Cooperation and Conflict

How Cambodia is coping with the COVID-19 crisis remains a grey area in the nascent research on the pandemic in Asia. While South Korea and Taiwan have been held up as models, dictating the strategies to be taken in response to the epidemic, in Cambodia there has been until very recently a certain disregard of the health risk to the benefit of economic and political concerns. The country suffered from an early infection, with a first confirmed case on January 27, 2020. However, official data published over three months later on May 7 reported no deaths linked to COVID-19 and only 122 confirmed infections for a population of approximately 16 million. At the time of writing, 26 days passed since the last positive case was reported on April 11. In other circumstances, this low prevalence would qualify COVID-19 as an epiphenomenon. A series of measures aiming to contain the epidemic have nevertheless been put in place, such as restricting gatherings and travel, and closing schools and some businesses, but these remain unequally implemented, monitored and controlled. The crisis affecting Cambodia lies mainly in the impact on the country's economy. The textile industry was greatly affected by the floundering global economy. A break in the production capacity for raw textile materials in China induced supply problems, and resulted in many businesses closing in Cambodia. At the other end of the chain, the vertiginous drop in orders for finished products from Western Europe and the USA, where the economies have ground to a halt, has aggravated the situation for the some 800,000 workers concerned (Pierson 2020). With no supplies coming in and no orders going out, the whole industry is threatened with collapse and thousands of people are facing unemployment.[i] Another crucial sector in Cambodian economic life, tourism, came to a sudden stop in January 2020, further shaking the national economy.[ii] Finally, the mass withdrawal of Chinese investors, diverted by the crisis in their own country, has also plunged Cambodia into an uncertain future. In response to the situation, the government recently announced the release of USD 800 million for the first six months in order to limit the impact of the economic crisis (Vicheika 2020). The damage to the economy and the persistent threat of the epidemic itself partly explain the central role assigned to COVID-19 in the discourses and practices of the country's authorities. But to fully understand the extent of this crisis, we must take an Science, Medicine, and Anthropology

The paper examines the Philippines' One-China Policy, a diplomatic position the Philippines has held since 1975, recognizing that People's Republic of China (PRC) is the only legitimate government of China (People's Republic of China, Official Records of Foreign Relations, 2018). The Department of Foreign Affairs described its commitment to the One-China Policy as "Clear and unwavering," but many challenges confront this policy. In particular, tensions between Manila's diplomatic deference to Beijing and increasing pressure from China in the West Philippine Sea present a major challenge.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan has a prevalent history that tips the global economic equilibrium. With this, countries around the world are pressured and influenced between rivalries. The U.S. even made a legislation that acknowledges PRC as the official Chinese state, but still continues to have unofficial relations with Taiwan. Now, with the recent controversy on the dispute on the West Philippine Sea, the Philippines will inevitably be a potential war hotspot.

After months of simmering tensions, fighting erupted along the Thailand-Cambodia border on 23 July 2025, reigniting a long and bitter dispute between the two countries. The violent episode over five days involved heavy exchanges in artillery fire and airstrikes, inflicted dozens of fatalities and forced upwards of 300,000

The study investigates the process of biometric voter registration and the advancement of electoral democracy in Cameroon: the case of electoral districts in Fako division. Biometric software was introduced in the Cameroon electoral system in the year 2012 with the hope of eliminating unwanted voters, double registration, registration of deceased persons and increasing the numbers of eligible voters, but according to Statistics from Afro-barometer ELECAM could register 6667754 in the 2018 Presidential election with the used of the biometric software as against 7251651 in 2011 when the registration was done manually. The overall objective was to examine the impact of biometric voter registration on the
advancement of electoral democracy in Fako division. Furthermore, to assess how the biometric software work on voter registration and the advancement of electoral democracy, to investigate the problems of biometric voter registration and to propose mitigating strategies
for biometric voter registration. The technology acceptance theory which explained the importance of modern technology on electoral processes, System theory explaining the Political will of the government on enhancing electoral democracy and Social Choice theory explains the process for the selection of the leaders in a Political System, were all used to explained the study, furthermore, the study adopted a mixed method of quantitative and qualitative research method, the research design was a survey design to triangulate data the study resulted to the following findings. Objective one, results of the findings shows that the way it works is different from the way it operate in other countries as receipt instead of the original cards to be produced and the legal framework electoral code of 2012) encourages biometric voter registration, but does not really emphasize on how ELECAM field workers should go about it. Furthermore, the way the biometric software works here is different from
the way it works in States. The biometric software does not eliminate ghost voters due to the
lack of central unit Objectives two findings of the study reveals that numerous challenges like
the Anglophone crisis, trust by Citizens on management of registration procedure, lack of sufficient field workers or staff and delay in the production of voters cards and the National Identity card and objective three, on strategies for BVR, findings reveals decentralization of the biometric software and digitalization will help foster biometric voter registration. The study concludes that BVR is not the only move to increase the number of eligible registered voters, but trust, political will mass sensitization are all important.

Children's motivation for the egalitarian allocation of resources is reflected in their allocation of positive and negative resources between themselves and others. In the present study, 6-(n = 29) and 8-year-olds (n = 25) could choose between different allocations of positive and negative resources to themselves and others in a series of games. The other player was either an ingroup member or an outgroup member. Results revealed that, overall and irrespective of resource valence, 8-year-olds were more likely to choose an egalitarian allocation of resources than 6-year-olds. 8-year-olds also shared more positive resources with the outgroup member than 6-year-olds. Children's egalitarianism is discussed in light of theories of prosocial development.

Without a doubt, Ashok Swain's article provides an essential snapshot of the Nile Basin's challenges at a critical juncture in the NBI's development. Its strengths in historical context, identifying the core conflict, and diagnosing the NBI's structural flaws are undeniable. However, its limitations like; the underdeveloped environmental and climate dimension, the superficial treatment of non-state actors and civil society, the neglect of intra state dynamics, and the underestimation of the drivers for unilateral action, highlight the need for a more nuanced and comprehensive analytical framework for understanding and promoting Nile cooperation.

Margo Ings Wilson, one of the founders of evolutionary behavioral science, died peacefully on September 24, 2009 with Martin Daly, her husband and collaborator of more than 30 years, characteristically by her side. Four months earlier, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society had recognized both Margo and Martin with its second-ever Career Contribution Award. Our words here merely underscore the respect and appreciation of those many scholars who have found their paths easier for Margo's trailblazing. Margo was born in 1942 to Edith Ings, a nurse, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She was six years old when Edith accepted a position providing medical services to the indigenous Gwich'in community of Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories. This harsh and remote environment, north of the Arctic Circle, was a forge for Margo's intrepid character. A precocious student of animal behavior, she had her own miniature but fully functional dog sled which she used, among other things, for monitoring her muskrat trap lines. The profits from her activities supported the school lunch program-perhaps in multiple ways! After attending primary school in Fort McPherson's one-room schoolhouse, she attended high school in Victoria, British Columbia, returning to spend the endless summer days with her mother. Margo's professional education began at the University of Alberta, where she selected psychology as a major, with an initial intention to focus on clinical psychology. But parttime work in an avian embryology lab drew her interests to behavioral endocrinology, which provided the focus for her MA degree from the University of California, Davis, and her PhD from University College, London, the latter completed in 1972. Her dissertation work, with Rhesus monkeys, concerned the behavioral effects of gonadectomy and subsequent hormone replacement, a core paradigm for developmental studies of sex differences. Margo and Martin met as post-docs in Toronto in 1975 and quickly became inseparable. They just as promptly began defining our then-fledgling field. Those of us who struggled trying to bring evolutionary social science into the classroom will recall how grateful we were for their early synthesis of a broad literature in Sex, Evolution, and Behavior (1978/1983; Wadsworth/PWS). Placing humans firmly in the midst of, rather than atop or otherwise separate from, the panoply of life, this book was the first to explicitly apply notions of selection, reproductive strategies, life history, and sex allocation to explain sex differences in human anatomy, physiology, and behavior. And it did so with a clarity and humor that made it accessible to college students. During the formative 1980s, this was the book that introduced so many scholars to evolutionary behavioral science.

Reputation and punishment are two distinct mechanisms that facilitate cooperation among strangers. However, empirical research on their effectiveness is mainly limited to relatively small groups and does not address how they enhance cooperation in relatively larger groups. We address this gap in the literature by testing hypotheses from competing perspectives about the extent to which reputation-based partner choice and punishment enhance cooperation in both small and large groups. Prior work recognizes that an increase in group size is accompanied by a change in the incentive structure, which determines whether the temptation (extra benefit for each person from noncooperation over cooperation, regardless of others' choices) or gain (extra benefit for each person from full cooperation over full non-cooperation) remains constant or varies with group size. Thus, we first test how group size affects cooperation when temptation or gain increases with group size (Study 1), and then move on to testing predictions on the effectiveness of reputation and punishment across different group sizes (Study 2). In Study 1 (N = 820), we randomly assigned participants to play an online one-shot public goods game in groups of 4, 20, or 40, while keeping the marginal group return or marginal per capita return fixed across groups, in which case the temptation or gain increased with group size. In Study 2 (N = 1,132), we further compared a public goods situation involving a punishment or reputation mechanism with an anonymous situation across group sizes, while the marginal group return was fixed across groups. Overall, we found that when temptation increased with group size, 20-person groups cooperated significantly less than 4-person groups in one-shot interactions, and that this effect was explained by lower expectation of others' cooperation, less perceived collective efficacy, and greater perceived conflict. However, 40-person and 4-person groups did not vary in one-shot cooperation. Importantly, reputation-based partner choice and punishment invariably promoted one-shot cooperation in groups of different sizes. These findings suggest no simple effect of group size on cooperation and underscore the utility of reputation and punishment in fostering cooperation (at least in one-shot interactions) regardless of the size of groups.

The testimonies of witnesses who testify before criminal courts provide crucial insights into the situated experience of conflict-related sexual violence. Witness testimonies highlight the complex realities and everyday lives of individuals caught up in situations of armed conflict. The evidence presented by witnesses can provide vital insights into lived experiences of wartime violence, and reveal the seemingly mundane strategies and tactics adopted by victims to cope with, survive and resist the violent and coercive circumstances of war. This article foregrounds conflict-related sexual violence witness testimonies as highly significant sources of knowledge of everyday experiences of conflict. It sets out a bottom-up, mixed-method approach for identifying and analysing the experiential accounts of those who lived through conflict-related sexual violence, while engaging with the opportunities and challenges of using witness testimony. Our approach unsettles existing notions of ‘the ...

Reciprocal altruism is the theory, developed by Robert Trivers in 1971, that this is a behavioral trait wherein an organism performs an action which is temporarily disadvantageous to its own fitness while simultaneously improving the fitness of another organism, with the expectation of future reciprocity of such acts. This concept forms one staple conceptual underpinning for complex social behaviors and, therefore, bears great importance within the bounds of religious psychology and behavioral studies.

This paper reviews some models of consequentialist justice, social contracts, and the social coordination of behaviors through social norms. A challenge with actualizing justice in many contemporary societies is the broad and often conflicting individual beliefs on rights and responsibilities that each member of a society maintains about the opportunities and compensations they attribute to themselves and others. This obscurity is compounded through a lack of academic or political alignment on the definition and tenets of justice. The lack of commonality of the definition and tenets of justice often result in myopic decisions by individuals and discontinuity within a society that reduces the available rights, obligations, opportunities, and/or compensations that could be available through an efficient and commonly maintained model for just social contracts. This paper begins by assessing the challenge of establishing mutual trust in order to achieve cooperation. I then examine utility enhancement strategies available through cooperation. Next, I turn to game theories and evolutionary models that inform beneficial social contracts. Models of bargaining and models of cultural evolution such as dual inheritance theory examine social norms, and ways in which they can selectively reinforce certain cooperative behaviors and reduce others. The models take individuals to be motivated by their own welfare. Through selective processes to improve the overall fitness of society, fair social contracts and distribution provides an enhancement potential for the average utility, rights, opportunities, and compensations available to the members of a society. A possible common set of social coordination strategies can be formed through this examination of models intended to maximize the average welfare of a society. Leaning on a naturalistic perspective, an integrated story of social coordination, social contracts, and consequentialist justice may illustrate an integrated perspective of social norm selection to support efficient and fair social contracts. Through additional examination, a more comprehensive model to describe how societies could identify and foster just human coordination could be pursued. 1. Binmore's Fair Equilibrium…………………………………………………………………….21 2. Just Social Contracts……………………………………………………………………….....45 Can there be a more significant concept to establish, agree upon, and act in accordance with than that of Justice? The study of Justice was a part of the examination of core virtues by ancient Greek philosophers. The rights and obligations of justice have been an integral part of the study of ethical, legal, and political philosophy as an examination of what each person is properly entitled to. For this paper, I propose to examine justice as a part of a cooperative contract to enable human coordinated efforts. David Hume, in his Treatise of Human Nature, contended that contemporary societies manage justice as a man-made contractarian construct 7 . This paper both emphasizes the man-made social constructs necessary to maintain just contracts and also expands fair social coordination to include natural sources that can act to inform and optimize social contracts to improve the welfare of the individuals who follow just cooperative actions in a society. Using this lens through which to see Justice, Hume's contractarian construct is to be constantly assessed, refined, communicated and reinforced through various mechanisms in the pursuit of improving contracts to achieve just results. Justice was described by John Rawls in his book "A Theory of Justice" as the mutually agreed upon social constructs of rights and duties to guide mutually beneficial agreements, where equity on either side of a circumstance is determined from a hypothetical fair starting point, Rawls' 'original position'. Rawls' theory of justice recognized the dynamic tension in society between the benefits of cooperation and each person's pursuit to maximize their share of available utility. Through just social constructs, an association between individuals with disparate purposes is feasible. Justice, Rawls concluded, is a prerequisite for a viable human community 14 . Rawls's definition emphasizes the social construction of justice. By what actions should we measure the justice of a society and through what tools can we shape the behaviors of individuals in a society to act following Contractarian Justice? By answering the first question and achieving the second, the quality of life for the average individual in a society can be markedly improved through reducing conflict and enhancing beneficial cooperation. Cooperation, participation, and synergy can improve the total productivity of a society through supporting beneficial coordination. Rawls specifically saw just social contracts to reduce the least lucky circumstances of individuals the least advantaged in his 'Difference Principle'

Counterinsurgency witnessed a powerful revival in our post-9/11 world. With its focus on the control of territory, populations and seemingly less kinetic hearts and minds campaigns-as well as a good dose of liberal humanitarianism-contemporary counterinsurgency has become the dominant form of the Western military interventionism. While most of the associated debates focus on the potentials and pitfalls of Western counterinsurgency approaches, the role of South-South cooperation in the making of 'Global Counterinsurgency', and the related emerging geopolitical convergences of interest between Western and non-Western elites in counterinsurgency, has received little attention. In focusing on counterinsurgency-related forms of knowledge production, and by analyzing the role of transnational military knowledge entrepreneurs promoting a form of coercive Realpolitik that supports 'locally owned' elite-driven counterinsurgency efforts in the field of South-South military cooperation between Colombia and Somalia, this article addresses this void. We show that conventional North/South divides no longer capture the realities of counterinsurgent warfare going global and call for a de-centering of the study of military interventions that is sensitive to how knowledge production in regards to 'Global South' contexts not only makes them legible, and thereby more governable, but also how this knowledge production informs ongoing reconfiguration of interventions themselves.

Sardinia was a hub of sea routes in the Final Bronze Age, c. 1200–850 BC, connecting the Aegean and the Levant in the East with the Iberian Atlantic façade in the West at its latitudinal extremes. Although situated some 1,200 nautical miles apart, bronze working techniques on the island, specific decorations, and implement typologies were clearly related to those in western Iberia, which was a pivotal node connecting the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds. Without doubt, individuals have travelled between and beyond both regions, and transported objects alongside technological as well as theoretical information. Although serious challenges accompanied the multi-directional intensification of interactions, the local communities had innovative responses to them, managing to integrate new people and knowledge. The general aim of this contribution is to provide a theoretical framework with which to analyse the motivations and social mechanisms for cooperation and communication that facil...

La réflexion sur la médiation internationale présentée dans le document propose plusieurs enseignements clés pour améliorer les mécanismes de médiation et favoriser la paix et la stabilité internationales. Voici quelques-uns des principaux enseignements :
- Importance de la Prévention et de la Résolution des Conflits : La médiation internationale joue un rôle crucial non seulement dans la résolution des conflits existants, mais aussi dans leur prévention. Cela inclut la gestion des tensions avant qu'elles ne dégénèrent en conflits ouverts.
- Diversité des Mécanismes : Plusieurs mécanismes sont utilisés pour la médiation, notamment la diplomatie, les missions de maintien de la paix, les sanctions économiques, et l'assistance humanitaire. Chaque mécanisme a son rôle et son importance selon le contexte.
- valuation et Amélioration Continue : L'efficacité des mécanismes de médiation doit être régulièrement évaluée. Cela inclut l'analyse des processus, le suivi des indicateurs de performance, et le retour d'expérience des parties prenantes pour identifier les forces et les faiblesses des approches actuelles.
- Renforcement des Capacités Locales : Il est essentiel d'investir dans la formation et le renforcement des institutions locales pour qu'elles puissent jouer un rôle actif dans les processus de médiation et de consolidation de la paix.
- Coordination et Coopération : Une meilleure coordination entre les acteurs internationaux, ainsi que le partage d'informations et de bonnes pratiques, sont nécessaires pour maximiser l'impact des interventions de médiation.
- Innovation et Adaptation : L'utilisation de technologies innovantes et l'adaptation des stratégies aux contextes locaux sont cruciales pour améliorer l'efficacité des missions de médiation.
- Rôle Central du Dialogue : Les mécanismes de dialogue interculturel, interreligieux et intercommunautaire sont essentiels pour renforcer la compréhension mutuelle, construire la confiance et faciliter la médiation.
- Engagement Politique et Financier : Un engagement politique fort et un soutien financier adéquat sont nécessaires pour assurer le succès des missions de médiation et des initiatives de consolidation de la paix.
- Approches Holistiques : Intégrer les initiatives de dialogue dans les stratégies de médiation plus larges permet une approche plus holistique et durable de la résolution des conflits.
- Recherche et Sensibilisation : La recherche interdisciplinaire, la sensibilisation et le plaidoyer politique sont importants pour promouvoir l'importance du dialogue et de la réconciliation dans la résolution des conflits.

Ces enseignements soulignent la complexité et la multidimensionalité des efforts de médiation internationale et la nécessité d'une approche intégrée et adaptative pour répondre efficacement aux défis des conflits modernes.

The article analyses the extent to which organized crime groups that migrate to new territories develop into fluid networks of relations or into hierarchical organizational structures. The data come from an extensive police investigation into an attempt by a Russian mafia group to open a branch in Rome in the mid-nineties, and include a complete set of phone intercepts over nine months. Using quantitative content analysis, multiple correspondence analysis (homals) and actor-oriented models of network evolution, the paper reconstructs the motivation for migration and links it to the resulting organizational structure. When a key motivation for the migration is to monitor investments in the legal economy, the group is likely to be hierarchically structured yet poorly integrated. The paper contributes to broader debates on globalization and organized crime by discussing agency dilemma, trust and the role of women.

Discussing one of the most difficult and sensitive topics in criminology, Federico Varese came to the Mershon center to present his research on Russian mafia activity in Italy . Varese applied techniques borrowed from the field of physics to map the organization of one Russian ...

Background: Research points to three groups of interrelationships of hormones with implicit motives. The first two are organizational: First, prenatal hormones (e.g., testosterone) may provide a biological basis for initial development of the implicit power motive (and probably other motives), as the 2D:4D ratio was associated with this motive in three samples when considering activity inhibition, a marker for functional right-hemispheric brain lateralization. After this biological basis has been pruned to varying degrees by parental demands in early childhood, a second organizational phase seems to modulate implicit motives: the interaction between the power motive and activity inhibition was also related to facial width-to-height ratio, a likely marker of pubertal testosterone, when aggregating two samples. We speculate that after this second phase, peers further trim the power motive to varying degrees. The third pathway is activational and its strength may depend on the outcomes of the two organizational phases: for example, higher progesterone around ovulation entails higher affiliation motivation in the luteal phase and testosterone responses after winning or losing dominance contests are scaled by power motive strength. Conclusions: We propose a tentative life-span model of the relationship between steroid hormones and implicit motives in which two growth-and-prune phases lay the foundation for arousal effects later in life. Future research may corroborate this model via (1) testing the associations of motives with organizational hormone effects using other markers like anogenital distance, (2) exploring social influences on motive development during adolescence, and (3) including saliva sampling in all studies involving motive arousal.

The evolution of cooperation is a major question in the biological and behavioral sciences. While most theoretical studies model cooperation in the context of an isolated interaction (e.g., a Prisoner’s Dilemma), humans live in heterogeneous social environments, characterized by large variations in fitness interdependence—the extent to which one’s fitness is affected by others. Theoretical and experimental work indicates that humans can infer, and respond to, variations in interdependence. In a heterogeneous ancestral environment, these psychological mechanisms to infer fitness interdependence could have provided a selective advantage, allowing individuals to maximize their fitness by deciding when and with whom to cooperate. Yet, to date, the link between cognitive inference, variation in fitness interdependence, and cooperation remains unclear. Here we introduce a theoretical framework to study the evolution of inference and cooperation in heterogeneous social environments, where individuals experience interactions with varying levels of corresponding interests. Using a combination of evolutionary game theory and agent-based modeling, we model the evolution of adaptive agents, who incur a cost to infer interdependence, in populations of fixed-behavior agents who always cooperate or defect. Our results indicate that natural selection could promote the evolution of psychological mechanisms to infer fitness interdependence, provided that there is enough variation in fitness interdependence to offset the cost of inference. Under certain conditions, the fixation of adaptive agents results in higher levels of cooperation. This depends crucially on the type of inference performed and the features of the interdependence landscape.

In 1445, John II of Castile awarded a sizeable estate southwest of Toledo to Gutierre de Sotomayor, a favored noble supporter. The land and its jurisdiction, however, were not taken from royal lands or following due process; rather, they belonged to the city of Toledo as a result of purchase from an earlier monarch. The city's council consequently protested the grant and initiated a lawsuit for the return of its property. At stake was an issue central to the nature of kingship in Castile -the monarch's use of "absolute royal authority." J. B. Owens examines Toledo's lawsuit, known to contemporaries as the "Belalcázar lawsuit," from its inception to its conclusion during the reign of Philip II, more than 120 years later. He treats the case as a microhistory that illuminates judicial procedure at the highest levels in Castile while revealing the tension between competing visions of "justice," the universally acknowledged fundamental attribute of kingship within the monarch's realms. He argues that the monarch was most effective in employing the language of "absolute royal authority" as justification for an action when the action coincided with widely accepted norms consistent with the provisions of written law. While reviewing many episodes in Castilian history for their effects on monarchs' behavior -for example, the comunero revolt in 1520 -21 -he also uses the long duration of the suit to argue against a putative era of "early modern state-building." In addition, he disputes the centrality of clientage as a means for monarchs to control their realms. Clientage, he observes, represented weakness rather than strength and, when coupled with a perceived disregard of due process and justice, damaged the monarch's influence. Owens skillfully traces the Belalcázar suit through a judicial process that moved in fits and starts depending on the protagonists' reading of political conditions. Among other things, marriage, death, family ties, and formal and informal positions at court affected the timing of initiatives related to the suit or decisions to stall the proceedings. At root, however, remained the core issue -was the monarch's use of "absolute royal authority" to reward a favorite with land owned by another party "just," or did it represent corruption in government and thus injustice? After years of effort, ultimately Toledo lost the case. Despite a favorable verdict by the Chancillería of Granada, the Council of Castile in 1568 reversed the decision and banned further appeal. To stunned city councilors, the verdict demonstrated the effectiveness of the defendant's aristocratic connections at court. It also strengthened fears about the monarch's reliability in living up to his promises in general. Thus, Philip II's use of his absolute royal authority had the paradoxical effect of weakening his leadership and reducing his ability to secure support for the fiscal resources needed to sustain policies at home and especially beyond Castile during "the first global age." The long chronological sweep of this work enables the author to trace both the shifting participants and the changing broader contexts at court and elsewhere in Cas-

Le Acque del Nilo: Accordi Storici, la Grande Diga Etiope e il Futuro della Cooperazione Regionale

Descrizione:
Questa ricerca analizza la storia dei conflitti e degli accordi sulla condivisione delle acque del Nilo, partendo dai trattati del 1929 e 1959 tra Egitto e Sudan, firmati in un contesto coloniale e senza il coinvolgimento dei paesi a monte come l’Etiopia. Il lavoro approfondisce il ruolo crescente dell’Etiopia con la costruzione della Grande Diga della Rinascita (GERD) e le reazioni degli altri paesi del bacino, in particolare l’Egitto. Si esamina l’Accordo Quadro di Cooperazione (CFA) e l’importanza della cooperazione tra i 11 paesi del bacino del Nilo per garantire una gestione equa e sostenibile della risorsa idrica.  Uno studio fondamentale per chi si occupa di politica africana, relazioni internazionali e gestione delle risorse naturali.

La Chambre de Commerce Européenne en Côte d'Ivoire (Eurocham), créée en 2009, fédère plus de 230 entreprises membres issues de 14 pays européens. Elle favorise le réseautage, la formation et le développement des entreprises européennes en Côte d'Ivoire. Son action vise à renforcer les échanges commerciaux et industriels avec l'Union européenne, promouvoir les investissements et contribuer à l'amélioration du climat des affaires par un dialogue constructif avec les autorités ivoiriennes. Eurocham est membre du

Truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) have emerged as an international norm and are assumed to be an essential element of national reconciliation, democratization, and post-conflict development. Despite the increase in the number of TRCs being initiated around the globe and the international consensus regarding their positive effects, there is little understanding of the long-term effects and consequences of TRCs. Specifically, currently there are no established methods or mechanisms for measuring the impacts of TRCs; furthermore, the few examples of efforts to measure these impacts have serious limitations. This article explores both the rise in TRCs as an international norm and the contradictions and inadequacies in existing efforts to measure the impacts and successes of commissions. Through this examination, we aim to demonstrate the need for more critical, interactive, and inclusive mechanisms of assessment for understanding the effects of TRCs. The objective is neither t...

During his new Thai counterpart Paetongtarn Shinawatra's first formal visit to Malaysia, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim announced that he is assembling a team of informal advisers to help Malaysia prepare for its future chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) next year. He plans to recruit retired ASEAN leaders to this informal club in the coming weeks, but the first member has already been signed up: Thaksin Shinawatra. Anwar's announcement set the region abuzz with talk of the former Thai leader making a comeback in ASEAN issues. The fact that so many in ASEAN circles seem to have been completely uninformed of Anwar's plans speaks volumes about Malaysia's intentions to shake up the organisation.

Some metacontingency experiments were based on cooperation procedures such as the iterated prisoner’s dilemma game (IPDG), but dismissed earlier results on cooperation as pertaining only to operant (not cultural) selection and did not control verbal interactions among participants. The present study evaluated the effects of verbal interactions on participants’ choices in an IPDG. Three sets of four university students played in four networked computers (screened by panels) and were exposed to conditions with or without permission to use a virtual chat room in a multiple baseline design. Without verbal interaction, choices varied, but tended to be all-defect. Once verbal interaction was allowed, choices quickly shifted and stabilized in all-cooperate on almost all trials. An IPDG can be interpreted as programming a metacontingency in which the higher payoff for the group (a cultural consequence) selects participants’ choices of the cooperative alternative (a culturant). As the cooperation literature had similarly found, verbal interactions among participants even through virtual chat room promotes the selection by the higher payoff. Metacontingency and cooperation procedures such as the IPDG are indistinguishable and their results must be evaluated together.

The governance of transboundary water resources in the Nile Basin has long been characterized by hydropolitical tensions, historical legal agreements, geopolitical power struggles, and environmental challenges. This study examines the hydropolitics of the Nile Basin with a focus on Egypt and other Nile resource receivers, critically analyzing the historical treaties, governance frameworks, and regional diplomatic negotiations that shape contemporary water-sharing disputes. The research investigates whether current governance structures, including the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) and the Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA), offer viable solutions for equitable and sustainable water allocation among riparian states. In addition, the study evaluates the role of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) as a transformative factor in shifting regional power dynamics and influencing future water diplomacy.
The research employs a qualitative methodology, relying purely on secondary data sources, including legal treaties, policy reports, government documents, academic literature, and institutional analyses from organizations such as the United Nations (UN), African Union (AU), and World Bank (WB). A descriptive and analytical research design is adopted to provide a historical account of Nile water governance while critically assessing its contemporary implications. The study is guided by Hydro-Hegemony Theory, the Theory of International Water Cooperation, and Political Ecology Theory, which collectively offer a multidimensional framework for analyzing power asymmetries, cooperation incentives, and environmental constraints influencing Nile governance.
Findings from this study reveal that Egypt's hydro-hegemony, maintained through the 1929 and 1959 Nile Water Agreements, continues to be a major barrier to equitable water allocation. Upstream states, particularly Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya, reject these historical treaties, advocating for more inclusive governance mechanisms. The analysis of GERD underscores its significance as a regional game-changer, with Ethiopia leveraging the project to assert greater sovereignty over Nile waters, while Egypt perceives the dam as a strategic threat to its water security. Moreover, the study finds that climate change, population growth, and increasing water demands are exacerbating regional tensions, necessitating urgent governance reforms and cooperative management strategies.
The study concludes that the current governance mechanisms, though necessary, remain insufficient due to Egypt and Sudan’s reluctance to fully engage in multilateral frameworks such as the CFA. It recommends that riparian states prioritize diplomatic negotiations, adopt legally binding agreements, and implement adaptive governance strategies to mitigate climate-induced water scarcity challenges. The role of international mediation, technological innovations in water conservation, and cross-border economic incentives is also emphasized as potential solutions for fostering long-term cooperation. This research contributes to the ongoing discourse on transboundary water governance, offering policy recommendations for strengthening institutional frameworks, balancing national interests, and ensuring sustainable water resource management in the Nile Basin.
Keywords: Hydropolitics, Nile Basin, Water Governance, Hydro-Hegemony, Transboundary Water Management, GERD, Cooperative Framework Agreement (CFA), Climate Change, Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), Water Diplomacy.

This article discusses energy neocolonialism, highlighting how the transition to renewable sources can reinforce global inequalities. Using the Noor Solar Complex in Morocco as a case study, it analyzes how large-scale energy projects prioritize exports to developed nations while neglecting local needs. The study explores the dependence of Morocco on energy and agricultural exports, questioning the sustainability of a model that extracts natural resources for foreign benefit. It argues that the green transition, if conducted without structural changes, perpetuates historical patterns of exploitation. The conclusion emphasizes that renewable energy investments must ensure environmental justice and energy sovereignty rather than serving only the decarbonization needs of industrialized countries.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact

The relationship between religion and morality has been a steadfast topic of inquiry since the dawn of the social sciences. Researchers have expended considerable effort addressing questions such as how widespread this relationship is and what aspects of religion contribute to "moral" behaviour. This Element probes these questions and how the social sciences have addressed them by detailing how theory and method have evolved over the past few generations. It shows that much of our current knowledge about this relationship has been significantly shaped by our cultural history as a field. By critically examining the tools and theories specifically developed to answer questions about the evolution of morality, society, and the gods, it argues that-given the role religious beliefs and practices play on our social lives-the relationship between religion and morality is, despite considerable diversity in form, quite common around the world.

O artigo analisa as relações entre o suma qamaña (Buen vivir) e a política neoextrativista na Bolívia, que contribuiu com a eleição e reeleição de Evo Morales. Identifica semelhanças com o extrativismo clássico e limitações em diversificar a indústria e superar o modelo primário-exportador. A partir de uma revisão integrativa baseada em dados do governo boliviano, da estatal YPFB e literatura interdisciplinar, investiga os impactos sociais e territoriais do Neoextrativismo em um país que garantiu constitucionalmente a defesa da Pachamama (Mãe-Terra). A nacionalização se tornou uma das principais políticas públicas de Evo Morales, elevando indicadores sociais e econômicos, ao mesmo tempo que aprofundou a subordinação ao mercado internacional e os impactos socioambientais, promovendo intensos conflitos étnicos e territoriais.

Given its ubiquity, scale and complexity, few problems have created the combined interest of so many unrelated areas as the evolution of cooperation. Using the tools of evolutionary game theory, here we address, for the first time, the role played by intention recognition in the final outcome of cooperation in large populations of self-regarding individuals. By equipping individuals with the capacity of assessing intentions of others in the course of repeated Prisoner's Dilemma interactions, we show how intention recognition opens a window of opportunity for cooperation to thrive, as it precludes the invasion of pure cooperators by random drift while remaining robust against defective strategies. Intention recognizers are able to assign an intention to the action of their opponents based on an acquired corpus of possible intentions. We show how intention recognizers can prevail against most famous strategies of repeated dilemmas of cooperation, even in the presence of errors. Our approach invites the adoption of other classification and pattern recognition mechanisms common among Humans, to unveil the evolution of complex cognitive processes in the context of social dilemmas.

Few problems have created the combined interest of so many unrelated areas as the evolution of cooperation. As a result, several mechanisms have been identified to work as catalyzers of cooperative behavior. Yet, these studies, mostly grounded on evolutionary dynamics and game theory, have neglected the important role played by intention recognition in behavioral evolution. Here we address explicitly this issue, characterizing the dynamics emerging from a population of intention recognizers. We derive a Bayesian network model for intention recognition in the context of repeated social dilemmas and evolutionary game theory, by assessing the internal dynamics of trust between intention recognizers and their opponents. Intention recognizers are then able to predict the next move of their opponents based on past direct interactions, which, in turn, enables them to prevail over the most famous strategies of repeated dilemmas of cooperation, even in presence of noise. Overall, our framewo...

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

It is well documented that aging is associated with cognitive declines in many domains. Yet it is a common lay belief that some aspects of thinking improve into old age. Specifically, older people are believed to show better competencies for reasoning about social dilemmas and conflicts. Moreover, the idea of aging-related gains in wisdom is consistent with views of the aging mind in developmental psychology. However, to date research has provided little evidence corroborating this assumption. We addressed this question in two studies, using a representative community sample. We asked participants to read stories about intergroup conflicts and interpersonal conflicts and predict how these conflicts would unfold. We show that relative to young and middle-aged people, older people make more use of higher-order reasoning schemes that emphasize the need for multiple perspectives, allow for compromise, and recognize the limits of knowledge. Our coding scheme was validated by a group of professional counselors and wisdom researchers. Social reasoning improves with age despite a decline in fluid intelligence. The results suggest that it might be advisable to assign older individuals to key social roles involving legal decisions, counseling, and intergroup negotiations. Furthermore, given the abundance of research on negative effects of aging, this study may help to encourage clinicians to emphasize the inherent strengths associated with aging.

This article seeks to address a major shortcoming of the idea of Societal Multiplicity in international theory: its lack of a worked-out definition of what counts as 'a society'. The article supplies this definition in four steps. First, it reviews some difficulties in defining 'society', arguing that these arise in part from the historical separation of social and international theory. Second, it interweaves resources from both traditions to argue: (a) that societal multiplicity reflects the specifically political separation of human populations; (b) that this separation arises in part due to centripetal properties of the political as a feature of social life; and (c) that an individual 'society' is best defined as a unit of the resultant multiplicity: a social formation that exists simultaneously as a geopolitical subdivision of the social world. Third, the article defends this definition against a series of objections-that it is too general, that it reifies the state, that it is methodologically nationalist and that it suppresses historical variety. And finally it inserts the definition into the idea of Societal Multiplicity in order to test how far, and with what consequences in International Relations and beyond, this closes the definitional gap left by the original formulation of that idea.

The testimonies of witnesses who testify before criminal courts provide crucial insights into the situated experience of conflict-related sexual violence. Witness testimonies highlight the complex realities and everyday lives of individuals caught up in situations of armed conflict. The evidence presented by witnesses can provide vital insights into lived experiences of wartime violence, and reveal the seemingly mundane strategies and tactics adopted by victims to cope with, survive and resist the violent and coercive circumstances of war. This article foregrounds conflict-related sexual violence witness testimonies as highly significant sources of knowledge of everyday experiences of conflict. It sets out a bottom-up, mixed-method approach for identifying and analysing the experiential accounts of those who lived through conflict-related sexual violence, while engaging with the opportunities and challenges of using witness testimony. Our approach unsettles existing notions of ‘the ...