2017 Graduate Student Conference

PhD in International Studies
24 October 2017
24 October 2017
Contatti: 
PhD in International Studies Administrative Office
Tel. 
+39 0461 283105
Fax 
+39 0461 283152
14:00–14:30
MARIA CECILIA DEL BARRIO
“Prudential Oversight and Supervisory Cultures in the Euro Area: The Banking Union and the Integration of National and Supranational Spheres​”
Supervisor: Prof. Luisa Antoniolli
 
The euro-area sovereign-debt crisis revealed the feebleness of the Economic and Monetary Union’s architecture and the need for a strongly regulated, highly capitalized, and tightly supervised banking system. It is in this milieu that the Banking Union, potentially one of the most transformative institutional responses to the crisis, began to take shape. In 2014 the European Central Bank (ECB) and the national competent authorities (NCAs) launched the Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM), which entailed a transfer of sovereignty from Member States to an EU institution as important as the creation of the euro itself. 
Although the ECB remains ultimately responsible for the effective functioning of the SSM, since one of its objectives is to promote the harmonization and convergence of supervisory approaches, this supranational authority depends on the knowledge and experience of its national counterparts. This institutional arrangement is at the interface between regulatory monocultures and experimentalist governance. 
Drawing on a distinction between, on the one hand, regulatory and supervisory schemes, consisting of institutional arrangements, and on the other regulatory and supervisory cultures, the aim of the research is to investigate the operational interaction between national and supranational authorities within the SSM framework. To analyse the real-world architecture of banking supervision, the research will incorporate input from legal, political, economic, and cultural perspectives. The analytical rationale of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework will provide a structure for studying these complex social interactions, complemented by in-depth interviews with key stakeholders and an analysis of relevant background documents such as speeches, positions papers, and official texts.
 
14:30–15:00
IOTAM ANDREA LERER
The Provision of Lethal Assistance in International Law: A Taxonomy of Senders and Receivers in the Conventional Arms Trade
Supervisor: Prof. Marco Pertile

Despite the adoption of stricter regulations, military expenditure and the arms trade is on the rise. Since the end of the Cold War, states have adopted global and regional treaties on conventional weapons, but these have not halted the movement of arms and weapons destined for states and non-state actors (NSAs). Data show that even the recently adopted Arms Trade Treaty has not altered the flow of weapons. 
Based on this observation, the research aims to better understand when the provision of lethal assistance is lawful and under which conditions. It develops an analytical grid in which states and NSAs are considered both as senders and receivers. This matrix is not an end in itself but is a tool that helps to clarify which norms, of customary or treaty nature, regulate which relation and highlight the open questions in each of the nodes. The unresolved issues, which spans from treaty-custom relationship to state responsibility, from legitimacy to control, are then duly confronted. 
The research will contribute to the ongoing debate on one critical aspect of contemporary conflicts and foreign policy. On the one hand, given the economic and strategic interests involved, it cannot be excluded that international law may just play a secondary role; on the other hand, the growing awareness of the problem may reinforce the need for more comprehensive regulations. 

 
15:00–15:30
GIULIA SCIORATI
National security strategies in contemporary China: learning and convergence in securitization processes
Supervisor: Prof. Paolo Rosa

Conventional wisdom holds that the state is the main architect of national security. This proposal aims to challenge this assumption by investigating the trajectory of China’s national
security policies during the last three generations of Communist leadership. The proposed research seeks to explain why Communist authorities, after having relied on a coercive/concessive model of
national security, have opted to point their policy toolkit in the direction of active interventionism in order to quell internal unrest.
Alternative theoretical propositions derived from the neorealist, liberal, and socialconstructivist schools of international relations are investigated to explore this issue. Neorealism identifies in mounting threats the main stimulus to national security strategy; liberalism focuses on the preferences of domestic groups to explain securitization processes; while social-constructivism maintains that the transmission of identity and behavioral norms are key elements of national security-making processes.
By developing a qualitative longitudinal research design, the proposal aims to analyze the trajectory of China’s national security strategy since the country’s active involvement in the process of regional securitization. Critical junctures analysis will be employed to detect the key events that demarcated dramatic change in China’s national security strategy. Process tracing will then be used to identify the main constituents of each theoretical proposition, while content analysis of government documents and national newspapers will be employed to determine elements of variation in party rhetoric with regards to the conceptualization of national security.
 

15:30 - 16:00 BREAK
16:00-16:30
BROVINA BLETA
The role of exogenous state-building and associated factors on multi-ethnic societies: a comparative study of Kosovo and Macedonia
Supervisor: Prof. Jens Woelk

After the attacks of 11 September 2001, in general there has been a shift in priority from human rights to counter terrorism.  However, in the past decade several cases of violence in majority-minority relations have refocused the Responsibility to Protect debate and brought attention on minority issues, too. The violence has destabilized the nexus between kin-states, host states, and the minorities living in the latter.  Therefore, majority-minority relations have an important role notably in terms of human rights, but also for geostrategic purposes and spheres of influence. 
Drawing from the work of Brubaker - triadic nexus, extended by Smith – quadratic nexus, and Germane’s - ‘the fifth element’, the proposed project aims to investigate whether there is another factor that influences minority rights in multi-ethnic societies, in addition to well established factors such as kin state, host state, minorities, and the international organizations.  This will be done by investigating the relationship between exogenous state building and minority rights. Specifically, the proposed project aims to explore how the exogenous state-building processes influence majority-minority relations in multi-ethnic societies by focusing on the constitutional and other legislative rights of minorities. It will primarily draw upon the case of Kosovo as a multi-ethnic and exogenously built state, while a comparative analysis with other similar cases, such as Macedonia will be conducted to identify differences and analogies concerning minority rights. Other Western Balkan countries will be examined to illustrate or further explore the influence of international actors on shaping the rights of minorities, particularity with respect to European Union integration. 

 
16:30-17:00
VINCENZO TUDISCO
Reconciling Law and Context: A Comparative Study of Constitutional Bans on War in Japan, Italy, and Germany
Supervisor: Prof. Jens Woelk

Constitutional bans on war pose challenges to constitutional systems in a changing security environment. Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution was generally considered to be a model of absolute constitutional pacifism. Interpretative evolution over time, however, has changed the original and textual meanings of this clause to such an extent that a re-examination of this Japanese “uniqueness” is required.
A deeper understanding of the Japanese case can only emerge by comparing the similarities and differences with other legal systems. The comparison will be conducted with Italy and Germany, which have similar fascist, nationalist, and militaristic pasts and similar postwar features, i.e. the alliance with the United States, a civil law tradition, and steady economic development. They are also liberal democracies and middle-sized powers.
A contextualized functionalist approach will provide the necessary methodological tools for understanding the role of a legal institution, to what extent it is effective, and how it operates (1).  At the same time, constitutional bans on war will be studied with a focus on historical, strategic, and cultural factors. This contextualized functionalist approach will be combined with the analysis of legal formants, which will guide the analysis of the constitutional bans on war with the positions held by the main legal actors. Legal formants will be studied from a historical perspective, which focuses on the constitutional bans on war beginning from the postwar constitutional settlement. This approach aims to assess whether and to what extent more general rules may be found on constitutional bans on war. 

(1) The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Constitutional Law, ed. Michel Rosenfeld and András Sajó, Oxford Handbooks (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 55–74, 62.
17:00-17:30 ISABELLA OLDANI
Reconciling Data Localization demands and calls for the free flow of data: an International Law perspective
Supervisor: Prof. Antonino Alì

In a context where data are incessantly relocated from one place to another and often replicated in multiple places simultaneously, countries are making increasing efforts to exert their control over the flow of information entering and leaving their territorial borders. States’ practices that directly or indirectly aim to localize data within national geographic borders are generally known as data localization measures. These measures are mainly driven by privacy and security concerns. However, privacy is often used as a smokescreen for furthering other less exalted purposes such as protectionism and political control over the States’ own citizens. Unsurprisingly, the adoption of these measures has paved the way to stiff opposition from those countries and companies that seek to fully exploit the benefits stemming from the cross-border transfer of services and goods, and in turn, from the free flow of data. 
This “emerging global trend” has attracted the attention of scholars and practitioners who have examined the possible triggers of data localization, measured its (in)effectiveness and highlighted its inner inconsistencies and fallacies. Building on this analysis, the proposed research will study data localization measures from an international law perspective with a view to examining if, and to what extent, calls for an open Internet and the free flow of data can be accommodated at the international level while respecting national/regional legal differences. A review of existing international law tools will be conducted in order to understand how these tools can be leveraged for reconciling the interests at stake. 
 

EVALUATION COMMITTEE

Prof. Jens Woelk 
Prof. Paolo Carta
Prof. Louisa Parks

Full proposals are available in Moodle.

 
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