The Truth about Trade: The Real Impact of Liberalisation

The usual perspective on technology spillovers from FDI sees the MNC subsidiary as a passive actor. It presumes that the technological superiority that spreads from subsidiaries to other firms in the host economy is initially created outside it by MNC parent companies, and is delivered to subsidiaries via international technology transfer. The role of subsidiaries is little more than to act as a ‘leaky container’ lying between the technology transfer pipeline and the absorption of spillovers by domestic firms. This paper suggests a different model in which a substantial part of the potential for spillover is created within local subsidiaries as a result of their own knowledge-creating and accumulating activities in the host economy. We explore empirically the effects of these activities on technology spillovers from FDI using data for industrial firms in Argentina over the period 1992–96. The analysis suggests that significant results can be obtained incorporating subsidiaries' own technological activities as an explanatory variable of the spillover process.     

The Pursuit of Responsive Museum Governance: Community Engagement in Turkish Public Museums

The public museum sector does not remain untouched by the main trends and changes in public administration, even if it has some different characteristics from other government agencies in terms of administrative priorities and purpose. This is why the sector has been largely influenced by the prevailing administrative model of the era. Today, community engagement has become one of the main topics in the sector in parallel with the changes in public administration. Thus, the objective of this study is to propose and test a model that explains Turkish public museums’ community engagement performance. Findings of the research show that goal clarity is the most important factor in the community engagement performance of Turkish public museums, whereas museum infrastructure is surprisingly the least significant factor. Furthermore, this study reveals the positive correlation between the fulfilment of endogenous and exogenous functions of the public museums. Therefore, any effort to make them more engaged in their community should not be regarded as an alternative of their primary functions, namely endogenous functions.     

The Uses and Abuses of History: Genocide and the Making of the Karabakh Conflict

Abstract

Did the 1915 genocide of the Ottoman Armenians play a role in the genesis of the Karabakh war? In the early phase of the conflict, many Armenian activists and politicians drew parallels between the evolving struggles of the present and the traumatic events of 1915. This essay explores the ways in which Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey have referred to the events of 1915 to formulate their policies towards the conflict. The essay argues that the largely suppressed past trauma was present in the mass psychology of the conflicting parties, although in radically different ways, and that it shaped developing events. After depoliticising genocide commemorations in the early years of its independence, Armenia has recently witnessed an increase in references to the genocide in political discourse. The same also applies, somewhat paradoxically, to Azerbaijan, which has developed its own state-sponsored discourse of genocide, vehemently denying that the genocide took place while portraying Azerbaijan as a victim of genocide itself. This exchange of roles clearly needs further explanation.     

瑞士的真正魅力

人们早就注意到,瑞士这个人口仅700万的小国拥有无穷的魅力.瑞士没有海洋,它的远洋船队按实力却居世界前列;它不出产可可豆,却生产出世界上最好吃的巧克力;它的国土面积41万平方公里,也就两个北京大小,而且一年只有4个月可以放牧和耕种,其余时间都是冬季,但却拥有世界上质量最高的乳制品.     

欧洲现代史中的苏联史

苏联史就是现代史的同义语,只有把苏联包括在内才有可能书写20世纪的世界历史;苏联的存在对20世纪世界历史的事件序列和结构,对国际体系,对文化关系和微观环境(不只局限于苏联),对政治和社会话语,对有关政治、经济、社会理论的形成,都产生了决定性的作用;不能把苏联史错误地理解为苏联疆域内的历史,也不能理解为现代史部门内众多国别史中的一部,因为苏联史同时显示出欧洲和全球的维度,波及西欧和欧洲以外的社会乃至日常生活和生活环境。因此,本文在兼顾欧洲背景的情况下,试图突出苏联史的几个主要线索,如人口损失、暴政、非斯大林化、苏维埃社会国家、合法性基础的改变、社会的转变、帝国的形成等,并探讨了与苏联现代化和工业化有关的理论问题。     

Aid,the Real Exchange Rate and Why Policy Matters: The Cases of Morocco and Tunisia

Abstract

Every form of foreign-exchange inflow, including aid, can potentially cause real-exchange rate appreciation, with adverse consequences for the production of tradables (‘Dutch Disease’). Whether it does so depends on the policy response to the inflow. This paper investigates the issue for Morocco and Tunisia, over 1980–2009. We find that aid led to a real appreciation in Morocco, but had no effect on Tunisia’s real exchange rate. This confirms the importance of the macroeconomic framework in which aid is provided, and the key role for infrastructure and other supply-side improvements in determining the final real-economy impact of aid and other inflows.     

The Dynamics of Multi-organizational Partnerships: an Analysis of Changing Modes of Governance

Multi-organizational partnerships are now an important means of governing and managing public programmes. They typically involve business, community and not-for-profit agencies alongside government bodies. Partnerships are frequently contrasted with competitive markets and bureaucratic hierarchies. A more complex reality is revealed once partnerships as an organizational form are distinguished from networks as a mode of social co-ordination or governance. Data from studies of UK urban regeneration partnerships are used to develop a four-stage partnership life cycle: pre-partnership collaboration; partnership creation; partnership programme delivery; and partnership termination. A different mode of governance - network, market or hierarchy - predominates at each stage. Separating organizational form from mode of governance enables a richer understanding of multi-organizational activity and provides the basis from which theory and practice can be developed. The key challenge for partnerships lies in managing the interaction of different modes of governance, which at some points will generate competition and at other points collaboration.     

Online Pursuit in the Twilight Zone: Cyberstalking Perpetration by College Students

The author provides one of the first empirical examinations of cyberstalking perpetration. The extent and nature of cyberstalking are investigated using a sample of college students from a large university in the Midwest. The results indicate that cyberstalking was perpetrated by 4.9% of research participants. In addition, the findings suggest that persons with low self-control are significantly more likely than their peers to perpetrate cyberstalking. Those who participated in sexting were also more likely to engage in cyberstalking. However, these variable effects differed by sex. In particular, women with low self-control were at higher risk of perpetrating cyberstalking, while low self-control did not affect offending risk for men. These results speak to the potentially gendered nature of cyberstalking, while at the same time finding that the prevalence of offending was essentially the same for men and women.     

当代中国村民自治以来的乡村治理模式问题

研究中国村民自治以来的乡村治理模式问题需要注意三条线索,即成本—收益线索,权力—权利线索,传统—现代线索,三条线索构成了一个影响(推进或阻碍)乡村治理进程的作用框架。任何试图以单一模式涵盖中国乡村治理问题的努力都将是不全面的。根据在双向民主化进程基础上实现"自治精神"的原则,应尊重乡村民众的自主权和自发创造能力,自下而上推进民主治理进程,使其与自上而下的治理进程相平衡,由"治民"传统走向现代"民治",以期形成多面相的乡村治理局面。     

In Pursuit of the Re-Engineering Agenda in Public Administration

The article examines the findings from longitudinal case study work conducted in the 1992-96 period in two organizations in the United Kingdom health care and post office sectors. The study highlights the many cultural, political and technical issues that emerge in the strategy and implementation of IT-enabled re-engineering projects. The radical re-engineering perspective and model for change presented by Hammer and Champy (1993) are compared against empirical findings. These suggest that the Hammer and Champy advice contains many limitations. The cases show the specific circumstances in which radical re-engineering can be effective, in managerial terms, but also point to conditions under which a unitary perspective on the organization often cannot address adequately many critical political and cultural issues. Moreover, the case histories point to the dangers of an over reliance on a methodological holism that can rarely be delivered in complex large-scale organizations, given the scale of change envisaged; and the difficulties engendered by over-emphasizing the need for transformation, and 'starting again', and downplaying the role of history and continuity in both the study and management of organizational change.     

Commemorating 1917 in Russia: Ambivalent State History Policy and the Church’s Conquest of the History Market

Abstract

Russia’s historical policy towards the centenary of 1917 was composed of several parallel strategies: diminishing the meaning of the event to avoid the head of state and other government figures having to take a stance; outsourcing commemorative events, with no pre-planned grand design; developing a reconciliatory narrative of the ‘Whites’ and the ‘Reds’; and allowing other actors to promote a plurality of contradictory readings of the events. Yet the space left by the state’s refusal to commemorate 1917 has been taken over by the Church, which, as today’s most active engineer of Russia’s historical policy, promoted a very clear pro-Tsarist narrative best embodied by the multimedia historical park ‘Russia—my history’ (Rossiya—moya istoriya).