Formidable Political Research Articles

The Ukrainian interest rate pass-through in the post-1999 era and the effectiveness of the countercyclical monetary policy

This study investigates the nature of the Ukraine interest rate pass-through from January 2000 to November 11, 2018-the post-1999 era. The empirical results reveal a relatively high short-run interest pass-through of 0.724100 and a marginally overshooting long-run interest rate pass-through of 1.054309. The bounds test results indicate a strong long-term relationship between countercyclical monetary policy and market rates. These empirical findings suggest that the National Bank of Ukraine has been very effective in formulating and implementing its countercyclical monetary policy, in spite of the pervasive corruption, formidable political and economic challenges faced by the Ukrainian Republic over this sample period, the results are quite surprising.

The Transmission Mechanism of Russian Central Banks Countercyclical Monetary Policy since 2011: Evidence from the Interest Rate Pass-Through

The study is an investigation of the nature of the Russian interest rate pass-through from February 2011 to November 11, 2016. The empirical results reveal a relatively low short-run interest pass-through of 0.662937 and an incomplete long-run interest rate pass-through of 0.826353. The bounds test results indicate no long-term relationship between countercyclical monetary policy and market rates. These empirical findings suggest that the Russian Central Bank has not been very effective in formulating and implementing its countercyclical monetary policy. In light of the formidable political and economic challenges faced by the Russian Federation over this sample period, the results are hardly surprising.

‘Continuous abuse’ or ‘a unanimous blessing’? Reassessing the Conservative Party’s stance on the 1951 Festival of Britain

The 1951 Festival of Britain has long been seen as both a key turning point in the country’s post-war history and an event which was delivered, by Clement Attlee’s Labour Government, in the face of formidable political (and media) opposition. This article considers the Festival’s status as a pivotal moment in modern British history but focuses primarily on the Conservative Party’s approach to the project. In doing so, its draws on previously neglected evidence to suggest that successive works on the subject have greatly exaggerated the extent to which the festivities were the subject of partisan campaigning and political contention.

Tobacco and the Malays: ethnicity, health and the political economy of tobacco in Malaysia

ABSTRACTObjectives: To identify the historical nexus between Malaysia’s largest and politically dominant ethnic group and the political economy of tobacco, and to consider the implications of this connection for tobacco control.Design: Primary and secondary documentary sources in both English and Malay were analysed to illuminate key events and decisions, and the discourse of industry and government. Sources included: speeches by Malaysian political and industry actors; tobacco industry reports, press releases and websites; government documents; World Health Organization (WHO) tobacco control literature; and press reports.Results: Malays have the highest smoking prevalence among Malaysia’s major ethnic groups. The tobacco industry has consistently been promoted as furthering Malay economic development. Malays play the major role in growing and curing. Government-owned Malay development trusts have been prominent investors in tobacco corporations, which have cultivated linkages with the Malay elite. The religious element of Malay ethnicity has also been significant. All Malays are Muslim, and the National Fatwa Council has declared smoking to be haram (forbidden); however, the Government has declined to implement this ruling.Conclusion: Exaggerated claims for the socio-economic benefits of tobacco production, government investment and close links between tobacco corporations and sections of the Malay elite have created a conflict of interest in public policy, limited the focus on tobacco as a health policy issue among Malays and retarded tobacco control policy. More recently, ratification of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, regional free trade policies reducing the numbers of growers, concerns about smoking from an Islamic viewpoint, and anxieties about the effects of smoking upon youth have increasingly challenged the dominant discourse that tobacco furthers Malay interests. Nevertheless, the industry remains a formidable political and economic presence in Malaysia that is likely to continue to proclaim that its activities coincide with Malay socio-economic interests.

The Foreign Policy of the Baltic States and the Ukrainian Crisis: A Case of Europeanization?

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have established themselves as ardent supporters of the EU's Eastern Partnership, and have also combined this with robust national policies. The crisis in Ukraine, with the annexation of Crimea and Russian military aggression precipitating confrontation in EU-Russia relations, presented the Baltic countries with the most formidable political challenge since restoring independence. Combining Europeanization literature with Larsen's (2005) approach to the foreign policy of small states, the article focuses on the relationship between national foreign policies of EU member states and the European Union as a foreign policy platform. The analysis synthesizes the results of a content analysis of official press releases with interviews with the Baltic states’ diplomats. The empirical results show that in responding to the Ukraine crisis, the Baltic states have regularly pursued their policy aims through the EU, contesting the conventional notion that Europeanization rarely extends to foreign and security affairs. More specifically, the Baltic states’ handling of the Ukraine crisis suggests that Europeanization can affect even dossiers with heavy bearing on member states’ security and national sovereignty where – according to the extant consensus in the literature – it should be least likely.

Burroughs across Borders

Burroughs across Borders Hassan Melehy (bio) The Stray Bullet: William S. Burroughs in Mexico Jorge García-Robles Daniel C. Schecter, trans. University of Minnesota Press www.upress.umn.edu 156 Pages; Print, $17.95 One of William S. Burroughs’s distinctions is to figure among the most controversial of US authors, for both his life and his work, the former often invoked to indict the latter. The publication of Jorge García-Robles’s wonderful little book may go a long way toward smoothing out the controversy, for the very significant reason that it joins current efforts to view the Beat Generation as a transnational phenomenon. A novelist, himself, who is the leading Mexican specialist on the Beat Generation and a translator of Jack Kerouac, García-Robles offers a vivacious narrative that situates Burroughs’s exile years in Mexico, 1949–1952, in the currents of the country’s modernism and social life that ran in the shadow of the formidable political and cultural presence to the north. Illuminating this exile as driven by a fascination, both anthropological and deliberately indulgent, with poverty, abjection, addiction, and corruption, The Stray Bullet: William S. Burroughs in Mexico enhances the critical understanding of Burroughs’s writing as a remarkably keen series of commentaries on extended imperial networks. Readers of Burroughs, of course, know that the time in Mexico, marked by heavy consumption of drugs and alcohol, culminated when an extremely high-risk “William Tell act” came unhinged. Aiming his Star .380 automatic through a chemical haze at the glass on his wife Joan Vollmer Burroughs’s head, the author fired the “stray bullet” that killed her. The sense of the importance of this moment in Burroughs’s path to becoming a writer originates in his own account: in the introduction to his 1985 Queer (a novel he first wrote in Mexico in 1950), for the first time he fully confesses the circumstances of what he had previously designated an accident, stating that “the death of Joan brought me in contact with the invader, the Ugly Spirit, and maneuvered me into a lifelong struggle, in which I have no choice except to write my way out.” García-Robles transfers this much-rehearsed chapter of Burroughs lore from the disembodied, mythical status that repetition accords it to the concreteness of its social and cultural setting, the unruly and intoxicated aspects of Mexico City underground life that the author sought. First published as La bala perdida in 1995 and reissued in a 2007 volume with García-Robles’s companion book on Kerouac in Mexico, El disfraz de la inocencia (also just published by Minnesota in Daniel Schecter’s translation, At the End of the Road), The Stray Bullet provides evidence that placing the transnational dimension of the Beat Generation at the center of critical attention may be a habit in Mexico. However, it remains a novelty in the United States, despite being a sine qua non in accurately assessing these writers’ immense contributions to American literature. García-Robles opens the book with other familiar Beat tales: the meeting between Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg in New York, the now-immortal circle that included Kerouac, Neal Cassady, Hal Chase, Lucien Carr, the ill-fated David Kammerer, Edie Parker (who married Kerouac), and her roommate Joan Vollmer. We read of sex, drugs, violence—Carr’s stabbing of Kammerer, who had stalked him for years, the subject of the recently published early novel by Burroughs and Kerouac, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Tanks (2009), and the 2013 movie directed by John Krokidas, Kill Your Darlings. García-Robles completely saves this section of the book from tedium through his poetic chronicling, at the pace of a tight thriller leading us to Burroughs’s heroin addiction and arrest. Exile in Mexico becomes a necessary consequence: “He had no other choice but to leave the country via the shortest route possible and flee…There was no other way. Fate had called the shots. Mexico it was. Next stop: hell.” García-Robles depicts the thriving transnational forces that were, among other things, securing Mexico’s status as a Third World country...

Federalism and Economic Growth: The Importance of Context in Nigerian Public Finance Reform

This article examines public finance reforms in the Nigerian federal system against the background of its transition from military to democratic rule in 1999 and the challenges posed to overall outcomes, especially by the fiscal health of the sub-national units. Using a before-and-after assessment of policies and performances, the article highlights the progress made in reforming public finance, and discusses the formidable political, institutional and social constraints that have made reforms difficult and inefficient. By focusing on the Nigerian case information, the article contributes to the debates on whether or not, and when federalism can contribute to economic growth and prosperity.

Commentary on Consideration of Diagnostic Criteria for Erectile Dysfunction in DSM-V

The DSM-V subcommittee on sexual dysfunction is attempting to redefine erectile dysfunction (ED) to pave the way to improved patient care, medical education, research, insurance reimbursement, and government policy. Integration of these diverse goals is a formidable political task that raises the question of their relative importance.

The Geopolitical and Economic Importance of Energy Rich Central Asia: Possibility of an EU-Russia Alliance

The scramble for oil and influence by the big powers in the Caspian Sea region has been likened to the Middle East in the 1920s. But in today’s Central Asia there is an even larger and more complex quagmire of competing interests. There are the big powers such as Russia, the EU, the US; the neighbours such as Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkey; the Central Asian states and the most powerful players of all, the oil companies, competing in what we call “The New Great Game.”The Caspian sea basin has tremendous potential, offering the possibility of production increases from 1.6 million barrels a day (b/d) in 2001 to 5.0 million (b/d) in 2010.In an emerging multipolar world, the prime source of intractable conflicts and a formidable political and diplomatic weapon in the hands of states will be energy sources and pipeline routes. As energy is not just a commodity but a need, Europe wants security of supply. Russia on its part wants security of demand. Russia needs European upstream investment in its energy sector, while itself seeking to invest in downstream markets in Europe. For the European Union the key strategic challenge is its dependence on Russian gas.In the twenty first century an enduring goal is a long-term partnership, built around reaching economic integration embracing the whole of the European continent, including Russia.

Developing adaptive capacity for responding to environmental change in the Arab Gulf States: Uncertainties to linking ecosystem conservation, sustainable development and society in authoritarian rentier economies

The recent assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has emphasized that understanding the institutional context in which policies are made and implemented is critical to define sustainable development paths from a climate change perspective. Nevertheless, while the importance of social, political and cultural factors is getting more recognition in some parts of the world, little is known about the human dimensions or the contexts in which they operate in the affluent oil economies of the Arabian Peninsula. Policies that implicitly subsidize or support a wasteful and environmentally destructive use of resources are still pervasive, while noteworthy environmental improvements still face formidable political and institutional constraints to the adaptation of the necessary far reaching and multisectoral approach. The principal aim of this paper is to identify some of the major shortcomings within the special context of the Arab Gulf states' socio-cultural environment in support of appropriate development pathways. Conclusions highlight that past and current policy recommendations for mitigating environmental threats are likely to be ineffective. This is because they are based on the unverified assumption that Western-derived standards of conduct, specifically the normative concept of ”good governance” and ”democracy”, will be adopted in non-Western politico-cultural contexts.

The Rôle of John Fisher's Memory and Philip Melanchthon's Hermeneutics in the Household of Bishop Stephen Gardiner

On 11 August 1553, having received a pardon from Queen Mary, Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, returned to the house at Southwark where his household had reassembled, ready for the work ahead. Gardiner's household was a formidable political and ideological instrument. It had been forged during his battles with Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in the 1540s and early 1550s. It was Gardiner's household which defended him at his trial in the winter of 1550 and supported him through his confinement until 1553. Key individuals, especially Thomas Watson, assisted him in the theological contest with Cranmer which he carried on from the Tower of London. At Mary's accession in 1553, these men began a constant round of preaching engagements, visitations, work in Parliament, and formal disputations, and three, Watson, John White and James Brooks, took up places on the episcopal bench. Of the artefacts of this work that remain to us, some of the most significant are the printed political treatises, books of sermons, and school textbooks produced by Gardiner's household. These items offer a window into the intellectual culture and ideology of the Lord Chancellor's household at a time when Gardiner had more control over national life than ever before in his long career. A study of the ideological literature published by Gardiner's household falls naturally into three areas: material connected with the parliament of April 1554, material which promoted popular engagement with the Fathers of the Church, and material connected with St John's College, Cambridge, and John Fisher. It is this last area that will be the focus of this paper.

Nuclear Power and Climate Change: Aspects of the Current Debate

Formidable political and structural obstacles limit the degree to which concern about carbon emissions has translated into widespread support for new nuclear power plants.

Image (and) Nation: The Russian Exotic in 19th-Century French Travel Narratives

Drawing from a variety of nineteenth-century French travel narratives on Russia, the paper “Image (and) Nation: The Russian Exotic in Nineteenth-Century French Travel Narratives” explores the idea of nation as a cultural construction and narrative. The paper attempts to address in particular the role of ``exotic othering'' in creating French national identity in the decades following the Revolution. Where post-Revolutionary France discovered a formidable political and military enemy in tsarist Russia, the French likewise viewed the continued enslavement of the Russian peasants as the example par excellence of tyrannical government. Russia thus appeared in the eyes of many a French traveler as the diametrical opposite of post-Revolutionary France founded on liberal Enlightenment ideals. In bringing to light both widely-read and lesser-known French accounts of travel to Russia, this paper suggests how a developing French national identity coalesced in part around the articulation of cultural difference from the Russian Other. Evoking the critical work of Homi K. Bhaba, Edward Said, Benedict Anderson and Lisa Lowe, the paper describes tropes of the exotic as they appear in these nineteenth-century French travel narratives on Russia and suggests how such narrative depictions of the Russian landscape, the Russian woman, and Russians in general established and reaffirmed – through an implicit cultural comparison – the idea of the French nation.

The two Mr. Gladstones: a study in psychology and history

William Gladstone - four times prime minister of Great Britain, the premier moral spokesman of the Victorian era, a prodigious author, and an unparalleled orator - was among the most revered figures of his age. But there was another side to Gladstone. His sudden bursts of anger in Parliament, aggressive campaigns against opponents, resignations and threats of resignations from political life, and secretive formulations of high policy reveal him as a man of disquieting moods. In his private life, too, there were incongruities. Admired as a loving husband and father, he maintained a long-standing intimacy with a former courtesan. Equally disturbing were his nocturnal rambles among London's prostitutes, ostensibly for philanthropic purposes. This book applies an eclectic and sophisticated psychological framework to Gladstone's life that explains the duality of his character. Crosby traces the disparate threads of Gladstone's volatile personality and shows how he developed a range of responses to emotional stress to shore up his need for an unquestioned control over the events of his life. Gladstone emerges as a man who wrestled with powerful internal conflicts as much as he struggled with the formidable political and social issues of his time.

The new politics of U.S. health policy.

Following the demise of comprehensive health care reform in 1994, some reformers are seeking comfort in the successful "incremental" strategy for enacting Medicare that emerged out of President Harry Truman's failed campaign for national health insurance in 1948-50. But despite similarities between the Truman and Clinton health security efforts, overall contexts of government and politics are much less hospitable to governmentally funded reforms today than they were after Truman's defeat. Back then, market transformations and political dynamics were both pushing toward expanded access to health services and insurance coverage. Today, by contrast, both push in the opposite direction. The private insurance market is fragmenting, federal budgetary constraints stymie new programs, and the deficit dominates debate over existing programs. Equally important, a stable pro-reform coalition like that of Truman's day has yet to emerge, while a new and fiercely conservative corps of Republicans is championing coherent programmatic alternatives based on antigovernment premises. Although passage of the Kassebaum-Kennedy health insurance reform bill in 1996 unleashed a wave of enthusiasm about incremental health care reform, formidable political, fiscal, and technical obstacles continue to stand in the way of even relatively modest incremental solutions.

Su Voto Es Su Voz: Latino Political Empowerment and the Immigration Challenge

Will Latin American migrants bring with them the tradition of the “mordida,” the lack of involvement in public affairs, etc.? … ‘Gobernar es poblar’ … Can ‘homo contraceptivus’ compete with ‘homo progenetiva’ if borders aren't controlled?.…perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down!…(John Tanton, founder of the interest groups FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), U.S. English, and ZPG (Zero Population Growth), 1988)Clearly, Latino population growth has made its presence known among those who concern themselves with U.S. political culture. With half of the Latino population boom attributable to international migration, the Latino foreign-born have come under particular fire. John Tanton, a Michigan opthamologist and outspoken policy activist, served as the 1980s prelude to equally-heated debates throughout the 1990s—debates that engaged far more formidable political and policy figures, from the immigration restrictionism of California governor Pete Wilson and economist George Borjas to the immigration advocacy of National Council of La Raza director Raul Yzaguirre and economist Julian Simon.At the core of Tanton's “warnings” in the 1980s are a provocative mix of half-truths. It is a fact that Latino population growth has outstripped that of non-Hispanic whites since 1980—by a factor of nine, to be precise. By the turn of the 21st century, one in ten U.S. residents will be Latino-origin (Baker 1996). It is a fallacy, however, that this burgeoning population growth presages a new millenium in which “lack of involvement in public affairs” will characterize the Latino contribution to politics in America. That fallacy is revealed most succinctly in the slogan of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, launched in 1974 in San Antonio, Texas: “Su voto es su voz” (Your vote is your voice). The operational result of that principle, backed up by decades of diligent voter registration training in towns and cities across the United States, has been the registration of over 2 million Latino voters and consistent increases in both registration and turnout over time, relative to African-American and non-Hispanic white voting patterns (Southwest Voter Research Institute 1996).

Su Voto Es Su Voz: Latino Political Empowerment and the Immigration Challenge

Will Latin American migrants bring with them the tradition of the “mordida,” the lack of involvement in public affairs, etc.? … ‘Gobernar es poblar’ … Can ‘homo contraceptivus’ compete with ‘homo progenetiva’ if borders aren't controlled?.…perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down!…(John Tanton, founder of the interest groups FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), U.S. English, and ZPG (Zero Population Growth), 1988)Clearly, Latino population growth has made its presence known among those who concern themselves with U.S. political culture. With half of the Latino population boom attributable to international migration, the Latino foreign-born have come under particular fire. John Tanton, a Michigan opthamologist and outspoken policy activist, served as the 1980s prelude to equally-heated debates throughout the 1990s—debates that engaged far more formidable political and policy figures, from the immigration restrictionism of California governor Pete Wilson and economist George Borjas to the immigration advocacy of National Council of La Raza director Raul Yzaguirre and economist Julian Simon.At the core of Tanton's “warnings” in the 1980s are a provocative mix of half-truths. It is a fact that Latino population growth has outstripped that of non-Hispanic whites since 1980—by a factor of nine, to be precise. By the turn of the 21st century, one in ten U.S. residents will be Latino-origin (Baker 1996). It is a fallacy, however, that this burgeoning population growth presages a new millenium in which “lack of involvement in public affairs” will characterize the Latino contribution to politics in America. That fallacy is revealed most succinctly in the slogan of the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, launched in 1974 in San Antonio, Texas: “Su voto es su voz” (Your vote is your voice). The operational result of that principle, backed up by decades of diligent voter registration training in towns and cities across the United States, has been the registration of over 2 million Latino voters and consistent increases in both registration and turnout over time, relative to African-American and non-Hispanic white voting patterns (Southwest Voter Research Institute 1996).

Contingency Planning for Local Economic Development

Local economic development has become a central concern of public policymakers. Urban, rural, and regional planners will encounter new opportunities to establish or restructure economic development planning in the years ahead. Local planners require an approach to planning for economic development that responds to the growing pressures on planning to achieve tangible results and accounts for the formidable political and financial constraints on public planning. The proposed approach—contingency planning—is presented in this paper. In the first section, contingency planning is placed in a planning theory context. In the body of the paper, the approach is described and critically discussed in the context of local economic development. After the conclusions, the practice of contingency planning is reviewed in the appendix to the paper.

Agricultural Unionism and the Early New Deal: The California Experience

Nascent revisionism notwithstanding, it is a virtual article of faith among historians of modern American life that the New Deal was for the labor movement in the United States a watershed. And certainly a simple before and after comparison of the labor movement as it entered and departed the New Deal era can only serve to make that judgment all the more compelling. On the eve of the New Deal the labor movement was emaciated and disspirited, and saddled with an inept, frightened, and backwardlooking leadership devoid both of ideas and ideals. Within less than a decade there was a transformation so dramatic that even the movement's oldest friends could scarcely recognize it. It had more than quadrupled in size, as well as transfigured itself, by finally acknowledging the industrial revolution. More importantly, it was not simply big, but, despite a pronounced fratricidal tendency, it was muscular, aggressive, and self-confident. Most importantly, it was possessed of new legal rights, and had amassed power and influence great enough to assure that whenever government or employers undertook decisions affecting labor interests they generally did so within the narrowed latitudes in» posed by the formidable political and economic presence of organized workers. For all the changes that marked the New Deal years, none was more significant or fundamental than that which occurred in our industrial power relationships as a result of the emergence of a powerful labor movement whose base of strength was no longer narrow craft unions but new organizations representing the millions of workers in America's great mass production industries. Ironically, however, this change, which has generally been re-