Resources,Rights and Communities: Extractive Mega-Projects and Local People in the Russian Arctic

Industry in the twenty-first century advances to ever-remoter regions, seen as ‘periphery’ from the point of view of headquarters and capital cities, while for local people these areas are the core of their world. This article investigates the encounter between communities, regulatory authorities and industry in the Russian Arctic. Using cases from Sakha (Yakutiya), we analyse how communities organise for coexistence of traditional livelihoods with big industrial projects in what we call state-led resource development. Our analysis shows the surprising room for agency that development agendas in a centralised state nonetheless leave for local people so far.     

Patent cross-licensing,the influence of IP interdependency and the moderating effect of firm size

This paper analyzes technological interdependency as the key factor for companies’ motivation to engage in cross-licensing transactions. It gives evidence on how the incentive effects for mutual technology transfers vary by firm size and the degree to which a firm has to rely on its competitors’ intellectual property (IP dependency). Even though IP dependency exists also among smaller firms, cross-licensing has previously only been analyzed for large firms. This paper fills this gap in the empiric literature using original survey data among German manufacturing companies. Findings suggest that the influence of firm size and IP dependency on the use of cross-licensing can not be regarded separately. While the effect of IP dependency on the relevance of cross-licensing itself has a clear positive effect this seems to be true to a higher extent for small firms and decrease for larger companies. A possible reason for the interaction effect between these two factors is that larger firms have better odds of achieving a technological workaround which can serve as an alternative to in- or cross-licensing; furthermore small high tech firms might need to explicitly use cross-licensing to secure the freedom to operate while a large firm’s patent portfolio itself can serve as an implicit insurance by posing a threat which prevents other technology holders to file patent infringement cases.     

The resilient state: new regulatory modes in international approaches to state building?

‘Resilience’ has quickly risen to prominence in international security and development circles. In recent years it has found its way into political discourse on state building and state fragility, triggering a vast but often conceptually indistinct examination of the subject. Given its meaning in policy publications and guidelines, ‘resilience’ tends to eschew a static conceptualisation of statehood, turning instead to a more dynamic, complex and process-oriented rendering of state–society relations. This illustrates a conceptual shift from ‘failed states’ to ‘fragile states and situations’. It also transforms the concept of ‘failed state’ as a mere threat perception – with ‘stability’ as its logical other – into ‘fragility’ as a particular form of social and political risk. This paper analyses the concepts in 43 policy papers, focusing on the nexus of ‘resilience’ and ‘fragility’ in international state building, and assesses potential consequences. What does ‘resilience’ – as the opposite vision to ‘fragility’ – in fact mean? What is the practice derived from this chimerical state of states?     

Water Service Provision and Peacebuilding in East Timor: Exploring the Socioecological Determinants for Sustaining Peace

This article presents an examination of post-conflict water resource management in East Timor through the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) with the aim of contributing to our understanding of the opportunities and challenges inherent to the sustainable management of water resources in post-conflict countries and of gaining insight into its potential long-term benefits for sustaining peace. The article contributes one of the first theory-centred, empirical analyses of post-conflict water resource management, in which the challenges and failures of UNTAET in East Timor shed light on the opportunities and risks inherent to post-conflict water service provision for peacebuilding.     

From Reform to Resistance: Universities and Student Mobilisation in Egypt and Morocco before and after the Arab Uprisings

University students played a pivotal role in the Arab uprisings in 2011. This article explores the link between reform policies and social mobilisation through a comparison of university reforms and student protests in Egypt and Morocco. It argues that both—the fabrication of social policies and the formation of protest—are rooted in the specific political configuration of authoritarian regimes. Egypt and Morocco have both embarked on internationalising higher education, but the monarchy was more successful in embracing change through a more pluralistic type of governance. Hence, Morocco was able to escape the disruptive dynamics of the uprising, unlike Egypt, which was more reluctant to establish a new type of governance.     

The influence of standards and patents on long-term economic growth

The Journal of Technology Transfer - Formal standards codify knowledge. Next to patents representing the generation of innovative knowledge, standards can hence be used to proxy the diffusion of...