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3392. Clausewitzian Friction and Future War
- Author:
- Barry D. Watts
- Publication Date:
- 10-1996
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Abstract:
- Since the end of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, there has been growing discussion of the possibility that technological advances in the means of combat would produce ftmdamental changes in how future wars will be fought. A number of observers have suggested that the nature of war itself would be transformed. Some proponents of this view have gone so far as to predict that these changes would include great reductions in, if not the outright elimination of, the various impediments to timely and effective action in war for which the Prussian theorist and soldier Carl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) introduced the term "friction." Friction in war, of course, has a long historical lineage. It predates Clausewitz by centuries and has remained a stubbornly recurring factor in combat outcomes right down to the 1991 Gulf War. In looking to the future, a seminal question is whether Clausewitzian friction would succumb to the changes in leading-edge warfare that may lie ahead, or whether such impediments reflect more enduring aspects of war that technology can but marginally affect. It is this question that the present essay will examine.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, Cold War, Government, and International Law
- Political Geography:
- United States, Soviet Union, and Southeast Asia
3393. Global Cooperation in Science, Engineering, and Medicine
- Author:
- Susan Raymond and Rodney Nichols
- Publication Date:
- 02-1996
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- New York Academy of Sciences
- Abstract:
- Many experienced observers have noted a persistent fatigue in current systems of international cooperation on research in science, engineering, and medicine. The institutions designed to serve global science since the end of World War II are not keeping pace with the changes sweeping science and technology. In the mid–1990s, the unease and uncertainty has become acute. Yet, simultaneously, research and education in science, engineering, and medicine are themselves becoming increasingly international in scope. This trend is not created by formal collaborative institutions. Instead, the factors setting the global pace include the rise of high–capacity, rapid modes of electronic communications; the end of the Cold War and the defense–based motivations that drove much innovation; the expanding scientific capacity throughout the world; and the emergence of new scientific problems that are increasingly global in nature and widely acknowledged as common priorities among scientists and nations. The uncertain “fit” between traditional institutional arrangements and tomorrow's generation of scientific activities has engendered widespread concern. A central question is how best to re–tool existing mechanisms to serve most effectively international collaboration in addressing the societal goals and research frontiers of the 21st century. The prescription for possible therapies, however, must be accompanied by a clear understanding of the nature of the symptoms and a careful analysis of the current state of existing, collaborative mechanisms.
- Topic:
- Government, International Cooperation, International Political Economy, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- New York
3394. The Politics of Free Trade in the Western Hemisphere
- Author:
- Manuel Pastor and Carol Wise
- Publication Date:
- 08-1996
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The North-South Center, University of Miami
- Abstract:
- Just as the 1980s now stand out as the decade of the debt crisis in Latin America, the 1990s have become the free trade decade. After a number of failed attempts at trade liberalization during the 1970s, many states in the region now have made dramatic progress in their efforts to reduce tariffs and eliminate quantitative restrictions (QRs) (see Table 1). The strongest evidence of this new openness is reflected in Mexico's 1994 entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the United States and Canada, the stated intention at the 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami to develop a plan for the full expansion of hemispheric free trade, and the ongoing consolidation of such subregional trade pacts as South America's Southern Cone Common Market (MER - COSUR), including Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay.
- Topic:
- Development, Government, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United States, Canada, Brazil, South America, Uruguay, Caribbean, North America, and Paraguay
3395. The Origins and Transformations of the Chilean Party System
- Author:
- J. Samuel Valenzuela
- Publication Date:
- 12-1995
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- This paper analyzes the Chilean party system from its inception to the present. It presents three polarities as basic to the constitution of the Chilean parties: in addition to the state/church conflicts and the divisions over socioeconomic programs, it shows that for long periods of its history the party system contained parties devoted to supporting specific political leaders or their legacies. The coalitional behavior of the Chilean parties during many decades cannot be explained without taking this polarizing (or unifying) factor into account. It was in evidence between 1856 and 1874 given the impact of the montt-varistas, between 1894 and 1925 due to the balmacedistas, between 1936 and the mid-1950s given ibañismo, and since 1985 as a result of the military government and its effects on the formation of a new party of the Right. The argument also reveals the extent to which the Chilean party system has nineteenth-century origins and emphasizes the importance of electoral rules in molding its transformations. The paper concludes by pointing to the fact that the Chilean electorate has considerable loyalty to party tendencies but less loyalty to specific party labels.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Government, History, Authoritarianism, Political Parties, and Political Behavior
- Political Geography:
- South America and Chile
3396. Mission to Haiti #3
- Author:
- Robert A. Pastor
- Publication Date:
- 03-1995
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Carter Center
- Abstract:
- Independent candidates and representatives from 27 political parties contested more than 2,000 municipal and Parliamentary postions in elections in Haiti on June 25, 1995. In the pre-election period, the Provisional Election Council (CEP) judged the qualifications of nearly 12,000 candidates, and disqualified about one thousand without explanations. The process was so prolonged and contentious that the ballots had to be changed up to the last days, and there were numerous mistakes. The CEP's erratic performance led three parties to boycott the election, and virtually all to question the CEP's judgment and independence. The unresponsiveness of the CEP to legitimate complaints raised by the political parties sowed seeds of distrust in the electoral process.
- Topic:
- Government and Politics
- Political Geography:
- United Nations, Latin America, and Caribbean
3397. Symbols, Positions, Objects: Toward a New Theory of Revolutions and Collective Action
- Author:
- Mustafa Emirbayer and Jeff Goodwin
- Publication Date:
- 10-1995
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Studies of Social Change
- Abstract:
- In 1980, Jack Goldstone wrote an influential review essay entitled "Theories of Revolution: The Third Generation." Goldstone noted that a "third generation" of theorists had emerged during the 1970s, one that placed special emphasis on the causal role of political and economic "structures" in social revolutions, especially states, transnational forces, and peasant communities. (By contrast, "second generation" theorists emphasized the role of diffuse "social strains" and their social-psychological consequences) Today, it seems increasingly apparent that this third generation, despite its impressive theoretical contributions, has largely run its course. In fact, as John Foran has recently noted, "the first signs of a new school may be appearing on the intellectual horizon." This new perspective, Foran and many other scholars agree, ought to focus much more attention on culture and ideology (as well as on agency) than did the third generation, but without losing sight of the important role played by political and economic structures.
- Topic:
- Government, Politics, and Science and Technology
3398. How Militarization Drives Political Control of the Military: The Case of Israel
- Author:
- Yagil Levy
- Publication Date:
- 12-1995
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Studies of Social Change
- Abstract:
- Observation of state-military relations in Israel reveals an apparent paradox: Within a period of about seventy years, the more the militarization of Israeli society and politics gradually increased, the more politicians were successful in institutionalizing effective control over the Israel Defence Forces (IDF, and the pre-state organizations). Militarization passed through three main stages: (1) accepting the use of force as a legitimate political instrument during the pre-state period (1920-1948), subsequent to confrontation between pacifism and activism; (2) giving this instrument priority over political-diplomatic means in the state's first years up to the point in which (3) military discursive patterns gradually dominated political discourse after the 1967 War. At the same time, political control over the IDF was tightened, going from the inculcation of the principle of the armed forces' subordination to the political level during the pre-state period to the construction of arrangements working to restrain the military leverage for autonomous action.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, and Government
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and Israel
3399. What is Agency?
- Author:
- Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Miscbe
- Publication Date:
- 01-1995
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Studies of Social Change
- Abstract:
- The concept of agency has become a source of increasing strain and confusion in social thought. Variants of action theory, normative theory, and political-institutional analysis have defended, attacked, buried, and resuscitated the concept in often contradictory and overlapping ways. At the center of the debate, the term "agency" itself has maintained an elusive, albeit resonant, vagueness; it has given rise to a long list of associated (and often equally vague) terms, such as selthood, motivation, will, purposiveness, intentionality, choice, initiative, freedom, and creativity. Yet despite the growing numbers of recent theorists -- ranging from Jeffrey Alexander, Anthony Giddens, and Pierre Bourdieu to Jurgen Habermas and James Coleman -- who have addressed the so-called "structure and agency problem," the concept of agency itself has been surprisingly neglected. In the struggle to demonstrate the interpenetration of agency and structure, most theorists have failed to distinguish agency as an analytical category in its own right -- with distinctive theoretical dimensions and temporally variable social manifestations. The result has been a flat and impoverished conception that, when it escapes the abstract voluntarism of rational choice theory, tends to remain so tightly bound to structure that one loses sight of the different ways in which agency actually shapes social action.
- Topic:
- Government, Politics, and Science and Technology
3400. Disintegration and Consolidation: National Separatism and the Evolution of Center-Periphery Relations in the Russian Federation
- Author:
- John W. Slocum
- Publication Date:
- 07-1995
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Judith Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
- Abstract:
- Practitioners of the late lamented science of Sovietology have been roundly criticized for failing to predict one of the most momentous events of the twentieth century—the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Anxious to avoid a repetition of past mistakes, post-Sovietologists have in turn devoted a good deal of attention to the question of whether the USSR's largest successor state, the Russian Federation, is itself in danger of breaking apart. Like the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation is a multinational state with ethnically-defined territorial subunits; political elites in these subunits, faced with massive political, economic and social uncertainty, may be attracted by the idea of political independence. During the first half of the 1990s, post-Soviet Russia has indeed experienced more than one crisis of center-periphery relations. The present study, however, suggests that the likelihood of a general disintegration of the Russian Federation peaked in the early 1990s and is now decreasing. In view of this analysis, the war in Chechnya is an exception to an overall trend toward consolidation, rather than an indicator of a general breakdown in center-periphery relations.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Government, and Nationalism
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Soviet Union, and Chechnya