Suchergebnisse

Governments often attempt to increase the confidence of financial market participants by making implicit or explicit guarantees of uncertain credibility. Confidence in these guarantees presumably alters the size of the financial sector, but observing the long-run consequences of failed guarantees is difficult in the modern era. We look to America's free-banking era and compare the consequences of a broken guarantee during the Indiana-centered Panic of 1854 to the Panic of 1857 in which guarantees were honored. Our estimates of a model of endogenous market structure indicate substantial negative long-run consequences to financial depth when panics cast doubt upon a government's ability to honor its guarantees.

Virtually every account of the rise of the American human rights movement includes a discussion of the iconic moment in May 1945, when several American non-governmental organizations petitioned the U.S. government to support human rights provisions in the United Nations Charter. The key point in this drama came during a meeting at the San Francisco UN Conference, when Joseph Proskauer, the head of the American Jewish Committee, made an impassioned speech, imploring Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Jr., to support human rights in American foreign policy. Historians of human rights have long pointed to this event as a successful "experiment in democracy" involving a diverse coalition representing American civil society and liberal internationalism. More recently a revisionist school has dismissed this episode as a carefully executed public relations maneuver by the State Department policy planners. In this line of interpretation, Proskauer's naïve idealism only underscores the U.S. government's early cynical manipulation of human rights policy. In this article, I argue that both of these interpretations miss the significance of what actually took place during this canonical event. Instead, I offer a new interpretation of the speech and the entire episode of early American human rights activism by using archival sources to recover Proskauer's own motivations and the forgotten intra-Jewish political subtext. In my analysis, I reconstruct the AJC's ideological path to leadership in the American human rights movement, its competition with rival Jewish political groups also present at the San Francisco Conference, and its behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts. I conclude that the Proskauer speech represented not moral idealism but a self-conscious act of political theater intended for the benefit of multiple audiences. The speech arrived in the midst of a rancorous intra-Jewish battle between Zionists and non-Zionists for control of the American Jewish community and deep anxiety about Jewish political influence on ...

Amid a recent wave of revived interest in citizenship and citizenship education, foreign language education is emerging as an important but under-researched site for the education of citizens under conditions of globalization and massive social, economic, and political changes. This qualitative study deconstructed the concept of good citizenship embedded in China's and America's foreign language curricula during the past decade. The study presented a comparative critical discourse analysis of four interwoven data sets: (a) foreign language policies and/or curriculum standards bounded by the two contexts of this study: Shanghai in China and Utah in the U.S.; (b) EFL (English as a foreign language) and CFL (Chinese as a foreign language) instructional materials developed for the 1st through 3rd and 10th through 12th graders in Shanghai and Utah, respectively; (c) media accounts relating foreign language education with citizenship education in the two countries; and (d) relevant academic publications. Together with a body of critical literature on ideology in curriculum, a two-dimensional citizenship matrix consisting of nationalism, cosmopolitanism, neoliberalism, and Confucianism assisted in the identification and comparison of the country-specific sociopolitical and sociocultural meanings associated with being a good citizen in China and the U.S. Three sets of findings were reported in response to the three research questions. First, among a jumble of meanings and expectations, the most widely shared imaginary embedded in China's EFL curriculum is an individual whose allegiance is to the nation and the market, whereas the second popular perception is someone who observes Confucian moral principles and adopts a global perspective. Second, the dominant good citizenship notion embedded in America's CFL curriculum is characterized by a marked neoliberal orientation. Third, the two cases demonstrated two chief differences and two major similarities. Due to the unique social contexts, cultural institutions, and global power differentials of China and the U.S., the good citizenship discursive fields of two cases were qualitatively different both in terms of intent and belonging. The discursive fields were similar in that the neoliberal-nationalism discourse was prevalent and the officially preferred good citizenship notion was oppressive in nature in both cases.

This paper is a consideration of four major truth gathering projects —Argentina, Chile, Guatemala and Colombia-. This descriptive study applies a "typology of truth" to these 4 historical projects and considers how these truth commissions defined the notion of "truth" in the context of the highly politicized context of transitional justice.

This article critically investigates recent water governance shifts, particularly constitutional changes implemented in several Latin American countries that highlight a 'right to water' as well as recent efforts that invoke such a right in conjunction with bans on private water provision (e.g. Uruguay, Ecuador, and Bolivia). Drawing on legal research, document review, and interviews, the article investigates the historical, political and discursive scaffolding of these constitutional changes in several case study contexts, including attention to implementation issues and ongoing challenges following the reforms. Placing these shifts within the broader context of neoliberalization of water governance of the past several decades, the analysis attends to both the specific historical–contextual formations that are important to understand the constitutional reforms, as well as the ways these changes might be usefully understood as connected to broader political and discursive shifts and movements. Highlighting similarities and differences across the cases allows us to make conceptual contributions to debates on variegation of neoliberalized natures, as well as to discussions of alternatives to neoliberalism and postneoliberalism. We argue that although many of these reforms are partial, and not wholly resistant to neoliberalism, they are nonetheless significant for politics and debates related to 'alternatives.' Apart from resisting particular aspects of earlier neoliberal reforms, they are also important to stake new discursive and policy terrain on alternative priorities and uses of water. Further, the reforms also offer points of resistance to the influence of international financial institutions, or of transnational corporations. Copyright statement: "NOTICE: this is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Geoforum. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Geoforum, 50, (December 2013) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.07.009 ¨ ; Science, Faculty of ; Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES), Institute for ; Reviewed ; Faculty ; Postdoctoral

The South Atlantic is becoming a strategic space in terms of development. The maritime usage on both shores of the ocean allows the exploration and the use, as well as the conservation and the management, of the natural resources of the seabed and the subsoil. The guarantee of economic rights, with the counterpart of duties and responsibilities of political nature, environmental and of public security, reflects the possibility of control over and area rich in natural resources and that, at the same time, becomes vulnerable to international pressures of all kinds. The research objectives are: a) analyze the geo-economic importance of the ocean due the increasing exploration of this space; b) analyze the new geopolitical reality, because the South Atlantic was converted into a strategic route of passage and development pole; and, c) analyze its geostrategic relevance by establishing a connection with Asia via Indian Ocean, highlighting the role of South Africa and IBSA.

The mid 18th century backcountry of Virginia helped to give birth to a new and truly American fashion, the hunting shirt. This shirt was split up the front and sometimes belted closed, often caped around the shoulders and festooned with fringe on all its edges. At its conception, the garment remained extremely regional to the backcountry and Great Valley of Virginia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. This paper will explore and focus on this regionalism and the further adoption of this garment as the first uniform of the Continental Army. General George Washington notes "No Dress can be had cheaper, nor more convenient" and quickly dispatches "patterns" to New England for their tailors to copy. This garment will rapidly disseminate from the far reaches of Georgia through New England. At the end of the Revolution, scarcely a soldier could say that he did not wear this peculiar uniform from the Old Dominion. George Washington Parke Custis states in his Recollections and private memoirs of Washington that this "national costume" was indeed "the emblem of the Revolution." Curiously, as quickly as this garment came into military fashion it disappears. It's last Military use was in the United States Rifle Regiments as American independence was challenged again during the War of 1812. After that period these garments were only to be found in "museums, like ancient armor, exposed to the curious."

Ownership unbundling and third party access are discussed as two options of unbundling in both the literature and political discussions. Focusing on the South American electricity sector, I contrast static and dynamic impacts of ownership unbundling and third party access regimes on customer prices. Substantially different results are found using dynamic rather than static analysis. In particular, negative short term effects of ownership unbundling found in static models are approximately cancelled out by subsequent positive impacts in the dynamic model. Third party access seems to allow for similar benefits while avoiding the (restructuring) costs of ownership unbundling. Previously estimated static models thus appear to suffer from either omitted variable biases or endogeneity problems of static non-difference models.

This report relates to the situation of immigrant detainees who are held in solitary confinement in detention facilities in the United States. It is submitted in response to the United States' fourth periodic report and specifically addresses the widespread use of solitary confinement in immigrant detention as it violates immigrant detainees' rights to due process and judicial remedies, violations of minimum standards of the right to humane treatment, and the right to personal liberty. The report discusses the policies and practices of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that support the use of solitary confinement to show that the United States' failure to protect the rights of immigrant detainees represents a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The report seeks to urge the Human Rights Committee to recognize that the United States must adhere to its obligations under the ICCPR by limiting the use of solitary confinement and strictly permitting its use as a last resort.

The existence of gay and lesbian teachers remains for many a dangerous notion. Indeed, education and schooling are terrains in which homosexuality has historically been highly charged. Underlying this are problematic assumptions about the suitability of gays and lesbians as school workers, assumptions that feed into larger questions about gays and lesbians in general. This thesis will explore these assumptions - and their consequences for gay and lesbian teachers - against the backdrop of both the 1950s, when the burgeoning Cold War created an "age of anxiety," and the 1970s, when the rise of the religious right began to transform American politics and rally a nascent gay rights movement. In doing so, I will attempt to "map" the cultural, religious and political discourses which have supported prejudices against gay and lesbian school workers.