Economic ideas and institutional change: Evidence from soviet economic debates 1987–1991

The article analyses the shift in ideas that took place in Soviet economic thought between 1987 and 1991 and its relation to the changes in the real economy. The main focus of the article is on the issue of whether the evolution of Soviet economic thought in the analysed period changed in a gradual, path-dependent manner, or in a discontinuous, revolutionary fashion. Following the approach of Imre Lakatos, I argue that the conviction of being on the road to the ‘wholesome society’ formed the hard core of Soviet ideology, while ‘democratic centralism’ and the centralised economy provided its protective belt. Perestroika was the last attempt to save the hard core of Soviet ideology by adjusting the protective belt. This attempt failed, and the economic debates, which at first had been restricted to the protective belt, more and more approached its hard core, until it finally cracked. In this sense there was certainly a paradigm shift in Soviet economic thought. However, the notion of history as a purposeful process was not given up even by the Soviet adherents of monetarism. The utopian liberalism which became fashionable among Russian economists for a short period of time, it is argued, provides evidence that paradigm shifts and path-dependence in the evolution of economic ideas are not mutually exclusive.     

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Suicide with chloroquine combined with maprotiline and trimipramine]

Report on suicide with chloroquine in combination with maprotiline and trimipramine. Chloroquine and his metabolite monodesethylchloroquine could be determined in organs and body fluids. The highest organ-concentrations of chloroquine were found in liver and kidney. The survival time and dose are discussed.     

论社区矫正与其他非拘禁措施——问题与解决思路

社区矫正制度与非拘禁措施在欧洲有逾30年历史,比较成熟。各国分在审前阶段,审前阶段和刑罚执行阶段规定了不同的非拘禁措施。非拘禁措施的执行必须建立在信赖的基础之上,而且要有法律规定做保障。     

The Return of Prejudice in Europe's Regions: The Moderated Relationship between Group Threat and Economic Vulnerability

Using data from 16 countries and employing multilevel analysis that encompasses the national, regional, and individual levels, we find that both economic and social factors trigger anti-immigrant attitudes among Europeans. Regional per capita GDP is positively correlated with tolerant attitudes while the regional unemployment rate drives prejudice. We find a moderating relationship between immigrant population size and per capita GDP, which suggests that, as the size of the immigrant population increases, prejudice rises but only in poorer regions. In more affluent regions, an increase in the immigrant population corresponds to increased tolerance.     

Governance typology of universities’ technology transfer processes

Despite the growing interest in university-to-industry technology transfer, there are very few studies on the governance of universities’ technology transfer offices (TTOs). The few existing ones tend to focus on US universities and generally tackle one dimension of the governance. The present paper aims at contributing to this literature in two ways. First, it takes into account the diversity of organizational models with a theoretical perspective: the paper presents a discussion on which combinations of four structural dimensions should yield viable configurations. Four main types of TTOs are identified: (1) classical TTO; (2) autonomous TTO; (3) discipline-integrated Technology Transfer Alliance; and (4) discipline-specialized Technology Transfer Alliance. Second, the paper relies on 16 case studies of universities located in six European countries in order to address the pros and cons of the four types of TTOs. The results provide both a conceptual understanding and an empirical overview of how universities organize their technology transfer and intellectual property management.     

The social imperative of pacifism in postwar Japan: Shimizu Ikutarō and the Uchinada movement

Abstract

Postwar Japanese history is often analyzed from the perspective of peace and democracy. Both ideas represented an interpretation of the war experience on the part of postwar progressive thinkers that saw postwar pacifist activism assume an anti-State character. But another important part of this intellectual context was its pro-society inclination. Social agency and autonomy became the main objectives of postwar progressive thinking, and it was this that drove the intellectual activism and advocacy of postwar pacifist movements. But how did intellectuals conceptualize society, and what were the consequences of this conceptualization for the actual development of pacifist movements? Through examining the intellectual leadership of postwar pacifist movements we can begin to appreciate how the peace-democ-racy paradigm actually worked. A pioneering thinker in this respect was Shimizu Ikutarō, who was a central figure in Japanese pacifism in the 1950s, and a leading activist in the first anti-base movement at the village of Uchinada in 1953–54. It was in the context of this movement that Shimizu developed and articulated his ideas about society and peace. In the process, he revealed the dissonance in his thinking concerning “commoners,” and commenced his own intellectual disintegration as a progressive thinker. The consequences of the Uchinada protest for postwar popular and intellectual movements for peace would be formative, eventually leading to the cataclysm of the failed anti-security treaty movement of 1960.     

Netzwerkstruktur, Handlungslogik und politische Räume: Institutionenwandel in europäischen und nordamerikanischen Grenzregionen

This paper is a contribution to the debate on political order and governance in a “debordered world” beyond the “Westphalian system”. It is based on empirical information about the development and change of political institutions in cross-border regions in Europe and North America in the 20th century. First, it is shown that the nation state is loosing its gate keeper role at the end of the century and that various sub-national actors institutionalise independent cross-border links or participate on an equal footing. Therefore, the pattern of interaction is changing from formal hierarchies to networks. Nevertheless, if we define hierarchies and networks as modes of governance, we cannot conform such a change since the mode of interaction has not changed over the years. There does not exist and never has existed any other mode of interaction as “negotiated agreement”. What has changed is the institutional logic for finding such a cross-border agreement. Whereas older institutions were designed to find a common solution by using a technocratic-deductive logic, younger institutions use a symbolic-inductive logic (mainly in Europe). In North America they are based either on a rationalistic-evolutionary logic (at the US-Mexican border) or on a discursive-constructivist logic (in the Pacific Northwest). Also in respect to the much proposed tendency towards “deterritorialization” of political orders we find strong differences between the continents: Whereas in Europe even the younger institutions are based on “spaces of place”, in North America the more recent institutions are much more oriented towards “spaces of flows”.     

Religion, Historical Contingencies, and Institutional Conditions of Criminal Punishment: The German Case and Beyond

Religion and historical contingencies help explain cross-national and historic variation of criminal law and punishment. Case studies from German history suggest: First, the Calvinist affiliation of early Prussian monarchs advanced the centralization of power, rationalization of government bureaucracy, and elements of the welfare state, factors that are likely to affect punishment. Second, the dominant position of Lutheranism in the German population advanced the institutionalization of a separation of forgiveness in the private sphere versus punishment of "outer behavior" by the state. Third, these principles became secularized in philosophy, jurisprudence, and nineteenth-century criminal codes. Fourth, partly due to historical contingencies, these codes remained in effect into post–World War II Germany. Fifth, the experience of the Nazi regime motivated major changes in criminal law, legal thought, public opinion, and religious ideas about punishment in the Federal Republic of Germany. Religion thus directly and indirectly affects criminal law and punishment, in interaction with historical contingencies, institutional conditions of the state, and other structural factors.