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51. Multilateral Arms Control and the Challenge of North Korea

Author:
Chung-in Moon
Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
The North Korean problem is composed of two inter-related issues, namely nuclear weapons and missiles. The current quasi-crisis on the Korean peninsula has resulted mainly from disputes over North Korea's nuclear weapons development that involves three dimensions. The first dimension is the suspicion on its past possession of nuclear warheads (one or two) before the signing of the Geneva Agreed Framework (Agreed Framework) in 1994. The second one centers on present nuclear issues related to reprocessing of 8,000 spent fuel rods stored in water pond and manufacturing and exports of plutonium as well as production of additional nuclear warheads, which were previously frozen by the 1994 Agreed Framework. The third dimension is the future nuclear problem associated with the development of highly enriched uranium (HEU) program. The United States claims that North Korea admitted its existence during its special envoy, James Kelly's visit to Pyongyang in October 2002.
Topic:
Security and Arms Control and Proliferation
Political Geography:
Geneva, Israel, and North Korea

52. Is South Asian Nuclear Politics Different?

Author:
Rajesh Basrur
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
The central question before us is whether it is appropriate for South Asians to learn from the US-Soviet experience of the Cold War. This raises other questions: Are the two sets of relationships comparable? Is there in South Asia a "cold war" essentially similar to the Cold War? Should the theoretical lenses we use for both sets be the same? Can we learn from the one about the other? Is the thinking and practice relating to nuclear weapons in the two sets comparable?
Topic:
Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
Political Geography:
United States, South Asia, and Soviet Union

53. The Social Sciences in Transition: The Case of Central and Eastern Europe

Author:
Elzbieta Matynia
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
The biggest challenge in trying to make sense of the social sciences in Central and Eastern Europe today is that the very condition of the societies in question is "transitional." From the moment the Poles negotiated the beginning of their own transition in April have been dealing with a part of the world in which all aspects of social, political and economic life are in constant motion. Some elements of the reports we commissioned on the status of the social sciences in various countries of the region are already obsolete; by the time the overview presented in this volume goes to press, it too will have become a case study in what Timothy Garton Ash calls the "history of the present."
Topic:
Education
Political Geography:
Europe and Eastern Europe

54. Assessing Scholarly Communication in the Developing World: It Takes More Than Bytes

Author:
David Block
Publication Date:
01-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
STUDIES of scholarly communication in Western Europe and North America describe a world in crisis. (Borgman, 2000.) By the early 1990s, the cost of print journals had reached a level that discouraged their purchase by even the richest institutions, and digital editions of these works, a feature of the next decade, raised the ante higher still. Copyright, the legally-enforced ownership of ideas in some fixed form, has become more contentious in a digital realm, which potentially makes unauthorized usage as simple as "copy and paste." And, finally, while archiving scholarly publications has been difficult in the medium of acidic paper, it has become even more problematic in electronic form where the data themselves, the media that hold them and the computer programs that make them intelligible are all subject to decay or obsolescence. This triumvirate—spiraling information costs, control of information and its preservation for succeeding generations—constitutes the developed world's central focus for research and planning in scholarly communication. (Atkinson, 2000. NINCH).
Topic:
Development, Education, International Cooperation, Science and Technology, and Third World
Political Geography:
North America and Western Europe

55. International Scholarly Collaboration: Lessons From the Past

Publication Date:
01-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
Scholarly collaboration is not a new activity. It is embedded in the institutional framework of modern research universities, implicit in the acknowledgments of every scholarly monograph, and takes place all the time, across all kinds of boundaries. Yet we are a long way from understanding the range of phenomena captured by the term "scholarly collaboration" in a systematic way. If, as most observers expect, the scale and extent of international scholarly collaboration will increase substantially in the future, then a fuller understanding of collaboration as a field of social action is long overdue. This report is the result of a collective step toward that end.
Topic:
Development, Education, and International Cooperation

56. Ideas, Culture and Political Analysis Workshop

Author:
Thomas Risse, Sarah Mendelson, Neil Fligstein, Jan Kubik, Jeffrey T. Checkel, Consuelo Cruz, Kathleen McNamara, Sheri Berman, Frank Dobbin, Mark Blyth, Ken Pollack, George Steinmetz, Daniel Philpott, Gideon Rose, Martha Finnemore, Kathryn Skikkink, Marie Gottschalk, John Kurt Jacobsen, and Anna Seleny
Publication Date:
05-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
The last decade or so has witnessed a resurgence in scholarship employing ideational and cultural factors in the analysis of political life. This scholarship has addressed political phenomena across a variety of national and international settings, with studies of European politics being particularly well represented. For example, the work of scholars like Peter Hall (1993), Peter Katzenstein (1996), Ronald Inglehart (1997), Robert Putnam (1994) and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen (1995) has improved our understandings of European polities, societies and economies. Yet despite a recent rise in interest, ideational and cultural explanations still meet with skepticism in many quarters of the discipline. Some scholars doubt whether non-material factors like ideas or culture have independent causal effects, and others, who accept that such factors might matter, despair of devising viable ways of analyzing their impact on political life.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, International Relations, Security, Democratization, Economics, Government, Human Rights, International Cooperation, Nationalism, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Middle East, France, and Latin America

57. Networks in International Capacity Building: Cases from Sub-Saharan Africa

Author:
Kenneth Prewitt
Publication Date:
01-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Social Science Research Council
Abstract:
Networking is ubiquitous, Networks are not. By networks we have in mind professional and scientific collaborations unrestricted by geography—a group of scholars taking advantage of improved mobility and communication to work across institutional and national boundaries. This report draws from a conference that inquired into the role of networks in research, training and institution-strengthening in sub-Saharan Africa—terms commonly, if loosely, associated with "capacity building." Although the conference focused on networks that were making headway toward their declared goals, the purpose was not to celebrate success stories. It was to be analytic, with the intention of identifying generic questions and preliminary answers, particularly lessons of use to those involved in building, maintaining, strengthening and funding professional networks.
Topic:
Development and Third World
Political Geography:
Africa