Women between a new marriage and an independent position: Rural widows in Bohemia in the first half of the nineteenth century

This article discusses the position of widowed rural women in early 19th-century Bohemia. It focuses on women who had been married to full peasant farmers, holders of smaller farmsteads or cottagers. The data collected are based on the method of family reconstruction, which made it possible to carry out an in-depth examination of the background of individual widows as well as of the factors which influenced the widows' future. Results show that in deciding whether to remarry, widows were not determined only by economic or demographic circumstances (their age). Rather, the decision depended on specific life experience of each widow. One of the crucial factors was whether a widow was entitled to managing the farmstead of her late husband and also the number and age of children in the family. Young widows under 35 remarried in 88% of the cases, which was only natural since they did not have enough time to fulfil their maternal needs — 62% of women under 35 had either no child or only one when they became widowed. By contrast, the majority of older widows (61% of widows aged 35–50) decided to manage the farm by themselves, since by entering into a new marriage they would compromise the inheritance shares of their existing children.     

Manufacturing output,employment and real wages in the 1980s: Labour's loss until the century's end

During the 1980s most developing countries experienced sharp declines in manufacturing output and real wages, whilst their manufacturing sectors were supposedly ‘restructured’ or made more competitive by having to confront market forces. This article examines the extent to which macroeconomic adjustment and industrial restructuring policies succeeded in achieving their objectives.     

‘War don don’: stability,normalcy and Sierra Leone

There are few consistently reliable indicators of stability in post-conflict countries, but police behaviour is one of them. Based on the premise that stability has less to do with the introduction of specific institutions and procedures, and more to do with how people assess their environment and go about their routine business, this article uses police reform in Sierra Leone, 1996–2005, to provide a contextual explanation of the meaning of stability and the normalcy underpinning it. Rather than focusing on programme implementation, or on the normative indicators associated with international stabilisation and reconstruction projects, it argues that stability is the cumulative result of political realities and visible low-level activities which individually reinforce or offset each other.     

Responding to Catastrophic Terrorism

Current approaches to conventional terrorism are too restrictive for the environment of catastrophe and must be supplemented by insights from disaster management and escalation theory. Although disaster management alone cannot address weaknesses in strategic planning, when complemented by the concept of escalation, the two become a useful aid to understanding events directly related to extremes of scale, complexity, or longevity. Responding to catastrophic terrorism will thus require security interests to be balanced by strategic focus, policy coherence, operational skills, and cultural values.     

Why should Austria be different from Germany? the two recent nationality reforms in contrast

The article compares and evaluates the two recent reforms of nationality law in Austria and Germany. Before the changes both countries were very similar cases in terms of their nationality and immigration policy. Both relied on strict ‘jus sanguinis’, the principle of descent which is anchored in their nationality laws. One implication of jus sanguinis is that it constantly reproduces ‘new-born’ foreigners, as the only way for foreign residents to obtain national citizenship is via naturalisation. This includes the obligation to renounce any former nationality. In its recent amendment in 2000, Germany has softened the principle of descent by introducing limited ‘jus soli’ with the obligation to opt for one nationality at the age of 23 at the latest. Austria, on the other hand, has stuck to its tradition and introduced restricted reform. The article will outline the context of the two amendments. Why has the outcome been so different although both countries have faced so many similar experiences and circumstances? I will trace the development of both amendments and highlight the backgrounds of these two so contrasting decisions: two different attempts to deal with naturalisation of long-term immigrants and new-born foreigners.