scholarly journals Geopolitical Constraints on Development Policies of Small Countries

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (26) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ljubomir Madžar

Unlike competitive markets with theoretically infinite number of agents whose decisions merge into a large mass of other agents’ decisions, forming prices as allocation parameters controlled by no one, international arena is characterized by a limited number of discernible subjects whose decisions have system-wide impacts and turn out significant for policies of other agents. Policies pursued by any country concern not only the country in question but influence other countries and oftentimes significantly affect the degree and manner of reaching their policy objectives. Due to the limited number of acting entities the nexus of international interactions has a notable conflict potential. Small countries are in a special situation due to their almost implied modest power implying further a significant number of independent agents whose interests have to be seriously taken into account in framing their own development and many other policies. Policies of various countries come out visibly interdependent so that other agents’ interests and actions uninterruptedly define wide enough set of constraints to be observed in formulating and implementing development policies of the country in question.Particularly important are the large, economically developed and militarily powerful countries. Their aspirations have to be carefully observed and meticulouslystudied by the small and relatively weak countries. There might emerge, and in Serbiancountries almost regularly emerges, a conflict between highly valued nationalgoals deeply rooted in history, popular myths and collective memory, on the onehand, and interests of the big powerful international players on the other. These aresettings in which baleful strategic mistakes are occasionally made and in Serbianhistory the frequency of such mistakes was rather pronounced. There has been farabove the optimum courage in Serbian history conspicuously exercised by both elitesand popular masses. The consequences of such “determinations for the kingdom ofheavens” are perilous and mistakes are dearly paid in terms of hundreds of thousandsof lost lives and wasted chances for economic and general social development.The paper ends with recommendation that the small countries endeavor to carefullyfit into interests and policies of great powers, invest equally large efforts into choosingthe right allies and adjust pragmatically to their aspirations and, as the casemight be, even to their orders. No matter how strange it may sound, bending flexiblyto the interests of the mighty may be the optimal strategy of pursuing the genuinenational objectives. For, no matter how elevated and majestic they are, they dwindleto little value if they are blocked in the process of realization and the high-mindedefforts invested in their realization get ultimately frustrated. 

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 327-354
Author(s):  
Nadia Yaqub

This article examines the posting of photographs on two Facebook groups created by survivors of the 1976 fall of the Tal al-Zaʾtar refugee camp and their descendants. What happens to photographs as they circulate through these particular social media groups, and what relations do people (including photographed subjects who appear in images of atrocity and trauma) create with such images as they circulate in new ways? How are they mobilized through social media to create and sustain collective memory? I argue that by addressing the yearning to discover, document and sustain networks of affiliation and association on one hand and a shared geography, lost in 1976 and virtually reconstructed through members’ activities on the sites on the other, group members appeal in complex ways to both indexical and iconic qualities of photographs, thereby allowing for the creative engagement with a collective past for the needs of community members in the present.


2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (5) ◽  
pp. 290-306
Author(s):  
A.N. Krichevets ◽  
M.V. Solodushkina

The individual ways of the stutter correction group participants are considered in the article. We see this situation as difficult and even antinomical for participant because it requires the his partial rejection of self-control and a trust in handing over his consciousness to the group leader. We assume that this aspect of communication is expressed only stronger in the situation considered here, but is presented in all kinds of communication. On the other hand, not only psychology, but also our culture lacks in adequate measures for understanding and control of such a processes in the communication. Our analysis of participant’s interviews shows that the participant’s way in the correctional process depends on ones attitudes towards the problem of handing control over one’s condition to the group leader.


Author(s):  
A. A. Kovalevskiy ◽  

The article considers the issues of the nature and conditions of the formation of the geopolitical identity of the Bulgarian nation. The author analyzes the specifics of geopolitical thinking in Bulgaria as a small state in South-Eastern Europe associated, on the one hand, with the approval of the “central”, “core” position of Bulgaria on the Balkan Peninsula, and with belonging to “Intermediate Europe” (“Wide South-Eastern Europe”) along with all other Balkan countries on the other hand. It has been shown that the fundamental Bulgarian geopolitical notions are not part of any clearly articulated doctrine, as was the case in neighboring Greece or Serbia, but are the result of a number of political events, due to which the modern Bulgarian national identity begins to take shape. First of all, we are talking about the firman of the Ottoman Sultan, according to which the Bulgarian Autocephalous Church – Exarchate was founded on March 11, 1870, and after that the draft about autonomous Bulgaria worked out at the Istanbul Conference of Ambassadors of the Great Powers (December 1876), and finally – San - Stefan Peace Treaty of 1878, which completed the formation of the national geopolitical ideal of "Greater Bulgaria."


2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-56
Author(s):  
Johanna Lehr

This article seeks to show that the bodies of Jewish people who died in the Drancy internment camp between 1941 and 1944 were handled on French soil in a doubly normalised manner: first by the police and judicial system, and then in relation to funeral arrangements. My findings thus contradict two preconceived ideas that have become firmly established in collective memory: first, the belief that the number who died in the Drancy camp is difficult to establish; and second, the belief that the remains of internees who died in the camp were subjected to rapid and anonymous burial in a large mass grave in Drancy municipal cemetery.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Dinik Fitri Rahajeng Pangestuti ◽  
Nisrina Sari ◽  
Ambar Lestari

Abstract Tax planning is one example of the use of regulatory loopholes. On the other hand for the Fiscal Authority, carrying out tax avoidance practices as a form of tax planning will have a negative effect on the Government and, for this reason, the Government makes fiscal corrections as its remedial. Many also hide their assets in tax heavens countries. This is so that the assets they have are not taxed. Tax heavens countries are usually small countries that apply very low taxes, some even do not impose taxes at all. However, the government has prepared an Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI) data exchange plan that occurs in 2018, certainly will make tax evaders unable to run away from the pursuit of the tax authorities, even if they have to flee to tax heavens countries (tax heavens). Keywords: tax heavens, tax planning, Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI)   Abstrak Perencanaan pajak adalah salah satu contoh penggunaan celah peraturan. Pada sisi lain bagi Otoritas Fiskal, melakukan praktik penghindaran pajak sebagai bentuk perencanaan pajak akan membawa efek negatif bagi Pemerintah dan, untuk itulah, Pemerintah melakukan koreksi fiskal sebagai remedialnya. Banyak juga yang menyembunyikan asetnya di negara-negara tax heavens. Hal ini bertujuan agar aset yang mereka punya tidak terkena pajak. Negara tax heavens biasanya merupakan negara kecil yang menerapkan pajak yang sangat rendah, bahkan ada yang tidak mengenakan pajak sama sekali. Namun, pemerintah telah menyiapkan Rencana pertukaran informasi data perbankan secara otomatis (Automatic Exchange of Information/AEoI) yang terjadi pada 2018, dipastikan akan membuat para pengemplang pajak tidak akan bisa lari dari kejaran otoritas pajak, sekalipun mereka harus kabur ke negara surga pajak (tax heavens). Kata kunci: Tax Heavens, Tax Planning, Automatic Exchange of Information (AEoI)


1947 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-377
Author(s):  
E. Wilder Spaulding

An expert on foreign affairs has summarized the limitation upon the right of a government to make public the diplomatic papers which it has received from another government as follows: “ … one party to a negotiation cannot, in honor and in courtesy, publish the negotiation without the consent of the other party, on pain of forfeiting that good-will upon which … ‘the peace of the world ultimately depends.’ ” This principle of consent to publication is accepted, with some reservations and exceptions, by American practice. But American practice in this matter is not generally accepted by all foreign offices and it is not precisely and definitely written into international law. It has been generally observed in normal times by the Great Powers, which have had most to gain by its application, and it has frequently been disregarded by small powers and by Great Powers in times of stress. It rests upon comity and reciprocity, not upon international legislation.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Renshon

This chapter examines whether status concerns lead decision makers to value status more highly by looking at three separate sets of decisions: Russia's decision to aggressively back Serbia in the 1914 July Crisis, Britain's decision to collude with Israel and France in launching the 1956 Suez Crisis, and Gamal Abdel Nasser's 1962 decision to intervene in the Yemen Civil War (and continue to escalate through the rest of the decade). These cases broadly substantiate the patterns found in the Weltpolitik case—decision makers tend to value status more highly due to status concerns—while highlighting the plausibility of several new mechanisms. They also show that status concerns are not confined to European countries, great powers or states in the pre-World War I era. Finally, they reveal the other side of status concerns: state behavior designed to salvage or defend status rather than increase it.


Author(s):  
Francis L.F. Lee ◽  
Joseph M. Chan

Chapter 8 discusses the impact of digital media on collective memory. The chapter examines both the positive and negative impact of digital and social media. On the one hand, the analysis notes how digital media provided the channels for memory mobilization and the archives for memory transmission. On the other hand, the analysis examines the problematics of memory balkanization. It explicates how political forces have shaped the development of digital and social media in Hong Kong and how competing representations of the Tiananmen Incident and commemoration activities are articulated and reinforced within distinctive memory silos.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A Lake

Abstract The debate about China’s rise and future United States–China relations has focused on the purpose to which China’s growing international power will be put. This article focuses on the form of China’s power, distinguishing between domination and authority. Different great powers have, at different times, chosen one, the other, or more commonly differing mixes of the two forms. How China chooses now and in the future will have a significant effect on its relationships with other states, and through them on its relationship with the United States. The first section explores the differences between domination and authority as strategies for the exercise of international power. The second section summarizes a theory of authority with particular relevance to China today. Though necessarily speculative, this section identifies where China is most likely to choose one strategy over the other as its international influence expands. The final section examines the domestic impediments in China to the choice of authority. While both China and the United States might be better off in a world in which the former constructs an international hierarchy to parallel the latter’s, the conclusion draws a relatively pessimistic assessment of the prospects for cooperation between the two emerging superpowers.


Worldview ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-17
Author(s):  
Gerald Franklin Hyman

Seven years after the fall of Saigori and three and a half after the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia/Kampuchea, Southeast Asia is an area in search of equilibrium. That search provides the key to understanding the relations between and among the various states in the region.Vietnam's foreign policy objectives have been fairly clear and in a sense straightforward, at least since 1979. It wants de jure recognition of the status quo; that is, of a unitary Vietnamese state (now widely granted) and of both the Heng Samrin government in Cambodia and the Kaysone government in Laos (far less widely granted). Vietnam says it is seeking a normalization of relations with ASEAN and China for itself and on behalf of the other two Indochinese governments.


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