The Jewish community in nineteenth century Palestine: evidence from the Montefiore censuses

Initial findings from five recently transcribed censuses of the Jewish community in nineteenth century Palestine, commissioned by Sir Moses Montefiore. This article discusses each census and presents uncorrected population figures. It describes how the Jewish community was rapidly changing: the population increased almost fourfold between 1839 and 1875, primarily due to immigration from Ashkenazi countries. The Jewish community was majority Ashkenazi by 1875. Analysis of the census data gives us detailed information about the community, such as the fact that Ashkenazim were significantly more likely than Sephardim to be engaged in full-time Torah study, whereas individuals who had immigrated to the land of Israel were slightly less likely. It also suggests that immigrations occurred at all ages, although the average age of an immigrant when they came to Palestine was 36.     

The titularization of Latvian secondary schools: The historical legacy of Soviet policy implementation

Abstract

Few would deny that the Soviet occupation has had an effect on post-restoration policy making and implementation in Latvia. Indeed, many commentators of post-Soviet politics insist that we must come to terms with the Soviet to understand the post-Soviet. In our view, the effects of the Soviet legacy on the policy process are clearly apparent in post-restoration Latvia, specifically in the area of language education policy. This article argues that both Soviet and post-Soviet policy making and implementation can be characterized in three ways: duplicity, a Soviet ethos, and “professionalization”. In what follows, we first engage with the Soviet policy process in general and the 1958–59 education reforms specifically. Based on interviews with education professionals, teachers and parents, we then analyze Latvian education laws and their implementation in 2004, highlighting the legacy of Soviet governance.     

The role of the pristavstvo institution in the context of Russian imperial policies in the Kazakh Steppe in the nineteenth century

The institution of pristavstvo was introduced in the Kazakh Steppe in the first decade of the nineteenth century. This institution had different meanings and functions, from an individually held position (e.g., a pristav to the khān of the Junior Horde in 1820; the pristavs who accompanied the Kazakh delegation to Saint Petersburg in the first half of the nineteenth century) to an administrative-territorial structure (e.g., the pristavstvo of the Senior Horde; the Mangyshlak and Zaisan pristavstvos). Though the political structure of the Russian empire had included institutions analogous to the pristavstvo, it was not a conventional component of the Russian administrative system. Studying the features of the pristavstvo institution in the territory of Kazakhstan and analysing the transformation of the pristav's function provide new insights on how the multi-ethnic Russian empire was managed. They will also help scholars to better understand the forms and methods the Russian authorities employed to manage their nomadic populations.     

Unfolding the coverage of illicit drugs in Estonian print press

The aim of this article is to analyze the changes in the coverage of illicit drugs by the Estonian press in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the restitution of Estonia’s independence. The article adapts Anthony Downs’ ‘issue-attention cycle,’ in which he proposes that public concern about certain issues follows a particular five-phase model. The author of this paper conducted a content analysis of 1523 press articles from 1993 to 2009. The analysis indicates that coverage of drug issues follows four of the five phases of Downs’ model, the exception being the fifth ‘post-problem’ phase.     

The Europeanization of financial regulation and supervision on the Baltic–Nordic axis: the perspective of national bureaucracies

ABSTRACT

This article presents a comparative case study about the impact of Europeanization on two types of small North European states after 2008. For our case study countries, this is mainly a process of Europeanization. Our analysis focuses on interpreting the Europeanization process from the perspective of bureaucracies: we attempt to understand financial bureaucracies’ perceptions of, attitudes toward, and reactions to the post-2008 developments in financial regulation and supervision in Sweden, Norway, Estonia, and Latvia. This enables us to reflect on the implementation performance and embeddedness of post-2008 regulatory and supervisory principles in these countries.     

The Impact of the European Union on Sub-National Mobilization in A Unitary State: The Case of Estonia

The discussion of multi-level governance and sub-national mobilization has become a critical case for those concerned with the political and institutional consequences of European integration. The evidence so far indicates that the EU impact on the empowerment of the sub-national level has not been as uniform within member states as the multi-level governance concept traditionally would assume. This article explores the Europeanization impact on sub-national mobilization in Estonia. The results of the study address the factors affecting the emergence of multi-level governance and provide a foundation for the analysis of the possible wider applicability of these manifestations to a wider set of countries with similar territorial and political structures.     

世界经济发展进程中的东亚金融危机

东亚金融危机是在一个不断变化中的世界经济环境中发生的,其中有３ 个因素有助于我们对这次危机的成因的理解,它们是：经济的全球化,知识经济的兴起,市场体制的普及。从而,如何解决这一危机也应从上述３ 个方面寻找答案     

The Politics of Chaebol Reform in Korea: Social Cleavage and New Financial Rules

Korea's developmental state had long maintained the principle of “separation between industrial capital and financial capital,” whereby the nation's industrial conglomerates – the chaebol – were restricted from having controlling ownership of financial institutions, especially banks. The financial crisis of 1997-98 renewed calls for regulating the chaebol, especially in terms of reinforcing corporate governance and competition policy. This process was supported and promoted by vibrant non-governmental organisations led by progressive activists who forged an effective alliance with the government and the ruling party whose platform followed a populist course. The reform movement has been resisted with equal fervour by conservative elements, led by the opposition party, chaebol-supported think tanks, and the conservative media. This cleavage is evident in the case of a pending legislation on chaebol ownership of financial institutions, the Financial Industry Structure Law. The controversy over this proposed law demonstrates that the contemporary chaebol reforms are deeply politicised. It also illustrates the path-dependent nature of the government-chaebol relationship.     

The Transformation of Korean Business Groups after the Asian Crisis 1

This study examines the evolution of Korean business groups after the economic crisis. In particular, we investigate the post-crisis changes in their business structure and corporate governance system, which are argued to be major precipitating factors leading to the economic crisis. Our analysis suggests that the divestment intensity of non-core, highly indebted and low intra-group trade firms was higher for groups which survived the economic crisis, compared to the bankrupt groups. Besides, most surviving groups did not pursue diversification as actively as before the crisis, and their financial conditions remained favourable in the post-crisis period. The corporate governance of the groups has also improved in terms of corporate transparency, implementation of monitoring mechanisms and their accountability to shareholders. Therefore, it seems that Korean business groups have successfully implemented radical corporate transformation to adapt to the changed business environment after the crisis. But, the dominance of family management still remains as an important feature of Korean business groups.     

Reemerging religiosity: the mainstreaming of new spirituality in Estonia

Due to historical-cultural factors, Estonians answer that religion occupies a low level of importance in response to European and global surveys. Nonetheless, new spiritualities, rather than scientific materialism, have become increasingly influential in Estonia. Based on material from quantitative and qualitative studies, this article identifies indicators of the changing understandings about spiritual-alternative ideas and practices in Estonia and analyzes the tactics spiritual practitioners use to legitimize their worldviews. The study argues that “fuzzy spirituality” is the dominant mode of religiosity in Estonia and challenges researchers to find new methods and theoretical approaches to study religions.     

The historical evolution of settlement patterns and trends in South Africa: Unlocking the log-jam of the unsustainable settlements impasse

Abstract

This article ascertains the underlying causes of the persistence of unsustainable settlement patterns and trends in post-apartheid South Africa. Despite positive development planning policy intentions in the post-apartheid South Africa, glaring deprivation and spatial inequality has persisted. The article is grounded in a chronological analysis of demographic, functional and regional economic dynamics at the different epochs of South Africa's history as well as the settlement policy and planning intentions. Its main finding is that the persistence of unsustainable settlement patterns and trends in post-apartheid South Africa is largely a result of misplaced settlement policies and strategies. They give knee-jerk responses to global, regional, national and local dynamics shaping settlement patterns and trends. The recommendation is that development planning initiatives should be informed by the dialectics of settlement facets at local, regional, national and global levels for them to deal decisively with the historical problem of unsustainable patterns and trends.     

Debating Economic Democracy in South Korea: The Costs of Commensurability

ABSTRACT:

In the 2012 Korean presidential election, both liberal and conservative parties fought their campaigns on the slogan of “economic democratization,” marking a strong departure from past presidential elections and the growth-first policies of the then-incumbent conservative administration. Both parties pledged to tackle growing social polarization and the concentration of economic power by reforming the corporate governance of Korea's large, family-led conglomerates (chaebol), to the degree that chaebol reform itself became synonymous with economic democratization. This focus led to a series of heated exchanges among liberal-left reformers about the vision of economic democratization being promoted, with one camp favoring the creation of a “fair market” through the restructuring of the chaebol and another promoting the protection of the chaebol’s management rights over their affiliates as a desirable strategy for the creation of a Korean welfare state. This essay examines the long-standing tensions between these two liberal-left perspectives and argues that the capital-centric and market-based visions these camps promoted risk confining intellectual debate over the meaning of economic democracy within boundaries that serve dominant political interests.     

Filling in the Gaps: The Transnational Administration of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Peru

Diverse sources have constructed a common narrative of individual and isolated responses by countries and their leaders to the global coronavirus pandemic, akin to sálvese quien pueda (every man for himself). This article suggests that this is a simplification of the governance of the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru. Peru's governance story is one of domestic public and private action closely interwoven with crucial elements of transnational administration out of sheer necessity. The struggle against the pandemic has generated a domestic and transnational administrative symbiosis, involving authorities at multiple levels in efforts to fill a series of interconnected domestic, regional, and global governance gaps.     

The Evolution of Innovation Policy Governance Systems and Policy Capacities in the Baltic States

This paper analyzes the evolution of innovation policy (IP) governance systems in the Baltic States and discusses how this progression has influenced the development of long-term IP capacities. The Baltics must attend to their long-term policy capacities as they are going through a ‘catch-up’ process while being influenced by both historical socioeconomic legacies and pressures of the global political economy. At the same time, they have delegated key policy activities away from centers of policy making and moved toward increasingly fragmented IP governance models, which provide narrow feedback and policy learning mechanisms that complicate the creation of long-term policy capacities.     

The Spanish model of New Journalism in a European context

This work deals with the study of the evolution and the historical experience of Spanish journalism in the context of decades of transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the selection of the most relevant cases and the examination of tracking, or not, of models and European patterns of the reference press, singularities and analogies of the historical evolution of the Spanish journalism model may be seen – an evolutionary model fully registered within the framework of Western Europe and in one of its most fruitful phases: the origins and first development of the mass media. Therefore, the following trilogy of reference media is selected covering specified time periods: El Imparcial, Madrid, 1867–1933; La Vanguardia, Barcelona, 1881; and ABC, Madrid, 1903.     

The mimicry of the state as a state practice: the regulation of rickshaw licenses in Dhaka (Bangladesh)

Around half a million cycle rickshaws are currently active in Dhaka, Bangladesh. With only 86,000 official licenses available, different types of organizations supply licenses to most rickshaw drivers. These non-official licenses mimic the language of the state. This article argues that while these licenses appear as part of non-state, hybrid, or twilight institutions, they in fact constitute a state practice. Based on approximately 200 semi-structured interviews at six locations in Dhaka and offering a conceptualization of the Bangladesh state as a party-state, the article shows that the operation of non-official rickshaw licenses and the mimicry entailed is an inherent part of party-state governance, one which is not morally neutral. While most respondents saw the everyday benefits of non-official licenses in the absence of sufficient official ones, the latter remained the most prized and, if made available, respondents agreed that the former would become redundant.     

The Latvian student corps and politics in the inter-war period of the twentieth century

Abstract

To date, Latvia's student corps have remained a neglected topic in the country's political history, notwithstanding the size of these organisations and the fact that they have been in existence for more than a century. Those accounts that do exist have for the most part been written by corps members themselves, and have not included any real analysis of the corps' interaction with society or their role in Latvian political life. A study of these issues opens up new avenues towards a better understanding of the activity and influence of interest groups in Latvian politics during the 1920s and 1930s. Unlike many other social organisations, the student corps (also including the alumni societies) are often seen as linked to the activity of the major parties, to the coup d'état of 1934 and to radical Latvian nationalism.