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This essay, as a section out of the history of the Newspaper-Press, deals with the collaboration between agitational papers and street-terrorism on the basis of characteristic examples. The author draws a distinction between partial and absolute terrorism. In the case of the former, a minority by means of intimidation with violence, presses the majority and their prominent leaders to political actions which in all human probability they would never have decided upon on their own initiative.The American War of Independence is quoted as an example, or rather the deeds of violence which, as practised by a radical minority, influenced the course of event.A sketch is then given of the importance of the American Press, at that time in its infancy, with regard to the political successes of the young government, both at home and abroad.As an instance of absolute terrorism, the reign of terror of the French Revolution is taken. There the terrorists themselves seized the power. A survey is given of the various agitational papers and their methods, Their development is described up to the institution of a press-dictatorship by Napoleon Bonaparte. Finally the attention is drawn to the causes of the intimidating effect of the War-Press in times of political tension, all of which is based on historical instances taken from the latter half of the 19th century.The essay endeavours to prove that in social-psychological descriptions it frequently occurs that insufficient attention is paid to the part played by coercion and intimidation.The periodical press offers adequate information to permit of ascertaining the leading ideas and their modifications during agitated times. At the same time, its pages reveal the modifications in the views of the leading men and their influence on the masses.Accurate and specialized research on the basis of similar material taken from the history of the Newspaper-Pres, will complete and justify many a theory on mass-passions and mass-disturbances of reason in the field of social psychology.

On going deeper into the life-history of Bakunin, it becomes evident that his first stay abroad (1840—1851) had been decisive for the whole of his spiritual development. Of quite special importance are his activities during the revolutionary epoch of 1848/49; this period of his life has hitherto not been considered with the attention it deserves. Bakunin's contributions to the "Dresdner Zeitung" in the months of March to May 1849 have not been explored at all up to the present.The "Dresdner Zeitung was the organ of the Dresden Democrats. It appeared regularly from the 1st Oktober 1848 until the 6th August 1850. From being a fairly moderate paper, it gradually became more radical in 1848/49.Decisive for the volte-face of the paper was the action of Bakunin who was staying in Dresden during the months March/May 1849 and who influenced Ludwig Wittig, one of the editors, to a considerable extent. A radical democrat with socialistic tendencies, already in early March, Wittig developed further and further to the left in the course of the stormy year of 1848. His impressions when in Vienna, where he had been sent by the Saxon democrats in 1848 in order to try arid effectuate the connections with the Vienna movement made him specially receptive for the final conclusions, which Bakunin drew from the events.

Karl Friedrich Köppen was born on the 28th of April, 1808, at Niedergörne, the son of a clergyman. After having attended the Latin School ("Gymnasium") at Stendal and the Latin Convent school ("Klostergymnasium") of Magdeburg, he took up the study of divinity in Berlin in the year 1827, but eventually became a teacher. In 1833 he was appointed at a Berlin school. Four years later he wrote a "Literary Introduction into Nordic Mythology" which has retained its value to the present day and the anti-clerical tendency of which revealed him as one of those radical diciples of Hegel who grouped themelves around A Ruge's "Hallische Jahrbücher" Their aim was: "Away from the Christian state and from State-Christendom'" In the "Doktorklub", the Berlin center of these Young-Hegelians, Köppen mixed with Bruno Bauer and Karl Marx. Under the influence of Marx, the pen of this most prolific of contributors, to the "Jahrbücher" quickly increaed in sharpness. A jubilant publication of 1840, dedicated to his "friend K. H. Marx of Trier", entitled "Frederick the Great and his adversaries", proved a publicistic masterpiece which supplied Marx with suggestionss and gained Köppen the recognition of Engels. This publication focussed its secret hopes in the ascent to the throne by Frederick William IV; the Reaction, however, which set in soon after the change of government, crushed the buds of Young-Hegelian idealism.

On his second journey abroad Leo N. Tolstoi took the opportunity of making the acquaintance of Alexander Hertzen. He spent two or three weeks in London and saw him very much.Literature, however, has very few data about their meeting, and thus the letters published here, more or less fill this gap. They had been preserved in that part of Hertzen' archives which his children in the beginning of the year 1880 gave to Professor M. Dragomanow for publication. Together with the latter's other papers, they are now to be found in the Russian Historical Archives in Prague.The letters are of the greatest importance to Tolstoi's biographers, and definitely allow of the exact time being fixed when Tolstoi decided to write a novel entitled; Die Dekabristen, which however, has remained unfinished.This happened in the late autumn of the year 1860 in Florence, where Tolstoi met Prince S. G. Volkonksy who may be regarded as the prototype of Peter Labasov out of the first version of "Die Dekabristen".Although Hertzen was very keen on Tolstoi's writing this book, he himself unintentionally side-tracked him from the Dekabrists by introducing him to Proudhon. The latter at this time was engaged on his book Der Krieg und der Frieden. Immediately after meeting Proudhon, Tolstoi put aside "Die Dekabristen" and-started his War and Peace.The published letters, moreover, give an explanation of Tolstoi's standpoint towards the mainfesto of 19th February 1861, announcing the liberation of the peasants.

AbstractSystems thinking research confronts theoretical and empirical challenges, and new measures based on the cognitive sciences have been sought. In this paper, mental self‐renewal is proposed as a suitable new theoretical construct for studying systems thinking. The objective was to construct and validate a psychometric scale of mental self‐renewal (MSRS) and to investigate its associations with complex postformal thinking (CPFT), existing systems thinking scores (STSR) and visual remote associative thinking (vRAT). Data were collected by surveying 311 international designers. Exploratory factor analysis and correlative analyses indicate construct validity for a novel scale with 14 different factors that, when taken together, measure designer's mental self‐renewal. The MSRS is a strong predictor of CPFT, whereas its correlation with STSR is weak. MSRS or CPFT did not predict performance in the vRAT test, while STSR did. In conclusion, MSRS can measure novel aspects of systems thinking; however, further research is necessary.

AbstractExchange rate volatility is a vital issue in international finance due to its effect on the value of the firm, depending on firm's exposure to the exchange rate risk. However, this impact is not clear in literature as evidence is mixed. This article analyses the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on firm value. A system dynamics‐based corporate planning model has been developed that incorporates the modules for financial and physical processes, firm valuation and exchange rate determination. Simulation results reveal that a stronger home currency leads to an increase in market price per share of the firm and vice versa. The results provide counter intuitive evidence on the impact of exchange rate on firm value and provide nonlinear feedback loop‐based explanation. The study fills the gap in literature by incorporating a systemic approach in the strategic planning process to assess the composite impact of parameter changes on key variables.

AbstractIn this age of isolation, exacerbated by an increased number of natural disasters and their associated impact, we are faced with a deepening poverty of social connections and a high degree of polarisation on multiple counts. Designed for contexts ranging from workplaces to spiritual discourse, more and more instances of intentional conversations are surfacing across the world. It is only when we are able to appreciate the view of 'another', that we are truly able to step beyond the boundary of the self. In this paper, we explore a practitioner's perspective on three formats of gathering that are currently practiced at the International Society for the Systems Sciences. Using social and humanistic values, we outline how these three simple yet powerful techniques embody inclusivity, with the intention of inspiring its readers to consider hosting alternate forms of meetings in academic and organisational settings, thus creating grounds for compassionate understanding.

AbstractThe drying of Urmia Lake, the largest inland lake in Iran, is one of the greatest ecological disasters in Iran, and it was repeatedly included on the agenda of national and international conventions. The aim of the current study was to apply the system dynamics methodology to analyse rural households' vulnerability to the Urmia Lake drying. The result of the first phase (strategy collection) indicated that five strategies were proposed by stakeholders: 'To reduce the population of the region', 'To reduce the crop area and agricultural activities', 'To modify the cultivation pattern and growing crops with low water needs', 'To use new irrigation systems' and 'To create alternative agricultural livelihoods with less dependence on damaged resources'. The second phase used Vensim software and indicated that the best strategy to reduce households' vulnerability to the drying of Urmia Lake was 'To create alternative agricultural livelihoods with less dependence on damaged resources'.

AbstractThe present study aimed at conducting a pathological analysis of challenges related to systems thinking studies in Iran. The data were obtained through 18 in‐depth interviews. These individuals were selected through snowball sampling. Results showed that among the major challenges of implementing this method are deficiencies of training and awareness raising about systems thinking in organizations and society, issues related to methodology and analytical tools, low degree of research consistency with the needs of the society and deficiencies in knowledge sharing and networking. Among the major recommendations for resolving the aforementioned challenges are defining the aim, scope, communication pattern and potential challenges related to interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary projects at the beginning, holding training workshops and forming knowledge networks on national and international levels, raising awareness and knowledge of employees about systems thinking at different levels of organizations and encouraging researchers to choose topics that are of interest to beneficiary organizations.

Barbados, at the start of the 1990s, was a society in conflict and crisis. It was to witness its largest ever demonstrations, rising fiscal deficits, increased foreign borrowing and general disenchantment with the government andInternational Monetary Fund‐supported austerity measures. The Barbados that emerged from this crisis has moved past its Caribbean neighbours, becoming the most developed country in the region and placing highly among international development indicators. What marked this nation apart from others in the region has been its specific form of governance and approach to addressing the crisis. This paper investigates this form of governance and its place in helping the country to overcome the turbulence of the early 1990s. It demonstrates the role of collaborative governance as a tool for conflict management and consensus building in times of crisis. It also shows how and under what conditions, groups can collaborate to elevate national interests above the sectional. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

AbstractThe New Agoras Project is the result of the leadership of Bela H. Banathy in encouraging ideal‐seeking conversations in many venues, including the Fuschl conversations held for several years in Fuschl, Austria, under the sponsorship of the International Federation for Systems Research. In April 2002 one of the conversations in Fuschl was devoted to the New Agoras Project. Doug Walton and Patricia Gill had participated in earlier meetings on the New Agoras Project and so led the conversation. The co‐authors of this paper were new to discussions of the New Agoras Project but were familiar with other similar efforts in several countries. This paper is a reflection on the conversation that occurred in Fuschl. It compares the New Agoras Project with the work of the Institute of Cultural Affairs and lists websites and other work that we believe are related to the intent of the New Agoras Project. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This book provides a comprehensive study of asymmetric territorial conflict combining game theory, statistical empirical analysis and historiographic analysis. It proposes a model to explain the dynamics of territorial conflict between rivals with a wide disparity in capabilities between them. Using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a case study and testing the model on a database of almost four hundred territorial conflicts, Resnick argues that changes in 'patience' - explained by parallel evolutionary processes occurring in the respectively strong and weak societies - underlie the changing behaviour witnessed in such rivalries. Located within the general context of the interplay between material constraints and ideas, the theoretical significance of this model goes beyond the context of territorial conflict and can be seen to provide an explanation for the ideational aspects of power transitions and change in world politics. This book constitutes a significant advance in the literature on territorial conflict, which has increasingly come to be recognized as a key field of enquiry in the discipline of conflict studies and international relations scholarship in general.

The research reported in this volume represents the second stage of a wide-ranging National Bureau of Economic Research effort to investigate "The Changing Role of Debt and Equity in Financing U.S. Capital Formation." The first group of studies sponsored under this project, which have been published individually and summarized in a 1982 volume bearing the same title (Friedman 1982), addressed several key issues relevant to corporate sector behavior along with such other aspects of the evolving financial underpinnings of U.S. capital formation as household saving incentives, international capital flows, and government debt management. In the project's second series of studies, presented at the National Bureau of Economic Research conference in January 1983 and published here for the first time along with commentaries from that conference, the central focus is the financial side of capital formation undertaken by the U.S. corporate business sector. At the same time, because corporations' securities must be held, a parallel focus is on the behavior of the markets that price these claims

The trade policies addressed in this book have far-reaching effects on the world's increasingly interdependent economies, but until now little research has been devoted to them. This volume represents the first systematic effort to analyze specific U.S. trade policies, particularly nontariff measures. It provides a better understanding of how trade policies operate, how effective they are, and what their costs and benefits are to trading nations. The contributors chart the history of U.S. trade policy since World War II, analyze industry-specific trade barriers, and discuss the effects of tariff preferences and export-promoting policies such as export credits and domestic international sales corporations (DISCs). The final section of essays examines the worldwide impact of import policies, pointing out subtleties in industry-specific policies and providing insight into the levels of protection in developing countries. The contributors blend state-of-the-art economics with language that is accessible to the business community, economists, and policymakers. Commentaries accompany each paper