in the 1990s.

The administrative practices of officials who process the admission of immigrants show severe variations in the ways in which migration policy is enforced on the ground. For the author, inequality of treatment lies in the very hierarchy of tasks and services of what he dubs, following Pierre Bourdieu, the immigration "field". According to the author, the governments’ securitizing priorities favour the sort of suspicion towards foreigners that the media then reproduces, thus authorizing so-called street-level bureaucrats to act with great leeway with regard to immigrants. Under pressure, governments implement what the author calls a "trompe-l’oeil policy" that explores the ambivalence between international and domestic law: while the state enforces repressive laws that apparently comply with fundamental human rights, it leaves to low-ranking civil servants enough discretion to make those rights ineffective. This point is the author’s central contention. The arbitrariness of these officials is neither contingent nor accidental: it actually constitutes a purposive "front-line policy" to enlarge the discretionary power of street-level bureaucrats in charge of regulating admissions. Unequal treatment comes in three flavours in this context. First, officials are asked to ensure that each right granted to a foreigner will not threaten the national order, which means the economic, social and political order. They are therefore in a position to judge the suitability of each application in view of their own arbitrary interpretation of what such "threats" consist of. The question of discretionary power is in this way intimately linked to the problem of equality before the law. Second, the scarcity of material and human resources allocated to services in charge of welcoming migrants starkly contrasts with the expenditure incurred to deport foreigners. Inequality also arises from how agents perceive users and the leeway they have to implement the law. Third, inequality is related to foreigners’ abilities and means to challenge discretionary power, especially through the legal tools they use or through legal intermediaries. The author thus concludes that such "front-line policy" has increasingly been used as a weapon against migrants, especially since the early 2000s, when immigration and detention policies were generalized in France. More broadly, in Europe as well as in United States, immigration reforms have made greater use of detention and focused on enforcement rather than on hosting programs and services for asylum seekers. But they have also strengthened the role of legal intermediaries. Hence the need to investigate how discretionary power is challenged as it sheds light on the power relations between states and migrants. Keywords: foreigners, discretion, sociology, participant observation, front-line policy, illegalism, jobs, insecurity, legal intermediaries

There was a time when the development of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power was thought to be at the cutting edge of environmental protection. However, putting aside various social conflicts related to its location, concerns related to the efficiency of energy production, etc., legal and social agreements regarding the disposal or recycling of these renewable energy power generation facilities were ignored, and the era of introduction and commercialization continued. come. It was a phenomenon not only for us but also around the world. Many European and Western countries are facing their own risk of environmental destruction and are coming up with various policies and plans regarding this. Regarding the problem of disposal of waste solar panels and waste electric vehicle batteries, It is well known that we have taken steps to resolve this issue through legislative and administrative policies. However, in response to the aging of wind power generation facilities, especially waste blades, which have recently received the most attention among renewable energy materials, the EU and representative wind power countries such as Germany and Denmark are paying great attention to the government and industry regarding waste disposal, especially recycling, and solutions to the problem. has been pursued and is now coming to fruition. Unlike the case of Korea, which is stuck with the solution of simple landfill, global renewable energy companies such as Siemens Gamesa of the United States and Germany and Vestas of Denmark, which are actively introducing the use of materials as cement, are developing new products that can recycle blades at the disposal stage from the beginning. We are making progress to the point where we are developing technology to manufacture materials and announcing our success and plans for zero waste by 2040. In response to this situation, our government is not only reorganizing the basic laws for the recycling of waste wind blades, which are already causing environmental problems, but also establishing laws to promote research for technology development such as reuse and recycling, which are lagging behind Europe and the United States. Legal academia will conduct research on the limitations of the Producer Responsibility Recycling (EPR) system, which has already been introduced in the resource recycling law, and ways to overcome it, on the aspects of fiscal legislation such as the introduction of incineration taxes, and on local autonomy for cooperation with local communities. Efforts should be made to identify ways to improve the legal system.

India’s centre-heavy federalism suffered dual downturns in the 1990s, with the tides of globalization and economic liberalization challenging the sanctity of borders and the incidence of coalition politics increasing the salience of regional equations and demands. But Indian foreign policy in the 1990s remained the almost exclusive preserve of the Centre, ruled by several coalitions of political parties like the National Front (1989-1996), United Front (1996-1998). As Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popular yet controversial regime is poised at the middle of its second term in 2022 (beginning in 2019), the continued showcasing of the Centre’s leadership in foreign policy decisions, high-profile bilateral and multilateral engagements, bold collisions with uneasy neighbours, are only matched with the unilateralism exhibited within the borders. Given the oft-reported instances of acute voices of assertions by the states on various issues ranging from illegal and forced migration, resource-sharing, or economic development involving neighbouring countries, a stock-taking is needed, to explore how genuinely federal is India’s foreign policy. In other words, the role of the constituent states in leveraging influence and bargaining for their due share of active involvement as stakeholders, merits critical academic intervention. When tested against real cases, two observations can be made. The dynamics shaping federalism and foreign policy may not just involve the Centre and the states but involve local/regional factors and influences from across international borders as well. Second, there is no causal link between the nature of the government in power at the Centre, Union-state political equations, and the imperatives across the borders between provinces and neighbouring countries. This study examines three case studies; West Bengal, Assam, and the Northeast, to reveal that foreign policy operates within the constitutionally designed structures of federalism in India by negotiating recurrent complexities of politics and deceives regional stakeholders or states with narratives of inclusiveness.

India’s centre-heavy federalism suffered dual downturns in the 1990s, with the tides of globalization and economic liberalization challenging the sanctity of borders and the incidence of coalition politics increasing the salience of regional equations and demands. But Indian foreign policy in the 1990s remained the almost exclusive preserve of the Centre, ruled by several coalitions of political parties like the National Front (1989-1996), United Front (1996-1998). As Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popular yet controversial regime is poised at the middle of its second term in 2022 (beginning in 2019), the continued showcasing of the Centre’s leadership in foreign policy decisions, high-profile bilateral and multilateral engagements, bold collisions with uneasy neighbours, are only matched with the unilateralism exhibited within the borders. Given the oft-reported instances of acute voices of assertions by the states on various issues ranging from illegal and forced migration, resource-sharing, or economic development involving neighbouring countries, a stock-taking is needed, to explore how genuinely federal is India’s foreign policy. In other words, the role of the constituent states in leveraging influence and bargaining for their due share of active involvement as stakeholders, merits critical academic intervention. When tested against real cases, two observations can be made. The dynamics shaping federalism and foreign policy may not just involve the Centre and the states but involve local/regional factors and influences from across international borders as well. Second, there is no causal link between the nature of the government in power at the Centre, Union-state political equations, and the imperatives across the borders between provinces and neighbouring countries. This study examines three case studies; West Bengal, Assam, and the Northeast, to reveal that foreign policy operates within the constitutionally designed structures of federalism in India by negotiating recurrent complexities of politics and deceives regional stakeholders or states with narratives of inclusiveness.

The aim of the article is to study the experience of the emergence and development of municipal law enforcement agencies, to analyse the current state of local police in European countries. The other aim of the article is to study the development of local police, the state of legal, economic support in Ukraine, to form suggestions for the development of municipal police in Ukraine.The initiated reform of decentralization of power in Ukraine, active development of local self-government, building civil society, creation of united territorial communities, transfer of resources, powers from the central level to local levels in the framework of decentralization and local government reform have necessitated the strengthening role of local self-government. Protection of public order should go together with strengthening of a role of local governments in the spheres of medicine and education, in rendering accessible and qualitative administrative, municipal, social services. An additional condition for the formation of local law enforcement is the connection between the development of local self-government in democracies with the development of local law enforcement.Accordingly, the urgency and need to create municipal police in Ukraine, which is a democratic state, is beyond doubt, as evidenced by the active discussion of this topic, both among officials and the public.The world experience of the emergence and current state of functioning of the municipal police in European countries with democratic political regimes has been analysed in the article. Trends in the development of municipal police in European countries have been identified. The existing world models of financial support of the municipal police have been determined.Domestic approaches to the creation of municipal police have been considered. The current state of development of projects of municipal law enforcement forces, the state of adoption of the regulatory framework for the implementation of the functioning of the municipal guard has been studied. An analysis of problematic aspects of the functioning of the National Police of Ukraine, the state of corruption in Ukraine as a way for possible abuse and use of law enforcement agencies for the interests of certain classes has been made. Based on the experience of European EU member states, recommendations on the organization and definition of sources of funding for municipal law enforcement agencies have been made.

The article examines the essential determinants of decentralization and its main elements. Considerable attention is paid to scientific and theoretical aspects of the impact of fiscal decentralization on local economic development. Priority aspects of realization of bases of fiscal decentralization in the Ukrainian administrative practice are covered. It is proved that the key idea of ​​fiscal decentralization is manifested in the achievement of financial autonomy by local governments through the accumulation of financial resources at a certain level of government. Emphasis is placed on the concept of fiscal federalism and its role in the socio-economic development of administrative entities of unitary states. It is argued that the construction of an effective system of inter-budgetary relations should take into account a range of measures to strengthen the own tax potential of the territorial community. It has been established that recently the tax potential of local self-government bodies has been identified by tax capacity at the expense of three taxes: personal income tax, property tax and single tax. The study showed that fiscal decentralization through the prism of tax, budget and debt instruments can provide a favorable socio-economic climate in local communities. A structural and logical scheme of the impact of key paradigms of fiscal decentralization on the development of united territorial communities in Ukraine has been built. It is proved that fiscal decentralization in the conditions of divergence of interbudgetary relations can become a catalyst for effective fiscal stimulus policy, as delegation of budgetary powers to lower levels, while improving the efficiency of budgetary resources, will allow more fully and regionally respond to regional development and local needs.

The article deals with the problem of Internet governance in the context of international information security, which is quite new for political theory and international law, on a systematic basis. The advanced development of the technical base of the Internet, the attitude of the absolute majority of users to it as to new, powerful means of communication, without taking into account the conceptually inherent threats and risks, including political and even military ones, sharply complicate the creation of an international system of control over its use. Considered as a generalized concept, the Internet still does not have a clear definition. At the same time, even "advanced" Internet users rarely go beyond the knowledge that these resources, being included in open information networks and using the capabilities of public global communication networks, allow the storage, processing and exchange of information in a telecommunication mode. The question of who and how controls this process is not of interest to many. This uncertainty of the Internet environment is actively used by a number of states and IT corporations to solve their problems at the expense of the common good and public safety. Moreover, attempts to build a system of law in the Internet space as the development of the existing system of international security meets with resistance. As a result of the analysis of the practice of building an Internet governance system based on the principle of multistakeholderism, the presented article shows that this component of global communication in its current form, although it is caused by natural social and technical processes, acts in the interests of the United States and carries the potential of threats to peoples and countries. whose government policy does not allow Washington to classify them as "democratic" and "friendly". The recent Twitter revolutions are examples of this. Among the goals of their organizers today are the states of the Caspian region and the South of Russia. Accompanying and facilitating globalization, the Internet creates new opportunities and new, including strategic, risks. There are still no international legal mechanisms to prevent them. The development of the latter is an urgent task of modern law and diplomacy.

This paper uses CiteSpace software to conduct a bibliometric analysis of research literature under the topic of game theory which specifically focuses on energy and natural resources in the Web of Science Core Collection. The results show that: since 1990, the number of documents covering the topics of “energy” and “game theory”, and “natural resources” and “game theory” has continued to grow steadily, and entered an explosive growth stage after 2017. In terms of disciplinary classification of published papers, Energy & Fuels has the highest frequency, 311 with a significant centrality, 0.22. In terms of journal publications, Applied Energy is the most cited journal whose frequency is 311 and centrality is 0.01. In terms of country, China has the highest number of published papers, and the United States with the highest overall centrality of papers. North China Electric Power University published 31 papers, the largest number of documents from one institution. In terms of author productivity, Puyan Nie has been the most productive author since 2016. The co-citation cluster analysis on the literature topics shows that the game theory of energy and natural resources have roughly gone through four stages: (1) From 1990 to 2009, this is the embryonic stage with no more than 15 new papers per year; (2) From 2010 to 2014, this stage had microgrid as its mainstream research topic, and other topic clusters officially emerged; (3) From 2015 to 2017, the main research topics became the integrated energy system, subsidy mechanism and household energy management, with a hot topic on the evolutionary game process between government and enterprises; (4) From 2018 to 2021, this stage continued to focus on the previous topics, and the research goes much deeper, resulting in more models and new green technologies. Finally, the keyword analysis concludes with nine themes of concern in this research field, and has come to a comprehensive summary of the mainstream research methods in the field of game theory of energy and natural resources.

In this issue of Journal of Disaster Research, we introduce nine papers on societal responses to recent catastrophic disasters with special focus on long-term recovery processes in Japan and the United States. As disaster impacts increase, we also find that recovery times take longer and the processes for recovery become more complicated. On January 17th of 1995, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake hit the Hanshin and Awaji regions of Japan, resulting in the largest disaster in Japan in 50 years. In this disaster which we call the Kobe earthquake hereafter, over 6,000 people were killed and the damage and losses totaled more than 100 billion US dollars. The long-term recovery from the Kobe earthquake disaster took more than ten years to complete. One of the most important responsibilities of disaster researchers has been to scientifically monitor and record the long-term recovery process following this unprecedented disaster and discern the lessons that can be applied to future disasters. The first seven papers in this issue present some of the key lessons our research team learned from the studying the long-term recovery following the Kobe earthquake disaster. We have two additional papers that deal with two recent disasters in the United States – the terrorist attacks on World Trade Center in New York on September 11 of 2001 and the devastation of New Orleans by the 2005 Hurricane Katrina and subsequent levee failures. These disasters have raised a number of new research questions about long-term recovery that US researchers are studying because of the unprecedented size and nature of these disasters’ impacts. Mr. Mammen’s paper reviews the long-term recovery processes observed at and around the World Trade Center site over the last six years. Ms. Johnson’s paper provides a detailed account of the protracted reconstruction planning efforts in the city of New Orleans to illustrate a set of sufficient and necessary conditions for successful recovery. All nine papers in this issue share a theoretical framework for long-term recovery processes which we developed based first upon the lessons learned from the Kobe earthquake and later expanded through observations made following other recent disasters in the world. The following sections provide a brief description of each paper as an introduction to this special issue. 1. The Need for Multiple Recovery Goals After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, the long-term recovery process began with the formulation of disaster recovery plans by the City of Kobe – the most severely impacted municipality – and an overarching plan by Hyogo Prefecture which coordinated 20 impacted municipalities; this planning effort took six months. Before the Kobe earthquake, as indicated in Mr. Maki’s paper in this issue, Japanese theories about, and approaches to, recovery focused mainly on physical recovery, particularly: the redevelopment plans for destroyed areas; the location and standards for housing and building reconstruction; and, the repair and rehabilitation of utility systems. But the lingering problems of some of the recent catastrophes in Japan and elsewhere indicate that there are multiple dimensions of recovery that must be considered. We propose that two other key dimensions are economic recovery and life recovery. The goal of economic recovery is the revitalization of the local disaster impacted economy, including both major industries and small businesses. The goal of life recovery is the restoration of the livelihoods of disaster victims. The recovery plans formulated following the 1995 Kobe earthquake, including the City of Kobe’s and Hyogo Prefecture’s plans, all stressed these two dimensions in addition to physical recovery. The basic structure of both the City of Kobe’s and Hyogo Prefecture’s recovery plans are summarized in Fig. 1. Each plan has three elements that work simultaneously. The first and most basic element of recovery is the restoration of damaged infrastructure. This helps both physical recovery and economic recovery. Once homes and work places are recovered, Life recovery of the impacted people can be achieved as the final goal of recovery. Figure 2 provides a “recovery report card” of the progress made by 2006 – 11 years into Kobe’s recovery. Infrastructure was restored in two years, which was probably the fastest infrastructure restoration ever, after such a major disaster; it astonished the world. Within five years, more than 140,000 housing units were constructed using a variety of financial means and ownership patterns, and exceeding the number of demolished housing units. Governments at all levels – municipal, prefectural, and national – provided affordable public rental apartments. Private developers, both local and national, also built condominiums and apartments. Disaster victims themselves also invested a lot to reconstruct their homes. Eleven major redevelopment projects were undertaken and all were completed in 10 years. In sum, the physical recovery following the 1995 Kobe earthquake was extensive and has been viewed as a major success. In contrast, economic recovery and life recovery are still underway more than 13 years later. Before the Kobe earthquake, Japan’s policy approaches to recovery assumed that economic recovery and life recovery would be achieved by infusing ample amounts of public funding for physical recovery into the disaster area. Even though the City of Kobe’s and Hyogo Prefecture’s recovery plans set economic recovery and life recovery as key goals, there was not clear policy guidance to accomplish them. Without a clear articulation of the desired end-state, economic recovery programs for both large and small businesses were ill-timed and ill-matched to the needs of these businesses trying to recover amidst a prolonged slump in the overall Japanese economy that began in 1997. “Life recovery” programs implemented as part of Kobe’s recovery were essentially social welfare programs for low-income and/or senior citizens. 2. Requirements for Successful Physical Recovery Why was the physical recovery following the 1995 Kobe earthquake so successful in terms of infrastructure restoration, the replacement of damaged housing units, and completion of urban redevelopment projects? There are at least three key success factors that can be applied to other disaster recovery efforts: 1) citizen participation in recovery planning efforts, 2) strong local leadership, and 3) the establishment of numerical targets for recovery. Citizen participation As pointed out in the three papers on recovery planning processes by Mr. Maki, Mr. Mammen, and Ms. Johnson, citizen participation is one of the indispensable factors for successful recovery plans. Thousands of citizens participated in planning workshops organized by America Speaks as part of both the World Trade Center and City of New Orleans recovery planning efforts. Although no such workshops were held as part of the City of Kobe’s recovery planning process, citizen participation had been part of the City of Kobe’s general plan update that had occurred shortly before the earthquake. The City of Kobe’s recovery plan is, in large part, an adaptation of the 1995-2005 general plan. On January 13 of 1995, the City of Kobe formally approved its new, 1995-2005 general plan which had been developed over the course of three years with full of citizen participation. City officials, responsible for drafting the City of Kobe’s recovery plan, have later admitted that they were able to prepare the city’s recovery plan in six months because they had the preceding three years of planning for the new general plan with citizen participation. Based on this lesson, Odiya City compiled its recovery plan based on the recommendations obtained from a series of five stakeholder workshops after the 2004 Niigata Chuetsu earthquake. <strong>Fig. 1. </strong> Basic structure of recovery plans from the 1995 Kobe earthquake. <strong>Fig. 2. </strong> “Disaster recovery report card” of the progress made by 2006. Strong leadership In the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake, local leadership had a defining role in the recovery process. Kobe’s former Mayor, Mr. Yukitoshi Sasayama, was hired to work in Kobe City government as an urban planner, rebuilding Kobe following World War II. He knew the city intimately. When he saw damage in one area on his way to the City Hall right after the earthquake, he knew what levels of damage to expect in other parts of the city. It was he who called for the two-month moratorium on rebuilding in Kobe city on the day of the earthquake. The moratorium provided time for the city to formulate a vision and policies to guide the various levels of government, private investors, and residents in rebuilding. It was a quite unpopular policy when Mayor Sasayama announced it. Citizens expected the city to be focusing on shelters and mass care, not a ban on reconstruction. Based on his experience in rebuilding Kobe following WWII, he was determined not to allow haphazard reconstruction in the city. It took several years before Kobe citizens appreciated the moratorium. Numerical targets Former Governor Mr. Toshitami Kaihara provided some key numerical targets for recovery which were announced in the prefecture and municipal recovery plans. They were: 1) Hyogo Prefecture would rebuild all the damaged housing units in three years, 2) all the temporary housing would be removed within five years, and 3) physical recovery would be completed in ten years. All of these numerical targets were achieved. Having numerical targets was critical to directing and motivating all the stakeholders including the national government’s investment, and it proved to be the foundation for Japan’s fundamental approach to recovery following the 1995 earthquake. 3. Economic Recovery as the Prime Goal of Disaster Recovery In Japan, it is the responsibility of the national government to supply the financial support to restore damaged infrastructure and public facilities in the impacted area as soon as possible. The long-term recovery following the Kobe earthquake is the first time, in Japan’s modern history, that a major rebuilding effort occurred during a time when there was not also strong national economic growth. In contrast, between 1945 and 1990, Japan enjoyed a high level of national economic growth which helped facilitate the recoveries following WWII and other large fires. In the first year after the Kobe earthquake, Japan’s national government invested more than US$ 80 billion in recovery. These funds went mainly towards the repair and reconstruction of infrastructure and public facilities. Now, looking back, we can also see that these investments also nearly crushed the local economy. Too much money flowed into the local economy over too short a period of time and it also did not have the “trickle-down” effect that might have been intended. To accomplish numerical targets for physical recovery, the national government awarded contracts to large companies from Osaka and Tokyo. But, these large out-of-town contractors also tended to have their own labor and supply chains already intact, and did not use local resources and labor, as might have been expected. Essentially, ten years of housing supply was completed in less than three years, which led to a significant local economic slump. Large amounts of public investment for recovery are not necessarily a panacea for local businesses, and local economic recovery, as shown in the following two examples from the Kobe earthquake. A significant national investment was made to rebuild the Port of Kobe to a higher seismic standard, but both its foreign export and import trade never recovered to pre-disaster levels. While the Kobe Port was out of business, both the Yokohama Port and the Osaka Port increased their business, even though many economists initially predicted that the Kaohsiung Port in Chinese Taipei or the Pusan Port in Korea would capture this business. Business stayed at all of these ports even after the reopening of the Kobe Port. Similarly, the Hanshin Railway was severely damaged and it took half a year to resume its operation, but it never regained its pre-disaster readership. In this case, two other local railway services, the JR and Hankyu lines, maintained their increased readership even after the Hanshin railway resumed operation. As illustrated by these examples, pre-disaster customers who relied on previous economic output could not necessarily afford to wait for local industries to recover and may have had to take their business elsewhere. Our research suggests that the significant recovery investment made by Japan’s national government may have been a disincentive for new economic development in the impacted area. Government may have been the only significant financial risk-taker in the impacted area during the national economic slow-down. But, its focus was on restoring what had been lost rather than promoting new or emerging economic development. Thus, there may have been a missed opportunity to provide incentives or put pressure on major businesses and industries to develop new businesses and attract new customers in return for the public investment. The significant recovery investment by Japan’s national government may have also created an over-reliance of individuals on public spending and government support. As indicated in Ms. Karatani’s paper, individual savings of Kobe’s residents has continued to rise since the earthquake and the number of individuals on social welfare has also decreased below pre-disaster levels. Based on our research on economic recovery from the Kobe earthquake, at least two lessons emerge: 1) Successful economic recovery requires coordination among all three recovery goals – Economic, Physical and Life Recovery, and 2) “Recovery indices” are needed to better chart recovery progress in real-time and help ensure that the recovery investments are being used effectively. Economic recovery as the prime goal of recovery Physical recovery, especially the restoration of infrastructure and public facilities, may be the most direct and socially accepted provision of outside financial assistance into an impacted area. However, lessons learned from the Kobe earthquake suggest that the sheer amount of such assistance may not be effective as it should be. Thus, as shown in Fig. 3, economic recovery should be the top priority goal for recovery among the three goals and serve as a guiding force for physical recovery and life recovery. Physical recovery can be a powerful facilitator of post-disaster economic development by upgrading social infrastructure and public facilities in compliance with economic recovery plans. In this way, it is possible to turn a disaster into an opportunity for future sustainable development. Life recovery may also be achieved with a healthy economic recovery that increases tax revenue in the impacted area. In order to achieve this coordination among all three recovery goals, municipalities in the impacted areas should have access to flexible forms of post-disaster financing. The community development block grant program that has been used after several large disasters in the United States, provide impacted municipalities with a more flexible form of funding and the ability to better determine what to do and when. The participation of key stakeholders is also an indispensable element of success that enables block grant programs to transform local needs into concrete businesses. In sum, an effective economic recovery combines good coordination of national support to restore infrastructure and public facilities and local initiatives that promote community recovery. Developing Recovery Indices Long-term recovery takes time. As Mr. Tatsuki’s paper explains, periodical social survey data indicates that it took ten years before the initial impacts of the Kobe earthquake were no longer affecting the well-being of disaster victims and the recovery was completed. In order to manage this long-term recovery process effectively, it is important to have some indices to visualize the recovery processes. In this issue, three papers by Mr. Takashima, Ms. Karatani, and Mr. Kimura define three different kinds of recovery indices that can be used to continually monitor the progress of the recovery. Mr. Takashima focuses on electric power consumption in the impacted area as an index for impact and recovery. Chronological change in electric power consumption can be obtained from the monthly reports of power company branches. Daily estimates can also be made by tracking changes in city lights using a satellite called DMSP. Changes in city lights can be a very useful recovery measure especially at the early stages since it can be updated daily for anywhere in the world. Ms. Karatani focuses on the chronological patterns of monthly macro-statistics that prefecture and city governments collect as part of their routine monitoring of services and operations. For researchers, it is extremely costly and virtually impossible to launch post-disaster projects that collect recovery data continuously for ten years. It is more practical for researchers to utilize data that is already being collected by local governments or other agencies and use this data to create disaster impact and recovery indices. Ms. Karatani found three basic patterns of disaster impact and recovery in the local government data that she studied: 1) Some activities increased soon after the disaster event and then slumped, such as housing construction; 2) Some activities reduced sharply for a period of time after the disaster and then rebounded to previous levels, such as grocery consumption; and 3) Some activities reduced sharply for a while and never returned to previous levels, such as the Kobe Port and Hanshin Railway. Mr. Kimura focuses on the psychology of disaster victims. He developed a “recovery and reconstruction calendar” that clarifies the process that disaster victims undergo in rebuilding their shattered lives. His work is based on the results of random surveys. Despite differences in disaster size and locality, survey data from the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the 2004 Niigata-ken Chuetsu earthquake indicate that the recovery and reconstruction calendar is highly reliable and stable in clarifying the recovery and reconstruction process. <strong>Fig. 3.</strong> Integrated plan of disaster recovery. 4. Life Recovery as the Ultimate Goal of Disaster Recovery Life recovery starts with the identification of the disaster victims. In Japan, local governments in the impacted area issue a “damage certificate” to disaster victims by household, recording the extent of each victim’s housing damage. After the Kobe earthquake, a total of 500,000 certificates were issued. These certificates, in turn, were used by both public and private organizations to determine victim’s eligibility for individual assistance programs. However, about 30% of those victims who received certificates after the Kobe earthquake were dissatisfied with the results of assessment. This caused long and severe disputes for more than three years. Based on the lessons learned from the Kobe earthquake, Mr. Horie’s paper presents (1) a standardized procedure for building damage assessment and (2) an inspector training system. This system has been adopted as the official building damage assessment system for issuing damage certificates to victims of the 2004 Niigata-ken Chuetsu earthquake, the 2007 Noto-Peninsula earthquake, and the 2007 Niigata-ken Chuetsu Oki earthquake. Personal and family recovery, which we term life recovery, was one of the explicit goals of the recovery plan from the Kobe earthquake, but it was unclear in both recovery theory and practice as to how this would be measured and accomplished. Now, after studying the recovery in Kobe and other regions, Ms. Tamura’s paper proposes that there are seven elements that define the meaning of life recovery for disaster victims. She recently tested this model in a workshop with Kobe disaster victims. The seven elements and victims’ rankings are shown in Fig. 4. Regaining housing and restoring social networks were, by far, the top recovery indicators for victims. Restoration of neighborhood character ranked third. Demographic shifts and redevelopment plans implemented following the Kobe earthquake forced significant neighborhood changes upon many victims. Next in line were: having a sense of being better prepared and reducing their vulnerability to future disasters; regaining their physical and mental health; and restoration of their income, job, and the economy. The provision of government assistance also provided victims with a sense of life recovery. Mr. Tatsuki’s paper summarizes the results of four random-sample surveys of residents within the most severely impacted areas of Hyogo Prefecture. These surveys were conducted biannually since 1999,. Based on the results of survey data from 1999, 2001, 2003, and 2005, it is our conclusion that life recovery took ten years for victims in the area impacted significantly by the Kobe earthquake. Fig. 5 shows that by comparing the two structural equation models of disaster recovery (from 2003 and 2005), damage caused by the Kobe earthquake was no longer a determinant of life recovery in the 2005 model. It was still one of the major determinants in the 2003 model as it was in 1999 and 2001. This is the first time in the history of disaster research that the entire recovery process has been scientifically described. It can be utilized as a resource and provide benchmarks for monitoring the recovery from future disasters. <strong>Fig. 4.</strong> Ethnographical meaning of “life recovery” obtained from the 5th year review of the Kobe earthquake by the City of Kobe. <strong>Fig. 5.</strong> Life recovery models of 2003 and 2005. 6. The Need for an Integrated Recovery Plan The recovery lessons from Kobe and other regions suggest that we need more integrated recovery plans that use physical recovery as a tool for economic recovery, which in turn helps disaster victims. Furthermore, we believe that economic recovery should be the top priority for recovery, and physical recovery should be regarded as a tool for stimulating economic recovery and upgrading social infrastructure (as shown in Fig. 6). With this approach, disaster recovery can help build the foundation for a long-lasting and sustainable community. Figure 6 proposes a more detailed model for a more holistic recovery process. The ultimate goal of any recovery process should be achieving life recovery for all disaster victims. We believe that to get there, both direct and indirect approaches must be taken. Direct approaches include: the provision of funds and goods for victims, for physical and mental health care, and for housing reconstruction. Indirect approaches for life recovery are those which facilitate economic recovery, which also has both direct and indirect approaches. Direct approaches to economic recovery include: subsidies, loans, and tax exemptions. Indirect approaches to economic recovery include, most significantly, the direct projects to restore infrastructure and public buildings. More subtle approaches include: setting new regulations or deregulations, providing technical support, and creating new businesses. A holistic recovery process needs to strategically combine all of these approaches, and there must be collaborative implementation by all the key stakeholders, including local governments, non-profit and non-governmental organizations (NPOs and NGOs), community-based organizations (CBOs), and the private sector. Therefore, community and stakeholder participation in the planning process is essential to achieve buy-in for the vision and desired outcomes of the recovery plan. Securing the required financial resources is also critical to successful implementation. In thinking of stakeholders, it is important to differentiate between supporting entities and operating agencies. Supporting entities are those organizations that supply the necessary funding for recovery. Both Japan’s national government and the federal government in the U.S. are the prime supporting entities in the recovery from the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the 2001 World Trade Center recovery. In Taiwan, the Buddhist organization and the national government of Taiwan were major supporting entities in the recovery from the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake. Operating agencies are those organizations that implement various recovery measures. In Japan, local governments in the impacted area are operating agencies, while the national government is a supporting entity. In the United States, community development block grants provide an opportunity for many operating agencies to implement various recovery measures. As Mr. Mammen’ paper describes, many NPOs, NGOs, and/or CBOs in addition to local governments have had major roles in implementing various kinds programs funded by block grants as part of the World Trade Center recovery. No one, single organization can provide effective help for all kinds of disaster victims individually or collectively. The needs of disaster victims may be conflicting with each other because of their diversity. Their divergent needs can be successfully met by the diversity of operating agencies that have responsibility for implementing recovery measures. In a similar context, block grants made to individual households, such as microfinance, has been a vital recovery mechanism for victims in Thailand who suffered from the 2004 Sumatra earthquake and tsunami disaster. Both disaster victims and government officers at all levels strongly supported the microfinance so that disaster victims themselves would become operating agencies for recovery. Empowering individuals in sustainable life recovery is indeed the ultimate goal of recovery. <strong>Fig. 6.</strong> A holistic recovery policy model.

The article considers the role and place of public authorities in shaping the policy of effective cross-border cooperation between Ukraine and the EU taking into account the national interests.Particular attention is paid to the principles and features of territorial cooperation, taking into account the specifics of the EU’s external cooperation as well as the interests of the participating countries.The basic principles of the cooperation are determined on the basis of connections as well as contractual interregional and interstate relations, in compliance with the national legislation and respect for the international obligations of the states that are subjects of contractual relations; the thematic objectives are defined.The current state of Ukraine and the EU countries cross-border cooperation development is characterized and the main factors limiting this process are outlined. The most significant ones are the insufficient level of the national economic development and inconformity of the national legislation with European standards; lack of well-balanced management at the local level; the impossibility of implementing international projects of economic and social development due to ineffective management; lack of proper infrastructure; lack of marketing which aims to facilitate the existing resource potential of the border regions; sparking interethnic conflicts; the lack of skilled personnel in different spheres of establishing effective cooperation between the authorities, business and the public, etc. are also among them.Lack of sufficient financial resources and managerial powers in local administrations, in particular, for establishing the information infrastructure necessary for the cooperation with the authorities of the foreign countries regions and the development of financial projects is a specific problem of cross-border cooperation.The role of international projects and regional programs such as EU4Business, cross-border cooperation (Black Sea, Romania, Moldova, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland), EU programs, such as ERASMUS, HORIZON (61 projects amounting to 11.95 million euros were announced in 2016), COSME (May 2016) and their role in improving the socio-economic development of the border regions as well as solving common problems in ecology, health, safety and security, promoting the living conditions of citizens are grounded in the paper.The role of the united territorial communities (UTC) in cross-border cooperation activating, in particular their participation in international projects is grounded and the results of this activity in the Transcarpathia are presented. Insufficient level of professional training of public authorities representatives is pointed out. It is proved that cross-border cooperation is one of the main economic mechanisms of attracting foreign investments and grant funds for the economy modernization, for new jobs creation through the small business development, attraction of innovative technologies, access to the European market and the entry of Ukraine into the European community in the current economic situation.The expediency of working out the coherent effective state policy of cross-border cooperation with the EU, in which the legal, institutional and financial instruments should be clearly defined, along with the determined means of its implementation and mandatory public monitoring of the results is emphasized. The development of cross-border cooperation between Ukraine and the EU countries, ensuring a competitive economy running, the effective development of international trade, improvement of conditions and support of entrepreneurship, can be realized under the condition of implementation of the policy of public administration at the regional level.

Abstract The pivotal motive behind financial crime in the real socialist states was the chronic shortage of goods and services. In the case of Poland under the Gomułka administration (1956-1970), a factor which contributed to the prevalence of practices considered economically criminal was, ironically, the liberalization of the government in the period following Władysław Gomułka’s rise to power. The procedure of issuing new licenses to private and co-operative manufacturing businesses fostered illegal practices, because the new businesses needed supplies of deficit resources. Private trade businesses struggled with similar problems. The authorities tried to prevent financial crime by concentrating on publishing new laws which allowed heavy punishment for those behind the biggest economic scandals. In this field, the penal policy was shaped by the top authorities of the communist party, and their decisions were binding for the institutions of the justice system. Such decisions of the top authorities of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PUWP) were behind the death sentence for Stanisław Wawrzecki, who was charged with fraudulence in meat trade in Warsaw. Poles’ attitude towards financial crime was not clear-cut. One the one hand, in their letters to authorities, many Poles expressed their support for severe punishment for those responsible for the biggest fraud, while others objected towards capital punishment for Wawrzecki. The information we have on the dynamics of confirmed financial crimes does not provide a clear answer whether it was actually related to the severity of the punishments.

In recent years, renewable portfolio standards (RPS), which require a certain percentage of electricity sold to consumers to come from renewable resources, have been established by many state governments to mitigate emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants in the United States. Nevada’s RPS set a target of 50% of electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030. By coupling the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s AVoided Emissions and geneRation Tool (AVERT) and CO–Benefits Risk Assessment (COBRA) model, this study assesses potential emission reductions from fossil fuels owing to this requirement and regional health benefits via improved air quality, as well as how these benefits vary spatially under high and low projected electricity demands in 2030. Successful implementation of the RPS could produce health benefits equivalent to USD 3–8 million per year for Nevada residents and up to USD 164 million per year for the entire U.S. Nevada is ranked only 6th among states benefiting from the policy, while California and Washington obtain the most health benefits. There is also inequity among Nevada counties, partly caused by the county population and proximity to major fossil fuel power plants. Lowering electricity demands by 5% in Nevada would lead to a ~10% increase in health benefits. These findings should empower public support of RPS policies and energy conservation to reduce air pollution and public health inequity for the region.

Currently, the issue of renewing the nuclear deal remains a key factor in the d?tente and reset of relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Western countries. The success of the talks could stabilize the Middle East region and lead to the resumption of Iran’s close economic cooperation with international actors. At the same time, the public power, which is currently in the hands of conservative circles of the Iranian elite, and the presence of a significant part of hardliners in government circles of the United States and Israel prevent the rapid achieving of positive results via negotiations. Iran-Ukraine relations, despite considerable prospects, are currently de facto frozen due to a significant number of adverse factors. In addition, taking into account the important fact that today there is a significant intertwining of geopolitical processes in the international arena, one can state that the future of relations between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Ukraine lies in the solution of two tangential cases, namely: the Russian-Ukrainian war and the Iranian nuclear deal. The resolving of both situations lies with the international community, whose interests are closely intertwined. The development of Iran-Ukraine relations is possible and is strategically important for the formation of a zone of economic, political and military security in Europe, the Caucasus and the Middle East not only at present, but also for the future of the whole world. Given this, the Iranian direction of Ukrainian foreign policy needs a reset and an integrated approach even now. The object of the study of the article is the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The article is aimed at studying the socioeconomic and political profile of the Islamic Republic of Iran. As a result, it is concluded that Iran effectively uses all available opportunities to advance its own interests. Significant natural and human resources provide an opportunity to stabilize the economy and ensure its growth despite external and domestic political obstacles. The use of asymmetrical means allows to successfully resist the superior force of numerous regional opponents, while the «soft policy» provides the necessary human and financial resources.

Greenland, the biggest island in the world inhabited predominantly by Inuits, was a Danish colony before 1953 and has since then been a part of the Danish realm with a gradually increasing autonomy. Some 2/3 of its population favor a complete secession, but the heavy dependence upon Danish budget subsidies is the main challenge. The Chinese government and companies have since 2005 maintained a close dialogue with Greenland as an entry point to the Arctic and a rich base of natural resources (including rare earth elements), though there has not been major investments yet. The U.S. have lately tried to halt this cooperation for the reasons of foreign, security and resource policy, and to put Greenland under a tighter American control. President Trump’s purchase offer in 2019 was the most publicized initiative. Denmark, despite its close alliance with the United States, is worried by either American or Chinese involvement and tries to become a good patron for Greenland to prevent its secession. Meanwhile, the Greenlandic authorities confirm their political will to struggle for a complete independence from Denmark. The article suggests three medium-term scenarios, with Greenland remaining in an gradually looser union with Denmark, moving into the U.S. domain and acquiring a full statehood with a subsequent competition of great powers. Whatever the outcome, Russia shall monitor the development closely and play an active role in the Arctic, not taking a part in the US-China rivalry.

Europe is transforming its energy balance and increasing the use of local renewable energy sources. Russia's economy depends on the export of fossil (non-renewable) energy resources. About half of the country's energy resources are exported, primarily to European countries. A change in the fuel and energy balance of European countries, as the main consumer of Russian energy resources, will affect the Russian economy. Therefore, Russia urgently needs to know the state of alternative energy in Europe. The purpose of this article is to assess the growth rate of the share of innovative alternative energy sources in the energy balance of Germany and Denmark, as leading countries. The background for the implementation of energy policy in the field of alternative energy is different. First of all, these are countries with developed economies. They need a reliable, uninterrupted supply of energy sources. The Danish government was the first among European countries to evaluate the potential of alternative energy and began to develop it. Denmark is the first country in Europe to use wind energy to generate electricity. In 1991, the first offshore wind energy plant in Europe appeared in Denmark. Germany started the construction of wind power parks only in 2008. Nevertheless, today Germany, along with China and the United States, is among the top three world leaders in terms of wind power capacity, and also has become one of the world leaders in terms of the total installed capacity of solar panels. In absolute terms, characterizing the development of alternative energy, Germany is the world leader, in relative terms - Denmark. Germanys economy is many times larger than Denmarks. Therefore, Germany cannot rebuild the fuel structure of its economy as fast as Denmark. The Danish leadership has set ambitious goals for the development of alternative energy. In 2050, 100% of the energy supplied to end consumers will be generated from renewable sources. Germany cannot rebuild its economy with this fast pace. In Germany in 2050, the share of renewable energy in final energy consumption will be 60%. Germany, unlike Denmark, initially relied not on the development of alternative energy, but on the development of nuclear energy. However, through consistent energy policies, it has become a world leader in alternative energy use. When Germany began to implement energy policy, it already had a prototype - Denmark. But then, as the study showed, the country chose its own path. And then Germany and Denmark developed alternative energy in different ways. Nowadays the international cooperation has a great importance. Germany and Denmark collaborate in regional and transregional projects in terms of renewable energy sources. North Sea Wind Power Hub is a successful example of their work together. The experience of Germany and Denmark has shown that alternative energy development programs do not exist by themselves. The alternative energy development program is only part of several other related programs. Among them are programs on the rejection of the use of nuclear energy (in relation to Germany), measures to increase the energy efficiency of economies, construction of infrastructure, changes in the organizational structure of energy, etc. Nowadays, many countries in the world pursue an energy policy in the field of renewable energy. In 2009, Russia also committed to increase the share of alternative energy sources to 4.5% by 2020. In the implementation of this policy, it is necessary to take into account the experience of Western countries. The difficulties faced by countries in the new energy sector do not allow us to talk about a decrease in their dependence on energy imports.

The article highlights the controversial issues of the state, contradictions and trends of modern globalization in the face of new challenges and threats associated with political, immigration, pandemic, climate, economic and trade shocks – Britain’s exit from the EU, the implementation of the US President’s policy “America Above All”, the beginning of trade de-globalization as a result of the revision of free trade agreements (FTAs) and the trade “war” between the United States and China, the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and climate change on deepening the global economic recession, the collapse of national economies and international trade, lack of financial resources for active government support of the health care systems, social protection, small and medium-sized businesses. Political, economic, managerial and academic circles are actively discussing the problems of the “end” of globalization, de-globalization, “new” globalization, the need for a “new world order”, which will actually embody the fundamental values of democracy, economic freedom, free trade and, at the same time, will strengthen social responsibility of the world community and its international institutions, the main geopolitical, geo-economic and military centers of power (primarily the United States, China, the European Union, Russia, etc.) for the preservation of peace on the basis of consensus, recognition of global priorities in countering climatic and epidemic threats to human life on Earth , consistent implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals to eradicate poverty in all its forms and manifestations, combat inequality within and between countries, ensure continuous, inclusive and sustainable economic growth and promote social inclusion. The article drew attention to the strengthening of the trends of protectionism and economic nationalism, in particular, the US withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and attempts to revise the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The article shows the loss of the US leadership in world trade due to the accelerated economic development of other countries, primarily the Asian region. The discussion of these problems at the Davos Economic Forum led to the conclusion about the likely end of Atlanticism and globalization. At the same time, the UN report (2018) highlighted a special section on trade hyperglobalization. The article hypothesizes that the Bali Round (2013) of negotiations on trade began the fourth wave of its globalization, and proposes a new theory of international trade – the theory of globalization impact.