Buildings and Democracy

Author(s):  
Jessica Paga

This final chapter addresses the links between the built environment as outlined in the previous chapters and the historical context of the early democracy. In total, as many as forty-five monumental structures were built in a twenty-eight-year period. This represents an incredibly high level of coordination, exploitation of resources, and financial expenditure that Athens had not seen prior to this. This chapter, therefore, draws attention to the economic ramifications of such building activity, before turning to a consideration of the term “building program” and what it implies about demotic agency. The chapter concludes by evaluating what the building activity tells us about the state of the new government system in the Late Archaic period.

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 102-110
Author(s):  
N. P. Molchanova

The paper deals with the methodology and practice of the state regulation of the regional economy based on the legislative framework and works of Russian scientists in the historical context with account for the specifics of the current period of market transformation. The subject of research is organizational and economic relations, aimed at improving the management efficiency of regional socio-economic development. The purpose of research was to identify the key problems of the regional economy regulation preventing the balanced functioning of administrative-territorial entities and substantiate the need to boost measures of state support. Based on the dialectical cognition method and the system approach, the positions of leading scientists and scientific schools on topical issues of the regional economy as a scientific discipline were analyzed, which made it possible to identify the main reasons hampering socio-economic transformations and justify measures for running a more active regional policy. It is concluded that consistent improvement of methodological and organizational approaches creates prerequisites for improving the results of the socio-economic development at the regional level; however, in the current situation of the macroeconomic instability serious problems may arise to be resolved primarily by the state regulation.


Author(s):  
Дмитрий Рубвальтер ◽  
Dmitry Rubvalter ◽  
Александр Либкинд ◽  
Alexander Libkind ◽  
Валентина Маркусова ◽  
...  

A multidimensional analysis of the state of Russian studies on the education issues over 1993–2016 was carried out based on the materials of the data contained in the Web of Science (SSCI, A & HCI and SCI-E databases). There were determined the dynamics and trends of a number of relevant indicators, such as the number of Russian publications by year, the share of these publications in the global flow of publications on education issues, the dynamics of the share of publications made in co-authorship with foreign colleagues, etc. A number of distributions of Russian publications on educational issues was compiled and analyzed: by journals, by Russian regions and cities, by organizations and authors of the publications. It was found that most of these distributions were characterized by a high level of non-uniformity. A list of journals (125 titles) in which Russian works on education issues had been published was compiled. Russian organizations (308) and domestic researchers (about two thousand) engaged in studying the issues of education were identified. It was discovered that more than 200 organizations and about 400 academicians from 60 foreign countries had participated in Russian studies on the education issues.


Author(s):  
Eugenia Roldán Vera ◽  
Susana Quintanilla

The Mexican policy of state provision of standardized textbooks for all was instituted in 1959 and still ongoing. This is an overview of the previous history of state intervention in the production and distribution of school textbooks, an examination of the particular circumstances in which the 1959 policy was figured and implemented, and a description of the characteristics of the different generations of textbooks that have since been published, corresponding with several educational reforms. The arguments for and against standardized textbooks mobilized by different sectors of society throughout sixty years are discussed in their historical context. Far from this being a debate about the authoritarian intervention of the state in education, issues of social equality and teaching quality have been central.


2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Fennell

High rates of desertion and surrender during the battles in North Africa in the summer of 1942 were a major factor in Eighth Army’s poor combat performance. At the time, some suggested that these problems were symptomatic of a lack of courage or even of cowardice. There are two broad strands to the conceptualization of courage and cowardice. One focuses on the willingness of the person to fight; the other puts emphasis on how actions express an individual’s ability to cope with fear. Whichever conceptualization is used, high morale motivates the soldier to fight and shields the ordinary recruit from his fear, preventing it from overcoming him in battle. Where morale fails, the soldier is left demotivated and burdened with his terror and, therefore, and is therefore prone to desertion or surrender. Because it is extremely difficult to maintain morale at a continuously high level in an environment governed by chance and managed by humans, all soldiers can find themselves in situations where their actions may be judged as cowardly. Alternatively, if they are properly motivated to fight and prepared by the state and military to deal with the unavoidable fear of combat, all soldiers can be labelled courageous. Accordingly, emotive terms should be avoided when attempting to describe rationally explainable outcomes. The undoubtedly negative connotations attached to cowardice in battle and the positive ones attached to courage are, therefore, arguably unhelpful in understanding Eighth Army’s performance in the summer of 1942 and the human dimension in warfare more generally.


2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (5) ◽  
pp. 110-118
Author(s):  
M. Shkurat ◽  
K. Pavlotska

Analysis of the migration process of the Ukrainian population, which takes place within the state and at the international level during 2014–2019 is carried out in this paper. On the basis of scientific works of domestic scientists and institutes the problems which have not been investigated, and also aspects which have been solved partially are defined. The negative consequences of the Ukrainian migration process on the state of the country are identified. The classification of migration flows of the Ukrainian population according to the reasons of movement is carried out. The main regions and countries which, as of the beginning of 2021, are more attractive to compatriots and are characterized by significant influxes of Ukrainians are identified. The main centers of departure – regions and countries – which are characterized by high level of outflow of Ukrainians are determined, the main problems and reasons that motivate the outflow of Ukrainians are highlighted in this paper. The level of growth of the Ukrainian population in terms of migration flows is defined. The investigation of Ukrainian diasporas, territorial location and analysis of their share in comparison is carried out. The main factors that force the Ukrainian population to move, which affects the demographic situation in Ukraine, the level of employment, as well as the amount of cash flows to the country and the state of the economy as a whole are identified. The main regulations and identified solutions to the migration flows of the domestic population, which were approved and implemented in the period from 2001 to 2019 are compared in this paper. On the basis of current and newly introduced strategies, critical analysis of the ways of regulating the migration process of the Ukrainian population is carried out, the main aspects and problems of the implemented migration policy of Ukraine are determined. The results of the work are to identify the main ways to reduce the negative impact of the migration process on the country's economy and related processes, and strategies to benefit from the movement of citizens of Ukraine, namely: introduction of intellectual security, revision of wages by region, stimulating the process of attracting technology in all spheres of activity and formation of the social protection system.


2002 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-55
Author(s):  
Louise I. Shelley

The murder of Valentin Tsvetkov, the governor of Magadan in central Moscow in broad day light in October 2002 highlights that organized crime and corruption are still alive and well and highly destructive of life and governance in Russia (Wines, 2002). His murder once again raises the question, “Why has Russia not been able to stop organized crime and high level corruption?” The answer is that Russia docs not have the political will at the national, regional or local level to fight these problems. This is true because the Kremlin and economic elite push their personal interests over those of the state and the society. Structural problems such as low salaries of state personnel and the embedding of organized crime and corruption make reform very difficult.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carey James Garland ◽  
Victor D Thompson ◽  
Matthew C Sanger ◽  
Karen Y Smith ◽  
Fred T Andrus ◽  
...  

Circular shell rings along the Atlantic Coast of southeastern North America are the remnants of some of the earliest villages that emerged during the Late Archaic Period (5000 – 3000 BP). Many of these villages, however, were abandoned during the Terminal Late Archaic Period (ca 3800 – 3000 BP). Here, we combine Bayesian chronological modeling with multiple environmental proxies to understand the nature and timing of environmental change associated with the emergence and abandonment of shell ring villages on Sapleo Island, Georgia. Our Bayesian models indicate that Native Americans occupied the three Sapelo shell rings at varying times with some generational overlap. By the end of the complex’s occupation, only Ring III was occupied before abandonment ca. 3845 BP. Ring III also consists of statistically smaller oysters ( Crassostrea virginica ) that people harvested from less saline estuaries compared to earlier occupations. These data, when integrated with recent tree ring analyses, show a clear pattern of environmental instability throughout the period in which the rings were occupied. We argue that as the climate became unstable around 4300 BP, aggregation at shell ring villages provided a way to effectively manage fisheries that are highly sensitive to environmental change. However, with the eventual collapse of oyster fisheries and subsequent rebound in environmental conditions ca. 3800 BP, people dispersed from shell rings, and shifted to non-marine subsistence economies and other types of settlements. This study provides the most comprehensive evidence correlations between large-scale environmental change and societal transformations on the Georgia coast during the Late Archaic period.


1992 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 763-767 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Watts ◽  
T. E. Dwan ◽  
C. G. Brockus

An analog fuel control for a gas turbine engine was compared with several state-space derived fuel controls. A single-spool, simple cycle gas turbine engine was modeled using ACSL (high level simulation language based on FORTRAN). The model included an analog fuel control representative of existing commercial fuel controls. The ACSL model was stripped of nonessential states to produce an eight-state linear state-space model of the engine. The A, B, and C matrices, derived from rated operating conditions, were used to obtain feedback control gains by the following methods: (1) state feedback; (2) LQR theory; (3) Bellman method; and (4) polygonal search. An off-load transient followed by an on-load transient was run for each of these fuel controls. The transient curves obtained were used to compare the state-space fuel controls with the analog fuel control. The state-space fuel controls did better than the analog control.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernesto F. L. Amaral

Title in Portuguese: Funções de migração por idade e caracterização de migrantes das microrregiões de Goiás e Distrito Federal, 1975-1979 e 1986-1990(Dissertação de Mestrado)(M.A. Thesis)Since the 70’s, the Brazilian Middle-West Region has experienced an important modernization process in agricultural and industrial activities, which has led to an employment retraction and migration flows, especially from rural areas to the major metropolitan cities of the region. In this research the focus of analysis are the State of Goiás and the Federal District, which encompasses Brasília, the capital of Brazil. In order to understand the new population configuration, the region was divided into four sub-areas (micro-region of Goiânia, micro-region of Entorno de Brasília, the Federal District, and a group of 16 micro-regions of Goiás) and the patterns of migration, by age and sex, were estimated for the periods 1975-1979 and 1986-1991. In addition, differences between native and migrant population of each sub-area, according to the participation in the labor force, income, education and type of migration were investigated. The analysis was performed on the basis of the 1980 and 1991 Brazilian Census data.In the intra-state migration, the fluxes between the micro-region of Goiânia and the 16 other micro-regions of Goiás, and between the Federal District and the micro-region of Entorno de Brasília were the most important. In the inter-state migration, the flux from the states of Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul and the North region to the 16 micro-regions of Goiás, as well as the flux from Northeast, Southeast and South to the Federal District were significant. But there was a decline in the migration to the Federal District, between 1975-1979 and 1986-1991, while, in the same period, the migration to the Entorno of Brasília increased.The chance of the migrant population in the micro-region of Goiânia and in the Federal District to have worked in the last 12 months prior to census interview was lower than that of the native population. However, those who migrated from the Federal District to the micro-region of Entorno de Brasília had higher chance to have worked in the formal sector than those who did not migrate. Migrants who moved from the micro-region of Entorno de Brasília and the 16 other micro-regions of Goiás to the micro-region of Goiânia had lower wages than the non-migrant population. The lowest level of wages was recorded for the migrants to the 16 other micro-regions of Goiás. Migrants living in the Federal District had high level of education, while those migrants living in the micro-region of Entorno de Brasília had low level of education.In 1986-1990, the micro-regions of Goiânia and Entorno de Brasília, as well as the 16 other micro-regions of Goiás, presented a high percentage of returned migrants. In the same period, a major proportion of migrants to the micro-region of Entorno de Brasília had first moved from Southeast or from the Federal District to others regions. In addition, there was a considerable proportion of migrants with low income who had moved from Northeast to the Federal District and then to the micro-region of the Entorno de Brasília.Future research could focus other areas or regions of Brazil, and could also explore the same kind of analysis, on the basis of the incoming 2000 Brazilian Census, which requires the development of new techniques, as it did not collect information on the city of previous residence, but only on the state of residence.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (025) ◽  
pp. 1-59
Author(s):  
Leland D. Crane ◽  
◽  
Ryan A. Decker ◽  
Aaron Flaaen ◽  
Adrian Hamins-Puertolas ◽  
...  

Lags in official data releases have forced economists and policymakers to leverage "alternative" or "non-traditional" data to measure business exit resulting from the COVID- 19 pandemic. We first review official data on business exit in recent decades to place the alternative measures of exit within historical context. For the U.S., business exit is countercyclical and fairly common, with about 7.5 percent of firms exiting annually in recent years. Both the high level and the cyclicality of exit are driven by very small firms and establishments. We then explore a range of alternative measures of business exit, including novel measures based on paycheck issuance and phone-tracking data, which indicate exit was elevated in certain sectors during the first year of the pandemic. The evidence is mixed, however; many industries have likely seen lower-than-usual exit rates, and exiting businesses do not appear to represent a large share of U.S. employment. Actual exit is likely to have been lower than widespread expectations from early in the pandemic. Moreover, businesses have recently exhibited notable optimism about their survival prospects.


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