The Authoritarian Governor’s Dilemma

2020 ◽  
pp. 59-77
Author(s):  
Henry Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Control Agency ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
East German ◽  
Significant Mass

Even authoritarian leaders cannot rule alone. This chapter explores the politics of indirect authoritarian governance through coercive institutions in socialist Poland and East Germany. It explains why the Polish Bezpieka’s staff and secret informant network shrank after 1956 despite significant mass opposition to the regime, while the East German Stasi grew to become a much larger agency. Authoritarian governors face a problematic tradeoff between the competence of the secret police and their ability to control it. When goal divergence with the police leads a regime to exert more control, agency competence suffers and the regime must turn to violent ex post repression, rather than ex ante deterrence and subversion of threats. In Poland, replacement of the Stalinist party leader in 1956 created significant goal divergence between the upper ranks of the secret police and the new elites the police had previously victimized. Elites shrank the coercive agency to exert control over it, despite significant mass opposition to the regime. In East Germany, in contrast, continuity of Stalinist leadership led to less goal divergence between elites and the secret police, enabling its continued growth.

The Western Connection: Western Support for the East German Opposition

2003 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 74-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Financial Support ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Secret Police ◽  
The West ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
East German ◽  
Environmental Network ◽  
The Relationship

Without help from the west, the small East German opposition,such as it was, never would have achieved as much as it did. Themoney, moral support, media attention, and protection provided bywestern supporters may have made as much of a difference to theopposition as West German financial support made to the East Germanstate. Yet this help was often resented and rarely acknowledgedby eastern activists. Between 1988 and 1990, I worked withArche, an environmental network created in 1988 by East Germandissidents. During that time, the assistance provided by West Germans,émigré East Germans, and foreigners met with a level of distrustthat cannot entirely be blamed on secret police intrigue.Outsiders who tried to help faced a barrage of allegations and criticismof their work and motives. Dissidents who elected to remain inEast Germany distrusted those who emigrated, and vice versa,reflecting an unfortunate tendency, even among dissidents, to internalizeelements of East German propaganda. Yet neither the helpand support the East German opposition received from outside northe mentalities that stood in its way have been much discussed. Thisessay offers a description and analysis of the relationship betweenthe opposition and its outside supporters, based largely on one person’sfirst-hand experience.

Ex-Ante and Ex-Post Performance of Optimal REIT Portfolios

CFA Digest ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-9
Author(s):  
Ann C. Logue
Keyword(s):  
Ex Post ◽  
Ex Ante

Erreurs de prévision ex ante et ex post

1993 ◽  
Vol 108 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-138
Author(s):  
Pierre Malgrange ◽  
Silvia Mira d'Ercole
Keyword(s):  
Ex Post ◽  
Ex Ante

Crime and Punishment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Adelstein
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Liability ◽  
Court Case ◽  
Efficient Allocation ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Crime And Punishment ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Ex Ante ◽  
Supreme Court Case

This chapter elaborates the operation of criminal liability by closely considering efficient crimes and the law’s stance toward them, shows how its commitment to proportional punishment prevents the probability scaling that systemically efficient allocation requires, and discusses the procedures that determine the actual liability prices imposed on offenders. Efficient crimes are effectively encouraged by proportional punishment, and their nature and implications are examined. But proportional punishment precludes probability scaling, and induces far more than the systemically efficient number of crimes. Liability prices that match the specific costs imposed by the offender at bar are sought through a two-stage procedure of legislative determination of punishment ranges ex ante and judicial determination of exact prices ex post, which creates a dilemma: whether to price crimes accurately in the past or deter them accurately in the future. An illustrative Supreme Court case bringing all these themes together is discussed in conclusion.

“Socialist Realist” Critiques of Neoliberal “Shock Therapy”

2019 ◽  
pp. 431-451
Author(s):  
April A. Eisman
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
East Germany ◽  
Shock Therapy ◽  
Socialist Realism ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
German Art ◽  
Socialist Realist ◽  
East German ◽  
Insight Into

This article focuses on the East German artistic response to the 1973 putsch in Chile, an event now recognized as foundational in the development of neoliberalism. Outraged and saddened, artists in East Germany responded to the putsch with thousands of works of art. These works disrupt Western expectations for East German art, which was far more modern and complex than the term “socialist realism” might suggest. They also offer insight into the horrors of the putsch and remind us that there have been—and can once again be—alternatives to neoliberal capitalism. In addition to creating prints, paintings, and sculptures, East German artists organized solidarity events to raise money for Chile and spearheaded a book project with artists from sixteen communist and capitalist countries to document the event and losses suffered. This article ultimately shows that communist visual culture can serve as a model for art as an activist practice.

scholarly journals Going Beyond Panaceas: The Diversity of Land Observatory Forms in Africa

Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quentin Grislain ◽  
Jeremy Bourgoin ◽  
Ward Anseeuw ◽  
Perrine Burnod ◽  
Eva Hershaw ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Video Conferencing ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Informed Decision ◽  
Informed Decision Making ◽  
Information Production ◽  
Dynamic Data ◽  
Ex Post ◽  
Ex Ante

In recent decades, mechanisms for observation and information production have proliferated in an attempt to meet the growing needs of stakeholders to access dynamic data for the purposes of informed decision-making. In the land sector, a growing number of land observatories are producing data and ensuring its transparency. We hypothesize that these structures are being developed in response to the need for information and knowledge, a need that is being driven by the scale and diversity of land issues. Based on the results of a study conducted on land observatories in Africa, this paper presents existing and past land observatories on the continent and proposes to assess their diversity through an analysis of core dimensions identified in the literature. The analytical framework was implemented through i) an analysis of existing literature on land observatories, ii) detailed assessments of land observatories based on semi-open interviews conducted via video conferencing, iii) fieldwork and visits to several observatories, and iv) participant observation through direct engagement and work at land observatories. We emphasize that the analytical framework presented here can be used as a tool by land observatories to undertake ex-post self-evaluations that take the observatory’s trajectory into account, or in the case of proposed new land observatories, to undertake ex-ante analyses and design the pathway towards the intended observatory.

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