September 11th and U.S. Hegemony—Or Will the 21st Century Be American Too?

The tragedy of September 11 highlights the stark contrast between the real and measurable capabilities possessed by one state, and the almost inevitable resentments which the possession of those capabilities engendered in others. The purpose of this article is not to interrogate the strengths and weaknesses of arguments of American decline. Nor is it to speculate at length about September 11th. It is instead to set the scene and try and identify the underlying causes of America's transition from presumed crisis in the 1970s and 1980s to new self-confidence in the 1990s—a self-confidence that some now feel has been shattered by the events of September. While there were important structural reasons why the United States was unlikely to go the way of other powers, it was a peculiar conjuncture of mainly unforeseen developments that combined together after 1989 to improve the U.S. position within the world. We will then move on to discuss the most effective way of characterizing this position. Here, we will mount a defense of the somewhat contentious notion of "hegemony" While recognizing the problems associated with the idea, it will be argued that as a concept it has serious intellectual advantages over its various theoretical competitors. If nothing else, because it focuses on the American role within the world system, rather than just its statically defined position, it is theoretically more suggestive than the less dynamic idea of unipolarity.     

Towards Effective Collective Security and Human Rights Protection in Africa: An Assessment of the Constitutive Act of the New African Union

Netherlands International Law Review -     

中国汉族与日本群体DYFl55S1基因座的遗传多态性

目的探讨Y染色体DYF155S1基因座的遗传多态性及群体间差异。方法 应用MVR-PCR、荧光显谱及DNA序列分析技术,对来自中国群体(北方汉族,64例)和日本群体(43例)男性个体的DYF155S1基因座进行初步分析。结果107例样本共检出了5种重复序列类型,包括新的命名为6型的重复序列,它是在1型的基础上T22A置换所形成,仅存在于日本群体,可作为民族特征性遗传标记。2群体重复序列的排列方式以3134顺序为主,在中国和日本群体中各占73.44％和67.44％,是黄种人的特点。134顺序在中国群体中占第二位,为17.19％,6134排列占日本群体的16.28％。3’端的4型重复序列的平均数目在日本群体为8.8条,明显低于中国群体的12.5条。结论DYF155S1基因座具有非常高的遗传多态性和明显的群体差异。     

The legislative recreation of RICO: Reinforcing the ``myth' of organized crime

This paper uses historical content analysis to examine the implementation ofthe Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). It is argued thatthe historical events leading to the definition of organized crime as an alienconspiracy still affect RICO's use some 30 years after its passage. This paper applies state-centered theory to the theoretical frameworks of sociology of knowledge and innovation diffusion. This approach is used to relate the current implementation and controversy of RICO to the alien conspiracy view. Thought of in this context, legal implementation is the result of a knowledge creation and diffusion process. This paper demonstrates how one knowledge diffusionprocess (the acceptance of organized crime as a national conspiracy in 1970) leads to a new knowledge diffusion process (the use of RICO).