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Redefining Regional Power in International Relations
This book examines the concept of regional power in international relations. Using the emerging powers of India and South Africa as the case studies, it explores how regional powers simultaneously differ and share common features.
The book develops a method to classify and evaluate different types of regional powers and applies this typology to contemporary case studies of India and South Africa. Regional power is often expected to have a positive influence on region-specific problems of conflict, economic deprivation and political instability. In reality, an ‘achievement-expectations gap’ can be seen in many regional powers, which can be analysed and understood through observable variation in regional power. The author discovers that in addition to the management of the internal regional order, regional powers have to establish individuality whilst fitting into the global international environment, altering both regional dynamics and creating variance in the level of control within the region. Elucidating concepts and definitions, this book is an accessible and in-depth study that both introduces key concepts and provides a framework for the future study of regional power in international relations.
Redefining Regional Power in International Relations will be of interest to students and scholars of regionalism and international relations.
eBook
Sharing the burden? : NATO and its second-tier powers
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO's middle powers have been pressured into shouldering an increasing share of the costs of the transatlantic alliance. In Sharing the Burden? Benjamin Zyla rejects the claim that countries like Canada have shirked their responsibilities within NATO. Using a range of measures that go beyond troop numbers and defense budgets to include peacekeeping commitments, foreign economic assistance, and contributions to NATO's rapid reaction forces and infrastructure, Zyla argues that, proportionally, Canada's NATO commitments in the 1990s rivaled those of the alliance's major powers. At the same time, he demonstrates that Canadian policy was driven by strong normative principles to assist failed and failing states rather than a desire to ride the coattails of the United States, as is often presumed. An important challenge to realist theories, Sharing the Burden? is a significant contribution to the debate on the nature of alliances in international relations. --Provided by publisher.
Book
Blue-Chip Black
As Karyn R. Lacy's innovative work in the suburbs of Washington, DC, reveals, there is a continuum of middle-classness among blacks, ranging from lower-middle class to middle-middle class to upper-middle class. Focusing on the latter two, Lacy explores an increasingly important social and demographic group: middle-class blacks who live in middle-class suburbs where poor blacks are not present. These \"blue-chip black\" suburbanites earn well over fifty thousand dollars annually and work in predominantly white professional environments. Lacy examines the complicated sense of identity that individuals in these groups craft to manage their interactions with lower-class blacks, middle-class whites, and other middle-class blacks as they seek to reap the benefits of their middle-class status.
eBook
When right makes might : rising powers and world order
\"Analyzes the question of whether great powers choose to accommodate, contain, or confront a rising power depends on the legitimacy of the challenger's expansionist aims\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
State Practices and Zionist Images
Although the Israeli state subscribes to the principles of administrative fairness and equality for Jews and Arabs before the law, the reality looks very different. Focusing on Arab land loss inside Israel proper and the struggle over development resources, this study explores the interaction between Arab local authorities, their Jewish neighbors, and the agencies of the national government in regard to developing local and regional industrial areas. The author avoids reduction to simple models of binary domination, revealing instead a complex, multi-dimensional field of relations and ever-shifting lines of political maneuver and confrontation. He examines the prevailing concept of ethnic traditionalism and argues that the image of Arab traditionalism erects imaginary boundaries around the Arab localities, making government incursion disappear from view, while underpinning and rationalizing the exclusion of the Arab towns from development planning. Moreover, he shows how images of environmental protection mesh with and support such exclusion. The study includes a chronology of events, tables, maps, and photographs.
This revised paperback edition with a new epilogue brings accounts of Arab land loss and struggles for economic development up to date. The author also deals with the challenges of life and research in Israel and examines the possibilities of sharing the land as the homeland of both Jews and Palestinians.
eBook
When Right Makes Might
Why do great powers accommodate the rise of some challengers, while others are contained and confronted, even at the risk of war? The book proposes that when faced with a new challenger, great powers will attempt to divine its intentions, to determine whether that rising power poses a revolutionary threat to the system, or whether it can be incorporated into the existing international order. In departing from conventional rationalist and realist theories of international relations, the author argues that established powers come to understand a rising power’s intentions by observing how it justifies its behavior through diplomacy and its claims on the way it exerts its power. Diplomatic rhetoric, therefore, plays a critical role in the formation of grand strategy. Legitimacy is not marginal to international relations; it is essential to the practice of power politics.
eBook
The hippocampus as the switchboard between perception and memory
Adaptive memory recall requires a rapid and flexible switch from external perceptual reminders to internal mnemonic representations. However, owing to the limited temporal or spatial resolution of brain imaging modalities used in isolation, the hippocampal–cortical dynamics supporting this process remain unknown. We thus employed an object-scene cued recall paradigm across two studies, including intracranial electroencephalography (iEEG) and high-density scalp EEG. First, a sustained increase in hippocampal high gamma power (55 to 110 Hz) emerged 500 ms after cue onset and distinguished successful vs. unsuccessful recall. This increase in gamma power for successful recall was followed by a decrease in hippocampal alpha power (8 to 12 Hz). Intriguingly, the hippocampal gamma power increase marked the moment at which extrahippocampal activation patterns shifted from perceptual cue toward mnemonic target representations. In parallel, source-localized EEG alpha power revealed that the recall signal progresses from hippocampus to posterior parietal cortex and then to medial prefrontal cortex. Together, these results identify the hippocampus as the switchboard between perception and memory and elucidate the ensuing hippocampal–cortical dynamics supporting the recall process.
Journal Article
Are intrinsic neural timescales related to sensory processing? Evidence from abnormal behavioral states
•EEG resting-state shows a hierarchy of intrinsic neural timescales.•Sensory deficits as in disorders and alterations of consciousness lead to prolonged intrinsic neural timescales.•Clinical conditions with motor deficits do not show changes in intrinsic neural timescales.
The brain exhibits a complex temporal structure which translates into a hierarchy of distinct neural timescales. An open question is how these intrinsic timescales are related to sensory or motor information processing and whether these dynamics have common patterns in different behavioral states. We address these questions by investigating the brain's intrinsic timescales in healthy controls, motor (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, locked-in syndrome), sensory (anesthesia, unresponsive wakefulness syndrome), and progressive reduction of sensory processing (from awake states over N1, N2, N3). We employed a combination of measures from EEG resting-state data: auto-correlation window (ACW), power spectral density (PSD), and power-law exponent (PLE). Prolonged neural timescales accompanied by a shift towards slower frequencies were observed in the conditions with sensory deficits, but not in conditions with motor deficits. Our results establish that the spontaneous activity's intrinsic neural timescale is related to the neural capacity that specifically supports sensory rather than motor information processing in the healthy brain.
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Journal Article
Effect of polygenic risk scores on depression in childhood trauma
Research on gene × environment interaction in major depressive disorder (MDD) has thus far primarily focused on candidate genes, although genetic effects are known to be polygenic.
To test whether the effect of polygenic risk scores on MDD is moderated by childhood trauma.
The study sample consisted of 1645 participants with a DSM-IV diagnosis of MDD and 340 screened controls from The Netherlands. Chronic or remitted episodes (severe MDD) were present in 956 participants. The occurrence of childhood trauma was assessed with the Childhood Trauma Interview and the polygenic risk scores were based on genome-wide meta-analysis results from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium.
The polygenic risk scores and childhood trauma independently affected MDD risk, and evidence was found for interaction as departure from both multiplicativity and additivity, indicating that the effect of polygenic risk scores on depression is increased in the presence of childhood trauma. The interaction effects were similar in predicting all MDD risk and severe MDD risk, and explained a proportion of variation in MDD risk comparable to the polygenic risk scores themselves.
The interaction effect found between polygenic risk scores and childhood trauma implies that (1) studies on direct genetic effect on MDD gain power by focusing on individuals exposed to childhood trauma, and that (2) individuals with both high polygenic risk scores and exposure to childhood trauma are particularly at risk for developing MDD.
Journal Article