State practice, customary humanitarian law and civilian casualties of armed conflict

The article examines the customary international law credentials of the humanitarian law rules proposed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICR) in 2005. It relies on the BIICL/Chatham House analysis as a ‘constructive comment’ on the methodology of the ICRC study and the rules formed as a result of that methodology with respect to the dead and missing as an aid to determination of their customary law status. It shows that most of the rules studied have a customary international lawpedigree which conforms to the conclusions formed on the rules generally in the Wilmshurst and Breau study. However, the rules with respect to return of personal effects, recording location of graves and notification of relatives of access to gravesites do not seem to have even on a majoritarian/deductive approach enough volume of state practice to establish them as customary with respect to civilians.

Quick abnormal-bid-detection method for construction contract auctions

Noncompetitive bids have recently become a major concern in both public and private sector construction contract auctions. Consequently, several models have been developed to help identify bidders potentially involved in collusive practices. However, most of these models require complex calculations and extensive information that is difficult to obtain. The aim of this paper is to utilize recent developments for detecting abnormal bids in capped auctions (auctions with an upper bid limit set by the auctioner) and extend them to the more conventional uncapped auctions (where no such limits are set). To accomplish this, a new method is developed for estimating the values of bid distribution supports by using the solution to what has become known as the German Tank problem. The model is then demonstrated and tested on a sample of real construction bid data, and shown to detect cover bids with high accuracy. This paper contributes to an improved understanding of abnormal bid behavior as an aid to detecting and monitoring potential collusive bid practices.

Legitimacy

This chapter examines the importance of legitimacy for international organizations, and their efforts to legitimate themselves vis-à-vis different audiences. Legitimacy, which for decades barely featured in the scholarly analysis of international organizations, has since the late 1990s been an increasingly important lens through which the processes, practices, and structures of international organizations have been examined. The chapter makes three main arguments. First, it argues that in most international organizations the most important actors engaging in legitimation efforts are not the supranational bureaucracies, but member states. This has important implications for our understanding of the purposes of seeking legitimacy, and for the possible practices. Second, legitimacy and legitimation serve a range of purposes for these states, beyond achieving greater compliance with their decisions, which has been one of the key functional logics highlighted for legitimacy in the literature. Instead, legitimacy is frequently sought to exclude outsiders from the functional or territorial domains affected by an international organization’s authority, or to maintain external material and political support for existing arrangements. Third, one of the most prominent legitimation efforts, institutional reforms, often prioritizes form over function, signalling to important and powerful audiences to encourage their continued material and political support. To advance these arguments, the chapter is divided into four sections. The first develops the concept of legitimacy and its application to international organizations, and then asks why their legitimacy has become such an important intellectual and political concern in recent years. The second part will look in more detail at the legitimation practices of international organizations, focusing on who engages in these practices, who the key audiences are, and how legitimation claims are advanced. The third section will look in more detail at one of the most common forms of legitimation – institutional reform – through the lens of two such reforms in international organizations: efforts towards greater interoperability in NATO, and the establishment of the African Peace and Security Architecture in the African Union (AU). The chapter will conclude with some reflections of the contribution that a legitimacy perspective has made to our understanding of the practices of international organizations.