Competition and cooperation in artificial intelligence standard setting: Explaining emergent patterns

Efforts to set standards for artificial intelligence (AI) reveal striking patterns: technical experts hailing from geopolitical rivals, such as the United States and China, readily collaborate on technical AI standards within transnational standard-setting organizations, whereas governments are much less willing to collaborate on global ethical AI standards within international organizations. Whether competition or cooperation prevails can be explained by three variables: the actors that make up the membership of the standard-setting organization, the issues on which the organization's standard-setting efforts focus, and the “games” actors play when trying to set standards within a particular type of organization. A preliminary empirical analysis provides support for the contention that actors, issues, and games affect the prospects for cooperation on global AI standards. It matters because shared standards are vital for achieving truly global frameworks for the governance of AI. Such global frameworks, in turn, lower transaction costs and the probability that the world will witness the emergence of AI systems that threaten human rights and fundamental freedoms.     

Intermunicipal cooperation,municipal amalgamation and the price of credit

In many countries, local government size is increasingly thought to be insufficient to operate efficiently. Two possible solutions to this problem are amalgamation and intermunicipal cooperation. This paper applies a novel methodology to shed light on the efficiency implications of this choice. Using a unique and rich micro-level dataset, we find that intermunicipal organisations (IOs) in the Netherlands consistently pay higher interest rates than municipalities, while there is no economic reason to do so. We interpret this as a form of inefficiency. Municipal amalgamation, on the other hand, does not result in higher interest rates. Our analysis eliminates one possible explanation, dispersed ownership of IOs, as the number of partners cooperating in an IO does not affect interest rates (no ‘law of 1/n’). This leaves the introduction of extra hierarchical layers as a result of cooperation, and the ensuing reduction in monitoring, as the most probable explanation.     

社会保障法概念探析

本文通过对社会保障的概念与法的概念、社会保障的本质与法的本质、以及现有社会保障法的概念的全面分析 ,对社会保障法进行了重新定义。本文认为 ,社会保障法 (广义社会保障法 )是关于基于社会理性、为保证每一个人的生活安全、维持基本生活并保证生活质量从而保证其生存权和发展权而采取的社会互助行为的法律规范的总称 ,包括社会救济法、社会保险法和社会福利法三个次级法律规范群 ;狭义社会保障法是关于基于社会理性、为保证每一个人的生活安全、维持基本生活从而保证其生存权和发展权而采取的社会互助行为的法律规范的总称 ,包括社会救济法和社会保险法两个次级法律规范群。     

Not Child's Play: Tactics and Strategies in Viva Cuba and Habanastation

Recognition of the national and international contexts in which Viva Cuba (Juan Carlos Cremata, 2005) and Habanastation (Ian Padron, 2011) were made and marketed highlights the coexistence of a pragmatic, tactical approach to filmmaking with the expression of specific, national concerns. Indeed, the two elements are inextricable, since both directors exploit the association of children with universality and the apolitical in order to pursue both personal and national goals, so that these films for children, about children must be seen not as child's play but as contracandelas: strategic and affective responses to uncertainty and threat.     

El referéndum en latinoamérica: Un análisis desde el derecho comparado

This paper tells of the proliferation in recent decades, formulas referendums in Latin American constitutions. The comparative analysis of this mechanism to identify severalunique features in the treatment of this formula of direct democracy, which distinguish it from reflections from other disciplines. For now the simple regulation has meantaltering the form of state and government of various constitutional systems of our region.     

La sumisión del poder público al derecho en el civil law y en el common law: estado de derecho,rule of law y su expansión al ámbito internacional

Generally regarded as synonyms, the Rule of Law and the Rechsstaat are different. There are between the two legal institutions substantial differences that we must distinguish rigorously. The idea of the public power submission to the law —expressed through both theoretical constructions— has gone beyond the State borders and, progressively, made its way into international scenario. For some authors, the root for the application of the principle of the Rule of Law to interstate relationships, within international society, could date back to the XVIII century. However, it was until a few years ago that the Rule of Law analysis, from a sttrictly international point of view, started to take off. In this article the author analyzes the differences between the Rechsstaat and the Rule of Law in order to study the extension of these conceptions and how it could be applied to highlight the preeminence of law at international level.     

The effect of social status on women's age at first childbirth in the late seventeenth- to early eighteenth-century Korea

While records on historical population are available and do exist, the fact that they are so limited in nature is a critical problem. We applied the method of family reconstitution to a Korean household register to deal with these limitations. Based on family reconstitution from five successive registers, we calculated women's age at first childbirth for each social status in two ways: “observed woman's age” at first childbirth = woman's current age–age of her first child, and “estimated woman's age” at first childbirth, which uses linear regression analysis on the basis of positive association between women's age and the age of their firstborn. Our results shed light on the effects of social status and cultural factors on the age at which women in pre-industrial Korea bore their first child.     

Why this institute

Turkish democracy passed its “maturity” test in 2007. The massive shift of power from the Kemalist establishment to the rising, mostly provincial elites and their allies culminated in the landslide victory of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the summer, which increased and consolidated its electorate after its first electoral victory in 2002. One of the main fault lines of the Turkish social and political order, secularism, took centre stage in the military's interference in the presidential election debacle, the ensuing massive demonstrations and the parliamentary and presidential elections that followed. At the same time, xenophobic nationalism, the dark side of democracy, raised its ugly head, fed further by the exacerbation of PKK violence. With the AKP's monopolisation of power, Turkey's politics are in uncharted waters and many of the givens of the republican era are being questioned. Unable to cope with the profound economic and social transformations and changing composition of the population due to massive migration, the old political structures are crumbling, yet the new political leadership, so adept at municipal government and so pragmatic in its approach to problem solving, has yet to offer the country a comprehensive vision of its politics.     

Comments on Hasenfeld and Gidron: “Understanding multi-purpose hybrid voluntary organizations”

The article develops a theoretical framework to analyse the social construction of citizenship at the local level in Bolivia through the Ley de Participación Popular (LPP). It explains how decentralization at the municipal level and the introduction of participatory mechanisms affect the development of civil society in Bolivia. I argue that decentralization at the city level can provide new formal spaces for the development of civil society in relation with the state, which can in turn foster the social construction of a more inclusive citizenship regime. Many factors, however, determine if such potential is exploited. Drawing from the Bolivian experience, the article elaborates on the socio-political conditions necessary for local governance to have a positive impact on citizenship. It shows that the institutional shortcomings of the LPP, an elite-driven reform adopted in a country with a legacy of weak institutions and civil society, posed fundamental limits for social participation at the municipal level to lead to the social construction of an inclusive citizenship regime.