Coalitions: Beyond the Politics of Centrality?

This article examines the character of oppositional movements in the GDR in the light of post‐Wende revelations of Stasi infiltration. We look at responses by members of the alternative culture to accusations that their work during the GDR was rendered ineffective by the Stasi and is consequently of little importance to a historical reappraisal of the GDR. Whilst they were clearly aware of the Stasi, whose influence did have an effect, our evidence suggests that this influence was not total. Current debates about the Stasi are creating an unbalanced view of the actual situation in the GDR before 1989 in that the Stasi is being portrayed as an organisation of almost Orwellian Big Brother proportions. Our article attempts to deconstruct this paradigm and argues that the complicity of the few with the MfS should not invalidate the activities of the majority of those involved in the alternative culture.     

Polish ‘Temporary’ Migration: The Formation and Significance of Social Networks

This article is based on in-depth interviews with migrants in different locations in Poland and the UK and explores Polish migrant decision making in both countries. In particular, we ask how migrants build networks, how this influences their decisions about the duration of their stay abroad, and the implications of network building for community cohesion. Networks exist within the sending country; between the sending and the receiving country; within diasporas; and between diasporas and the receiving community. Our article considers the first three sections of this chain.     

The politics of greater China's integration into the global Info Tech (IT) supply chain

The most notable feature of the public ‘dialogue of the deaf’ taking place across the Strait separating Taiwan and China is its zero‐sum logic. This logic of one‐upmanship in political and security matters dictates that whatever benefits Taipei is detrimental to Beijing and vice versa. Commercial interaction between Taiwan and China, particularly in the broadly defined sector of information technology (IT), is arguably the more powerful driver of cross‐Strait interaction today. Two characteristics of this accelerating dynamic of commercial interaction across the Taiwan Strait are paramount: (1) its tight integration into a global IT supply chain; and (2) the extent of symbiosis by which all participants in this global supply chain depend on the worldwide vitality of this economic ecosystem. In interpreting what cross‐Strait economic integration in IT portends, political logic may be leading Taipei and Beijing along opposite paths to the same end‐point: the presumption that economic integration is undermining, and destabilizing, the cross‐Strait economic and political status quo. As a dominant player in global IT, the US has its own stake in a clear understanding of this globalization dynamic and in astutely maintaining its interests as the global IT supply chain continues to extend across the political fault‐line of the Taiwan Strait. Non‐partisan analysis of the logic of globalization suggests a different outcome for the cross‐Strait commercial dynamic than either Taipei or Beijing has publicly credited: its potential to mutually enhance economic prosperity and contribute long‐term to stabilizing cross‐Strait political interaction.     

One of the family: Domestic service in early modern Japan

This study investigates the effect of domestic service upon social practice and asks if domestic service led to self-affirmation and individualistic behavior in early modern Japan. It begins by describing various employees classified as domestic servants. Next the role of the servant as a member of the employer's family shows fluid kinship relations that resulted in changes in the family system and family practice. Contemporary theater is used to address some of the conflicting issues that these changes offered as challenges to patriarchal authority and how society reacted to these changes.     

Participatory Reactions to Policy Threats: Senior Citizens and the Defense of Social Security and Medicare

The sociodemographic factors emphasized in much participation research cannot explain abrupt changes in levels of activity. This study shows how threat of undesirable policy change acts as an impetus to participatory activity, helping to explain temporal variation in participation. Newly available individual-level time-series data are used to show surges in senior citizen letter writing in response to threats to Social Security and Medicare during the 1980s. Policy threat interacts with individual characteristics to produce variations in participatory reaction congruent with the magnitude of the threat to the individual.     

Technical Cooperation and the International Coordination of Patentability of Biotechnological Inventions

Within the formal international framework, the coordination and harmonization of substantive patentability is currently of a limited nature, confined to the level of general principles, in contrast to the greater degree of procedural coordination. This involves increased costs and a lack of legal certainty for those seeking patents in multiple jurisdictions, mainly transnational corporations in some research-based industries such as pharmaceuticals. The problems encountered in achieving even a basic level of international consensus have encouraged informal cooperation through what could be conceptualized as 'global patent networks'. Furthermore, the interrelationship between procedural and substantive patent law issues has led the Trilateral Patent Offices, an informal, transgovernmental regulatory network of technical specialists, to undertake projects relating to the harmonization of procedural and substantive patent law issues primarily in contentious areas of patentability such as biotechnology. This raises the possibility of developing convergent interpretations of the patentability rules, although with implications for accountability and legitimacy.     

Regional Innovation Systems: General Findings and Some New Evidence from Biotechnology Clusters

This paper focuses on interactive innovation. It starts by operationalising Regional Innovation in the context of multi-level governance. It shows how regional and external innovation interaction among firms and other innovation organizations is important for regional innovation potential. The ability to access and use funding for innovation support for regional firms and organizations is crucial for regional innovation promotion. Equity investment funding is more important than public funding, which tends to be cautious and otherwise risk avoiding, except in circumstances of market arrest or failure to develop. Regional systems of innovation are broader than single sectors or clusters but some of these will be strategically privileged recipients of policy support because of their growth performance or potential, rather than, as in the past, their uncompetitiveness. The paper devotes space to exploring biotechnology clustering from a regional innovation systems viewpoint, as an instance of rather strong sectoral, regional innovation systems capabilities, though integrated also to global knowledge supply and markets. Illustration is provided of the way such sectoral innovation systems work at local regional level by reference to cases from Cambridge, Massachusetts and Cambridge, England.     

Governance, risk and dataveillance in the war on terror

This paper critically analyses the importance of risk management techniques in the war on terror. From the protection of borders to international financial flows, from airport security to daily financial transactions, risk assessment is emerging as the most important way in which terrorist danger is made measurable and manageable. However, we argue that the risk-based approach results in the displacement of risk onto marginal groups, while its effectiveness in the war on terror remains questionable.