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Crisis escalation to war is a subject of longstanding interest. Case studies, formal models and statistical analysis offer compelling explanations for why some crises escalate to war while others do not. Much less can be said in answer to the following question: where do crises come from in the first place? In this paper, we first introduce the concept of a near crisis following the approach taken over the course of more than four decades by the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project. A near crisis is just below a crisis as defined by ICB with regard to intensity, as it lacks one essential condition for a crisis—higher likelihood of military hostilities. Second, we present a newly developed dataset that contains information on 86 cases in which actors perceived a threat to one or more basic values, along with an awareness of finite time for response to the value threat. We also present simple statistical models comparing (a) near crisis to crisis and (b) crisis to war that show that analyses based on the Near Crisis dataset will contribute to advancement of knowledge.

Crisis escalation to war is a subject of longstanding interest. Case studies, formal models and statistical analysis offer compelling explanations for why some crises escalate to war while others do not. Much less can be said in answer to the following question: where do crises come from in the first place? In this paper, we first introduce the concept of a near crisis following the approach taken over the course of more than four decades by the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project. A near crisis is just below a crisis as defined by ICB with regard to intensity, as it lacks one essential condition for a crisis—higher likelihood of military hostilities. Second, we present a newly developed dataset that contains information on 86 cases in which actors perceived a threat to one or more basic values, along with an awareness of finite time for response to the value threat. We also present simple statistical models comparing (a) near crisis to crisis and (b) crisis to war that show that analyses based on the Near Crisis dataset will contribute to advancement of knowledge.

"International Crises Interrogated: Modeling the Escalation Process with Quantitative Methods" published on by Oxford University Press.

At first glance, Germany appears, economically, to be quite unusually successful. Despite the budgetary and financial crises affecting the other nations of the European Union, the German unem-ployment rate is declining. It has a positive export balance, and its own budgetary deficit is shrinking due to increases in national income and tax revenues. Indeed, the other European nations expect a relatively prosperous Germany to take more financial responsibility for the Union as a whole—a view not supported by a German majority. That majority thinks that the German welfare state, with health insurance and retirement pensions and considerable investment in culture and education as well as material infrastructure, is exclusively a national achievement. Having recently spent billions on domes-tic income transfers (from West to East after reunification in 1990), the German citizenry prefers to keep its money in German pockets. Disdain for Eastern and Southern Europeans serves as a solvent, washing away attention to internal differences in income and life chances that might otherwise move to the center of German politics. A truly yellow national popular press, television commentators as clueless as those we know here, and rigid professors of economics insist on austerity as the one true path to economic salvation. Austerity is prescribed not only for other Europeans, but for those Germans so improvident as not to belong to the upper income groups.

Since its establishment in 1949, NATO has been a political and military international organization that constitutes one of the most important actors in the international system. Although the prestige and advantages of being a NATO member in a bipolar world have been questioned from time to time after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, the Alliance has continued to sustain itself and, especially in the 2000s, has tended to expand. The acceleration of NATO's development and change after the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) suggests that the focus of this international organization is not only on the Eastern Bloc but also on the need to organize for other current and future focal points. Those who argue to the contrary suggest that in the aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR, which was
the focal point of NATO, and in an international system moving between unipolarity and multipolarity, the existence and purpose of the organization has become meaningless. The structure of NATO has been criticised due to factors such as the criticism of NATO's mission to protect Europe within the European Union (EU), especially in France, and the desire of the member states of the Union to take part in the mission to protect Europe themselves. Within the scope of this analysis, NATO's actions and its position in the face of crises, especially in the 2000s, will be examined, and how the reflections of its actions in the face of these political and military crises shed light on the future of the organization will be discussed. In this context, issues such as what the Alliance countries, especially in Europe, expect from NATO in the face of the recent crises will be analysed.

Political stakes in the Near East : between social and denominational crisis.
Studying more precisely the Lebanese case, the author shows that in the Arab Near East, communities bound together by religion and history, are combined with class identities gained through a process of modernization. When a crisis occurs, when State disappears, community identity and sympathies tend to substitute for the more recent class identity. But behind community unanimity can be perceived ideological, social, regional rifts.

Several emerging economies have, until recently, experienced large government surpluses and accelerating foreign exchange reserve accumulation. This has been accompanied by economic booms, exchange rate appreciations and in some cases increases in domestic inflation. We show that one way to understand these episodes is as manifestations of balance of payments anti-crises, as reflecting the perception that the government intends to discontinue its accumulation of reserves in the near future. The end-phase of such crises is characterized by nominal interest rates approaching their zero lower bou

In sum, by showing how and why local regional disputes quickly develop into global crises through the paired power of historical memory and time-space compression, 'Near Abroad' reshapes our understanding of the current conflict raging in the centre of the Eurasian landmass and international politics as a whole.

In this article, we aim at sharpening common understandings of the notion of political crisis to better explain the trajectories of authoritarian transformations during popular uprisings. We make three major claims. First, we propose a definition of crisis as brief moments of institutional fluidity and openness in which a process can take different directions. We delineate the crisis concept from the concept of critical junctures and outline how our approach contributes to the methodological debate on 'near misses'. Second, we indicate how the de-institutionalisation processes leading up to a crisis are to be analytically distinguished from within-crisis moments. We argue in favour of a discontinuity approach that takes into account the different temporalities of gradual lead-up processes and rapid within-crisis dynamics. Finally, we illustrate our theoretical and analytical reasoning with concrete cases from the authoritarian crises of the Arab uprisings, whilst suggesting that our argument can travel to other areas of research in which crisis narratives have gained prominence.

The present note is based on a publication by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), entitled "World agriculture: towards 2015/2030" (FAO 2002). The objective is to summarize the issues pointed out for FAO on the challenges to agriculture during the next year. The future of agriculture is dependent on the improvement of food security and sustainability (FAO 2002). In order to do this, it is necessary to analyze many contributory factors in assessing the prospects for progress towards improved food security and sustainability worldwide, according to the FAO study. One of the main challenges refers to a range of issues pertaining to the overall economic and international trading conditions, and those affecting rural poverty (FAO 2002). It affects the status and future of agricultural resources and technology. Of the many issues, FAO concluded that the development of local food production in the low-income countries with high dependence on agriculture for employment and income is the one factor that dominates all others in determining progress or failure in improving their food security. The FAO study also predicted that the uneven path of progress is, unfortunately, likely to extend well into this century. It indicates that in spite of some significant enhancements in food security and nutrition by the year 2015, mainly resulting from increased domestic production but also from additional growth in food imports, the World Food Summit target of halving the number of undernourished persons by no later than 2015 is far from being reached, and may not be accomplished even by 2030 (FAO 2002). However, according to the study, parts of South Asia may still be in a difficult position and much of sub-Saharan Africa will probably not be significantly better off and may possibly be even worse off than at present in the absence of concerted action by all concerned. Therefore, the world must brace itself for continuing interventions to cope with the consequences of local food crises and for action to permanently remove their root causes (FAO 2002). FAO emphasized that significant upgrading of the overall development performance of the lagging countries, with emphasis on hunger and poverty reduction, will free the world of the most pressing food insecurity problems (FAO 2002). A conclusion of the FAO study is that any progress towards this goal depends on many factors, not least among which the political will and mobilization of additional required resources; so that past experience underlines the crucial role of agriculture in the process of overall national development, particularly where a large part of the population, depends on the sector for employment and income. On the issue of sustainability, FAO emphasized that there is an assessment of the possible extent and intensity of use of resources over the years to 2030 and concluded that pressure on resources, including those that are associated with degradation, will continue to build up albeit at a slower rate than in the past. The main pressures threatening sustainability are likely to be those emanating from rural poverty, as more and more people attempt to extract a living out of dwindling resources (FAO 2002). When these processes occur in an environment of fragile and limited resources and when the circumstances for introducing sustainable technologies and practices are not propitious, the risk grows that a vicious circle of poverty and resource degradation will set in, as FAO pointed out. Mr. Jacques Diouf, Director-General of FAO, concluded by reiterating the importance of developing sustainable local food production and of rural development in the low-income countries; most of them depend highly on agriculture for employment and income as an important and, often, the critical component of any strategy to improve their levels of food security and alleviate poverty (FAO 2002). In conclusion, it is for this reason that sustainable agricultural and rural development must be given enhanced priority in all strategic framework for FAO and others organizations for food production and agriculture security and sustainability.

The Financial Crisis accelerated a latent Fiscal Crisis that had been brewing in many Western countries. The paper outlines the causes of the Financial Crisis, and how this increased expenditure and reduced revenues for many Western governments. But these additional fiscal stresses merely advanced the day of reckoning when fiscal problems had to be faced Demographics (the Baby Boom effect) dictated that reforms would be required in taxation, health care and pensions to smooth the transition. Many governments had not prepared adequately, so that the added burden of the Financial Crisis provided a double impost on budgets. The paper compares Canada and Australia in this framework, showing that there are similarities and differences that are instructive. Both countries avoided the initial Crisis, but they may not be so fortunate in the near future.