Destabilizing Effects Research Articles

Stateness, National Self-determination and War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century

How could the variations in the level of peace, order, institutionalization and cooperation in the various regions in the twenty-first century be explained? The author argues that the combined effect of two factors—state capacity and national congruence—is the most important, although an additional factor can mitigate or aggravate their effects—great power intervention. The two key factors are state capacity—the effectiveness of the functioning of state institutions; and national congruence—the extent of congruence between geo-political boundaries and national aspirations and identities in the region (including notably issues of national self-determination). Regions in which the states are strong and nationally coherent will tend to produce warm peace (Europe and South America). Regions in which at least some of the states are failed states—both weak and incongruent—will generate hot civil wars and trans-border violence (Africa, South Asia and the Middle East); while regions with strong states but incongruent will tend to produce a revisionist model and cold wars among strong states (East Asia and the post-Soviet). Finally, the instability prevalent in regions populated by failed states can sometimes be mitigated by the intervention of a benign hegemon and produce cold peace (the Balkans in the 1990s), but in highly fragmented regions such interventions might face a lot of problems and have some de-stabilizing effects, producing domestic and regional violence (South Asia and the Middle East).

‘When “gender” started’: the United Nations in post-occupation Timor-Leste

This article examines gender mainstreaming processes in successive UN peacebuilding missions in Timor-Leste, with a focus on the relationship between these missions and the national women's organizations who were vehicles for implementation. Apparent frictions occur in this process and the article suggests that the gender rhetoric and practice incorporated into UN peacebuilding since 2000 can have potentially destabilizing effects for women's activism in post-conflict settings. Women's organizations socialize and negotiate around gender norms in order to mitigate this potential and aim to identify the synergies between women's activism before peacebuilding, and gender mainstreaming policies and practice post-conflict. This article provides insight into how national women's organizations socialize gender norms, as well as how women's post-conflict activism can be shaped by the presence of UN peacebuilding.

The rise of capitalism and the roots of anti-American terrorism

This contribution examines the role of capitalism in anti-American terrorism. It uses two theoretical frameworks, both of which contrast the pacifying effects of higher levels of capitalist development with the potentially destabilizing effects of a transition towards capitalism, but differ with respect to their definition of capitalism, capitalism’s interaction with anti-American terrorism, and its empirical operationalization. Using panel data for 149 countries between 1970 and 2007 and providing further system-level time-series evidence, this contribution finds no support for hypotheses derived from the classical capitalist peace literature. There is no evidence that anti-American terrorism increases with external economic liberalization or that it decreases with higher levels of economic openness. By contrast, hypotheses derived from economic norms theory find empirical support. Conceptualizing capitalism as social market-capitalism, this article finds that higher levels of market-capitalism are associated with less anti-American terrorism, while the process of marketization fuels it. Consistent with expectations from economic norms theory, the destabilizing effects of the marketization process may stem from the violent opposition of antimarket interest groups that have benefited from the pre-market order to the economic-cultural change initiated by a transition towards a market economy. These interest groups deliberately target the USA as the main proponent of market-capitalism, globalization, and modernity, where anti-American terrorism serves the purpose of consolidating their societal position, rolling back pro-market reforms and limiting the perceived Americanization of their communities. This contribution’s findings suggest that the USA may ultimately become a less likely target of transnational terrorism through the establishment of market economies, but should not disregard the disruptive economic-cultural effects of the marketization process in non-market economies.

Abstract 16515: Differential Functions of HCN1 and HCN4 Pacemaker Channels Within the Sinoatrial Node for the Stable and Precise Beating of the Heart

The heart beat is initiated by the generation of spontaneous action potentials in pacemaker cells of the sinoatrial node (SAN) region. The maintenance of a stable heart beat requires mechanisms which protect the SAN pacemaker cells from potential perturbing influences which arise from inside and outside the sinoatrial network. Our previous work suggests that the hyperpolarization-activated cyclic nucleotide gated channel subtype 1 (HCN1) protects against such perturbations and thereby increases the stability, the precision and the safety of the sinoatrial network. Here, we investigate the role of HCN4 channels within this context. Using genetic mouse models deficient for HCN channels as well as mouse models expressing engineered HCN channels, we performed a detailed functional characterization of pacemaker mechanisms in single isolated sinoatrial node cells, explanted beating sinoatrial node preparations, with telemetric in vivo electrocardiography, echocardiography, and in vivo electrophysiology. We provide evidence that HCN4 has a critical role in counteracting and balancing potentially destabilizing effects of the autonomic nervous system on the regulation of the heart rate. Specifically, HCN4 channels smooth the transition of the heart rate to a new equilibrium. Furthermore, we provide evidence that the cAMP- dependent fine tuning of HCN4 channel activity could provide the exact dosage of current to balance and counteract overshooting responses of the heart rate to autonomic regulation. In the absence of such a protecting effect, mice display a brady- tachy syndrome.

Regulating Genetics

Over the past three decades, government regulation and funding of DNA testing has reshaped the use of genetic evidence across various fields, including criminal law, family law, and employment law. Courts have struggled with questions of when and whether to treat genetic evidence as implicating individual rights, policy trade-offs, or federalism problems. We identify two modes of genetic testing: identification testing, used to establish a person’s identity, and predictive testing, which seeks to predict outcomes for a person. Judges and lawmakers have often drawn a bright line at predictive testing, while allowing uninhibited identity testing. The U.S. Supreme Court in Maryland v. King, for example, held that entering arrestee DNA in databanks does not implicate substantial Fourth Amendment concerns, since police do not test for genetic predispositions “not relevant to identity.” We argue that policy implications of genetic testing laws cannot be so neatly demarked. For example, federal welfare laws require states to use DNA to establish paternity to collect child support from “deadbeat dads,” which may be relevant to identity, but also creates potentially destabilizing effects on families. We explore how genetic testing has been legally regulated across a variety of fields. We identify two dominant modes of regulatory action dealing with genetics: data-driven and ethics-based. Data-driven legislation is ostensibly focused on short-term benefits of gathering a population’s genetic information. Ethics-based legislation, in contrast, is concerned with long-term consequences, such as effects on privacy. We particularly critique data-driven legislation, and we argue that judges, legislators and scholars should focus squarely on the individual and government interests at stake. We set out a list of five factors that legal actors should consider when considering genetics regulation: (1) equality, (2) accuracy, (3) privacy, (4) finality, and (5) federalism. In particular, equality concerns permeate the short history of DNA regulation. In each of the areas explored, comparatively disadvantaged groups such as arrestees, convicts, juveniles, noncitizens, and welfare recipients, have received the most intrusive regulation and collection of their genetic evidence, while comparatively privileged persons benefit from enhanced genetic privacy. We conclude that the regulation of genetic evidence deserves far more careful legal scrutiny, since the ways that genetic evidence is deployed can profoundly affect constitutional rights and the structure of legal and social institutions.

Neostoicism and the Economics of Revenge in Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy

This essay seeks to historicize Renaissance Neostoicism in relation to the period’s emergent capitalism. As historians have demonstrated, the emergence of capitalism in England yielded significant social and cultural changes, affecting all aspects of life from state power, to civil society, to individual subjectivity. Building in particular on Hugh Grady’s study of the socially destabilizing effects of “early modern reification,” this essay explores how Cyril Tourneur’s The Atheist’s Tragedy employs the discourse on Stoic constancy as a method for resisting the destructive effects of this new economic logic. With particular reference to Justus Lipsius’s anxious writings on the spiritual destitution produced by excessive consumerism and bodily desire, the article contends that in The Atheist’s Tragedy emerging capitalism is negotiated and ultimately resisted through recourse to a monistic Stoic model of the inextricable relationship between body and soul, flesh and spirit.

Dynamic and energetic stabilization of persistent currents in Bose-Einstein condensates

We study conditions under which vortices in a highly oblate harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) can be stabilized due to pinning by a blue-detuned Gaussian laser beam, with particular emphasis on the potentially destabilizing effects of laser beam positioning within the BEC. Our approach involves theoretical and numerical exploration of dynamically and energetically stable pinning of vortices with winding number up to $S=6$, in correspondence with experimental observations. Stable pinning is quantified theoretically via Bogoliubov-de Gennes excitation spectrum computations and confirmed via direct numerical simulations for a range of conditions similar to those of experimental observations. The theoretical and numerical results indicate that the pinned winding number, or equivalently the winding number of the superfluid current about the laser beam, decays as a laser beam of fixed intensity moves away from the BEC center. Our theoretical analysis helps explain previous experimental observations and helps define limits of stable vortex pinning for future experiments involving vortex manipulation by laser beams.

Contingent Convertible Bonds and the Stability of Bank Funding: The Case of Partial Writedown

This paper adds to the growing body of literature on the design of Contingent Convertible Bonds (CoCos). We discuss how the design of the loss absorption mechanism affects the stability of bank funding and distinguish between Conversion-to-Equity (CE) CoCos, Principal WriteDown (PWD) CoCos with a full writedown feature and PWD CoCos with a partial writedown feature. As we show, the first two loss absorption mechanisms unambiguously improve a bank’s stability of funding position. By contrast, the latter type of loss absorption mechanism can increase solvency risk and, moreover, is identified as a source of uncertainty regarding a bank’s ex post solvency position. Bank managers, investors as well as supervisors and regulators should be aware of these potentially destabilizing effects. In this context, one important aspect is the regulatory treatment of PWD CoCos with a partial writedown feature.

Jobs Crisis: Moving Forward?

Jobs Crisis: Moving Forward?

Securing the Home Front: The Pursuit of "Natural Living" Among Evangelical Christian Homemakers

The pursuit of natural living is a project undertaken by a growing number of mostly US white middle class women who embrace homemaking as a transformative practice to secure the home against the increasingly destabilizing effects of economic crisis and endless war. The erosion of the welfare state intensifies the responsibility that falls on women to assume the burden of ensuring the well-being of their families. Women engage in practices of self-discipline and self-transformation in the management of domestic space to protect their family members from the deregulation of food safety and environmental protections. Purging the home of industrial food and household chemicals, learning DIY skills of food production and processing, and learning how to source food directly from small farmers all become part of a joyful process of producing the home as a sovereign space. However, postfeminist configurations that see women as embracing this domestic role as a form of agency must be seen in a complex relationship with neoliberal logics that intensify the need for making the home a stable bulwark in a time of financial instability, job insecurity, and the contraction of the political. The rhetorical and material practices of women who identify as Christian homemakers illuminate the forces reconfiguring domestic space as a place for political agency in the United States post-9/11. Homemaking is becoming revalorized in movements for sustainable living in the United States and elsewhere in the Global North. The process of “making the home,” has become a practice both transformative and intensely social among a growing number of predominantly white middle-class women, some of whom write blogs to document their learning and to share new skills. This quest is variously articulated as a pursuit for natural living, living sustainably, reclaiming nourishing traditions, or a return to real food. Efforts to de-link the home from industrial food figure centrally in this endeavor. Self-provisioning (growing your own) or sourcing food from local farmers are

Knowledge production in the security–development nexus: An ethnographic reflection

This article contributes to the analysis of transnationalized forms of security governance in the postcolonial world by looking into the production of knowledge aimed at increasing coherence between domains of security and development in Western donor policies. The article takes an ethnographic approach to the analysis of knowledge production, using the author’s personal experience of writing a policy analysis for a donor government concerning how to ‘further improve’ the policy of ‘concerted civil–military planning and action’. This attempt to ‘study up’ and analyse upstream practices involved in transnational security governance shows the degree to which policy-related knowledge production is a negotiated, social process that involves informal practices and defensive tactics. The policy process seems to be less concerned with effects on the ground than with the problem of creating unity among the wide range of agents and institutions involved in the emerging policy field. While such an approach may have potentially destabilizing effects – both for policy narratives and for researchers’ authority – it responds to calls for reflections on the politics of representation and writing in studies of international relations.

A Meta-Analysis of Community Response Predictability to Anthropogenic Disturbances

Disturbances often lead to changes in average values of community properties; however, disturbances can also affect the predictability of a community's response. We performed a meta-analysis to determine how response predictability, defined as among-replicate variance in diversity and community abundance, is affected by species removals, species invasions, nutrient addition, temperature increase, and habitat loss/fragmentation, and we further determined whether response predictability differed according to habitat and trophic role. Species removals and nutrient addition decreased response predictability, while species invasions increased response predictability. In aquatic habitats, disturbances generally led to a decrease in response predictability, whereas terrestrial habitats showed no overall change in response predictability, suggesting that differences in food web and ecosystem structure affect how communities respond to disturbance. Producers were also more likely to show decreases in response predictability, particularly following species removals, highlighting widespread destabilizing effects of species loss at the producer level. Overall, our results show that whether disturbances cause changes in response predictability is highly contingent on disturbance type, habitat, and trophic role. The nature of changes in response predictability--for example, strong decreases following species invasions and increases following species removals--will likely play a major role in how communities recover from disturbance.

Stabilizing the financial sector: EU Financial Services 2010–2012

The contribution is a follow-up on the overview published in ERCL 2010, 467 and covers the latest developments in 2011 through the first half of 2012. Whereas the report in 2010 predominantly focused on developments in consumer protection in the financial sector, the latest developments revolve around the management of the recent and ongoing financial and sovereign debt crises (illustrated at A). Most of the developments concern measures that seek to stabilize the financial markets and to reform financial supervision. Above all, the EU tries to strengthen the shaken trust in the stability of the banking sector by enacting a regime for the restructuring and resolution of financial institutions (at B I). Similar efforts apply to sovereign debt where the Euro zone seeks to re-establish market confidence with standardized Collective Action Clauses (at B II). The reputation of Credit Rating Agencies has suffered during the financial crisis, and especially the Euro zone is concerned about their power over the financial markets. As a result, the EU is planning reforms of the regulatory regime (see at B III). Naked short-sales and trades in uncovered Credit Default Swaps are eyed suspiciously for their potentially destabilizing effects and have therefore also been subject to regulation (at B IV). In comparison, consumer protection has not been the focus of recent financial services reforms. However, developments have occurred, and we will focus on the proposal for a directive on consumer credit for residential property (at C).

Il soggetto mutilato del futurismo: F.T. Marinetti e la costruzione dell'italiano futurista nel primo dopoguerra

This article analyzes representations of mutilated and prosthetically reconstructed bodies in two works by F.T. Marinetti: L’alcova d’acciaio: Un romanzo vissuto (1921), and Come si seducono le donne (1917). I argue that Marinetti’s interest in the physical body belies an anxiety over the integrity of the Italian body politic as a result of the culturally destabilizing effects of Italy’s participation in the First World War. Moreover, I argue that the prosthetic reconstruction of the body that Marinetti lauds throughout his writings demonstrates the extent to which the futurist political project is an extension of traditional formulations of Italianita since the Risorgimento, while it posits a form of political subjectivity rooted in the dissolution of liberal-democratic principles, and produces a model of political subjectivity amenable to, though not coincident with, Fascism.

Optimists, Pessimists or Skeptics: Explaining Variations in Post-Cold War International and Regional Security

With the end of the Cold War, analysts advanced competing expectations about the likely character of the post-Cold War Order. Many expected a far-reaching transformation in the fundamental character of world politics (notably, a decline in the centrality of the state in world politics). Some of these predictions were quite optimistic (esp. Liberals and Constructivists)- believing the changes will lead to more peace and cooperation; some were pessimists-predicting the emergence of new types of conflicts, while others (the realists) remained skeptic regarding the possible transformation (for better or worse) in the fundamental character of international politics, even if taking into account specific changes in the global distribution of capabilities as leading to some important changes in the dynamics of the international system - whether in the direction of a benign hegemon or balance of power politics. While none of these perspectives predicted accurately the nature of the international system, there is a differential application of the predictions of the competing approaches to different regions. Some regions seem to fit the optimistic expectations (Europe, South America), others fit the pessimists’ predictions (South Asia, Africa, Middle East), while still others might accord with realist expectations (East Asia and the post-Soviet). Some other regions went through a transition from fitting the pessimist line to resemble more closely the optimist approach (the Balkans). How could we explain the variations in the level of peace, order, institutionalization and cooperation in the various regions? I’ll argue that the combined effect of two factors-state strength and national congruence - is the most important, although an additional factor can mitigate or aggravate their effects - great power intervention. The two key factors are state strength - the effectiveness of the functioning of state institutions; and national congruence - the extent of congruence between geo-political boundaries and national aspirations and identities in the region. Regions in which the states are strong and nationally coherent will tend to meet the optimists’ predictions. Regions in which at least some of the states are failed states - both weak and incongruent - will follow the pessimist predictions; while regions with strong states but incongruent will tend to produce a revisionist model. Finally, the instability prevalent in regions populated by failed states can sometimes be mitigated by the intervention of a benign hegemon, but in highly fragmented regions such interventions might face a lot of problems and have some de-stabilizing effects.

Contact force estimation and regulation in active pantographs: An algebraic observability approach

In this paper we extend our previous work concerning the regulation of the contact force in active train pantographs with wire-actuators. In particular, we suggest a second-order sliding mode based control scheme that avoids the direct measurement of the contact force, which is quite unpractical in real applications. The idea is to estimate the contact force using the measured displacements of the upper and lower pantograph frames. Unlike the contact force, the frames displacements can be measured accurately and reliably in practice. The estimation method, based on the algebraic observability theory, entails the use of real-time sliding-mode differentiators. It makes use explicitly of the mechanical characteristics of the upper frame only. The considered second-order sliding mode control scheme also includes proper linear compensating cascade filters devoted to cope with the de-stabilizing effects of the resonant wire actuator. We show that such a control scheme can be effectively combined with the given contact force estimation method. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society

Making Globalization Ordinary: Teaching Globalization in the American Studies Classroom

“Making Globalization Ordinary” examines the challenge posed by globalization to traditional conceptions of the nation-state and offers a case study for how to address these transformations in the introductory American Studies class context. It is particularly geared toward colleges and universities in the Mid-American region where circumstances encourage students to think of globalization as a distant and relatively unimportant problem. It seeks to provide answers to the following questions: How do you teach about globalization in areas where the most destabilizing effects of capitalist transformation seem unrelated to daily life? Where global migrations increasingly affect local conditions, but in ways that are obscured by persistent patterns of ethnic, racial, and class privilege? Where politicians, economic leaders, and heritage industries all tout the timelessness of “local values” and encourage a willful blindness to the global penetration and reconfiguration of the local?

Can Transnational Advocacy Remake Democracy?

crucial investigation of transnational mobilization around the principled issue of human rights. His comparative study of Kenya and Uganda's transitions to democracy provides a much needed synthesis of related research on comparative politics, democratic transitions, modernization-development theory, international legal norms and human rights, and social movements-transnational advocacy networks. The implications of Schmitz's analysis are profound for those invested in sustaining normative, democratic changes after the dismantling of authoritarian regimes. Furthermore, he sets forth a captivating research agenda regarding the interactions between domestic and transnational political actors. Schmitz's significant contribution lies in the way he situates evaluations of democratic transitions within the study of international normative change. Most important, he directly challenges, particularly in Chapter 6, the assumption that transnational mobilization always affects transitional democracies in positive ways. Transnational advocates do pressure donor governments, international organizations, and international financial institutions to facilitate regime change in authoritarian states. Yet, during and after the transition to democracy, it is the political expediency of donors' interests rather than universal principles such as human rights that typically prevail. As a result, local activists find that transnational actors, despite often successfully calling attention to and prompting transition from authoritarian regimes, tend to obscure the political nuances and exigencies of domestic struggles, which are pivotal for continuing and consolidating democratic reforms after the transition. Furthermore, transnational activism unintentionally emboldens human rights violators and political leaders to maneuver around normative injunctions and to devise strategies of deception and counter-mobilization (p. 123) to bolster their own interests. Finally, activists' predominant support of particular urban, professional elites and exclusive focus on the transition from authoritarianism to multipartyism diverts attention from developments within various segments of civil society and the potentially destabilizing effects of a particular leader's electoral success. The first two chapters of Transnational Mobilization and Domestic Regime Change

On destabilizing effects of two fundamental non-conservative forces

In this work we discuss the instabilities in mechanical systems caused by two fundamentally different non-conservative forces, referred to as dissipative and positional forces, each of which may lead to energy dissipation. One of the objectives of this discussion is to recall and to put into the context of current research some of the important classical results by Thomson–Tait–Chetayev and Merkin, which are under-appreciated nowadays: many new examples, e.g. radiation in Hamiltonian systems, the Levitron, etc., appearing in recent literature can be interpreted with the help of these classical results. Next, in the spirit of the Lagrange–Dirichlet theory, we introduce the geometric picture of the phase space corresponding to the effects of destabilization in finite-dimensional systems. On the physical side, our objective is to demonstrate that both of these types of non-conservative forces appear quite commonly and often simultaneously in physical systems. As an illustration, we consider the Levitron, a system in which the dissipative effects have not heretofore been studied. Finally, using Nikolai’s elastic bar model as a paradigm, we discuss the notion of a secondary dissipation-induced instability, when the above two fundamental non-conservative forces interact. This unified way of thinking should help us to understand the intricate links among various mechanical systems through the most fundamental mechanisms in their behavior.

Coordination as a Political Problem in Coordinated Market Economies

The purpose of this article is to explore the political dynamics of employer coordination in three well-known “coordinated market economies.” We examine differences in how employer coordination has been organized in Sweden, Germany, and Japan in the area of industrial relations, and we examine the extent to which such coordination represents a self-sustaining equilibrium, as some of the most influential treatments suggest. To preview the findings, we argue that precisely the intensification of cooperation between labor and management in some firms and industries (that the “varieties of capitalism” literature correctly emphasizes) has paradoxically had deeply destabilizing collateral effects that have undermined or are undermining these systems as they were traditionally constituted. All three cases are characterized not so much by a full-blown breakdown of coordination so much as a very significant reconfiguration of the terms and scope of such coordination. Specifically, all three countries feature the emergence of new or intensified forms of dualism—different in each case based on different starting points—in which continued coordination within a smaller core has in some ways been underwritten through the breaking off of other, more peripheral, firms and workers.