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231. Terrorism's Financial Lifeline: Can It be Severed?

Author:
Kimberley L. Thachuk
Publication Date:
05-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Abstract:
To operate effectively, transnational terrorists and criminals need ready access to money and the ability to maneuver it quickly and secretly across borders. On a large scale, such money maneuvers can ripple across entire regions, embroiling global markets and threatening vital American economic interests as well as destabilizing other countries politically. The ability to move vast quantities of wealth rapidly and anonymously across the globe—sometimes combining modern-day wire transfers, faxes, and Internet connections with centuriesold practices, such as the hawala, of personal connections and a handshake—gives terrorist and criminal networks a strategic advantage over many states. Yet it also might be their vulnerability.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Economics, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
America

232. The Measure of India: What Makes Greatness?

Author:
Joydeep Mukherji
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
I join you tonight to consider India on the scales of greatness. In other words, to ask: by what standards do people regard a state as great? And how does India conform to those standards? I must say at the outset, that these are not questions on which I personally would fixate. Greatness in terms of power is not a standard that moves me as a human being. My impulse when looking at countries is to say, “what's so great about being great?” I think a country's taxi drivers tell us more about it than the number of nuclear bombs it might possess. The number of Ph.D. holders, engineers, and writers driving taxicabs in a country, and where they came from, tells me a lot about the country we're in and the country from whence they came. The taxi driver in Iran who complains bitterly about the ayatollahs and wants to talk about pop music and freedom, tells me something about Iran. The engineer who fled Nigeria for the opportunity possible in America, even if it's driving a cab, tells me something about Nigeria and the U.S. Great power has little to do with it.
Topic:
Economics and Industrial Policy
Political Geography:
America, Iran, South Asia, India, and Nigeria

233. The Gallic Rooster Crows Again: The Paradox of French Anti-Americanism

Author:
Richard Kuisel
Publication Date:
06-2001
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
What might a historical perspective provide toward understanding the current bout of bashing Uncle Sam? There is a pattern to Gallic anti-Americanism. It peaks, as it did in the 1950s and again today, when the U.S. postures as a socio-economic model and threatens a cultural invasion. But there are also new features to contemporary attacks on America. What has intensified French perceptions of American domination stems from changes within France as the nation pursues competitiveness and openness. These changes have brought a perception among the French that they have lost an idealized construction of "France" and are increasingly powerless over forces like globalization and European integration. Globalization in particular magnifies the presence and power of America. Anxiety about loss is transferred to an America that appears intrusive and selfserving. Neo-anti-Americanism is a form of retaliation—retaliation against a seemingly omnipotent United States which tries to impose the self-serving process of globalization on France; retaliation against our obstructionist, expendable and unreliable hegemony in international politics; and retaliation against American promotion of our flawed social model, which challenges a traditional construction of Frenchness.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Europe

234. Protest and Collaboration: Transnational Civil Society Networks and the Politics of Summitry and Free Trade in the Americas

Author:
Patricio Korzeniewicz and William C. Smith
Publication Date:
09-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
This paper examines the politics of hemispheric integration exemplified by the Summits of the Americas held in Miami (1994), Santiago (1998), and Quebec (2001) and the negotiations over the creation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Our basic premise is that political and institutional arrangements articulating state, society, and economy in Latin America are currently in the midst of a process of reconfiguration unleashed by the acceleration of globalization and attendant crises of state-centered development strategies. More specifically, we believe the Americas are witnessing the emergence of an ensemble of new social and political actors, among the most salient of which are new social movements and civil society organizations (CSOs), organized in networks operating at the domestic, regional, and global levels.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, America, South America, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, North America, and Miami

235. Preferential Treatment in Trade: Is There Any Room Left in the Americas?

Author:
Fernando Masi
Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The North-South Center, University of Miami
Abstract:
This paper evaluates the costs and benefits of changes brought by the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) on special and differential treatment (S); shows how these changes affected the new regional integration processes in the American continent; and examines whether this issue is still a priority of developing countries' agendas. Large concessions offered by developing countries in exchange for access to markets automatically led to “trade graduation.” Thus, S has lost its former significance among developing countries. Moreover, nonreciprocal treatment was retained for least developed countries, which do not even enjoy this type of treatment under the so-called “new trade-related issues” of services, investment, and intellectual property rights.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States, America, South America, Latin America, Central America, Caribbean, and North America

236. Reducing Urban and Industrial Pollution in India

Author:
Donald G. McClelland and Mark Hodges
Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United States Agency for International Development
Abstract:
An emerging industrial power, India faces major pollution problems. USAID has undertaken to help abate the release of emissions and effluents into the air and water using American technologies—thus helping U.S. firms as well. Significant success has been observed, but lack of solid baseline data obscures the actual extent of USAID's role.
Topic:
Economics, Environment, Human Welfare, and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
America, South Asia, India, and Asia

237. The Effects of Convergence: Internationalisation and the Changing Distribution of Net Value Added in Large German Firms

Author:
Anke Hassel and Jürgen Beyer
Publication Date:
11-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The paper examines whether and how the increasing internationalisation of firms impacts on the operation of a co-ordinated market economy. Following the tenets of agency theory it assumes that an emerging market for corporate control changes the monitoring mechanisms that oversee management. Since Anglo- American forms of monitoring are usually associated with a higher return for investors compared with Continental European firms, a change in the distribution of the net value added of firms is expected. Using financial data on 59 large German companies, the paper shows that the emerging convergence of German corporate governance practices to Anglo-American standards has had a weak, but significant, impact on the distribution of net value added. This is in contrast to the impact of the internationalisation of firms on product markets, which does not have an effect. Since the market for corporate control is, however, still underdeveloped in Germany, the main effects remain to be seen.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
America, Europe, and Germany

238. An Emerging Market for Corporate Control? The Mannesmann Takeover and German Corporate Governance

Author:
Gregory Jackson and Martin Hopner
Publication Date:
04-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
Corporate governance in Germany is often described as a bank-oriented, blockholder or stakeholder model where markets for corporate control have not played a significant role. This case study of the hostile takeover of Mannesmann AG by Vodafone in 2000 demonstrates how systemic changes during the 1990s have eroded past institutional barriers to takeovers. These changes include the strategic reorientation of German banks from the “house bank” to investment banking, the growing consensus and productivity orientation of employee codetermination and corporate law reform. A significant segment of German corporations are now subjected to a market for corporate control. The implications for the German model are examined in light of both claims by agency theory for the efficiency of takeover markets, as well as the institutional complementarities within Germany's specific “variety” of capitalism. While the efficiency effects are questionable, the growing pressures for German corporations to achieve the higher stock market valuations of their Anglo-American competitors threaten the distributional compromises underlying the German model.
Topic:
Economics, Emerging Markets, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
America and Germany

239. At The Bottom Of The Bush-Mubarak Agenda? The Slow Pace Of Political Reform In Egypt

Author:
Amy W. Hawthorne
Publication Date:
04-2001
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Abstract:
Urgent regional matters — such as Iraq and the Arab–Israeli peace process — will dominate the agenda during Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's visit to Washington this week, while Egypt's transition to a free-market economy and U.S.– Egypt trade ties will also receive attention. Egyptian domestic politics, however, will register little, aside from U.S. frustrations over anti-Semitism in the Egyptian press and concern about the status of Egypt's Coptic Christians. Although the regime appears quite stable, having secured a "victory" in its 1990s conflict with violent extremist groups, the state of political reform in Egypt, America's most important Arab ally, merits a closer look. That is because Egypt's long-term economic reform — in which Washington has invested so much — can succeed only if accompanied by meaningful political liberalization.
Topic:
Security, Economics, Human Rights, Political Economy, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, America, Washington, Middle East, Israel, Arabia, and Egypt

240. President Clinton's Visit to Vietnam

Author:
Frederick Z. Brown
Publication Date:
11-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Asia Society
Abstract:
On November 17, 2000, President Bill Clinton begins a four-day state visit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the first visit ever by an American president to the unified country of Vietnam. He will be accompanied by Mrs. Clinton, daughter Chelsea, and several cabinet secretaries, most likely state, commerce, health and human services, veterans affairs, and the United States Trade Representative (USTR). A congressional delegation is also planned.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Democratization, Economics, Human Rights, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, America, Vietnam, and Southeast Asia