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57351. International Constraints and Indigenous Strengths in Preventive Development

Author:
Jonathan Moore
Publication Date:
01-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Agency for International Development
Abstract:
I agree with Brady Anderson's guidance that “USAID's development policy and portfolio include integrated interventions aimed at addressing the effects of underlying social, economic and political problems.” My point of departure is that the only real prevention of conflict is root cause development, and that this cannot be separated from —but is closely connected to and part of—the crucial stage of post-conflict mitigation and rebuilding efforts. I will attempt to consider the implications for this proposition in three parts: the international “outside” perspective; the outlook from “inside” the crisis country; and where, broadly, combining these two points of view brings us.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Human Welfare, and International Organization
Political Geography:
United States

57352. How Do We Change the Way We Use Foreign Assistance to Help Prevent Deadly Conflicts?

Author:
Ted Morse
Publication Date:
01-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Agency for International Development
Abstract:
The topic of this paper is how do we change the way foreign assistance works in an increasingly unstable world: it has been interpreted to mean how do we change the way we use foreign assistance to help prevent deadly conflicts.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Human Welfare, and International Organization
Political Geography:
United States

57353. Developing a More Effective Conflict Prevention Capacity in an Increasingly Unstable World

Author:
Randolph Pherson
Publication Date:
01-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Agency for International Development
Abstract:
USAID wants to be proactive in developing a more robust capability to: Identify the root causes of deadly violent conflict and economic and political crises. Use analytic and programmatic tools at USAID's disposal to mitigate and, to the extent possible, prevent potential economic and political crises and deadly violent conflict.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Human Welfare, and International Organization
Political Geography:
United States

57354. Moral Freedom or Moral Anarchy?

Author:
Alan Wolfe
Publication Date:
09-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues
Abstract:
It is very difficult to discuss the issues which are raised in my book, without talking about September 11. This event is so important in our history, and, in fact, so important in the history of the modern world generally, that I am going to tailor at least some of my comments around it and try to reflect both on the event itself and on some of the things that I have said in my work over the course of the last few years and how these things interact with each other.
Topic:
Education, Government, Politics, and Religion

57355. Fear, Security and the Apocalyptic World View: The Cold War's Cultural Impact and Legacy

Author:
Paul S. Boyer
Publication Date:
03-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues
Abstract:
In 1967, Louis Halle published a book called The Cold War as History. If that title seemed jarring and premature in 1967, it would simply appear obvious and conventional today. The Cold War is receding from our collective consciousness with breathtaking rapidity. Cold War encyclopedias are appearing; an Oxford Companion to the Cold War will doubtless arrive at any moment. To the college freshmen of 2000 — seven years old when Ronald Reagan left the White House — the Cold War is merely a chapter in a textbook, an hour on the History Channel, not lived experience.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Cold War, and Communism
Political Geography:
Russia and United States

57356. Pathways of Property Transformation: Enterprise Network Careers in Hungary, 1988-2000 Outline of an Analytic Strategy

Author:
Balázs Vedres and David Stark
Publication Date:
10-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
This study analyzes the restructuring of a national economy by identifying the career pathways of its enterprises. This analysis is conducted in a setting strategically chosen as a case of rapid and profound economic transformation: the postsocialist Hungarian economy between 1988-2000. The goal of this study is to chart the multiple pathways of property transformation. Property pathways are conceptualized as the patterned sequences of change that firms undergo 1) in the composition of their ownership structure and 2) in their position within network structures of ties to other enterprises. These career pathways are neither unidirectional nor plotted in advance. The landscape and topography of the socioeconomic field are given shape and repeatedly transformed by the interaction of the multiple strategies of firms attempting to survive in the face of variable political, institutional, and market uncertainties. These different types of uncertainties will have different temporalities, and the study explores whether and how they increase or diminish in various periods. We develop and test specific hypotheses about how enterprise pathways along the compositional and positional property dimensions are related to the shifting contexts of these types of uncertainty. The core dataset for this study includes the complete ownership histories of approximately 1,800 of the largest enterprises in Hungary for a twelve year period, starting with the collapse of communism in 1989, recording each change in a company's top 25 owners on a monthly basis. Monthly entries for each enterprise also include changes in top management, boards of directors, major lines of product activity, raising or lowering of capital, and location of establishments and branch offices, as well as the dates of founding, mergers, bankruptcy, etc. Data on revenues, number of employees, and operating profit will be compiled from annual balance sheets. These rich data make it possible to map the life cycles of the business groups that are formed by network ties among enterprises, identifying not only when they arise, merge, or dissipate, but also the changing shapes of their network properties. To identify patterns of change, the study draws on sequence analysis, a research tool that makes possible the study of historical processes in an eventful way similar to historiography while retaining social scientific abstraction. Whereas sequence analysis has given us a perspective on careers as historical processes but has not been applied to business organizations, network analysis has been applied to business organizations but has not been done historically. The methodological innovation at the heart of this study is to combine the tools of sequence analysis and network analysis to yield a sequence analysis of changing network positions.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe and Hungary

57357. Opposite-Sex Twins and Adolescent Same-Sex Attraction

Author:
Peter Bearman and Hannah Bruckner
Publication Date:
10-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
We consider social, genetic, evolutionary, and hormonal transfer hypotheses for same-sex romantic preferences of adolescent (N=5,552) sibling pairs drawn from a nationally representative sample. We show that male but not female opposite-sex twins disproportionately report same-sex attraction; and that the pattern of concordance of same-sex preference among siblings is inconsistent with a simple genetic influence model. Our results provide substantial support for the role of social influences, reject the hormone transfer model, reject a speculative evolutionary theory, and are consistent with a general model that allows for genetic expression of same-sex attraction under specific, highly circumscribed, social conditions.
Topic:
Gender Issues and Science and Technology

57358. On the Uneven Evolution of Human Know-How

Author:
Richard R. Nelson
Publication Date:
10-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
Economists long have understood that the advance of technology, knowhow is a more inclusive term, has been the central driving force behind the improvements in standards of living that have been achieved over the last two centuries. It has been less well recognized that the advance of knowhow has been extremely uneven, dramatic in areas like communication and computation technologies and some areas of medicine, very limited in fields like housing construction and education. This essay is a preliminary investigation of the factors that might lie behind these differences. The search very quickly leads into exploration of why different fields of science have progressed so unevenly.
Topic:
Civil Society, Education, and Science and Technology

57359. Distributing Intelligence and Organizing Diversity in New Media Projects

Author:
Monique Girard and David Starkj
Publication Date:
09-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
This paper examines how web design firms in the emergent new media industry probe and experiment with possible forms and sources of value giving shape to the new economy. Focusing on the collaborative engineering of cross-disciplinary web-design project teams, we examine how websites emerge as provisional settlements among the heterogeneous disciplines as they negotiate working compromises across competing performance criteria.
Topic:
Economics, Industrial Policy, Intelligence, and Science and Technology

57360. Alternative Models of Dynamics in Binary Time-Series-Cross-Section Models: The Example of State Failure

Author:
Nathaniel Beck, David Epstein, Simon Jackman, and Sharyn O'Halloran
Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
This paper investigates a variety of dynamic probit models for time-series–cross-section data in the context of explaining state failure. It shows that ordinary probit, which ignores dynamics, is misleading. Alternatives that seem to produce sensible results are the transition model and a model which includes a lagged latent dependent variable. It is argued that the use of a lagged latent variable is often superior to the use of a lagged realized dependent variable. It is also shown that the latter is a special case of the transition model. The relationship between the transition model and event history methods is also considered: the transition model estimates an event history model for both values of the dependent variable, yielding estimates that are identical to those produced by the two event history models. Furthermore, one can incorporate the insights gleaned from the event history models into the transition analysis, so that researchers do not have to assume duration independence. The conclusion notes that investigations of the various models have been limited to data sets which contain long sequences of zeros; models may perform differently in data sets with shorter bursts of zeros and ones.
Topic:
Economics and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
Europe and France