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59041. New Capabilities: Transforming NATO Forces

Author:
C. Richard Nelson, Robert Hunter, and George Joulwan
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
Of the three important topics on the agenda for the Prague summit – New Capabilities, New Members and New Relationships – the issue of “ new capabilities ” is particularly critical. How well this issue is handled will determine in large measure how members and others, particularly potential adversaries, think about NATO in the future.
Topic:
Security and NATO
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

59042. Staying the Course: Limitations in U.S. -China Relations

Author:
Gen. Jack N. Merritt
Publication Date:
09-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
The People's Republic of China (PRC). As of mid-2002, the PRC's policy is to emphasize the positive, stressing its desire for an improved – and hopefully more stable – relationship with the United States. This policy reflects China's recognition of the need for stability at a time of many challenges. In the next few years, the PRC leadership will be seeking to extend economic reform and build prosperity beyond the limited areas in big cities and the eastern provinces that have made great strides in recent years. China will need to adjust the economy to the market-opening demands that World Trade Organization (WTO) membership will bring and it will face the problem of moving successfully over the next decade through a transition in leadership without compromising the continued power of the Party leadership group.
Topic:
International Relations and Foreign Policy
Political Geography:
United States, China, and Asia

59043. New Frontiers for U.S. - Japan Security Relations

Author:
Christopher J. Makins, L. Gordon Flake, and Akio Watanabe
Publication Date:
02-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
A strong U.S.-Japan security alliance remains in dispensable to the interests of both partners in East Asia and beyond. Through strategic cooperation, both formal and informal, the United States and Japan can achieve international objectives that would otherwise be out of reach. Bilateral cooperation also contributes to the kind of stable, predictable relations on which the increasingly interdependent economies of the East Asian region depend.
Topic:
Security and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, Israel, and East Asia

59044. Managing Proliferation Issues with Iran

Author:
C. Richard Nelson and David H. Saltiel
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Atlantic Council
Abstract:
Any government in Tehran will be inclined to seek weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missile delivery options given the realities of its strategic environment. These weapons might help Iran to deter potential external threats, to achieve equality with other major regional powers armed with WMD, and to attain self-reliance in national security, given the isolating experience of arms embargoes. A more pluralist leadership in the future, however, may examine broader choices and trade-offs, and perhaps be less likely to cross key thresholds in WMD acquisition. In any event, Iran's WMD behavior is likely to be determined by both external factors, mainly the availability of crucial components, and internal factors, including calculations of costs, risks, and benefits. Among the benefits, psychological factors, such as prestige, will play an important role. Other important factors that might well shape Iran's WMD behavior include developments in Iraq, relations with the United States and other Gulf states, Israeli-Palestinian relations and the future price of oil.
Topic:
Security and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States, Iran, and Middle East

59045. Economic Action Does Not Take Place in a Vacuum: Understanding Cisco's Acquisition and Development Strategy

Author:
Martin Kenney and David Mayer
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
Typically, economists and finance researchers have considered corporate acquisitions as arm's length transactions consummated in a relatively perfect market for corporate control, an appealing story no doubt, but it consigns the real world difficulties of managing the acquisition process into a black box. The key to making a successful acquisition does not begin with strategy and end with integration, rather it begins with understanding and participating in the external ecosystem and ends with managing the internal dynamics by which the newly acquired firm will be integrated. This paper finds that traditional "economistic" perspectives ignore the social and organizational dimensions within which the acquisition process is embedded. In tandem with the economist's erasure of the social; the temporal and processual dimensions were ignored. Put differently, acquisitions are treated as point-in-time events occurring in an environment that operates like the stock market in which corporate control, organizational knowledge, and employee fealty is transferred as seamlessly as stock shares. These assumptions ignore the social, temporal, and processual dimensions so critical for explaining acquisition success and failure.
Topic:
Industrial Policy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology

59046. Production in a Digital Era: Commodity or Strategic Weapon?

Author:
John Zysman
Publication Date:
08-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
Abstract:
The rise of the digital economy reignites debates over the transformation of production in industrial economies. For several decades, analysts attempted to describe the central features of the next economic epoch with labels like the knowledge, information, or service economy. The conventional argument claimed that just as an agricultural economy gave way to a manufacturing economy, an industrial economy was giving way to a service economy. Hence, their arguments went, industrial production was of diminishing importance.
Topic:
Security, Industrial Policy, and Science and Technology

59047. Europeanization and the Retreat of the State

Author:
Volker Schneider and Frank M. Häge
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
Is the state on the retreat? We examine this question through an analysis of changing patterns of government involvement in infrastructure provision, which is generally considered to be one of the primary functions of the modern state. Based on an analysis of the extent of privatization of infrastructure companies between 1970 and 2000 across twenty-six OECD countries, we find that there is indeed a general trend towards less public infrastructure provision visible in all of the countries and that the main factors associated with the extent of privatizations are EU membership and government ideology. We argue that the trend of privatizing infrastructure companies was triggered by a change of the prominent economic discourse in the 1970s and that a rightist party ideology and EU membership fostered the adoption and implementation of these ideas in domestic settings.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Europe

59048. Disentangling the Reform Gridlock: Higher Education in Germany

Author:
Helga A. Welsh
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
For more than a decade, bemoaning the many roadblocks to reforming important aspect of German politics has become commonplace. Explanations emphasize formal and informal veto points, such as the role of political institutions and the lack of elite and societal support for reform initiatives. Against this background, I was interested in factors that place policy issues on the political agenda and follow up with concrete courses of action; i.e., in factors that lead to a disentangling of the reform gridlock. I emphasize the importance of agenda setting in the emergence of higher education reform in Germany. Globalization, European integration and domestic pressures combined to create new pressures for change. In response, an advocacy coalition of old and new political actors has introduced a drawn-out and ongoing process of value reorientation in the direction of competition, including international competition, and greater autonomy. The result has been a burst of activities, some moderate, some more far-reaching in their potential to restructure German higher education.
Topic:
Education, Globalization, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

59049. National Interests, State Power, and EU Enlargement

Author:
Milada Anna Vachudova and Andrew Moravcsik
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
The EU enlargement process and its consequences are decisively influenced by material national interests and state power. Current EU leaders promote accession primarily because they believe it to be in their longterm economic and geopolitical interest, and applicant states embark on the laborious accession process because EU membership brings tremendous economic and geopolitical benefits, particularly as compared exclusion as others move forward. As in previous rounds of EU enlargement, patterns of asymmetrical interdependence dictate that the applicants compromise more on the margin—thereby contributing to a subjective sense of loss among those countries (the applicants) that benefit most. Domestic distributional conflict is exacerbated everywhere, but the losses are in most cases limited, inevitable and, in the longer term, even beneficial. Once in, we should expect applicant states, like their predecessors, to deploy their voting and veto power in an effort to transfer resources to themselves. While overrepresentation of smaller states gives the applicants an impressive number of votes, the lack of new “grand projects” essential to existing members, the diversity of the new members, and above all, the increasingly flexible decision-making structure of the EU, will make it difficult for the new members to prevail.
Topic:
International Political Economy and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

59050. Spain in the EU: fifteen years may not be enough

Author:
Miguel Sebastian
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
Europe has been the driving force of economic policy in Spain over the last four decades and the key factor behind the modernization and globalisation of the Spanish Economy. The accession to the EEC in 1986 was a crucial step in the process of economic and political integration.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe