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Crucial Period (crucial + period)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	80%

Selected Abstracts

China and the world financial markets 1870,1939: Modern lessons from historical globalization1

ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 2 2007
WILLIAM N. GOETZMANN
In this article we review the development of Chinese capital markets over a crucial period in the history of markets worldwide, and place that development in context. Despite fundamental differences between China today and China 100 years ago, it is still important to consider the effects of an imbalance between domestic and international investor markets, and the mismatch between domestic and foreign expectations about investor protection. The lessons of the last century suggest that China today should consider opening Chinese investor access to foreign capital markets in order to equilibrate the level of diversification between foreign and domestic investors. In addition, our analysis suggests that protecting of domestic corporate investor rights is at least as important as protecting foreign investor rights. [source]

The Republics of Ideas: Venice, Florence and the Defence of Liberty, 1525,1530

HISTORY, Issue 279 2000
Stephen D. Bowd
The sixteenth century has often been regarded as a crucial period in the history of political events in Italy, and in the history of political ideas. The contributions of Florence and Venice to this process have long been acknowledged. Florentine admiration for the Venetian political system reflected internal political instability in the former city. The evidence for Venetian-Florentine contacts, and for a Venetian concern or admiration for Florence has been less noted. This article aims to show that there is evidence that Venetian concern for the defence of republican liberty after 1525 was allied to an awareness of Florentine political events and their significance for Venetian political practices. This awareness was stimulated by the pressure of imperial intervention on the peninsula after 1525. Florence and Venice were allies under the treaty of Cognac, and diplomats in both cities articulated a concern for republican libertas in Italy and an antipathy towards imperial rule. The work of Gasparo Contarini can be placed in this context, and as a result the critical point in the development of his arguments about Venetian political stability can be placed in the 1520s rather than in the years around 1509. The politics and political ideas of both cities were therefore developed in a wider context than has hitherto been supposed. [source]

Martial Law and Military Power in the Construction of the South African State: Jan Smuts and the "Solid Guarantee of Force" 1899,1924

JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2009
JONATHAN HYSLOP
This paper seeks to provide a new approach to analysing the crucial period of the building of the South African state between the Boer War and 1924. Drawing on the sociology of Michael Mann, it argues that the construction of networks of military power was of central and partly autonomous importance in giving shape to the new state. It goes on to contend that this generated a legal order which was in many ways shaped by practices which derived from martial law. The paper also asserts that these questions of military power and martial law need to be analysed within a framework which does not limit itself to the boundaries of the South African state itself, but is placed within the wider context of the British Empire and the southern African region. A biographical exploration the role of Jan Smuts as the key leader is used to focus the paper's study of this process of state-making. [source]

The effect of hydrological patterns and breeding-season flooding on the numbers and distribution of wading birds in Everglades National Park

ANIMAL CONSERVATION, Issue 3 2002
Gareth J. Russell
Field ecologists in Everglades National Park know that the dynamics of water flow affect the breeding success of wading birds. A number of recent studies have suggested foraging success as the primary causal link. Data on the number and location of foraging birds are available from the Systematic Reconnaissance Flights, monthly aerial surveys of wading birds and surface water condition. A set of regression models were developed that predict the number of foraging birds observed in the Park at the beginning of May, a crucial period in the breeding season of almost all wading birds in this area. Predictor variables were obtained by converting the observations of surface water condition into three indexes that describe (1) the amount of surface water in the Park in January (near the beginning of the ,dry' season), (2) the rate at which it dries over the subsequent months, and (3) the amount of disruption to that drying process. An information-theoretic measure, ICOMP(IFIM), was used to choose on the basis of parsimony between the large set of possible models that incorporate these predictors. Most species were best predicted by the same few models, and the fitted model parameters were also similar, indicating that the same pattern of surface water dynamics was optimal for most species. The optimal pattern was: intermediate water levels at the beginning of the dry season, a rapid rate of drying, and no disruption in the drying process. A number of disruptions in drying since 1985 have been the result of releases of water from the flow-control structures at the northern boundary of Everglades National Park. Reducing or eliminating these unnatural hydrological events should help wading bird populations to increase. [source]

Anti-corruption: What Do We Know?

POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2007
Research on Preventing Corruption in the Post-communist World
This review assesses the anti-corruption literature in a first attempt to identify systematically significant trends so far and challenges remaining to future political science research. Research on anti-corruption is a young métier. While reflecting on the field at large, the review focuses on two issues that have been central to its development: the role of post-communist Eastern Europe and of civil society involvement. Organised in a chronological way, the review distinguishes and discusses four phases, in order to trace how scholars have addressed these two issues in the context of a rapid evolution of anti-corruption debates, ongoing transformations in Eastern Europe and increasing insight into the controversial matter of anti-corruption efforts. It considers four crucial periods: (1) earlier scholarly debates on corruption (pre-1990s); (2) initial anti-corruption debates (1990s); (3) a period of reorientation (early 2000s); and (4) latest anti-corruption debates (mid-2000s). Changing perspectives on anti-corruption in relation to post-communism and civil society involvement are discussed for each of the four phases in order to delineate the different research trajectories. This leads to the conclusion that future research, while addressing the theory deficit, needs to take account of increasingly complex conceptual challenges posed by the (interrelated) changes in international and domestic governance. [source]