Suchergebnisse

The year 1943 represented a turning point in the correlation of forces during the World War II.
In the first quarter there were important battles in North Africa, while the friendly forces to the
Allies consolidated in other African regions. Angola as a Portuguese colony was in a position of
neutrality, but strongly felt the effects of the conflict, due to security reasons and by the economic output. At the same time, the ideas of democracy and increasing Angolan urbanization stimulated the emergence of chains of opinion, very influential in the later development of the country.

"Mit Blick auf einige empirische Forschungsprojekte mit jeweils unterschiedlichem theoretischem Hintergrund wurde im Rahmen eines Workshops ein methodologischer Aspekt debattiert, der in der Afrikaforschung wenig Beachtung erfährt: der Vergleich. Die Teilnehmer(innen) entwickelten Fragestellungen, stellten jeweils dar, inwieweit in den verschiedene Disziplinen der Afrikaforschung der Vergleich als Methode eingesetzt wird, und benannten spezifische Herausforderungen in diesem Zusammenhang für einzelne Forschungsprojekte. Unter anderem wurden folgende Fragen erörtert: Warum ist die explizit vergleichende Methode in der Afrikaforschung so selten? Ist vergleichende Forschung im Kontext Afrikas schwieriger anwendbar als in der Forschung zu anderen Regionen? Verbessert sie unsere Forschungsresultate? Sollten sich Forscher um Generalisierungen jenseits der Einzelfallstudien bemühen? Ist in der Afrikaforschung eine explizit komparative Forschungsplanung notwendig oder reicht es, implizit zu Vergleichen zu kommen? Die Kommunikation zwischen den Disziplinen sollte zur Weiterentwicklung dieser methodologischen Debatte beitragen - doch letztendlich werden Gegenstandsbereich und spezifische Fragestellung eines Forschungsprojekts zu einem angemessenen komparativen Ansatz führen, nicht andersherum." (Autorenreferat)

Internet security is somehow being understated in ASEAN's strategy facing 2015. ASEAN Connectivity as the blue print of ASEAN's development strategy to strengthen the regional bond has not put proper attention in building security for guiding the connectivity plan among ASEAN member countries. This paper will discuss the future of cyber security cooperation particularly as ASEAN is planning to connect the region through ICT. This paper will try to analyse what kind of framework ASEAN will need on preparation to widen its security agenda to cyber world in the future to complete its preparation of being connected.

Demographic processes are one of the fundamental factors determining the number of students. This article presents the analysis of the demographic processes' influence on the current and future number of students in the Lubelskie Voivodship — a region of the NUTS 2 level, located in eastern Poland, bordering on Byelorussia and Ukraine. We used the auto-regression model to produce the forecast which indicates that through the year 2035 we will be experiencing drastic, permanent decline in the numbers of Polish students in the Lubelskie Voivodship, caused by the predicted significant decrease in the number of high school pupils.

Although there is a lively academic debate about contemporary populism in Europe and Latin America, almost no cross-regional research exists on this topic. This article aims to fill this gap by showing that a minimal and ideological definition of populism permits us to analyse current expressions of populism in both regions. Moreover, based on a comparison of four prototypical cases (FN/Le Pen and FPÖ/Haider in Europe and PSUV/Chávez and MAS/Morales in Latin America), we show that it is possible to identify two regional subtypes of populism: exclusionary populism in Europe and inclusionary populism in Latin America.

Disasters around the world disrupt the lives of millions of people, especially pushing many children into armed conflict, prostitution, drug trafficking and other dangerous situations, resulting in violation of their rights. Approaches to disaster management continue to be largely technology-centred, top-down and isolated from human development processes in the region. The rescue–relief–rehabilitation (3R) model of interventions largely results in treating children as beneficiaries and not as actors. This article offers possible lessons for Africa, based on the South Asian experience of how children's rights are (not) practised in the context of disasters.

During the new modernity, with the emergence of the question of the democratic deficit in health-care, we have seen the spread of new forms of participatory regulation. However, that this goal has been reached cannot be taken for granted, especially when one considers that these practices are often promoted by dominant players in the field and how they tend to maximise their profit. This article aims to expose the rhetoric of participation in the institutional practice in the Tuscan Region analysing its effects in relation to the redistribution of power in the decision-making process.

AbstractThis paper examines how ownership type and institutional environment affect firm taxation. Using a sample of Chinese‐listed firms from 1999 to 2006, we find that private firms enjoy a lower effective tax rate than local state‐owned enterprises. In addition, the preferential taxation of private firms is associated with local government incentives to promote local economic growth. We find that private firms located in regions with a lower level of privatization receive preferential tax treatment. Our results also suggest that decentralization and interjurisdictional competition lead to financial interdependence between local governments and private firms.

AbstractWe apply the Berry, Levinsohn and Pakes market equilibrium model to data from 30 brands of beer sold in 12 US cities over 20 quarters (1988–1992) to estimate consumers' preference for beer characteristics as well as for their cultural regions of origin. Consumer heterogeneity is accounted for with respect to age and income. Overall, our data is comprised of 7200 beer brand observations and 13 920 hypothetical consumer observations. Empirical results indicate that there is, indeed, home bias with respect to foreign beers, although it varies with consumer age and income.

The article presents the results of empirical research on the Russian mentality. A regional sampling (inhabitants of Tomsk region of the Russian Federation) provided the basisfor investigating the attitude towards paternalism as concerning the governmental authorities and describing the psychological profiles of its two empirical types, such as"agreement paternalism" and "obedience paternalism". The interconnections of the paternalistic attitude, the Russian self­identity structure, and certain social­ demographic characteristics have been analysed. The article describes specific features of the paternalistic attitude and the self­identity structure of the participants of a business support programme in the Russian Federation.

This article explores the pattern of land rents and agricultural productivity across nineteenth-century Prussia to gain new insights on the causes of the "Little Divergence" between European regions. We argue that agriculture reacted to urban and industrial development rather than shaping it. In the spirit of Johann von Thünen and Ernst Engel, we develop a theoretical model to test how access to urban demand affected agricultural development. We show that the effect of urban demand is causal and that it is in line with recent findings on a limited degree of interregional market integration in nineteenth-century Prussia.

This research examines mass media depictions of major American natural disasters that occurred between 2000 and 2010. Results indicate that mass media cover natural disasters for shorter periods of time than they do other issues; that media coverage tends to focus on the current impact of disasters on humans, the built environment, and the natural environment; that disaster economics is an important topic; that disaster media coverage generally focuses on the state and region related to the event; and that disaster news is largely about what is happening now.

Revista Română pentru Studii Baltice şi Nordice / The Romanian Journal of Baltic and Nordic Studies (RRSBN) gathers in this issue contributions based on new documentary sources and interpretations concerning the area it investigates, i.e. the Baltic and Nordic Sea area, and the relations and contacts between this region and its Black Sea match. The fascinating ethnic and cultural diversity of the area, the contacts between distant European lands, the perceptions of "the other" are topics approached from different angles and brought before the judgment of the public and the community of fellow researchers.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explore perceptions of Family-Centered Practice (FCP) among child welfare workers who are expected to use FCP principles in their work with children and families. Method: Nine focus groups were conducted among child welfare workers across seven different regions within one state to assess caseworker's experiences with FCP. Results: Themes related to time, resources and opportunities, work climate, and engagement emerged from the analysis in relation to the implementation of FCP. Conclusions: Implications of the implementation of the FCP framework for social work policy and practice are discussed.

Using micro-level farmer expenditure surveys, this article studies the insurgency in the Punjab region of India, thought to have cost over 20,000 lives. It finds that the violence is statistically associated with an 11.4 percent decline in spending on permanent agricultural labor but did not have a statistically significant effect on the use of temporary labor. Moreover, insurgency-related violence likely signaled an increase in future kidnappings of farm labor and may have incentivized labor away from longer duration contracts. Richer farmsteads appear to be more sensitive to insurgent violence than poorer ones in reducing their labor spending.