International crises, national scale, and economic resilience in the 21st century

ABSTRACTIn recent years, China has been experiencing the combined shock of rising trade uncertainty and a slowdown in economic growth, yet the performance of different provinces under such downward pressure varies significantly. To address this, the paper innovatively applies the DF‐SV model to systematically identify overall trade uncertainty across Chinese provinces and, based on this, employs the GPSTR model to investigate the nonlinear effects of trade uncertainty on economic resilience. The findings reveal that China's trade uncertainty is highly sensitive to major domestic and international economic and trade crises and exerts a negative nonlinear impact by reducing economic resilience. Specifically, the negative impact of trade uncertainty on economic resilience is closely related to provincial economic, financial, and policy endowment factors, such as industrial structure, financial frictions, and the scale of fiscal expenditure. Provinces with more severe corporate financial frictions tend to be more adversely affected, whereas provinces with more advanced industrial structures and larger fiscal expenditures are relatively less affected. This study provides valuable insights and practical guidance for understanding the dynamics of provincial trade uncertainty in China and enhancing the resilience of economic development.

Since the 21st century, crisis events have been frequent and normalized globally, and improving resilience has become the key for the tourism industry to cope with various uncertainty risks. To reveal the reality of the economic resilience of tourism in China, this study employed the autoregressive integrated moving average model (ARIMA) to construct a counterfactual function and integrated with the peaks-over-threshold (POT) model and geographical detector model to evaluate the spatiotemporal evolution and influencing factors of the economic resilience of tourism in China from the resistance and recoverability perspective, with a view to providing a reference for consolidating the resilience of the economic system of tourism in China and promoting the sustainable development of its tourism economy. The results showed that the economic resilience of tourism in China can be divided into four types—robust, self-reliant, laissez-faire, and fragile—based on a baseline resistance of −0.361 and recoverability of 0.342. Under different contraction–recovery cycles, the resistance and recoverability of China’s tourism economy have been progressively improved, transforming from the centralized model to the discrete model, from a fragile to a self-reliant type. The type of economic resilience of tourism in China exhibited a clustered contiguous development trend, with obvious zonal distribution characteristics and self-reliant tourism economic resilience areas dominating, but most areas have not yet formed stable economic resilience in their tourism sector. The ecological environment quality, government management ability, and technological innovation level were the main factors affecting the economic resilience of tourism in China. The interactions between different influencing factors were more significant in strengthening the tourism economic resilience.

Starting from the portrayal of a Mari-speaking soothsayer in the recent Russian television series “Ivan Groznyi”, this essay asks what the Maris’ longstanding reputation for witchcraft tells us about interethnic relations in European Russia, and about the place of magic in Russia’s popular imaginaries. A Finno-Ugric-speaking group that served as a buffer between Muscovy and the Khanate of Kazan’ until it was brought under Moscow’s rule in the sixteenth century, the Mari have had a reputation for sorcery from early travelers’ accounts up until the twenty-first century. Such a reputation is shared by numerically small and militarily powerless subject populations around the world, and is often interpreted as a mechanism of exclusion. Looking at accounts from non-Mari residents of the Volga region of how they encountered and interacted with Mari magical powers during the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, I argue that at least in recent times, the reputation for sorcery does not constitute grounds for ostracism. Rather, it provides Maris with a niche in a local system of ethnic interdependence, and occasionally, with recognition at a national scale. In a situation where the definition of officially sanctioned religion is fluid and open to contestation, labeling the assumed powers of not-fully-Christianized people as “magic” helps incorporate them into a larger imaginary of spiritual agency, where boundaries between religious systems are less important than the movement between complementary ways of enlisting superhuman help. Representations of Mari witchcraft at a national and regional scale emphasize familiarity, not insurmountable strangeness, and thereby construct a narrative of Russian national strength as rooted in the state’s ability to incorporate and bridge multiple ways of knowing and being.

Review of accounting for carbon dioxide emissions from tourism at different spatial scales

Contemporary urban development faces many uncertainties and complexities. Resilience research based on big data method provides new ideas for improving urban security. This paper analyzes the research on foreign urban security considering resilience from 1993 to 2018 with Citespace software. The big data algorithm provided by Citespace proves that the urban resilience research can be characterized by three aspects. Firstly, urban resilience and climate change adaptation are mostly at the national scale and regional scale, and there are few studies on community scale and family scale. In the future, the community scale should be emphasized to improve the research accuracy. Secondly, the urban resilience governance model and social dynamic mechanism should be based on the Chinese institutional background and localized and embodied and be socially fair. The combination of public participation, system resilience, economic resilience, and social resilience can still be further improved. Lastly, research can focus on interdisciplinary integration with geography, economics and sociology, considering big data and smart cities. The research scale should strengthen the comparative study of community scales.

The age of intelligent warfare has created a fully integrated cyber, economic, and information state of adversarial capabilities within an emergent threat landscape. The landscape is shaped by multidimensional strategic interactions of globalization, vis-à-vis foreign direct investment (FDI), that are not constrained by the traditional boundary conditions of national security or free trade. The complex concepts of power and influence within the broad scope of globalization and national security require an evaluation that adequately addresses the threat environment in the twenty-first century—a modernized model where investments, which create direct and indirect power over other nations, are weaponized. Nations are required to make difficult, and at times zero-sum, decisions between enabling growth-oriented economic policies and national security determinations. All governments must consider their nations’ place in progressing toward the next industrial revolution. This advancement includes evaluating how global competition creates technological and economic resilience, security, and innovation. Key reflection points include how to create consistent and transparent standards, evaluating to what extent governments participate in the capital markets, how and where capital and resources are allocated, and by what measure are the consequences of action or inaction judged over time. Nations must evaluate the positive and negative externalities on domestic industry that global competition creates by recognizing that placing limitations on the ability of companies to compete on a global scale directly impacts national security, technology, and economic policy.

Purpose: Financial education is increasingly recognized as a critical life skill in the 21st century, given the complexity of modern financial systems and the necessity for individuals to make informed decisions regarding savings, investments, and debt management. This paper examines the challenges and opportunities associated with financial education, highlighting the role of technology, policy frameworks, and behavioral economics in shaping financial literacy outcomes. It also discusses the implications of financial education on individual well-being and economic stability. Furthermore, through comprehensive case studies and an in-depth analysis of global perspectives, this research identifies innovative solutions and policy implications to enhance financial education, contributing to the global discourse on economic resilience and individual empowerment. Methodology: The paper utilized a qualitative approach, sourcing data from textbooks, journal articles, government publications, newspapers, and other relevant academic materials. This method was chosen to capture diverse perspectives and provide a comprehensive understanding of financial education challenges and opportunities. Findings: The study delved into the historical context of financial education on the African continent, revealing a trajectory shaped by colonial influences, indigenous practices, and post-independence reforms. It became evident that financial education in Africa has long been marred by systemic exclusion and underdevelopment. Unique Contribution to Theory, Policy and Practice: Digital innovation and global financial literacy campaigns offered promising avenues to expand access and engagement. Inclusive financial systems, particularly those blending traditional and modern practices, demonstrated potential for economic empowerment. Integrating financial education into formal curricula was recognized as a sustainable approach for fostering long-term literacy and resilience. These opportunities underscored the transformative potential of financial education in addressing socio-economic disparities and empowering African communities. By leveraging these avenues, Africa can navigate its unique challenges and harness the power of financial education for a prosperous future.

The Crisis of Liberal Internationalism:The Legacies of the League of Nations Reconsidered David Petruccelli The liberal order appears to be coming apart at the seams. The global economic crisis, rising authoritarianism, growing resentment of foreigners, and populist revolt against the political establishment have led many commentators to look to the 1930s as a point of reference. Nowhere has this impulse been more pronounced than in the United States, where a procession of historians rushed to offer their expert opinions for or against the frequently drawn parallels between the Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election and the rise of fascism and Nazism in interwar Europe.1 Historians of the United States, meanwhile, have explored the domestic fascist traditions that provided fertile soil for Donald Trump's ascendance.2 Such historical analogies have not been confined to the United States. In Europe, the [End Page 111] electoral gains of populist political parties railing against globalization, liberalism, and immigration has evoked similar comparisons to the 1930s.3 Such historical analogies risk obscuring more than they illuminate. They draw their urgency from an implicit warning—the crises of the 1930s led to the Second World War and the Holocaust—without directly confronting the critical question of whether the mounting challenges to the liberal order make major conflict and genocide more likely. Foreign policy experts warning of the impending demise of the liberal international order have, on the whole, been more measured in their diagnoses, rarely resorting to the kinds of comparisons to the 1930s so common in commentaries on domestic politics. Such prognostications predate the recent crisis. Already during the presidency of George W. Bush, foreign policy experts pointed to America's turn from its longstanding traditions of liberal internationalism as marking a historic watershed. But the twin shocks of the vote for Brexit and election of Donald Trump in 2016 have lent them credence outside of the narrow circles of foreign policy experts.4 If debates about the future of liberal internationalism have eschewed [End Page 112] direct comparisons to the 1930s, however, the specter of the interwar decades nonetheless looms large. "Liberal internationalism" is, in one sense, a term in search of a history. Beginning in the 1980s and gaining steam after the Cold War, scholars in the field of international relations developed the concept of liberal internationalism to characterize an approach to foreign relations that emphasized the role of international institutions and networks rather than principally sovereign states. In the United States, an influential cohort of foreign policy experts pushed the U.S. government to adopt what they labeled a "liberal internationalist" agenda that would bind it to the open, rules-based order even as it emerged as the world's sole superpower.5 The propagation of the idea of liberal internationalism has rested on three layers of historical revisionism. First, its advocates have attempted to reread America's Cold War foreign policy, emphasizing not the Realpolitik of Washington's approach to the Soviet Union but rather its successful construction of a liberal international order among its allies in Europe and East Asia.6 This has allowed them to argue that the ideology of liberal internationalism has been the key component of a kind of benign American hegemony that has ensured the relative peace and prosperity enjoyed by the West since the Second World War. Second, liberal internationalists have sought to reinterpret the crisis of interwar internationalism and the origins of the Second World War. They have rejected the longstanding view that Woodrow Wilson's program for the spread of liberal democracy through the League of Nations was irredeemably flawed, though they admit that the post-1945 "liberal internationalism 2.0" successfully addressed at least some of the very real weaknesses of this order.7 It was largely the vagaries of American domestic politics and personal failings on the part of Wilson, who proved incapable of brokering a deal to secure American entry into the [End Page 113] League, that had doomed his earlier project. Liberal internationalists have therefore shown a curious preoccupation with reviving "Wilsonianism," offering it as a roadmap for American foreign policy in the twenty-first century.8 This rehabilitation of Woodrow Wilson is...

This study focuses on forced migration and interstate violence during international crises, as a major security concern with salient implications for international relations stability. The empirical data consists of 229 crises designated as Forced Migration Crises (FMC), identified within the 374 crises of the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) project. The study outlines a framework for analyzing FMC compared with Non-Forced Migration Crises (NFMC), presents an index of Forced Migration Magnitude (FMM), and probes three hypotheses. It points to transformations in forced migration since WWII, compares crises with and without forced migration, and explores patterns of FMM and violence. Results lead to rejection of hypothesis 1 on similarities between FMC and NFMC, supporting hypothesis 2 on considerable diversity between them. Findings on extended scope, strategic locale, enduring forced migration problems and increased violence support hypothesis 3, challenging the placement of forced migration merely as a social or humanitarian domestic concern. Instead, results show a salient increase in FMM, coupled with more severe interstate violence and war, dangerously destabilizing regions worldwide. These patterns require the integration of forced migration within crisis frameworks, as a new research agenda, to understand the nature of forced migration in the 21st century and its impact.

: The purpose of this paper is to analyze the U.S. approach to achieving its national security objectives as it assumes global primacy in the 21th century. This paper argues that the U.S. has failed at shaping the post-Cold War environment, failing to use all elements of national power to prevent political unrest, civil wars and territorial disputes before they become international crises. How well has the United States exercised leadership in defusing international disputes and conflicts before they become international crises? How well does it anticipate and react to shifts in international paradigms? Are U.S. policymakers misrepresenting U.S. responding for shaping activities? These and other issues will be explored with recommendations for increasing U.S. effectiveness in shaping.

The 2013–2014 Russia–Ukraine crisis that started the Russian war against Ukraine is usually conceptualised as a geopolitical or international security crisis and analysed according to spatial logics. This article focuses on the underresearched chronopolitics of the crisis, arguing that in addition to a security crisis, events presented European leaders with a temporal identity crisis. The very fact that something like this could happen ‘in Europe in the 21st century’ was deemed extraordinary, challenging the EU's core legitimating narrative of Europe as a peaceful and advanced space. Drawing on timing theory from International Relations, the article analyses the frequent use of temporal language in political discourse during the crisis, such as the oft‐repeated phrase that Russia's actions were ‘unacceptable (in Europe) in the 21st century’. It casts leaders as timing agents seeking to fit events into their respective timing projects to legitimise their own actions and discredit those of others.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the merits of international financial integration are under more forceful attack than at any time since the 1940s. Even mainstream academic proponents of free multilateral commodity trade, such as Jagdish Bhagwati, argue that the risks of global financial integration outweigh the benefits. Critics from the left such as Lord Eatwell, more wary even of the case for free trade on current account, claim that since the 1960s “free international capital flows” have been “associated with a deterioration in economic efficiency (as measured by growth and unemployment).” Such a resurgence of concerns about international financial integration is understandable in light of the multiple crises seen since the early 1990s in Western Europe, Latin America, East Asia, Russia, and elsewhere. Supporters of free trade in tangible goods have long recognized that its net benefits to countries typically are distributed unevenly, creating domestic winners and losers. Recent international financial crises, however, have submerged entire economies and threatened their trading partners, inflicting losses all around. International financial transactions rely inherently on the expectation that counterparties will fulfill future contractual commitments; they therefore place confidence and possibly volatile expectations at center stage. These same factors are present in purely intranational financial trades, of course, but the relatively higher costs of trading goods and assets internationally make the adjustments to market shocks more costly. Furthermore, problems of oversight, adjudication, and enforcement all are orders of magnitude more difficult among sovereign nations with distinct national currencies than within a single national jurisdiction. And because there exists no natural world lender of last resort, international crises are intrinsically harder to head off and contain than are purely domestic ones.

Under the background of complex domestic and international environment and the trend of urban population agglomeration, the impact of population agglomeration on urban economic resilience is worthy of attention. This paper uses a sample of 284 cities in China to empirically analyze the impact of population agglomeration on urban economic resilience in the context of the 2008 international financial crisis with the help of spatial econometric models. The results are as follows. First, population agglomeration can enhance the city’s resistance to the economic crisis, is more conducive to improving the city’s economic recovery and adjustment ability, and has a positive spatial spillover effect on surrounding cities. Moreover, population agglomeration enhances the economic resilience of urban secondary and tertiary industries. Secondly, in the population agglomeration context, the situation of the labor force structure affects the resilience of the urban economy. In terms of the labor force’s age structure, the agglomeration of prime-age labor is more conducive to improving urban economic resilience than youth and old labor. In terms of labor quality structure, homogeneous human capital agglomeration enhances cities’ resistance to economic crisis, while heterogeneous human capital agglomeration enhances cities’ ability to recover and adjust their economy.

Reviewed by: A History of Financial Technology and Regulation: From American Incorporation to Cryptocurrency and Crowdfunding by Seth C. Oranburg Florian Vetter (bio) A History of Financial Technology and Regulation: From American Incorporation to Cryptocurrency and Crowdfunding By Seth C. Oranburg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp. 200. This book is an important contribution for financial historians insofar as it shifts away from a purely institutional perspective. At first glance, Seth C. Oranburg's work appears to reconstruct the milestones of the regulations of the U.S. financial markets and their transformation through the introduction of technology. However, a closer reading reveals that the author focuses on a large panorama of actors such as investors, state institutions, financial institutions, and small investors. In doing so, Oranburg highlights that ordinary investors and small businesses are often left behind when it comes to investing. He argues that today's regulatory apparatus in America is incredibly cost intensive for the taxpayer, leads to disparities in wealth, and makes it almost unprofitable for new actors to enter financial markets. Oranburg's book distinguishes itself from other works of financial history by its analysis of the intertwining of regulation and technology. The author bases his arguments mainly on current literature, quotations, advertisements, and photographs. The work covers the period between the 1790s and 2020. After a brief introduction, Oranburg introduces the key concepts of financial regulation and digital investment strategies in eleven chapters. The book focused on the intertwining of technology, regulation, and various actors within the American financial market. In addition, Oranburg demonstrates how laws and regulations prevented financial crises but also caused them. The history of corporate finance and financial markets in the United States is described across three epochs. The author shows that the first era (1790s–1930s) was characterized by capitalism and individualism. It becomes clear that between the 1790s and 1930s, the United States consisted of many unconnected financial markets. However, the advent of technologies such as the railway or the telegraph helped the individual states to grow together into an economic union. Consequently, the advent of technology led to the fact that financial crises took place on a national scale in the United States. The second era (1933–2008), according to the author, was characterized by a centralized command and control approach to securities regulation. Furthermore, the Great Depression had a significant impact on political and economic change in the United States. Here, Oranburg describes how the U.S. government created new federal agencies to counteract inflation after Franklin Delano Roosevelt became president. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) serves here as a case study to demonstrate how the growing federal bureaucracy became increasingly costly for the taxpayer. Thus, it becomes clear that the international crisis also led to centralization and consolidation [End Page 615] in the United States. As a result, New York rose to prominence as a financial center. Silicon Valley started to flourish as investors began to invest in new companies and start-ups instead of publicly listed companies. During this period, America's middle class also began to benefit from these regulations and changes as corporate profits seemed to flow into a growing middle class. From the 1990s onward, Oranburg highlights a fundamental change in investment. Until this time, stocks were primarily owned by large corporations rather than individuals. The author concludes this period with the dot-com era (mid-1990s–2000s) and illustrates through the resulting financial crisis in 2000 how domestic stock markets were reregulated to prevent further crises. In the third era (2008–20), Oranburg uses Bitcoin, social media activism, decentralized finance, and crowdfunding as case studies to show how financial regulation has fallen far behind financial technology. In doing so, he skillfully builds a bridge from the Great Depression to the digital age. He demonstrates that federal laws to regulate communication about investment opportunities from the beginning of the twentieth century are now no longer applicable. Oranburg has managed to write a book that offers financial historians as well as nonspecialists new perspectives. By adding simplified examples of economic theory in each chapter, the book serves as a good introduction for readers outside the field of financial history. These examples help...

The cultural and creative industries have emerged as significant drivers of economic growth and national competitiveness in the 21st century. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the role that cultural industries – including sectors such as film, music, publishing, design, digital arts, and more – play in enhancing a nation’s economic performance and global standing. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly and institutional sources, the study examines how cultural industries contribute to innovation and knowledge creation, generate employment (especially for youth and women), expand exports and diversify trade, and bolster a country’s soft power and international influence. The Introduction frames the importance of cultural industries in the global economy, while the Literature Review synthesizes key findings from prior research and policy reports. A Theoretical Framework is outlined to connect concepts of competitiveness, innovation systems, and soft power to cultural industry development. The Methodology section explains the qualitative research approach used. In the Analysis, we detail the multi-faceted contributions of cultural industries: as catalysts of innovation and creativity, as creators of jobs and skills, as sources of export revenues and trade competitiveness, and as instruments of soft power that enhance national brand value. The Discussion reflects on the implications of these findings, highlighting the synergistic effects of cultural industries on economic resilience, innovation ecosystems, and global influence, as well as policy considerations for nurturing these sectors. The article concludes that integrating cultural industries into national economic strategies yields not only direct economic benefits in terms of GDP and trade but also strategic advantages in innovation capacity and geopolitical influence. These insights underscore the need for policymakers to view the cultural sector not merely as entertainment or heritage, but as a pivotal component of sustainable economic development and global competitiveness.