Violent Extremism (VE) in Jordan is mainly driven by structural factors on the community rather than individual level. This necessitates a multi-faceted services-oriented institutional response to VE. Instead, Jordan's response is marked by heavy securitization and a misplaced emphasis on religion as a driver of VE. To understand how and why these two characteristics have evolved, this article examines the effect of functional pressures, veto-powers, and the relation between trust and legitimacy through historical institutionalism. Building on insights from 25 interviews with government officials and non-governmental actors, the article argues that Jordan should reduce the veto-powers of security actors, encourage higher internal adaptability, and design Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) policies that address structural drivers of VE for Jordan's institutional response to VE to succeed.

Refuting the conventional view of science diplomacy as Track II diplomacy while highlighting the Cold War as a structure wherein the superpowers initiated a geopolitical approach to science diplomacy, the article coins the term "cold hybrid warfare" to scrutinize how science diplomacy could serve as a covert strategic asset to advance an unpublicized grand strategy in redefining cross-regional security architecture for global hegemony. By focusing on how the United States and the Soviet Union had deployed the collaborative troika of science, technology, and culture for diplomacy to ace each other out of the world order, the findings further suggest that the globalization of regions eventually emerged as the consequence of the superpowers' commitment to a greater transregional connectivity within their respective defense perimeter, marking the paradigm shift from the bipolar order to the multipolar one.

With the decline of U.S. unipolarity and the rise of Sino-American bipolarity, this article explores a conceptualization of systemic transformation in international politics and its implications for outcomes in state behaviors during the transition. Neorealist theory, which emphasizes the impact of relative power redistribution among great powers, provides a valuable framework for understanding these changes. While often criticized for being overly static and limited in scope, the theory contains a subtle theory of change that can be leveraged to offer new insights into the ongoing transformation of the international system. The article develops four propositions from neorealist theory: disruptions in system-wide patterns of interstate rivalry and conflict, general realignment, increased occurrences of state "births and deaths," and waves of political regime changes, including de-democratization in the present case of emerging Sino-American bipolarity. These propositions are applied to the current transition, with preliminary evidence suggesting that neorealism can serve as a powerful analytical lens to further our understanding of the transformation toward a new bipolar world.

Media images of borders and their control have been one of the most dominant frames in reporting on the migrant crisis in European media and the negative coverage of the topic of migrants, presenting them as a threat to security and public health dominates media narratives around the world. This paper examines the way migrants and refugees have been portrayed on the borders of Serbia, a transit country alongside the Western Balkans migration corridor. The mixed method analysis is based on 300 images published in relevant national and regional print media and their online versions from 2015 until 2020. The results show that the visual depiction of walls, wires, control, law and order, modern technological equipment, security providers, and important political authorities have been often intensified with sensational headlines and tabloid coverage and at the same time confronted with images framing migrants as violent and deviant, threatening borders, people, and security.

Under the framework of SDG 16, namely Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions, one key underexplored area of inclusion relates to the means of ensuring access to justice through the equitable governance of scarce resources, and mechanisms to promote equal and structural access to opportunities across society. This research sets out to answer the following questions across three case studies: (1) What is the relationship between critical or scarce resources and political conflict in the region under study?; (2) On what basis is the scarce or critical resource currently distributed within the region under study?; (3) What formal or informal governance mechanisms are in place to manage access to critical or scarce resources, and resolve conflicts created by it?; and (4) What improvements could be made to ensure more inclusive and equitable access to the distribution of this resource? The three proposed case studies, namely, Central Mali (land), Northeastern Kenya (water), and northern Mozambique (extraction and revenues of natural gas), have unique political and geographic features that are indivisible from peace and security. In each case, a blend of formal and informal mechanisms is used, but these often involve competing mandates, are guided by socioeconomic dynamics or are unenforced, potentially leading to different types of localised conflict. This paper argues that, in order to prevent conflict around the governance of natural resources, communities need to be involved in a blend of informal and formal governance mechanisms from the outset. While the exact nature of these governance mechanisms may differ according to the nature of the natural resource and its extraction, there is a need to move from top-down towards people-centred approaches. Moreover, there should be efforts to develop specific SDG 16 targets related to environmental governance.

In the review/edit/review stages, the "acknowledgements" section on p. 289 did not fully emerge and the author of the article asked the editors to include a different version of the acknowledgements only after the proofs have been approved by the author and the article has been published. The information about this correction shall appear in Journal of Regional Security Vol. 18, No. 1 both, in print and online.

This contribution to the Forum analyzes narratives unfolding among Estonian Russian speakers who expose different attitudes towards the war in Ukraine. For this analysis the author selected several media platforms and public figures whose speaking positions are representative and typical for - and duly reflect - the entire spectrum of the current Russophone discourses in Estonia. The analysis singles out three distinct yet interconnected discursive positions that prominently feature in the Russophone milieu - pragmatic, popularly geopolitical and counter-normative.

What long appeared to be a static security environment in Asia has dramatically changed over the past two decades.The book Asia's New Geopolitics: Essays on Reshaping the Indo-Pacific is well-crafted and incisive research of Asia's role in a complex, unstable world.

Through the use of language, government institutions and officials in elective democracies try to present particular instances of abuse of power and public resources as legitimate and enable similar practices in the future. This article aims to identify and reveal the strategies used within the Western Balkans' official discourses to legitimize particular cases of suspected state capture and assess their outcomes. The empirical study of six prominent cases of suspected state capture in the construction industry in the period from 2010 to 2020 indicates that a single legitimization strategy is used region-wide, and this article contributes to better understanding it. To assess the strategy outcomes, an original analytic model is proposed. The findings suggest that the deployment of the strategy to legitimize the suspected cases of state capture encourages potential captors in the region to consider engaging in similar practices in the future.