Gathering Crisis Research Articles

Duces caecorum: On Two Recent Translations of Wyclif

Abstract Two recent publications have greatly increased the amount of Wyclif available in translation: the Trialogus, translated by Stephen Lahey, and a thematic anthology translated by Stephen Penn. This review article documents the failings that make these translations worse than useless. A post mortem leads the author to claim that the publication of these volumes, the first of which has already been warmly received, is a sign of a gathering crisis in medieval studies, and one that we should take steps to avert.

The German Democratic Republic by Peter Grieder (review)

Reviewed by: The German Democratic Republic by Peter Grieder Andreas Agocs The German Democratic Republic. By Peter Grieder. New York: Palgrave, 2012. Pp. xviii + 155. Paper $26.00. ISBN 978-0230579378. Peter Grieder’s small volume gives a concise overview of the main developments in the GDR’s forty years of existence. In little more than 150 pages, the book introduces and discusses the wide range of themes, arguments, and interpretive challenges that recent research into the “Workers’ and Peasants’ State” has yielded. Because the GDR’s human rights abuses were dwarfed by the much larger crimes of the Third Reich, historians have been struggling to define the nature of the East German state while taking into account its repressive nature, as well as popular participation and consensus. Grieder’s definition of the GDR adopts Konrad Jarausch’s concept of a “welfare dictatorship” and combines it with classical totalitarianism theory, a concept that is, for Grieder, “flexible enough to encompass softer, subtler forms of power” (4). The GDR was thus a “totalitarian welfare dictatorship guaranteed by the Kremlin” (130). This interpretive framework allows him, he claims, to “explain as well as describe East German reality” (2)—including the many inefficiencies of the GDR’s political system, the complex and often contradictory reactions and allegiances of its population, as well as its often rocky relationship with its Soviet patrons. Grieder then traces the development of a society that was ruled through a combination of “care and coercion” (6) from its conception in the 1940s to its collapse in 1989–1990. The book’s chapters break down the GDR’s history into six phases: conception (1945–1949), construction (1949–1960), consolidation (1961–1971), conservatism (1971–1977), crisis (1977–1989), and collapse (1989–1990). Grieder uses Hans-Ulrich Wehler’s description of East Germany as a Soviet “satrapy” (Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 1949–1990 [Munich, 2008], 424–25), but he prefers the term “Bolshevization” to “Stalinization” because the SED ruled without the type of large-scale violence that characterized Stalin’s reign. During its period of construction, the party’s leadership successfully established the pillars of its rule, which included the Ministry of State Security (MfS), as well as generous state price subsidies for food, housing, and utilities. Amidst the turbulences of the 1950s, “welfare-totalitarianism was taking root in the GDR” (44). In an effort to stave off the “pull of the increasingly magnetic Federal Republic” (50), the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961 enabled the [End Page 241] SED to consolidate its control. But communist party chief Walter Ulbricht’s limited market-oriented reforms in the 1960s were bogged down by the SED’s bureaucratic insistence on the primacy of politics over the economy—a self-inflicted problem that would define and plague the GDR’s “real existing socialism” until its collapse. Grieder’s periodization deliberately avoids the common division of the GDR’s history into a “Stalinist” Ulbricht era and an ostensibly post-totalitarian stage under Erich Honecker, who became party chief in 1971. Even though the Workers’ and Peasants’ state loosened its repressive rule over time, Grieder contends that “in some respects, East Germany became more totalitarian during the final two decades of its existence” (8)—as evidenced by the increased economic centralization and hypertrophy of the Stasi. Still, by the end of the 1970s the GDR had entered a destabilizing crisis that lasted until 1989. Grieder argues that the underlying “main cause for the gathering crisis was the totalitarian welfare state itself” (89). The GDR suffered from “systemic sclerosis,” brought about by the SED’s “obsessive-compulsive urge to direct an increasingly complex society, eventually leading to ‘bureaucratic overstretch’” (85). In this situation, Mikhail Gorbachev’s call for reforms in the Soviet Union became an existential threat to the East German client state. Because the SED leadership was unable and unwilling to liberalize the system that had assured its power for forty years, “totalitarianism was both the lifeblood and the wasting disease of the GDR” (93). Along with his analysis of SED policies, Grieder pays attention to popular attitudes among East Germans, even though the absence of real democratic elections and reliable polls makes the extent of popular identification...

Prionet Canada: A Network of Centres of Excellence for Research on Prion Diseases—Ongoing and Future Research Directions

It is PrioNet's vision to build a network that shapes and sustains prion research in Canada, translating basic science into accessible socioeconomic benefits for global betterment. PrioNet's research is developing surveillance measures, diagnostic tools, vaccines, and potential therapies and determining the various impacts of prion diseases on people. PrioNet seeks to integrate scientifically informed risk management strategies and to use this knowledge to address ongoing problems posed by bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), the gathering crisis of chronic wasting disease (CWD), emerging issues of human prion disease, and basic scientific understanding of the nature of prions. PrioNet is strategically responding to prion threats by focusing its network of highly accomplished researchers and trainees to implement integrated risk management strategies that could not be supported by other mechanisms.

Germany at a crossroads: The gathering crisis sharpens

In our book, The Gathering Crisis: The 2005 Federal Election and the Grand Coalition (Miskimmon et al, 2009), we argued that the German political and economic systems faced a number of serious challenges. The resource crunch in public finances has been particularly problematic in a country used to consensus politics- money had previously been used to oil the wheels of German federalism (and European integration). In the light of recent events- the global financial crisis, the Eurozone crisis, the 2009 federal election- we claim that the crisis in the German political economy has sharpened. The task of Angela Merkel and subsequent chancellors will be to navigate the new era, ensuring that Germany remains a leading political and economic power in the European Union and beyond. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

Crise financière et politique monétaire

Financial Crisis and Monetary Policy. Since 2007, financial markets and economies have been faced with a multiform crisis, which originated from specific market sectors, such as the US subprime credit component, and led to a systemic risk at the heart of the financial markets, causing major disruptions in funding markets as well as more recently in sovereign debt market. At each step in the gathering crisis, central banks have intervened in a timely and pragmatic fashion. They have provided emergency liquidity support and aggressively cut official interest rates in order to mitigate the consequences of the crisis in the financial markets and in the real economy. As a result of the severity of the crisis, central banks have also adapted their operational framework and have implemented innovative non conventional monetary policies. The nature of their response was conditioned by their explicit mandate and by the structure of their domestic funding mechanisms. Nonetheless the common objective was to lower the financing costs for the real economy and to ensure the smooth transmission of monetary policy. However, whilst the primary requirement concerns accommodative monetary policy, it remains paramount that expectations for future inflation remain firmly anchored. To this end, Central banks have defined the path to exit strategies, to ensure the normalization of their interventions in a medium term horizon. The implementation of these exit strategies is one of the post-crisis major challenges. Classification JEL : E02, G01, E52, E58.

Germany's Gathering Crisis: The 2005 Federal Election and the Grand Coalition – Edited by A. Miskimmon, W.E. Paterson and J. Sloan

Germany's Gathering Crisis: The 2005 Federal Election and the Grand Coalition – Edited by A. Miskimmon, W.E. Paterson and J. Sloan

Human Rights in the Council of Europe and the EU: Towards ‘Individual’, ‘Constitutional’ or ‘Institutional’ Justice?

Abstract: The European Convention on Human Rights, promulgated by the Council of Europe in 1950, is widely regarded as the world's most successful experiment in the trans‐national judicial protection of human rights. The EU's much more recent judicial and political interest in human rights has also been widely welcomed. Yet, while the crisis currently afflicting the Convention system has not gone unnoticed, the same cannot equally be said of the difficulties presented by the increasing interpenetration of the two systems. Amongst the few who have shown some interest in these problems, the dominant view is that good will and common sense will provide adequate solutions. We disagree. Instead, we detect a gathering crisis which, unless properly analysed and effectively tackled, will only deepen as the EU's interest in human rights develops further. In our view, the problem is essentially conceptual and that, ultimately, it boils down to a much‐neglected question, simple to state but not so easy to answer: is the trans‐national protection of human rights in Europe a matter of ‘individual’, ‘constitutional’ or ‘institutional’ justice?

Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century

What did politics and public affairs mean to those generations of Americans who first experienced democratic self-rule? Taking their cue from vibrant political campaigns and very high voter turnouts, historians have depicted the nineteenth century as an era of intense and widespread political enthusiasm. But rarely have these historians examined popular political engagement directly, or within the broader contexts of day-to-day life. In this bold and in-depth look at Americans and their politics, Glenn Altschuler and Stuart Blumin argue for a more complex understanding of the space occupied by politics in nineteenth-century American society and culture. Mining such sources as diaries, letters, autobiographies, novels, cartoons, contested-election voter testimony to state legislative committees, and the partisan newspapers of representative American communities ranging from Massachusetts and Georgia to Texas and California, the authors explore a wide range of political actions and attitudes. They consider the enthusiastic commitment celebrated by historians together with various forms of skepticism, conflicted engagement, detachment, and hostility that rarely have been recognized as part of the American political landscape. Rude Republic sets the political parties and their noisy and attractive campaign spectacles, as well as the massive turnout of voters on election day, within the communal social structure and calendar, the local human landscape of farms, roads, and county towns, and the organizational capacities of emerging nineteenth-century institutions. Political action and engagement are set, too, within the tide of events: the construction of the mass-based party system, the gathering crisis over slavery and disunion, and the gradual expansion of government (and of cities) in the post-Civil War era. By placing the question of popular engagement within these broader social, cultural, and historical contexts, the authors bring new understanding to the complex trajectory of American democracy.

The ethics of virtual realitySussex

Abstract Virtual reality (VR) has a cultural as well as a technical dimension. Culturally, it can be defined as a simulation in which we are invited, or perhaps persuaded, to amend our belief in what is real. VR is significant because it follows artificial intelligence and corresponds to the latest step in the gathering crisis of modern philosophy. There are therefore many problems in developing a code of ethics for VR, but it is possible to adopt pragmatic solutions. For example, it is possible to appeal to past ethical codes, it is possible to propose a philosophy of the artificial and it is possible to re-analyse our present dilemma and assert a humanist philosophy. This latter approach is adopted in this paper and some comments on the form and content of a possible ethics of virtual reality are provided.

A Gathering Crisis In The Philippines

More than two years after the August 1987 putsch that nearly toppled President Coraz?n Cojuangco Aquino, the Philippines appeared to have attained political stability and to be finally ready to join the club of rapidly industrializing countries of Southeast Asia. In 1988 the country posted a 6.7 per cent growth, demonstrating a healthy economy in place. In fact, the government has managed its economy so well that it earned high praises from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in May 1989. After the restoration of a constitutional government, strengthening the independence of the judiciary, and the re-establishment of the Philippine Congress, democracy was finally fully restored with the holding of nation-wide baranggay or local-level elections, the first since 1982. The government also managed to effectively contain the Moro secessionist movement while hastening the decline of the communist insurgency with the arrest of its key leaders. The worst appeared to have passed as military adventurism was likewise believed to have abated.

The Gathering Crisis in Deposit Insurance

The Gathering Crisis in Deposit Insurance

The Gathering Crisis in Federal Deposit Insurance

The system of federal deposit insurance adopted during the 1930s has become increasingly costly and unreliable. This timely study warns bankers, regulators, politicians, and taxpayers that no matter how well the deposit-insurance system may have run in the past it is headed for an expensive bureaucratic breakdown. It forcefully argues that unless market discipline can be reintroduced, this breakdown threatens to take depository institutions into de facto nationalization. Reversing these trends, it points out, requires redesigning the deposit insurance system to curtail the subsidizing of risk taking by deposit institutions, a practice that has resulted in widespread insolvency among financial institutions. The Gathering Crisis in Federal Deposit Insurance provides more than a warning. It shows that the current system is unfair and has transformed the federal government into the chief supplier of equity funds to depository institutions. And it observes that whenever the financial environment is changing rapidly, the existing system of deposit insurance subsidizes risk-taking in ways that impose a huge, but largely unrecognized burden on the general taxpayer and conservatively managed financial institutions. In one way or another, the taxpayer is going to be called upon to make good the financially staggering amount of the system's guarantees. The book provides a comprehensive discussion of FDIC and FSLIC policies and procedures, describes the variety of risks facing deposit institutions and their implications for the insurance system, explains the perverse risk-bearing incentives inherent in the current deposit insurance system, documents the extent of actual insolvency at insured institutions, and proposes a framework for reform.

Population: The Gathering Crisis

Ten years ago the United Nations sponsored the first conference of governments on global population. Held in Bucharest, the conference was spearheaded by the United States and planned as a rally in support of the notion that population was growing too rapidly around the world and that the right prescription was family planning. But Bucharest did not turn out as planned. Such developing giants as India and China questioned the cure, and the rallying cry became, rather, that development is the best contraceptive. The conferees produced a grandly-named World Population Plan of Action which, though it acknowledged the role of family planning and contraception, had more than one plan in its platform.

Holding the Line: The Eisenhower Era, 1952-1961.

Alexander sees the characteristic feature of the Eisenhower era as an effort to hold the line against Communism, against big government, against intellectual challenge, against disruptive social change. The period 1952-1961 is examined in trenchant detail by the author, who focuses on domestic politics and foreign policy but also examines economic, social, intellectual, and cultural aspects of the period. He scrutinizes such features of the fifties as McCarthyism, the Korean conflict, Dulles's system of global alliances, the early involvement in Vietnam, the economic boom, the appearance of giant conglomerates, the emergence of Black protest, the gathering crisis of the cities, and the impact of the mass media on popular culture. This book is lively enough for general readers and students of American history since the Second World War, yet probing and scholarly enough to interest specialists.

India 1974: Growing Political Crisis

POLITICAL SYSTEMS FACE a major threat to their survival when their problem solving capacity-fragile and limited in some cases-is impaired by a gathering crisis concerning their legitimacy. Such, it seemed, was the case in India in 1974 when all through that year a combination of economic and political failures created a situation which posed, for the first time, a serious challenge to the system's legitimacy. A rising tide of popular discontent swept through Gujarat in the first quarter of the year and was running high in Bihar at the close of the year, threatening to spread to other areas in the coming months. In between, there were a series of industrial strikes of which the most serious was the 20-day stoppage of work by rail' waymen, paralyzing that important network of communications for the longest duration in the nation's history. Although these movements were initially occasioned by growing economic distress as indicated by soaring inflation, runaway prices and acute shortages of food and other essentials, they soon acquired partisan political overtones when they set as their targets the dismissal of state ministries and dissolution of state legislatures. It is true that the movements were largely confined to urban areas, were discontinuous, and had achieved a rather low level of aggregation. For example, according to the estimates made by a teacher in Gujarat University, all but 11 out of the 63 towns with a population of over 20,000 were affected by the movement in that state. But out of 143 towns of smaller size only 20 were affected. Again, during the long months of agitation, industrial workers were not drawn into it. It was not different in Bihar where the agitation also had an urban and middle class character. But it was significant that protest movements had begun and that they evoked the profoundest sympathies of ordinary people everywhere as they came to symbolize the common man's frustrations and silent anger. In contrast to the setbacks suffered in the domestic economic and political spheres, some significant advances were made in foreign relations, such as improvement in Indo-U.S. relations, a new era of extensive co-operation with Iran and the resumption of trade between India and Pakistan. Of the positive developments at home, the more significant were the May 18 ex-

Nationalization by Request

During the first quarter of 1945, nothing was more symptomatic of the gathering crisis than an ap? parent outcry from Diet members and leading repre? sentatives of Japan's business world for the nationalization of industry. Evaluation of the suggested proposals and the resulting action must take account of the new stage which had been reached in the war. Taking precedence over all else, in the minds of Japan's business leaders, was the growing threat of the B-29 raids. They anticipated from these raids two outstanding results: extensive destruction to their plants and serious unrest among the workers. Against the background of these two simple fears, the clamor for government action at this period becomes one of the most revealing episodes in the evolution of Japan's wartime economy. The opening shot in the campaign was fired by the Tokyo Economic Association of Commerce and In? dustry, formerly the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry. For some time, it appeared, the Asso? ciation had been studying means to strengthen and improve existing policies, which had fallen short of meeting the actual needs to increase production, repair air raid damages, and [accomplish] reconstruction. On January 11, therefore, the Association made public two recommendations to the authorities. The first