Rival Systems Research Articles

Războiul Rece la periferie. RSS Moldovenească în ordinea mondială bipolară (1970-1980) / The Cold War on the Periphery. The Moldavian SSR in the Bipolar World Order (1970-1980)

This article uses unpublished documents from the Archive of Social-Political Organizations of the Republic of Moldova, the former archive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldavia, in order to identify and describe the main tendencies of the Cold War in the Moldavian SSR in the period from 1970 to 1980. The decade presented in this study is characterized by multiple and multi-level changes both within capitalist and socialist systems. In this context, the periphery became the main arena for the Cold War and a place where the concept of boundaries between the two rival systems underwent significant changes.

Modern sciences in religious Iran: An assessment of the educated Iranians’ attitude toward biological evolution

It is often assumed that there is a confrontation between science and Islam, especially in religious communities. Biological evolution is often one of the constant sources of contention due to its metaphysical implications. Although there are some empirical data showing low acceptance of evolution and understanding its basic principles in Sunni-majority countries, there has been a categorical lack of data about Iran as the most influential Shiite-majority state. Therefore, in order to reach a better understanding of the culture and world-view of Iranians, we implemented two established questionnaires and phone interviews to assess educated Iranians’ attitude toward evolution. We reach an important conclusion, which is supported by extensive quantitative data obtained from two separate questionnaires, that most Iranians accept both underlying principles as well as controversial topics such as human evolution in a striking rate. Additionally, key concepts of evolution were greatly understood by a large fraction of our participants. Finally, the research exhibited that Iranians did not consider evolution and their religious belief system as two rival systems, regardless of identifying themselves as religious or non-religious individuals. To investigate the reason for this cultural phenomenon that is unique among major Islamic countries, we suggest that it is due to three reasons. Central national education system implementing evolutionary science at both high school and university levels, explosive accessibility of academic atmosphere for the public, and more science-friendly interpretation of Islam are thought to be responsible factors for such a high level of acceptance and understanding. This study has crucial implications for revisiting the nature of Science-Islam interaction among various Muslim communities, Shiite Iranians included.

Managing Trust and Detecting Malicious Groups in Peer-to-Peer IoT Networks.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networking is becoming prevalent in Internet of Thing (IoT) platforms due to its low-cost low-latency advantages over cloud-based solutions. However, P2P networking suffers from several critical security flaws that expose devices to remote attacks, eavesdropping and credential theft due to malicious peers who actively work to compromise networks. Therefore, trust and reputation management systems are emerging to address this problem. However, most systems struggle to identify new smart models of malicious peers, especially those who cooperate together to harm other peers. This paper proposes an intelligent trust management system, namely, Trutect, to tackle this issue. Trutect exploits the power of neural networks to provide recommendations on the trustworthiness of each peer. The system identifies the specific model of an individual peer, whether good or malicious. The system also detects malicious collectives and their suspicious group members. The experimental results show that compared to rival trust management systems, Trutect raises the success rates of good peers at a significantly lower running time. It is also capable of accurately identifying the peer model.

Counter-rhetoric and sources of enduring conflict in contested organizational fields: A case study of mental health professionals

Abstract As a means by which actors justify beliefs and practices, rhetoric has a key institutional role. In contested settings, where multiple groups and the logics associated with them interact, research has highlighted rhetorical strategies that exploit rival systems. The account we develop expands on these ideas and suggests they embrace forms of counter-rhetoric, or arguments that delegitimize a rival’s logic and refine and reframe others’ values. We use these categories to explore the case of a local mental health service, an area of health policy known for problematic diagnosis and treatment. Here groups of medical and social-care providers were required to work together in a system of intensive inter-professional relations and clashing logics. Our analysis focuses on this interaction, exploring the language-based nature of logics and sources of conflict between logics that are asserted in counter-rhetorical forms.

A note on Papilio aegyptius Schreber, 1759, and its synonymy with Danaus chrysippus chrysippus (Linnaeus, 1758) (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae, Danainae)

In this paper, we seek to predicate the status of Papilio aegyptius Schreber, 1759, as a junior subjective synonym of Danaus chrysippus chrysippus (Linnaeus, 1758). As early as 1764, these taxa were synonymised by Linnaeus, but the name aegyptius was later revived by Hans Fruhstorfer in 'Seitz' to represent a 'race' of D. chrysippus found in the Eastern Mediterranean, including Egypt and also the Sudan. George Talbot subsequently used the name for one of seven subspecies of Danaus chrysippus he recognised. In the 1970s, work by Jacques Pierre persuaded other authors to regard ssp. aegyptius as the pan-Afrotropical subspecies, contrary to Talbot's view of ssp. aegyptius being limited to only part of Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. The 'Pierre classification' was quite widely followed for about 20 years. There are now two different, rival systems for African D. chrysippus : the 'Larsen classification', which includes all populations in a greatly expanded ssp. chrysippus, and the 'Smith classification', which divides African D. chrysippus into four named semispecies together with a large 'hybrid zone'. Both classifications agree, however, in placing both Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean populations in the nominotypical taxon. In 'Butterflies of Turkey', Gerhard Hesselbarth, Harry van Oorschot & Sigbert Wagener placed Papilio aegyptius as a junior subjective synonym of Danaus chrysippus chrysippus, an action since independently supported by David Smith and his co-workers. A brief account of events leading to the return to synonymy of D. chrysippus aegyptius under the nominotypical subspecies is presented. In this history, differing interpretations of the type locality of Danaus chrysippus play a key role.

A common language

ABSTRACTBoth the Internet and the Web beat out numerous rivals to become today's dominant network and online system, respectively. Many of those rival systems and networks had developed alternative solutions to issues that face us today, from micropayments to copyright. But few scholars, much less thought leaders, have a meaningful overview of the origins of our online world, or of the many systems which came before. This exclusivity is a problem, since as a society we are now making some of the permanent decisions that will determine how we deal with information for decades and even centuries to come. Those decisions are about regulatory structures, economic models, civil liberties, publishing and more. This essay argues for the need to comparatively study online information systems across all these axes, and to thus develop a “common language” of known precedents and concepts as a prerequisite for making informed discussions about the future of the online world. Doing so depends on two factors: (1) preservation of enough historical materials about earlier systems to be able to meaningfully examine them; (2) interdisciplinary, international attention to “meta” stories that emerge from considering the evolution of multiple networks and online systems.

Simplicity, Language-Dependency and the Best System Account of Laws

It is often said that the best system account of laws (BSA) needs supplementing with a theory of perfectly natural properties. The ‘strength’ and ‘simplicity’ of a system is language-relative and without a fixed vocabulary it is impossible to compare rival systems. Recently a number of philosophers have attempted to reformulate the BSA in an effort to avoid commitment to natural properties. I assess these proposals and argue that they are problematic as they stand. Nonetheless, I agree with their aim, and show that if simplicity is interpreted as ‘compression’, algorithmic information theory provides a framework for system comparison without the need for natural properties.

Blood Curse and Belonging in Thailand: Law, Buddhism, and Legal Consciousness

AbstractThis article takes up Talal Asad’s suggestion that studies of law and religion should reject the modern/non-modern binary and instead consider the “fragmented cultures” and “hybrid selves” associated with constantly changing social circumstances. The article begins with a seemingly bizarre incident that occurred during Thai street protests in March 2010. Tens of thousands of rural demonstrators splashed their own blood on Bangkok’s public buildings to curse the ruling government and its legal and political institutions. An explanation of the demonstrators’ controversial actions is found in their reaction against efforts of the central Thai ruling elite over the past century to modernize Thai law, rationalize its religious administration, and eliminate rival systems in outlying regions. These efforts, in turn, are placed in the context of a centuries-old tradition of law, kingship, and religious purification through which Thai rulers centralized their power and demonstrated their legitimacy. The street protests in 2010 represented a failed attempt by rural workers simultaneously to claim their place in the Thai nation and to challenge its hegemony, to assert their rights under modern law, and to invoke pre-modern legal norms and identities.

Being: An Entity, an Activity, or Both an Entity and an Activity?

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the three major religions of the Western world, are all monotheistic. On the basis of their sacred scriptures, all three profess belief in God as Ultimate Reality, a single transcendent entity who as Creator of heaven and earth is responsible for the enormous diversity of finite entities in this world. Neoclassical theism, based on the processoriented cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead, on the contrary, affirms that Creativity, an activity that transcends its embodiment in finite entities, is Ultimate Reality and that God is its primordial nontemporal embodiment or “accident.” Is there a possible third philosophical position that can mediate between these two rival metaphysical systems by postulating that Being is necessarily both entity and activity? In what follows, I claim that this is indeed possible, if one accepts a revision of the Whiteheadian category of society as more than an enduring aggregate of genetically interrelated actual entities with a “common element of form” or “defining characteristic.” It is instead a new corporate entity that exists in its own right even though derivative in its ongoing structure and scope of operation from the interrelated activity of constituent actual entities frommoment to moment. I argue this point by dividing the article into three parts. In the first part, I critique the preoccupation of classic theism, starting with Thomas Aquinas in medieval scholasticism but also including modern-day Thomists ðe.g., Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, James Felt, and Norris ClarkeÞ with Being as an individual entity rather than Be-ing as an ongoing process with something like Whiteheadian creativity as its principle of operation. Then in

Central Bank Behaviour Concerning the Level of Bitcoin Regulation as a Policy Variable

Bitcoin gains more and more attention in the general public and is already the most popular virtual currency. At the same time, the acceptance of Bitcoin as a speculative asset and also as a payment vehicle increases. This is an indication that we might now be entering an era of parallel currency systems. Therefore, one could state that the Bitcoin network and the central banking system could become two rival systems with respect to issuing payment vehicles and providing cross-border payment systems. Our aim is to analyse the central bank incentives for establishing a network model that includes hacking. With our model we are able to explain why central banks have no incentive to advance Bitcoin regulation at the current stage of development, as this would reduce the critical mass of Bitcoin users. Finally, in combination with a central bank loss function, we are able to calculate an optimal level of central regulation.

‘Masking madness with gaiety’: innovating sound exhibition in Australia and the Royal Commission's failure to prevent the talkie wars

The 1927–1928 Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry in Australia sought to strengthen the domestic film industry's competitiveness against foreign investment, technology and manpower. Although it concluded before the wide-scale rollout of sound exhibition, it began collecting evidence after the coming of sound had already begun to make waves. Beginning in 1924 and continuing beyond the Commission, agents of the US De Forest Phonofilms company, primed the local market for sound through a series of publicity events. Their activities lead the local trade press to dub the Australian Phonofilms franchise as the instigator of a ‘Talkie War’, challenging the Commission's ability to curtail the expansion of human capital and technology from the USA. Within a year of its conclusion, agents from the US Western Electric company arrived in Australia to wire the major capital city theatres with sound. Initially, this strengthened Hollywood's foothold in ways that the Commission was anxious to avoid. Hoyts Theatres intensified the ‘Talkie-gear war’ by backing the ‘Australian-made’ Markophone as a competitor to the US Fox–Movietone sound system. Hence, while the Commission failed to achieve its aims, local pioneers took action by innovating rival sound systems with local technology, engineering and showmanship. Markophone wired up the ‘Talkie War’ in face of local and international competition in ways that differed from nearly all alternative sound systems.

THE RELEVANCE OF PREMISES TO CONCLUSIONS OF CORE PROOFS

AbstractThe rules for Core Logic are stated, and various important results about the system are summarized. We describe its relationship to other systems, such as Classical Logic, Intuitionistic Logic, Minimal Logic, and the Anderson–Belnap relevance logic R. A precise, positive explication is offered of what it is for the premises of a proof to connect relevantly with its conclusion. This characterization exploits the notion of positive and negative occurrences of atoms in sentences. It is shown that all Core proofs are relevant in this precisely defined sense. We survey extant results about variable-sharing in rival systems of relevance logic, and find that the variable-sharing conditions established for them are weaker than the one established here for Core Logic (and for its classical extension). Proponents of other systems of relevance logic (such as R and its subsystems) are challenged to formulate a stronger variable-sharing condition, and to prove that R or any of its subsystems satisfies it, but that Core Logic does not. We give reasons for pessimism about the prospects for meeting this challenge.

Independent Advocacy: A brief look at its past and present. Is its future under threat?

<p>The need, in mental health care, for advocacy which is independent of the health care provider is clear and acknowledged but the existence of the schemes which provide it might be seriously threatened by PALS. Principles of independent advocacy have been developed over the last twenty five years. Unfortunately many advocates are unfamiliar with the law affecting their practice and its impact upon those principles, especially in respect of confidentiality. The advocate is the client’s agent, owing a duty of care but unable to guarantee confidentiality. It is likely that most independent advocacy schemes have wholly inaccurate and inadequate confidentiality policies and guidelines. If these inadequacies are not addressed independent advocacy will not be able to compete with rival systems and it will be in danger of disappearing.</p>

The Cross and Reaganomics: Conservative Christians Defending Ronald Reagan. By Eric R. Crouse. Lanham, Md.: Lexington, 2013. vii + 195. pp. $65.00 cloth; $64.99 ebook.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Cross and Reaganomics: Conservative Defending Ronald Reagan . By Eric R. Crouse . Lanham, Md. : Lexington , 2013. vii + 195. pp. $65.00 cloth; $64.99 ebook.Book Reviews and NotesIn The Cross and Reaganomics , Eric R. Crouse, a professor of history at Tyndale University College, Toronto, explores how theologically and socially conservative debated and defended economic and foreign policies of Reagan administration. Crouse sets out to answer question, were these Christian defenders of Reagan? (3). His answer is neither sociological nor transparently theological. Instead, he focuses most of his attention on evangelical popular press and its engagement with politicians, pundits, and economists. By focusing narrowly on internal Christian debates over free market economics during 1970s and 1980s, Crouse carves out a niche in crowded space of recent studies of rise of Religious Right.Through an introduction and six chapters, text walks readers through a series of exchanges between Ronald Reagan's defenders and his critics. In introduction, Crouse situates his text as a corrective to the mainstream media, which viewed conservative Christianity through prism of explosive social issues such as abortion, homosexuality, and pornography (11). Chapter 1 seeks to reorient readers to conservative Christians' sophisticated intellectual engagement with free market economics and their eventual conversion to Reagan's supply-side model. Crouse parses difference between supply-side economics and various rival systems such as monetarism of University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman and Austrian economic school of Friedrich von Hayek. Supply-side economics, or Reaganomics, sought to create additional wealth rather than transfer of existing wealth to business owners (31). Supply-sider efforts to lower obstacles to individual productivity and emphasize personal responsibility matched long-held Christian beliefs about self-transformation.After laying economic ground rules, chapters 2 and 3 outline tensions between Christian conservatives and Christian leftists, with each vying to claim a orthodox economic model. For Crouse Christian conservative is a broad category, encompassing evangelicals, fundamentalists, conservative Protestants, conservative Catholics, Pentecostals, and other charismatic Christians who upheld capitalism and smaller (3). Crouse deploys Christian left to label any socialist-leaning Christian who fell to theological or ideological left of mainline Protestant churches (6). With these battle lines drawn, chapter 4 covers economic recovery during Reagan's second term, while chapter 5 delves into moral murkiness of Reagan-era military interventions in Central and South America. In final chapter, Crouse triumphantly concludes that American Christian conservatives were not unthinking Reaganites, but rather clear-eyed pragmatists who rejected collectivism and regulation for benefits of small government and free market.Despite title, Reagan plays only a minor role in text, popping up occasionally as movie star, candidate, and president. …

Coercion and Consent

Most moral justifications for coercion have been based on one of two arguments: the consent of the coerced, usually understood as univariate and discrete, or the beneficial consequences of coercion; but many cases do not fit these categories. This paper proposes that consent be understood as our inferences about the agreement of agents, which vary in fine degrees with multiple underlying factors, including agent discretion, the choice set, information, and competence. Moreover, consent interacts with other moral values, including consequences, in a pluralistic system of morals that depends on the context. Examples suggest this framework can be reconciled with moral intuitions better than rival systems.

The Constitutional Debate in Early Qing China

Sungkyun Journal of East Asian Studies Vol.13 No.2 © 2013 Academy of East Asian Studies. 149-168 email of the author: john.delury@gmail.com 149 Constitutional Debate in Early Qing China China in the early Qing period witnessed a remarkable outpouring of critical political thought, led by two of the “great Confucians” (da ru) of their generation— Gu Yanwu (1613-1692) and Huang Zongxi (1610-1695). Gu and Huang, along with a host of now lesser-known thinkers, produced landmark “statecraft” (jingshi) writings that were constitutional in nature, in the sense that they grappled with the fundamental principles involved in ordering the state (De Bary 1967; Kuhn 2002; Schrecker 2004; Rowe 2012). They argued with one another at a system-level over how legitimate political authority ought to be constituted, and left a fascinating trail of political discourse. The richness of this early Qing moment in critical political discourse was inspired by the liberating effect that the structural failures and acute collapse of the Ming Dynasty exerted upon the political imagination of Chinese intellectuals. Similar to the profound intellectual reverberations of the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty, the demise of the Ming caused leading thinkers to question basic elements of the imperial system (Song 2011). This liberation was not only a mental one. In material ways, too, literati discourse networks were liberated by the fall of the Ming from the homogenizing orthodoxy of patronage by a well-centralized state, at least In the first few decades of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912), Chinese political thinkers engaged in a seminal debate over how to redesign the basic “constitution” of imperial authority. The pivotal figure in this rich argument was Gu Yanwu (1613-1682), who proposed a “mixed model” approach that would combine the strengths and counteract the weaknesses in the two rival systems for constituting political authority—the decentralized fengjian system versus the centralized, bureaucratic junxian system. This article reconstructs the main arguments in that debate, looking at how mixed model advocates differed from fengjian revivalists, focusing on the role and ideas of Gu Yanwu, but also drawing attention to their shared goal of using reform to strengthen the imperial state and the authority of the emperor. The concluding section shows how the consolidation of Qing ideological authority by 1680 brought a close to this constitutional debate, leaving it to be rediscovered during the crisis of the 19 century.

Determinants of franchise conversion: a franchisee perspective

Purpose – Conversion franchising is a strategy where franchisors recruit existing franchisees from rival systems or by converting independent businesses to franchisees. The present research aims to investigate the attractiveness of conversion offers and the likelihood of such offers being accepted under different conditions of the franchising agreement. Design/methodology/approach – Based on commitment theory and agency theory, it is hypothesised that conversion likelihood will be larger if the conversion offer is more attractive in terms of relational benefits, relational costs, the management of control in the franchise relationship, or perception of brand strength. The study comprises a qualitative phase followed by a scenario experiment held among 415 Australian business format franchisees across six industries. Findings – The qualitative findings reveal a predominantly calculative attitude towards the franchise relationship. The experimental findings support that relational costs and perception of brand strength are unconditional drivers of conversion likelihood; however, the effects of relational benefits and power and control depend on the details of the conversion offer. Effects of relational benefits depend on the level of power and control. More experienced franchisees and service-based franchisees are more likely to convert. Research limitations/implications – The use of experimental case scenarios limits the external validity but enhances the internal validity by allowing control for factors that are difficult to account for in survey-based approaches. The study includes only franchisees from Australia although from a range of industries. The proposed methodology can be easily modified for other contexts. Practical implications – The results can help franchisors tailor conversion proposals to suit specific conversion targets based on experience and industry type. Franchisors should generally focus on developing conversion proposals that are attractive in terms of perceived brand strength and relational costs. Relational benefits and management of power and control appear to play a role only in particular circumstances. For example, when no other factors differentiate the competitor, the management of power and control can make a difference in indicating franchise support quality and level of control among franchisees. Originality/value – The study extends franchising research to the franchisee perspective and to a non-American context. It utilises an experimental approach that hitherto had not been applied in franchising research, allowing rigorous testing of hypotheses about franchise behaviour. Hypotheses are tested for different industry groups.

Beyond the polemics of Christian–Muslim Relations: Exploring a Dialogical Approach

Against the historical backdrop of early Christian–Muslim apologetics in the Middle East, an apologetics that was overwhelmingly polemical in its scope, I consider the contribution of the mystics, in providing a dialogical model that would overcome the state of impasse that inter-religious debate had reached. Dialogue moves beyond the established polemical binaries of two rival belief systems, towards the clarification of defensible difference, in which the other is allowed to speak in all its polyvocality and even to impinge on the truth claims of one’s own tradition.

Comparative Analysis of Customer Satisfaction on Islamic and Conventional Banks in Malaysia

Customer satisfaction is critically important for banks to stay competitive as the customer is the ultimate source of income for any organization. Islamic banking system and conventional banking system are considered as rival systems working in the same banking industry. In order for Islamic banks to compete successfully with conventional banks, Islamic banks must give extremely high consideration to their primary customers. Whenever either Islamic banks or conventional banks offer any product or service, its success depends upon the customer satisfaction towards that product or service. This study examines the level of customer satisfaction on Islamic banks as well as conventional banks in Malaysia. It also investigates the relationship between different demographic variables and the satisfaction of customers. A sample of 1,153 respondents from various cities representing different states in Malaysia was selected. The results in this study suggest that customers are mostly satisfied with the quality of services which include competency, friendliness, and efficiency of the staff of the Islamic and conventional banks.

Life Must Be Led in the Dark. Hans Vaihinger’s The Philosophy of “As If” in William Gaddis’s The Recognitions

In an interview with Tom LeClair, William Gaddis suggests that The Recognitions (1955) is infused with “a nostalgia for order,” a hope that there are “origins of design” (LeClair 2007, 19). Gaddis is fascinated by the tension between order and chaos (p. 25) and has clearly turned it into one of the central themes of his first novel. Both the protagonist and his father are seriously affected by this tension. They are visibly struggling to come to grips with the confusing world surrounding them and long for a system through which they might comfortably approach reality. Though the novel alludes to many different doctrines, myths or beliefs, they do not lead to the resolution of this struggle. Gregory Comnes points out that “rival systems of order” in Gaddis’s novel constantly “conflict but never resolve” (Comnes 1994, 41). The Recognitions harbors a refusal to “reflect the superiority of any one system” (p. 41) and exposes the inadequacy of these frameworks to touch upon the essence of reality. The artificiality of essentialist frameworks is emphasized by, among others, several references to Hans Vaihinger’s The Philosophy of “As If”. Despite the fact that Steven Moore’s Reader’s Guide to William Gaddis’s “The Recognitions” covers these references, there has been no further attempt to fully gauge the relevance of Die Philosophie des Als Ob (Gaddis 2003, 530).1 This essay will concentrate on the tragic character developments of Wyatt Gwyon and his father, the Reverend Gwyon, as a direct result of conflicting frameworks and interpret them in light of the “As If” philosophy. A heightened awareness of what Vaihinger designates as “fictions” will not only elucidate the parallel between the evolutions of both the younger and the elder Gwyon, but also clarify the rather ambiguous presence of religion within the novel.