International field work training has focused mainly on the importance of support systems and supervision. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no detailed framework that specifies the components and strategies that should be included. To fill this gap, this article will explore the use of an experiential 3-week psycho-educational training seminar. Four main components were developed for the psycho-educational seminar on the basis of the approach to traditional field work practicum. In addition, five strategies were adopted to achieve these components. Practical guidelines are proposed for training social work students in international field work abroad.
In: Turner , O 2013 , ' 'Threatening' China and US security: The international politics of identity ' Review of International Studies , vol 39 , no. 4 , pp. 903-924 . DOI:10.1017/S0260210512000599
The paper tries to shed light on the conceptual link between international crises like the one following September 11, 2001, the Asian financial crisis of 1997/1998, the end of the Cold War or major international conflicts, and processes of change in the international system. It argues that cultural structures rest on their continuous instantiation through social practices, thereby making them coterminous with process. Process is constituted by meaningful acts of social agents, and can thus only be grasped by analysing meaning. Meaning is transmitted by language. Meaningful language is never reducible to individual speakers; it is a social act. In the paper, I call this process discourse. Linking Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with the theory of hegemony developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, I will finally be able to show how hegemonic discourses serve as the nexus between crises and cultural structures and how they make cultural change possible. ; Der Artikel untersucht den theoretischen Zusammenhang zwischen internationalen Krisen wie der Asienkrise, dem Ende des Kalten Kriegs oder den Folgen des 11. September 2001 und Prozessen des kulturellen Wandels in der internationalen Politik. Das Ausgangsargument lautet, dass sich kulturelle Strukturen im politischen Prozess permanent neu bilden; Kultur wird durch den sozialen Interaktionsprozess konstituiert. Durch Sprache erzeugte Bedeutung verleiht dem Prozess seine sozialwissenschaftlich analysierbare Substanz. Sprache ist niemals als isolierter Akt, sondern immer als soziale Handlung zu verstehen. In dem Artikel wird dieser Zusammenhang mit dem Begriff des Diskurses beschrieben. Als Analyseraster werden Einsichten der Kritischen Diskursanalyse mit der Theorie der Hegemonie von Ernesto Laclau und Chantal Mouffe verbunden.
Relevance. One of the most vulnerable aspects of the development of the Russian economy is its technological and innovative component. This aspect of the Russian economy was tried to reanimate and increase its effectiveness after the 2008 crisis, in order to move from a raw material model of economic growth to a model of advanced technological development. In 2022, Russia has no choice but to carry out a structural transformation of the economy, for the success of which it is vital to intensify and increase the efficiency of innovation. In this regard, the role of state financial regulation of innovation activities for the transition period is increasing.The purpose of this study is to substantiate approaches to state financial regulation of innovative development of the economy in the context of international sanctions and to clarify specific conditions for intensifying innovations in the non-state sector of the economy.Objectives: review of the scientific literature on the impact of sanctions on the dynamics of innovative activity; analysis of innovative activity in Russia over the past 10 years; justification of the methods and instruments of state financial regulation of innovations in the current conditions for Russia.Methodology. The article uses methods of analysis and synthesis of information, an overview analysis of scientific literature, horizontal and graphic analysis of Rosstat data on the innovative development of Russia.Results. The results of the work was the systematization of methods and instruments of state financial regulation in the context of international sanctions, as well as the justification of specific conditions for the successful innovative development of Russia in the current geopolitical situation.Conclusion. The Government should use a standard set of financial incentives for innovation activity, but to develop the non-governmental sector and improve the effectiveness of innovation activities, it is also necessary to create additional conditions for creating a favorable institutional environment in which appropriate private initiatives will be possible.
East Asian governments have long recognized that national security must incorporate a reduction of their vulnerability to the disruption of essential imports. The rapid economic growth of China and India has intensified competition for increasingly scarce resources, elevating resource security once again to the top of the international agenda. Issues that were previously regarded as 'technical' have been 'securitized' as state elites perceived possible conflicts over availability and pricing of natural resources as threats to national security.International institutions have the potential to contribute to the defusing of tensions over the supply of commodities by providing, through various means, assurances regarding the behaviour of partners. Only the global institutions concerned with commodities trade, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), have legally binding arrangements and the authority to impose sanctions on states that fail to comply with their obligations. But both have weaknesses: the IEA's membership is limited; the WTO's rules relating to raw materials trade are far from comprehensive. Most of the regional institutions in this field seldom go beyond information exchange or the setting of aspirational targets. At the bilateral level, government attempts to enhance resource security through minerals chapters in preferential trade agreements have had little success. Bilateral investment treaties are the only instances of cooperation at the sub-global level that incorporate legally-binding provisions.The cooperation on resources issues in which countries have engaged has reflected the core characteristics of Asia-Pacific bilateral and regional intergovernmental institutions. The shallowness of cooperation reflects perceptions on the part of state elites that their interests in the resources sector are best served by national rather than collective action and that current cooperative arrangements fail to provide sufficient incentives to prevent states from succumbing to opportunistic behaviour in the event of a short-term clash of interests. The potential gains to be made from a cooperative approach to resource security remain largely unrealized.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM: War is the major problem facing mankind as no other societal affliction can match it in terms of human suffering and loss of life. Throughout recorded history theorists have attempted to formulate a method of preventing wars but none have succeeded. John G. Stoessinger, Professor of Political Science at Hunter College, City University of New York, has formulated a theory of peacekeeping that shows some promise for success. The purpose of this paper is to examine Stoessinger's theory in order to determine its distinctiveness, originality, and utility. METHODS: Research has combined comparative and case study methods with the comparative approach being utilized a great majority of the time. Findings have been presented in the traditional narrative style favored in the discipline of international relations. Several of Stoessinger's books were compared in order to find the origins and content of his theory. In addition, Stoessinger's theory was compared to the work of other theorists in order to discover the originality and distinctiveness of Stoessinger's work. Several of Stoessinger's own case studies were partially restructured to illustrate the utility of his peacekeeping theory. Theoretical points of reference were used to define Stoessinger's approach and contribution to the discipline. Again, these reference points and Stoessinger's theory were subjected to the comparative method of analysis. FINDINGS: This thesis concluded that Stoessinger combined the traditional and behavioral approaches to write a mid-range theory of international relations. His peacekeeping theory is based on perception and therefore lies within the psychological realm - an area which has not yet been popularized by the discipline. Stoessinger's theory was found to be distinctive and original. It was discovered that Stoessinger's propositions have not had much impact on the discipline with possible reasons for the unpopularity of his theory being his personal life problems, matters of style, and the psychological aspect of his theory. Final conclusions pointed out that Stoessinger's theory may give partial solutions to the problem of war.
The conventional approach to comparing tax progression (using local measures, global measures or dominance relations for first moment distribution functions) often lacks applicability to the real world: local measures of tax progression have the disadvantage of ignoring the income distribution entirely. Global measures are affected by the drawback of all aggregation, viz. ignoring structural differences between the objects to be compared. Dominance relations of comparing tax progression depend heavily on the assumption that the same income distribution holds for both situations to be compared, which renders this approach impossible for international and intertemporal comparisons. Based on the earlier work of one of the authors, this paper develops a unified methodology to compare tax progression for dominance relations under different income distributions. We address it as uniform tax progression for different income distributions and present the respective approach for both continuous and discrete cases, the latter also being employed for empirical investigations. Using dominance relations, we define tax progression under different income distributions as a class of natural extensions of uniform tax progression in terms of taxes, net incomes, and differences of first moment distribution functions. To cope with different monetary units and different supports of the income distributions involved, we utilized their transformations to population and income quantiles. Altogether, we applied six methods of comparing tax progression, three in terms of taxes and three in terms of net incomes, which we utilized for empirical analyses of comparisons of tax progression using data from the Luxembourg Income Study. This is the first paper that performs international and intertemporal comparisons of uniform tax progression with actual data. For our analysis we chose those countries for which LIS disposes of data on gross incomes, taxes, payroll taxes and net incomes. This pertains to 15 countries, out of which we selected 13. This gave rise to 78 international comparisons, which we carried out for household data, equivalized data, direct taxes and direct taxes inclusive of payroll taxes. In total we investigated 312 international comparisons for each of the six methods of comparing tax progression. In two thirds of all cases we observed uniformly greater tax progression for international comparisons. In a bit more than one fifth of all cases we observed bifurcate tax progression, that is, progression is higher for one country up to some population or income quantile threshold, beyond which the situation is the opposite, i.e., progression is higher for the second country. No clear-cut findings can be reported for just one tenth of all cases. But even in these cases some curve differences are so small that they may well be ignored. We also test consistency of our results with regard to the six methods of comparing tax progression and present here twelve (Germany, the UK and the US) plus four comparing Germany and Sweden out of the total of 312 graphs, each containing six differences of first moment distribution functions. These differences can be interpreted as intensity of greater tax progression. We demonstrate the overall picture of uniform tax progression for international comparisons using Hasse diagrams. Concerning intertemporal comparisons of tax progression, we present the results for the US, the UK, and Germany for several time periods. We align our findings with respect to major political eras in these countries, e.g., G. Bush senior, W. Clinton, and G. Bush junior for the United States; M. Thatcher, J. Major, and A. Blair for the United Kingdom, and for Germany, the last year before German re-unification (1989), the beginning of H. Kohl's last term as chancellor (1994), and G. Schröder (2000). In addition, we study sensitivity of our results to the equivalence scale parameter.