This paper provides a systemic study of China's policy and legal responses to security-related actions and disputes in the international trade regime. It starts with a brief review of the law and practices relating to the security exceptions under the World Trade Organization to provide an important context for understanding the recent developments of China's approaches to national security. Based on a detailed discussion of China's approaches at international and domestic levels, we argue that China's security strategy has been shifting from being defensive to proactive: internationally by seeking to influence the development of trade rules and practices, and domestically by expanding national security to cover a wide spectrum of economic security interests and developing a comprehensive regulatory framework to protect such interests. The way in which major trading nations are taking the law into their own hands, based on ever-expanding security interests, does not bode well for the future of the multilateral trading system. There is a pressing need for collective action by all governments involved to re-design security-related rules and exceptions to confine the use of security measures to agreed parameters.

In Germany, as in many other European countries, vast changes in the welfare regime – towards workfare – have taken place. As a central activating element of workfare, sanctions were introduced to take effect by temporarily increasing deprivation through benefit cuts. This paper provides first quantitative insights on the effect of first sanctions on deprivation and contributes to the recent debate on the (un)constitutionality of sanctions, which re-emerged after a verdict of the Federal Constitutional Court, criticizing the lack of knowledge about the effects of sanctions on those affected. We implement a difference-in-differences propensity score matching approach that addresses selection on observables and individual time constant unobserved differences. High data accuracy is ensured by combining the “Panel Labour Market and Social Security” (PASS) with administrative data from the Federal Employment Agency. The results illustrate a slightly higher yet statistically insignificant level of deprivation for first-sanctioned unemployment/basic income recipients compared to non-sanctioned recipients. The results hint in the direction that higher levels of deprivation are not what activates the sanctioned beneficiaries to reintegrate into the labour market. We discuss whether the results imply a significant deviation from the socio-cultural subsistence minimum of sanctioned recipients and a failure of the welfare state.

Job search is a central element of activation policies, which aim to transform unemployed people into active jobseekers who are subject to checks. We examine a neglected aspect of activation: sanctions. To do so we analyse, through biographical interviews with formerly-unemployed people whose benefit payments have been stopped, what it means when a job search is deemed insufficient. Although these formerly-unemployed people have failed to present enough written and tangible evidence of their job search during checks, they have pursued a different type of job search comprising more informal activities that are difficult to convert into written documents. So, we identify a twin-stranded job search – prescribed and alternative. We also point out that the gap between institutionally-framed job search and experience-based job search widens among unemployed people having low employability attributes, so that ever-stricter checks penalize those who are most vulnerable.

What do regulations in the developing world tell us about the internet economy? In this paper, we argue that the ways in which developing nation states adjust to and legislate the internet depends upon whether they possess a national planning strategy for international data traffic. Focusing our attention on the global trade of intangible goods in Iran, we aim to demonstrate that digital protectionism causes, to varying degrees, suppression, censorship, and the violation of freedom of speech and other civil rights on the internet. Our results show that digital protectionism generated an emergence of domestic start-ups, with companies, such as Facenema and Soroush, operating in the Iranian market in the absence of global rivals such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Yet, digital protectionism and sanction-induced barriers have triggered social problems, besides the emergence of parastatals, securing the economy to an inefficient social and economic path towards digital development.

Intensive family intervention projects have become an increasingly prominent mechanism within anti-social behaviour and social policy programmes in the UK and are supported, in principle, by the new coalition government. They have also been the subject of considerable academic controversy within the evaluative and critical literature. This article attempts to inform continuing debates about the purpose and effects of these projects by conceptualising the contexts within which interactions between projects and families occur; classifying the component aspects of roles and support provided; and presenting a three-part typology of potential outcomes from project interventions.