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This essay examines the foreign policy discourse in contemporary Germany. In reviewing a growing body of publications by German academics and foreign policy analysts, it identifies five schools of thought based on different worldviews, assumptions about international politics, and policy recommendations. These schools of thought are then related to, first, actual preferences held by German policymakers and the public more generally and, second, to a small set of grand strategies that Germany could pursue in the future. It argues that the spectrum of likely choices is narrow, with the two most probable-the strategies of "Wider West" and "Carolingian Europe"---continuing the multilateral and integrationist orientation of the old Federal Republic. These findings are contrasted with diverging assessments in the non-German professional literature.Finally, the essay sketches avenues for future research by suggesting ways for broadening the study of country-specific grand strategies, developing and testing inclusive typologies of more abstract foreign policy strategies, and refining the analytical tools in examining foreign policy discourses in general.

Where Information Retrieval (IR) and Text Categorization delivers a set of (ranked) documents according to a query, users of large document collections would rather like to receive answers. Questionanswering from text has already been the goal of the Message Understanding Conferences. Since then, the task of text understanding has been reduced to several more tractable tasks, most prominently Named Entity Recognition (NER) and Relation Extraction. Now, pieces can be put together to form enhanced services added on an IR system. In this paper, we present a framework which combines standard IR with machine learning and (pre-)processing for NER in order to extract events from a large document collection. Some questions can already be answered by particular events. Other questions require an analysis of a set of events. Hence, the extracted events become input to another machine learning process which delivers the final output to the user's question. Our case study is the public collection of minutes of plenary sessions of the German parliament and of petitions to the German parliament.

This dissertation is a systematic study of the political belief systems, via the Operational Code approach, of two terrorist actors: al-Qaeda and Hamas. Operational codes for each were derived through computerized content analysis of statements attributed to both organizations. The resulting indices were compared across each organization and to the indices of a norming group of state leaders. Additional analyses were performed on internal subdivisions and across chronologic statement groupings for each. The results of these comparisons indicated that the Operational Code approach provides a valuable means of linking differences in terrorist behavior and motivation to differences in belief systems. It also provides a means for the tracking of group beliefs over time and for evaluating internal belief system differences. Additionally, by comparison of observed operational code values to expected values informed by commonly held assumptions within the field of terrorism studies, the Operational Code approach provides a means of testing the basic validity of those assumptions.

This work is an introduction to the study of Antonio Gramsci`s political thought. Gramsci's life complexity and the historical reality, in which he thinks and moves, made Gramsci's Marxism a particular political line, different from the MarxistLeninist point of reference. Gramsci's Marxism is at the present time the most influential expression of Marxism in the Western world. His thoughts about hegemony, political and civil society are the result of a conception which intertwines political work with cultural work. ; El trabajo pretende servir como introducción al estudio del pensamiento de Antonio Gramsci. La complejidad de su vida y la realidad histórica en la cual Gramsci piensa y actúa, hacen del marxismo gramsciano una línea de pensamiento político particular, distinta del marxismoleninismo. De los marxismos, el gramsciano es hoy el de mayor influencia en el mundo occidental. Las reflexiones sobre la hegemonía, la sociedad política y la sociedad civil aparecen en Gramsci como resultado de su concepción del trabajo político como trabajo cultural.

13 páginas ; El presente estudio sugiere algunas intersecciones para avanzar en el estudio de la cultura: 1) los vínculos entre economía política, corporaciones internacionales y claves culturales, que ayuden a descifrar la configuración de nuevos modos de vida y trabajo; 2) la dimensión religiosa, que permea la cultura latinoamericana y sin la cual es difícil entender lo que sucede; 3) el papel que la cultura juega en la articulación de la memoria colectiva de corto plazo, la construcción de la identidad y ciertas acciones sociopolíticas. ; I would like to suggest some intersections where to look to advance the study of culture: 1) the links between political economy, international corporations and the cultural keys that could help decipher the configuration of new modes of life and work; 2) the religious dimension that permeates Latin American culture and without which is hard to grasp what takes place here; 3) the role that culture plays in articulating short term collective memory, identity construction and socio political actions.

Air accidents represent a small proportion of the flights registered worldwide. Airplane collisions in the air are rare. In September of 2006, a Boeing 737-800 collided in midair with a Legacy Jet. It was the largest accident registered in the history of Brazilian aviation until that time. The present study explores aspects of press coverage of the accident. Data and information reported in the media about the accident from September 2006 to August 2007 were collected and discussed. Media coverage called attention to two unusual aspects: politicisation of the discussion, culminating in the opening of congressional inquiries, and equally the concomitance of police investigations interfering in the work of agencies responsible for the official accident investigation. Emphasis on assigning guilt and establishing penalties may close the windows of opportunity an accident had opened for discussions on the improvement of air safety. In Brazil, political imperatives and organizational pressures have interfered and the possibilities of organizational learning from the accident have been drastically curtailed.

The challenge of urbanization in Asia is unprecedented - some 1.1 billion people will move to cities in the next 20 years. Managing Asian Cities aims to provide a useful management resource, canvassing key issues and pointing managers to appropriate responses to problems; and, second, provide the initial step in a new phase of ADB's continuing support to Asian cities under its Strategy 2020. The study is organized in two parts. The first reviews the existing situation. The second presents options for improved urban management practice. Throughout the report, when options for solving problems are suggested, we distinguish between cities of differing wealth, size, and capacity. We also focus on a city's self-reliance, suggesting ways in which different types of cities can take on more responsibility for their own development. Last, we focus on how to establish enabling frameworks for urban development. Rather than suggesting prescriptive interventions, we concentrate on government as less of a doer and more of a facilitator for the community and private sector.

This paper examines the demand for directors' and officers' liability insurance (D&O insurance) by Chinese listed companies where controlling-minority shareholder incentive conflicts are acute due to the concentrated and split ownership structure. We hypothesize and find evidence that the incidence of seeking D&O insurance is positively related to the extent of controlling-minority shareholder incentive conflicts - a finding not previously documented in the literature. Using an event study, we find that the announcements of D&O insurance decisions in firms that engage in earnings management, and/or are controlled by a local government (such firms tend to have stronger incentives to tunnel), seem to have a negative wealth effect. In addition, the incidence of the D&O insurance decision is positively related to the proportion of independent directors and several litigation risk proxies. Therefore, the breakthrough in corporate governance and judicial reforms has created non-negligible perceived securities litigation risks in China. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ; postprint

The Western and Central Pacific Ocean is home to the largest tuna fishery in the world – around half of the world's tuna supply – and is a vital economic resource for Pacific island countries. The potential of the Pacific tuna fishery to contribute to economic development in the Pacific island countries is enormous, but will require a cooperative regional strategy to maximise access fees from distant water fishing nations, as well as targeted domestic policy and legislation to encourage local fishing industries. Together with the importance of acting strategically with regard to such a variable resource, the lesson of fisheries management globally is that it is most effective when it takes into consideration social, cultural and political contexts. Based on an extensive study of six Pacific island states, Capturing Wealth from Tuna maps out the aspirations and limitations of six Pacific island countries and proposes strategies for capturing more wealth from this resource in a sustainable and socially equitable manner.

Children's Services Departments (CSDs) that are willing to host research projects are invaluable to the ongoing development of a reliable and useable evidence bank within social care. However, little attention has been paid to the costs and benefits that CSDs experience as a result of their participation. Using a mixed methods design, this small-scale exploratory study sought to examine the experiences of CSDs when hosting research by exploring issues of research governance, the benefits of participation, the costs of participation and feedback from research. While the costs of engagement, in terms of staff hours and organisational planning, were recognised to be unavoidable, they were not regarded by interviewees as significant if they were offset by real benefits. Potential benefits identified include: assisting with service development; raising the profile of research and research mindedness; and staff development. Such benefits were reported to have been achieved by closer involvement with management in the planning of projects, greater interaction with staff during the research and increasing the effectiveness of feedback strategies.

This paper examines if, when, and to what extent U.S. minor party labels influence individual opinions over a range of political issues. Based on data from an experimental study, we reach three general conclusions. First, as cues, party labels are more likely to influence opinions over complex issues. Second, familiarity with and trust in a party condition cue acceptance. Third, as a whole, minor party labels act as effective cues less consistently than major parties. This finding, we suggest, indicates that there exists some threshold level of familiarity and trust that minor parties must reach in the mass public in order to be effective cues. This research is valuable because it extends current work on party labels as heuristic devices and more general work on cues; our findings are additionally important given recent trends in public opinion data, which indicate that the U.S. public is becoming more accepting of minor parties as permanent features of the political system.

In the public debate and amongst scientists anxiety prevails concerning the situation of modern parliamentary democracy regarding nearly all established of nearly democracies. The concern focuses on the electoral loss of middle parties and heavily fluctuating election results, and the rise of radical Left and Right, where words such as pallet democracy, crisis and Weimar republic are used. The author sketches the outlines of different research directions he studied regarding European politics: voter behavior; decreasing importance of the Left-Right antagonism; decreasing political faith; increasing numbers of extreme Right parties. This to study more closely the different aspects of the alleged crisis of European party democracies (do citizens have unrealistically high expectations of government; the evolution from cartel parties to campaign parties, including the growing importance of the media; lack of party representation for large groups of citizens). Foremost, the author mentions that neo-liberal economic policies of the European Union do not parallel public opinion of EU member states. Figures. O. van Zijl

The United States is once again actively pursuing educational reform with the expressed goals of increasing efficiency and improving the quality of education, while leaving no child behind. Although these themes have been recast in contemporary terms, this book demonstrates that they are a continuation of the educational efficiency movement that began in the early 1900s and reemerged during Jimmy Carter's administration. Carter's involvement in educational policy on all governmental levels offers a unique opportunity to study the formation and implementation of educational policies on the local, state, and federal levels and to witness the centralization of educational policymaking in the latter half of the twentieth century. Deanna L. Michael explores how Carter's commitments to efficiency and planning on the one hand, and to equal educational opportunity on the other, reflect the larger national movement in educational policy. When these commitments came into conflict, Michael suggests, Carter's attempts to reconcile them reveal both his own shifting priorities and the complex social and political obstacles facing educational policymakers then and now.

A contribution to a debate on a book by Fernando Quesada Castro, Sendas de democracia: entre la violencia y la globazacion ([Paths of Democracy: Between Violence and Globalization] new edition, Madrid: Trotta, 2008 [2006]). Quesada provides an in-depth study on the meaning & problems of democracy today & the reasons for its current condition. He examines the unfulfilled promises of the modern political-democratic project since its foundation & suggests that conviction of the project & the political imagination that sustained it are coming to an end. Faced with today's political anomy & violence, faced with democracy as the great loser, paradoxically, in the so-called era of democracy, Quesada nonetheless argues, with a certain hope, against a reductive view of the status quo, &, from the nucleus of democratic politics, of politics itself, suggests the possibility of a "new rise of conscience." He concludes that democratic equality is a task that can have new beginnings, but cannot have an end. Adapted from the source document.