Ecological Footprint Calculator Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Ecological Footprint Calculator - Assignment Example beef from a properly grazed cow can both be qualified as meat, but their production, development and preparation all have serious impacts on one’s ecological footprint. The quiz also lacked clarity at certain points. One question had to do with how much trash I generate. This question is easy to answer at first, but after some thought it actually becomes quite difficult. Do items recycled and composted count as trash? The quiz does not answer this question. Nor are there further questions relating composting and recycling. I can only cite the example of my own family. In our case, my mother would frequently refer to recyclable containers as trash, even though we used the environmentally friendly method to dispose of them. If other Americans use the same language as was used in my household, this particular question may produce skewed results and leave people with a very inaccurate perception of their ecological footprint. Ultimately the quiz does what it’s supposed to do. The Footprint Network is an organization designed to promote environmentally friendly lifestyles. It does this by giving you a result that projects your ecological footprint (however inaccurate it may be) and then listing ways you can improve your lifestyle to better the entire planet. However, it would be more useful for the website to give you a more accurate appraisal of your environmental situation. These are problems that could easily be fixed by introducing a new level of clarity to the questions

Economic Growth Determinants And Models | Literature Review

Economic Growth Determinants And Models | Literature Review Introduction Economic growth is one of the most important fields in economics. Since sustained economic growth is the most important determinant of living standards, there is no more important issue challenging the research efforts of economists than to understand the causes of economic growth. Human capital has been identified as a key stimulus of economic growth. In fact, it can never be overemphasized that human capital is the engine of growth of an economy. No nation can develop beyond its investment in education in particular. Growth economists in affirmation have explained that the differences in the per capita income of countries cannot be explained in isolation from the differences in human capital development. Health and education are both components of human capital and contributors of human welfare. Numerous economists research their relevance in the economic growth and tried to incorporate human capital in the growth model. While some researchers take a Keynesian route and stress on the demand factors, other researchers follow the neoclassical route and emphasis the role of factor supplies in growth. Human Capital in the form of education It is equally important to effectively and efficiently measure the human capital with the perceiving importance of human capital. Since, human capital is considered as a synonym of knowledge embedded in all levels such as an individual, an organizations and a nation, education is the primary element in the measurement of human capital. Some economists attempted to measure the stock of human capital utilizing â€Å"school enrollment rates† as a proxy of human capital. Through the study of 129 countries for a time period 1960 to 1985, Barro and Lee, 1993 concluded that female education stimulates the acquisition of human capital through children. A fact is in accordance with the findings of De Tray, 1773 and Becker and Lewis, 1973. Barro and Lee reconcile their findings with the conclusion of De Long and Summers (1992) with the belief that â€Å"perhaps the true key is to have educated women working with machines†. (Barro and Lee, 1991, p29). However, the study of Kyriacou in 1991 concluded a negative and insignificant correlation between years of schooling in labour force and future growth. One of the possible explanations for this result is the link between human capital and subsequent growth of technology was ignored. The method of using school enrollment rates is criticized as student’s effec tiveness can be recognized after participating in production activities. Nehru, Swanson, and Dubey (1993) attempted to measure relationship between human capital and studentsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã… ¸ â€Å"accumulated years of schooling† in the employable age as educational attainment. Their approach to measure human capital is similar to that of Lau, Jairison, and Louat( 1991), Psacharopolous and Arriagada (1986,1992). The results show a positive relationship between education stock and its influence on income per capita. They also concluded that there is a high correlation between education stock and other human capital indicators and hence justify the usage of this variable as a proxy for human capital. Nevertheless, they note that there is a problem with the estimates of education stock due to repeaters and dropout rates. The weakness in the study pertains to education stock estimation as they are â€Å"based on sparse data of uneven quality†( Nehru, Swanson, and Dubey,1993, p8). Romer (1990) suggested the ratio between skilled-adults and total ad ults to measure the stock of human capital in the national economy. Another approach to measure human capital is through the returns which an individual obtains from a labour market throughout education investment. Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin (1995) defines that aggregate human capital is the sum of quality adjustment of each individual’s labor force, and presents the stock of human capital utilizing an individual’s income. Their belief was that the â€Å"quality of a person would be related to the wage rate he receives in the marketplace†( Mulligan and Sala-i-Martin, 1995, p.2). This measure called the Labour –Income –Based is a measurement of human capital calculated through wage rate. Though this study, it was noted that the usage of average years of schooling as a measurement could be misleading since economists could interpret the increase in income in 1980s independent of human capital accumulation due to the dispersion of average years of schooling. Human capital in the form of Health A large body of literature has established that investment in education pay off in the form of higher future earnings. However, the demerit of the conventional measurement of the human capital is the disregard to qualitative benefits of human capital such as health, fertility rate, child mortality. Given the importance of â€Å"health capital† for education and earnings (Grossman, 2000; Case, Fertig, and Paxson, 2005; Currie and Madrian, 1999; Smith, 1999), it is possible that poor health has an impact on education and hence on economic status. Many health shocks can affect human capital and productivity, both in the short-run (Strauss and Thomas, 1998; Currie and Stabile, 2006) and the long-run (Cunha and Heckman, 2007; Currie and Hyson, 1999)( Joshua Graff Zivin and Matthew Neidell, 2013). The World Health Organization’s Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (2001) claims the following. â€Å"Improving the health and longevity of the poor is an end in itself, a fun damental goal of economic development. But it is also a means to achieving the other development goals relating to poverty reduction. The linkages of health to poverty reduction and long-term economic growth are powerful, much stronger than is generally understood.† Despite the importance of health capital, the empirical literature of the effects of health on economic growth is relatively thin. Recent experimental or quasi-experimental studies, such as Thomas and Frankeberg (2002) and Thomas et al. (2003) have found that specific health sector interventions help recipients raise earnings significantly, and general indicators of health and nutrition status are significant predictors of economic success. At macroeconomic level, several researches support the positive contribution of health on economic growth. Barro (1996b), Bloom and Canning (2003), Bloom, Canning, and Sevilla (2004) and Gyimah-Brempong and Wilson (2004) find that health capital indicators have desirable influence on aggregate output. For the countries in their sample, about one-fourth of economic growth was attributable to improvements in health capital, and improvements in health conditions equivalent to one more year of life expectancy are associated with higher growth of up to 4 percentage points per year. The following table summarises the finding of macroeconomic studies with health. Source: J. Hartwig / Journal of Macroeconomics 32 (2010) 314–325 According to Weil (2007, p. 1295 and 2005, pp. 153–161), health’s positive effect on GDP is strongest among poor countries. The existing evidence on whether health capital formation has an impact on economic growth gives a mixed response. Some papers such as Heshmati (2001), Rivera and Currais (1999a, 1999b, 2003, 2004) accept the significance of health capital formation for economic growth in OECD countries. However, Knowles and Owen (1995, 1997) as well as McDonald and Roberts (2002) reject the hypothesis that life expectancy is a statistically significant explanatory variable for productivity growth in high income countries. IN fact, Bhargava et al. (2001) and Acemoglu and Johnson (2007) estimated a negative effect of adult survival rate on economic growth for US, France and Switzerland. Some studies have associated fertility rate and child mortality with human capital. The best known study between population growth and development is Kuznets (1967). His study found a positive correlation between growth rates of population and income per capita within broad country groupings, which he interpreted as evidence of a lack of a negative causal effect of population growth on income growth. However, Kelley (1988) found no correlation between population growth and growth of income per capita, and similarly no relationship between population growth and saving rates. Summarizing many other studies, he concluded that the evidence documenting a negative effect of population growth on economic development was weak or nonexistent. Becker et al. (1990) associated endogenous fertility and a rising rate of return on human capital as the stock of human capital increases. Their analysis discusses the importance of investment of human capital and the impact of family sizes and birth rates. They concluded that â€Å"societies with limited human capital choose large families and invest little in each member; those with abundant human capital do the opposite † ( Becker et al., 1990, p.35). Weil et al.(2012) found that a reduction in fertility rate will increase GDP per capita income by an economically significant amount. This result is similar to the findings of Bloom and Canning (2008) who have regressed the growth rate of income per capita on the growth rate of the working-age fraction of the population, and have gotten a positive and significant coefficient. The high growth of working age fraction is the result of fertility reductions; it can be seen as showing the economic benefits of reduced fertility. Growth Models Being one of the most important determinants of living standards, economic growth is among the most important issue challenging the research efforts of economists. Many adopted the neoclassical growth approach to study economic growth. The neoclassical growth model emphasizes the role of factor supplies in growth as it seeks to undermine the long-run economic growth rate determinant through the accumulation of factor inputs such as physical capital and labour. Over time, human capital was introduced in the growth model. The concept of capital in the neoclassical model has been broadened from physical goods to include human capital in the form of education, training and experience. In the early 1960s, Schultz initiated the human capital revolution in economic thought. He claimed that â€Å"This knowledge and skill are in great part the product of investment and, combined with other human investment, predominantly account for the productive superiority of the technically advanced countries. To omit them in studying economic growth is like trying to explain Soviet ideology without Marx.†(Schultz, 1961, p.3). Exogenous growth model In general, there are two basic frameworks that seek to understand the relationship between human capital and economic growth. The first approach is through the exogenous growth model adopted by Nelson and Phelps (1966). The exogenous growth model has its origin form the Solow growth model. The crux of this model is the aggregate production function written in the general form: Y = F (A, K, L), Where output is explained as being a function of technology, A in addition to capital (K) and labour (L). In 1957, after a study of 40 years of growth, Robert Solow concluded that â€Å"it is possible to argue that about one-eighth of the total increase is traceable to increased capital per man hour, and the remaining seven-eighths to technical change† (Solow 1957, p316). The Solow growth model assumes a constant growth rate of productivity, g Y = A0 egt KÃŽ ± L1-ÃŽ ±. This implies that the growth in income in income is determined by productivity growth, g and growth of capital per worker. However, Solow left technological progress unspecified. Moreover, the model assumption of market competitiveness, constant returns to scale lead to further study of the model. In his seminal paper, Nelson and Phelps (1966) related how level of human capital stock is an indirect determinant of economic growth. They concluded that â€Å"the usual, straightforward insertion of some index of educational attainment in the production function may constitute a gross misspecification of the relation between education and the dynamics of production.† (Nelson and Phelps, 1966, p.75) They believe that stock of human capital determines the economic capacity of a nation to innovate, which in turn lead to economic growth. Education and training facilitate the implementation and usage of new techniques makes an economy technologically progressive and more productive. Henceforth, incentives to innovate and market structures necessary for research and development have become important in theories for growth. The Schumpeterian growth literature revived this doctrine. The Schumpeterian theory explains that â€Å"current innovators exert positive knowledge spillovers on subsequent innovators as in other innovation-based models, but where current innovators also drive out previous technologies-, generates predictions and explains facts about the growth process that could not be accounted for by other theories.†(Aghion et al, 2013, p.35) The empirical literature on technical diffusion has been growing. The role of human capital in facilitating technological is supported by Welch (1975), Bartel and Lichtenberg (1987) and Foster and Rosenzweig (1995). The significant spill-overs are documented by the survey of Griliches (1992). Benhabib and Spiegel (1994), using cross-country data, investigate the Nelson-Phelps hypothesis and conclude that technology spillovers flow from leaders to followers, and that the rate of the flow depends on levels of education. As a matter of fact, a great deal of study seeks to analyse the relationship between level of education and technological diffusion and this affects economic growth. Some examples will be Islam (1995), Temple (1999), Krueger and Lindahl (2001), Pritchett, Klenow and Rodriguez-Clare (1997), Hall and Jones (1999), Bils and Klenow (2000), Duffy and Papageorgiou (2000), and Hanushek and Kimko (2000). (Jess Benhabib and Mark M. Spiegel, 2002) Endogenous growth model The second approach is the endogenous growth model inspired by Gary Becker’s human capital theory (1964) which directly links human capital to economic growth. The basic idea behind Becker’s view is that growth is driven by human capital accumulation. Nobel laureate Robert Lucas presented an endogenous growth model in which the engine of growth is the human capital. He added â€Å"what Schultz (1963) and Becker (1964) call human capital to the model, doing so in a way that is very close technically lo similarly motivated models of Arrow (1962), Uzawa (1965)and Romer (1986)† ( Lucas, 1988. p.17). He assumed that individuals choose to allocate time to current production or schooling based on increases in productivity and wages in the future due to the current investment of time in education. Lucas model can be summarized in Y = Kß(UH)1-ß, Where H represents the current human capital stock of the individual and U is the fraction of time allocated to current production and K is the per capita stock of physical capital. Human capital growth model Over time, with numerous studies on human capital, different variables were included in the growth equation as a measurement of human capital. Drawing upon Mankiw et al. (1992), Barro (1996a, 1996b), Bassanini and Scarpetta (2001), Bloom et al. (2004) and Gyimah-Brempong and Wilson (2004), the following growth equation was modelled in the Baldacci, Clements, Gupta and Cui (2008) paper on Social Spending, Human Capital, and Growth in Developing Countries. The growth equation is based on the framework of neoclassical growth augmented by the inclusion of education capital, ed, health capital, he, investment ratio, sk and denotes the set of macro and institutional control variable such as the fiscal balance, inflation rate, trade openness, and governance that augment the baseline specification of the model. Moreover, it is assumed that there is a relationship between the initial stock and increment in human capital with per capita GDP growth, g. The baseline growth model was as follows: Where git is real capita per income growth, 1i and 1t denote the country-specific effect and period-specific effect, respectively, Ln (yit-1) is the lagged logarithm of per capita income to control for the expected reduction in growth rates as per capita incomes rise and there is convergence to steady growth rates; Skit denotes the investment ratio, Edit refers to the stock of education capital, which is proxy by the sum of the gross primary and secondary enrollment rate, Ed refers to changes in education capital, Heit refers to the stock of health capital, and he refers to changes in health capital, mit consists of control variables and uit is the error term.   Ã‚   Japanese in Brazil: Asian-zing Brazil Japanese in Brazil: Asian-zing Brazil Wendy Do   As a country of a very diverse population, Brazil has experienced the influx of a variety of races and ethnicities throughout the course of history. As a result, Brazil continues to experience extreme cultural syncretism and assimilation. Nearing the end of the nineteenth century, the world saw Brazil as a country with a high degree of miscegenation (Schwarcz 3); immigration is one of the major cause for this. From the discovery of Brazil in the 16th century to its colonization by Pedro Alvares Cabral and onward, Brazil has been a country of immigrants. One country in particular, Japan, started emigration to Brazil in the early 20th century. Most people would not expect Brazil to contain the largest Japanese immigration population. My thesis is that: Japanese immigrations initially sought relief from the Meiji Restoration and chose Brazil due to their increasing demand for laborers, but over time established a huge community which to their settlement. In this essay, I will discuss th e initial reason for the Japaneses immigration to Brazil, the impacts of these migrants, and the reaction of the Brazilians and Japanese to the migrants. This will demonstrate the impact of an Asian immigration society in Brazil and how it contributed to the diverse population due to racial formation. Before the Portuguese settled in Brazil, the majority of the population was of indigenous groups. As described in detail in Schwartzs work, when the Portuguese first arrived, they encountered various Indian groups and made an agreement where they decided that they needed to civilize the indigenous (Graham, W1D2). While the two groups of the Jesuits and the Portuguese settlers disagreed in ways to civilize the indigenous, they both believed in slavery. As indigenous groups were forced into slavery, they faced many risks including, overcrowding in their communities called aldeais and diseases that killed them at alarming rates (Graham, W1D2). Before the Portuguese arrived, the population of Indians capped around five million but by the 1950s, the population decreased to one hundred twenty thousand (Graham, W1D2). This not only led the devastation of the ingenious population, but increased the demand for labor. This trend would later contribute to the Japanese immigration to Brazil. How ever, before the Japanese, the substitution of indigenous slavery with African slave labor made its way. Brazil had a slave economy where one product dominated Brazils export for most of the slave period from 1550-1888 (Graham, W2D2). This began with the Donatorio Captaincies which were awarded by the crown in Portugal in order to protect interests in Brazil. The awards gave the Portuguese courtiers and soldiers, who bore the title of captain, to have the right of taxation, justice, administration, and the privileges to promote settlement and economic development (Schwartz 13) in Brazil. This marked the beginning of the Portuguese settlement which would evolve into plantations. The Coffee Cycle, is the period we will be focusing on, which took place from the 1830s to the 20th century. Coffee was expanding and slavery was abolished in the 1880s (Graham, W2D2) which led to a need for laborers. According to Schwarcz, from the beginning of the coffee plantations, the owners have contracted with workers in their home countries and engaging in acts such as loaning them money for travel costs, housing, or other expenses (8). With this being said, it can be noted that the Japanese were viewed more as an indentured servant, but eventually grew in status and recognition. The previous events mentioned have contributed to the diverse population in Brazil through: the indigenous already living there, the settlement of the Portuguese, the African slavery, and immigration from other countries. Many intellectuals, politicians, and cultural and economic leaders saw [] immigration as improving an imperfect nation that has been tainted by the history of Portuguese colonialism and African slavery (Lesser, 2013, 2). With the end of slavery, planters have encouraged their state and federal government to seek Europeans in order to replace their slaves in the massive coffee economy. By 1888, thousands of immigrants poured into Sao Paul (the largest group being the Italians); however, these white immigrants believed the elites of Brazil had created a system that gave them an inability to move out of low status. This created immigrant-led protests against labor and social conditions and the deportation of Italian for anarchism (Lesser, 1999, 82), so Brazil sought fo r a more submissive group. Japanese diplomat, Sho Nemoto mentioned in a later signed treaty that Brazil would be a country where Japanese immigrants could be perfectly settled and we could improve our standard of living, buy property, educate our children, and live happily' (Lesser, 1999, 82). Correlating with the Meiji governments interest in emigration of Japan, this seemed like the perfect option for the Japanese to immigrate to Brazil. The reasons for Japaneses immigration are laid out as: Brazilians needed more labor due to the abolishment of slavery, Japans Meiji government created a period of modernization where peasants become hungry and restless; the encouraged emigration in Japan, and the establishment of colonies by previous Japanese. The first reason why the Japanese migrated to Brazil was because Brazil was seeking a new labor group to fill in as laborers. They saw Japanese immigrants as a ready solution from their previous disappointment with the European replacements; in addition, this could also help foster a relationship between Japan and Brazil in relation to trading. The first Brazil-Japanese treaty was then signed in 1895, where Brazil would see a rapid increase in Japanese labor (Lesser 84). In addition between 1908 and 1941, about one-hundred ninety thousand Japanese immigrants would settle in Brazil (Lesser, 1999, 83). A ship containing the first 781 members of the newly founded Japanese community called the Kasato-Maru arrived after its fifty-one day journey from Japan in June 1908 (Lesser, 2012, 153). The results of the Japanese led the Brazilian government to later promote immigration to other Asian countries, such as China. The Japanese were described as an intelligent and energetic force and this people is amazing us with their power to assimilate everything from European civilization in letters, in science, in art, in industry and even in political institutions (Lesser, 1999, 83). The expectations of the Japanese to the Brazilians were very low, but what the Japanese contributed to this society made them realize that they were definitely not inferior. The second reason for Japanese migration was due to their expectations of Brazil. The Japanese workers felt tricked due to the belief that they would become rich. In turned, similar to previous immigrants, the Japanese revolted against the Brazilian elites. Some of them fled to Argentina, where the salary was higher; or other urban areas such as Minas-Gerais, Parana, and Sao Paulo (Lesser, 2012, 155). One Japanese boy, Riukiti Yamashiro summarized his experience in Brazil as the following: It was a lie when they said Brazil was good the emigration company lied (Lesser, 2012, 156). Japanese propaganda had led the Japanese to believe that Brazil would rich in five years and that they would be able to return home wealthy. However, this was just a proportion of the feelings that Japanese had of Brazil. The Japanese also faced a problem from their home country due to the modernization and industrialization of the Meiji period from 1868 to 1912 (Carvalho 3). Japanese sought escape from poverty, overpopulation, heavy taxes and numerous socioeconomic problems. While some Japanese immigrated to Manchuria or Korea, other fled to Australia or Hawaii. Emigration that was prohibited during the Tokugawa period (1603 1867) was solved when Japan faced these economic problems. The Japanese government gave permission to emigration companies to recruit emigrants, Brazil being the primary destination as immigrants faced strong resistance from other countries (Carvalho 4). The first group of immigrants was a failure because the Japanese rebelled against the emigration companies and deserted the population due to poor treatment and no form of payment. In addition, most had no experience in farming. However, all hope was not lost for the Japanese in Brazilians, because the Japanese would continue to enter the country for the next fifty years (Carvalho 7). The third reason was that Japanese were able to create a community within Brazil. In order to create solutions to the land and labor problems, law were established which required immigrants to come as family units (Carvalho 7) and Japanese-run colonies were allowed to be established. In addition, the Japanese did hold a more powerful protector regime than other immigrants since they were able to establish regular school schedules for children and allow adults to participate in various every day activities such as gymnastics and moral boosting (Lesser 2012 156). Schooling allowed children of the immigrants to move up into more dominant positions in Brazilian societies. In addition, foreign government-sponsored colonies allowed Japanese to be relived from the worry of landowners which allowed them to focus on settlement. This discouraged them from returning to Japan and encouraging more emigration as the success in Brazil news spread back to their home country (Lesser, 2012, 157). There were many opportunities for the Japanese to assimilate into Brazilian culture. Most Japanese arrived at a time where the acquisition of land was easy, allowing them to produce new crops such as cotton, rice and potatoes (Carvalho 8). The social structure of Japanese communities mirrored those of traditional Japanese communities where the social order also followed traditional Japanese patterns. If a Japanese were to disturb the social order, they would be [ostracized] (Carvalho 10). The Japaneses primary goal was to accumulate as much capital as possible in order to return to their country of origin, so they worked hard and saved; however, the years they spend on Brazilian soil allowed them to bring their traditions and customs. This included their practices of incense money, gosembetsu (farewell gifts), and emphasis on social relationships between children and parent and society in addition to holidays as well (Carvalho 11). Their economic and cultural success allowed them to negotiate a position in the Brazilian society to the extent where Brazilian Indians and Japanese immigrants were of the same biological stock (Lesser, 2012, 160). Japanese immigration has contributed a great deal to Brazils national identity. The Meiji era created changes in the economic structure of Japan which led to relief through emigration. At the same time, Brazilians believed that Japanese immigrations would solve the problem of rural work, yet the same result due to poor treatment led to the revolt. However, the difference of the Japanese lied in the fact that they were able to form their own communities. This led to the population being able to culturally sustain themselves in Brazil. Currently, about 1.5 million Brazilians claim Japanese descent (Lesser, 1999, 174). The Japanese migration highlights the differences in immigration to Brazil. The Japanese and their descendants are among some of the best Brazilians and the cultural attitude they developed has allowed them to move into the upper-class of society. Today, Japanese-Brazilians can be found amongst every area of Brazilian society, from politics to economy to arts and industry (Lesser, 1999, 174). Even so, the pattern of emigration and immigration differ according to the economy of Brazil. For most of the last two hundred years, Brazil has been a destination for immigration (Lesser, 1999, 190). However, even with an improved economy, Brazil has been faced with the problem of emigration rather than immigration. A statistic from 2010 shows that about four million Brazilians live abroad which means the population is slowly decreasing. Many Japanese are involved in a phenomenon called dekasegui which means working away from home which is used to those who are descendants of Japanese who migrated to Japan (Lesser,2012, 191). With the amendment to Japans Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Law in 1990, the Japanese were allows to have work visas up to the generation (Lesser, 2012, 191). This trend fluctuated for various years, for example, when Brazils economy grew strong in the 2000s and the Japanese economy weakened, the migratory trends reversed. As opposed to in the 19th century, Brazilian-Japanese immigrants believed they were temporarily migrating to Brazil to become wealthy (Lesser, 1999, 192). In conclusion, Brazil has and still is a country of immigration. Despite traditional views of Brazil as a country of mestizo and African slavery, the Japanese population outside of Japan is highest in Brazil. I chose to write this essay on the reason for Japanese immigration to Brazil because Asian immigration is typically viewed as the Chinese immigration to America in the 1800s. However, the Japanese is not a country that is really talked about. This relates to the course theme of the Racial Formation of Brazil because it discusses the reasons for the Japanese immigration and how it contributed to Brazils diverse population. Initially, the Japanese immigrations initially sought relief from the Meiji Restoration which paralleled the Brazilian need for laborers. However, the Japanese were allowed to create a settlement and community which in turned allowed for the mass emigration from Japan to Brazil. This contributed to the existing community today and despite reverse changes, Brazi l is able to add onto its extremely diverse and vast culture. Works Cited Carvalho, Daniela De. Migrants and Identity in Japan and Brazil: The Nikkeijin. 1st ed. Place of Publication Not Identified: Routledge, 2015. Print. Graham, Jessica. Arrival of Enslaved Africans. HILA 121A W1D2. Warren Lecture Hall, Rm. 2115, La Jolla. 19 Jan. 2017. Lecture. Graham, Jessica. History of Brazilian Indios. HILA 121A W2D2. Warren Lecture Hall, Rm. 2115, La Jolla. 12 Jan. 2017. Lecture. Lesser, Jeffrey. Immigration, Ethnicity, and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013. Print. Lesser, Jeffrey. Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities, and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil. (1999): Pp. 13-39 (Chapter Two); Pp. 81-94 (part of Chapter Four); Pp. 147-57 (Chapter Six).+. Duke University Press. Web. 21 Mar. 2017. Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz. Introduction. The Spectacle of the Races: Scientists, Institutions and the Race Question in Brazil, 1870-1930. New York: Hill and Wang, 1999. 3-20. Print. Schwartz, Stuart. Early Brazil: A Documentary Collection to 1700. (2010): 117-40. TED. Cambridge University Press. Web. 21 Mar. 2017.

The Death Penalty Debate Essay -- capital punishment debate

The death penalty is one of the most debated issues in the United States. It is a judicially ordered execution of a prisoner for a capital crime. There are many people who oppose the death penalty and then there are many people who support the death penalty. People who are against it think it is inhumane or it is too expensive. The people who are for the death penalty feel that it gives a chance for individuals to be accused for their wrongful acts. Each year billions of dollars are spent to sentence criminals to death. The death penalty costs $24 million dollars on average per execution (Pudlow). Since the death penalty is so expensive thirteen states have made it illegal to use the death penalty, and thirty seven states still have the death penalty. The US military and the US federal government still have the death penalty so thirty nine jurisdictions in all still uphold the death penalty to this day. This paper will examine reasons to support the death penalty and reasons to go against it and what type of crime determines whether or not you get the death penalty in America starting at colonial times. There are reasons to support the death penalty for instance it keeps people who are convicted of heinous and brutal crimes off the streets. The death penalty also keeps killers from killing again. The death penalty can also deter future criminals from committing murders (White). If felons believe that they are more likely to be arrested, convicted, and executed, they will be less inclined to commit homicides. The use of the death penalty is extremely rare since 1967 there has been one execution for every 1600 murders, or 0.06% (Hugo). There have been approximately 560,000 murders and 358 executions from 1967-1996 (Oshinsk... ...ose morale and righteous conflict among people. There is no clear answer to the resolution of this problem. Works Cited Hugo, Bedau. The Death Penalty in America. 1. 1. New York: Oxford University Press inc., 1998. 213. Print Oshinsky, David. Captial Punishment on Trial. 1. 1. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2010. 178. Print Pudlow, Jan. "Take a hard look at the real cost of the death penalty." The Florida Bar News, 13/02/2011. Web. 13 Feb 2011. . White, Deborah. "Pros and Cons of the Death Penalty." About.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Feb 2011. . Death Penalty Information Center, 11/02/2011. Web. 13 Feb 2011. .

Hotel Management: Quality, Speed, Dependability, Flexibility, and Cost Essay

(a) make sure that the way he manages the hotel is appropriate to the way it competes for business; 1. Training and development of staff 2. Planning & Staffing 3. Marketing & Service innovations 4. Operations and management improvement 5. Welfare and motivation to employees (b) implement any change in strategy; (10 marks) (c) develop his operation so that it drives the long-term strategy of the hotel. (10 marks) 2. What questions might Wernie ask to judge whether his operation is a Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3, or Stage 4 operations on Hayes and Wheelwright’s scale of excellence? (20 marks) 3. The case describes how quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost impact on the hotel’s external customers. Explain how each of these performance objectives might have internal benefits. (50 marks) Speed Speed means do thing fast. Speed means fast response to requirements of external customers or new conditions, speedy decision making and speedy movement of materials and information inside the operation. It’s benefit are: 1. Speed reduces inventories – reducing i inventories mean increasing the utilization of rooms and restaurant, that fast cleaning and preparing the available rooms and dinner tables for external customers adds revenue for organization, and improving the efficient of working. 2. Speed adds flexibility – fast response adds the capability for operations to the flexibility dealing with urgent things. 3. Speed adds dependability – fast delivering for the latest information among other department of operations, such as the newest customer entrance information, available room information, adds the dependability for each internal operation’s coordination and communication. Dependability Dependability means do things on time. Dependability means well management and coordination with each operation ensuring other process. are reliable, such as delivering right material or information on time, correct foreseeing and planning the facilities, reorder and workforce. It leads to more effective operation. It effectively arranging the facilities, information, material, workforce, money and time to ensure all of them can be available at any time, saves the time to wait or to look for the other substitutes. Dependability arrangement reduces the chance of repeating input resources or some resources leaving unused increasing the cost of maintain or store fee, or labor cost. Flexibility Flexibility means change what you do. It means according different requirements or things to fast handle with, making change or decisions , flexibility arranging and coordinating operations’ work. 1. Flexibility saves resources – can prevent unnecessarily repeating planning, spending, and using resources such as time, money, workforce, to follow the traditional ways to do things done. 2. Flexibility increase speed of response – being able to give fast service for customers depends on the operation being flexible. Flexible operations speedily transfer extra skilled staff and equipment to the urgent conditions and emergencies will provide the service with other customer’s needs. Quality Quality means ‘doing things right’. For Mutiara, quality means consistently producing impeccable services, using top-class and durable materials to create the right impression and environment, and anticipating and preventing all potential problems in advance. It is benefit to make life easier inside the operation. 1. Good quality leads to stable and efficient processes that less mistake, easy for coordination for matching the standard of processes, dependable and advance equipments and tools to use adds dependability for internal customer. 2. It reduces cost for Mutiara due to it is fewer the chance to make mistakes. Redoing or correcting mistakes, or to reducing confusion or irritation for each people; second, it also reduces the labor cost. Dispelling some serious troubles or problem always needs more staff or more time to do it, thus, it results in the labor cost added, such as part-time salary, overtime compensation. The more minimizing mistakes, the more minimize the excess labor costs to pay for doing excess works; third, less mistake and using top-class and durable materials also result in saving expenditures such as maintaining fee, cost of materials resulted by mistakes, transporting fees, and other excess expenditures.

Fossil Fuels: Developing Nations Look to Future Technologies for Energy Independence

The world is currently going through paradigm shift for large scale energy production. As a growing multitude of people, globally, are plugging in, that energy comes from technologies that were first developed in the 19th century. Renewable energy projects are outpacing fossil fuels and plummeting prices is causing demand to grow exponentially. Despite efforts to improve upon the antiquated design of heat source, boil water, steam, turbine, energy, to squeeze out and clean up as much coal and oil as possible, renewable energy technology needed to be developed, mass produced, and installed on a colossal scale to overtake the cheap operations cost coal has held for over a century. Taking a systematic approach, I will bring to attention the global energy revolution that is transforming the lives for billions of people. Likewise, I will address some of the common stigmas of size, jobs production, health effects of fossil fuels, and which countries are leading the largest efforts in industrial scale renewable energy production. Lastly, I will close with energy estimations into the future and what it means for renewable energies as they inherit a larger role in the energy landscape. Leading into 2018, renewable energy is now cheaper and more cost effective than fossil fuels, which data illustrates a decade of decline in fossil fuels for developed nations, but moreover that developing nations are now leap frogging fossil fuels in spending, taking advantage of the global cheaper cost of renewable energy. Table 1 – Global Pricing and Coal to Oil Consumption and Production Source: BP, 67th Annual Review of Global Coal ConsumptionCITATION Bri18 p 36,38-39 l 1033 (British Petroleum BP 36,38-39)Pricing index for global purchasing of coal: US Dollars per ton Northwest Europe US Central Appalachian Japan Steam China Qinhuangdao Marker Price Spot Price Index Spot CIF Price Spot Price2007 88.79 49.73 95.59 61.232011 121.52 84.75 126.13 127.272012 92.50 67.28 100.30 111.892017 84.51 63.83 96.02 94.72Coal Consumption: Million tons oil equivalent2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017US 544 535 471 498 470 416 431 430 372 340 332China 1584 1609 1685 1748 1903 1927 1969 1954 1914 1889 1892India 240 259 280 290 304 330 352 387 395 405 424Japan 117 120 101 115 109 115 121 119 119 118 120Coal Production: Million tons oil equivalent2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017US 558 566 513 523 528 491 475 482 426 348 371Russia 143 149 141 151 157 168 173 176 186 194 206Australia 227 234 242 250 245 265 285 305 306 307 297China 1439 1491 1537 1665 1851 1873 1894 1864 1825 1691 1747India 210 227 246 252 250 255 255 269 281 284 294Indonesia 127 141 151 162 208 227 279 269 272 268 271Energy and politics often go hand-in-hand, and one of the stronger talking points by many politicians is the continued growth and use of coal as a primary source for power. During the 2016 US presidential elections, this was even a main talking point by then candidate Trump. But how much of that is really true? In reality, coal consumption has declined by 40% in the United States, from 2007-2017, despite this reduction, coal and natural gas still make up 64% of the energy produced in the United StatesCITATION Man16 p 529 l 1033 (Mantel 529). Table one curtesy of British Petroleum did a cost analysis and oil to coal equivalent use for all nations. The price of coal is increasing globally and regressing back to prices seen in 2012 shortly after their peak cost in 2011CITATION Bri18 p 36 l 1033 (British Petroleum BP 36). These are the top producing and consuming nations in the world for coal. Table one highlights over a ten-year period (2007-2017) the United States had declined in coal consumption and production with a small uptick in production in 2017. This uptick could factor from political figures in office and relaxation of environmental regulations and controls. While developing nations show continued growth in coal consumption with China leading by a wide margin, peak consumption happening in 2013. India is continuing year after year steady growth, this is in line with the population and infrastructure modernization efforts. Detractors for fossil fuels will argue that this is because fossil fuels are cheap to produce and operate and as such should remain the primary resource for energy production as the Earth has still hundreds of years-worth and those in the future will figure out something that works. Well a quick response to that short-sighted answer, is the sun has billions of years remaining the technology for energy extraction is here now. However, data derived from Bloomberg states: The Frankfurt School, Renewable Cost Database of the International Agency for Renewable Energy (IRENA) and UN Environment – puts fossil fuels generated energy costs in the range of $49 and $174 per MWh (Megawatt hours) in G20 energy markets in 2017. Over a comparable period, renewable energy production came in between $35 and $54 per MWhCITATION Gau18 l 1033 (Sharma). Based on the data, no matter how a public relations employee of insert [fossil fuel corporation here] tries to spin the information, renewables are considerably cheaper, and prices continue to fall. This lower cost also allows for power companies to build larger renewable energy plants or cheaper plants that pass the savings to the customer. Critics for fossil fuels despite the data and evidence that renewable energies are more cost effective will then lament about the jobs created by the fossil fuel industry and people who have no other skills and are unable to learn something new. This again is a fallacy as the fastest growing segment in the energy industry for jobs growth is renewable energy. When compared against gigawatt hour energy production the two forms of energy producing technologies show orders of magnitude difference in favor for renewable energies: The number of jobs directly created from generating electricity via solar and wind power is ~10-60 jobs/GWh. This is significantly more jobs than are created through investments in conventional energy technology such as coal (0.3 jobs/GWh) and natural gas (0.1 jobs/GWh)CITATION Emi17 l 1033 (Noordeh). The size and scope that developing nations are applying towards renewable energy projects is in the billions of dollars. China is leading the way by setting the record in 2017 with a staggering 126.6 billion USD CITATION Ren18 p 140 l 1033 (REN21 140). China's investment in renewable energy is serving two purposes though. The first as demonstrated to the world in the 2008 summer Olympics is the abysmal air quality around China's capital Beijing. Decades of manufacturing and industry growth combined with little to no environmental regulation has led to China claiming the title for poorest air quality in the world. As it stands, â€Å"Air pollution kills 3.3 million people a year world-wide, including 55,000 Americans, according to a new study by an international group of scientists† CITATION Ada15 p 961 l 1033 (Adams 961). Continuing down the path of fossil fuels will lead to environmental catastrophe, one that neither China nor the world can afford. The second reason is economies of scale. China has over a billion people and being able to sufficiently provide reliable power to them and future generations is a daunting challenge. With renewable energies being cheaper than fossil fuels, and construction-to-operations time being significantly less, China can start supplying stable energy to its population and prevent spikes in prices and demand as regions continue to grow. As China and India move to stabilize and improve their electrical grid, this affords their populations to grow from an average household annual energy consumption rate of: 1,600 KWh in 2011 to 2,000KWh in 2016. By contrast the average US household consumes roughly 12,000KWh annually in 2016 and is the world's foremost consumer of electricity only followed by the Middle East. Currently the average global household energy consumption for 2016 is 3,800 KWh.CITATION Ren18 p 169 l 1033 (REN21 169) Renewable energy production and plummeting cost has countries you might not consider building in clean energy plants in record numbers. In the Middle East there is a new energy boom happening with truly transformative scale in solar plants as they are setting the stage to provide clean power to their nation and the surrounding region for the 21st and 22nd century. The Middle East, oil capital of the world is preparing to continue to export energy as a trade after oil the runs out. Major economies of scale started in 2017 including a 200MW solar plant completed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia completed a 300MW solar plant with the announcement in January 2018 that they were planning a 3.3GW plant to be constructed and operational in one yearCITATION Ren18 p 95 l 1033 (REN21 95)! Costs per KWh for these power plants have also set records for being the cheapest price to buy. For a size comparison the average US coal power plant is 50MW, while if you wanted to achieve one gigawatt or more you needed a nuclear power plant. So where does that leave wind energy? Globally, since 2007 wind energy has grown from 94GW to 539GW in 2017 with China producing roughly 190GW of energy, blowing away its next nearest competitor the United States who produced 85GW in the same timeframe CITATION Ren18 p 109-110 l 1033 (REN21 109-110). Not to be detoured but for size and scope of renewable energy, if the wind energy produced in the United States would have been globally ranked by state, â€Å"Texas were a country, it would rank sixth worldwide for cumulative capacity. Wind power accounted for nearly 15% of electricity generation in the state during 2017†³CITATION Ren18 p 111-112 l 1033 (REN21 111-112). Across the globe counties that could not develop large enough solar arrays due to either space or location, have found remarkable success in wind turbine utilization. Many counties that have a coast line are opting for massive off-shore wind farms leveraging the ocean winds with no impact on the land mass of that country. As renewable energy prices continue to dive because of mass production, adoption, and economies of scale more developing nations will see this as a viable resource. The stigma surrounding renewable energy as a fringe or small-scale resource have been shattered and every argument from the fossil fuel industry has been debunked and laid to rest, people are realizing that it is time to move to a better, cleaner form of energy generation. Not only for themselves but for their children as well, combining to this is the ability to build anywhere and on a scale that can meet the needs of the people in that particular region. With some developing countries having little to no infrastructure and having their only option being the cheapest product, they are then left with two choices, wind or solar. This will in effect cause them to adopt and leapfrog 20th century industrial age energy production methods involving fossil fuels, while continued suppling of fossil fuels for energy production is not beneficial and leaves developing nations beholden to outside nations and that could become a national security risk. This will provide them with a freedom to choose and build how their energy infrastructure looks and in turn teaches the next generations how to improve and make it better for their kids. Works CitedBIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Jill U. â€Å"Air Pollution and Climate Change.† CQ Researcher 13 Nov 2015: pp. 961-84. library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqreserr2015111300.British Petroleum BP. â€Å"Coal – BP Statisical Review of World Energy 67th Edition.† BP Statisical Review of World Energy 67th Edition (2018): pp. 35-40. https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/en/corporate/pdf/energy-economics/statistical-review/bp-stats-review-2018-coal.pdf. 12 09 2018.Mantel, Barbra. â€Å"Coal Industry's Future.† CQ Researcher 17 June 2016 : pp. 529-52. library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/cqresrre2016061700.Noordeh, Emil. â€Å"Leapfrogging Dirty Energy in Developing Nations.† 05 11 2017. http://large.stanford.edu/. http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph240/noordeh1/. 12 09 2018.REN21. â€Å"Renewables 2018 Global Status Report.† Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (2018): pp. 95, 109-112, 140, 169. http://www.ren21.net/wp-content/uploads/20 18/06/17-8652_GSR2018_FullReport_web_final_.pdf.Sharma, Gaurav. â€Å"Production Cost Of Renewable Energy Now ‘Lower' Than Fossil Fuels.† 24 04 2018. https://www.forbes.com. https://www.forbes.com/sites/gauravsharma/2018/04/24/production-cost-of-renewable-energy-now-lower-than-fossil-fuels/#7cc5b68d379c. 12 09 2018.

Tropical Fish Essays

Tropical Fish Essays Tropical Fish Essay Tropical Fish Essay Name: Course: Lecturer: Date: Tropical Fish There are different varieties of tropical fish, and people should know the type of fish they want to keep. Keeping fish is a lot of responsibility, and the people intending to keep the fish should be aware of these responsibilities. They need to know how to set a fish tank in the right way, and how to prepare it for the fish. They also need to perform regular maintenance on the fish tank, as this will ensure healthy growth and maturity of the fish. In setting a fish tank, many people do not know the amount of water needed, or the number of fish that can thrive well in the tank. The general rule is that one should use one gallon of water per inch of fish. This creates an enabling environment for the fish to grow well, and it ensures that the fish are not crowded. Keeping fish requires a person to know the right temperature to use. Tropical fish require a temperature of between 70 and 78 degrees Fahrenheit. Many people like putting decor in their fish tanks for aesthetic purposes. They should ensure that the materials they use for such purposes do not change the quality of the water. Materials such as coral and metal change the water quality, and they should not be used for decor. When keeping tropical fish, one should be aware of the type of species to keep. Some varieties are more popular than others are because they are physically appealing and come in many different colors. Such fish are an added benefit to the home because they beautify it. Other varieties are common because they are hardy. These varieties have higher chances of surviving, and they do not require as much maintenance as some of the varieties do. A person intending to keep tropical fish should decide on the varieties he wants to keep, and should learn more about them. Some varieties of tropical fish do not get along, keeping them together lessens their chance of survival because they will fight each other and die. It is important for a person to have a clear purpose for keeping tropical fish. Some people like to keep the fish as a way of adding beauty in the home. They beautify the aquariums by adding beautiful varieties of tropical fish. Many tropical fish have different beautiful colors. The way a person handles the aquarium can also be a source of beauty. People can add different decor in the aquarium, and this enhances the beauty of the home. They display their creativity in the type of design for their aquariums, and in the different ornaments that they choose to have inside there. Some people keep fish for educational purposes. They are more likely to have different aquariums holding different varieties of fish. Children learn a lot by keeping fish, especially if they are involved in taking care of them. They learn how to be responsible as they take care of the fish in feeding and changing the water. They also learn how tropical fish live, and they learn the nature of aquatic habitats. M any children are familiar with land animals and habitat and they do not know much about aquatic life. Keeping fish enables them to learn more about aquatic life. Keeping tropical fish is an important and interesting activity. The owner has to know how to understand the responsibilities of keeping the fish. He or she has to know the right way of setting a fish tank and maintaining it. The person has to know the right species to keep. Many people prefer keeping different species, but they have to know the kind of fish that get along well. Doing so will enhance the chances of the fish surviving. People keep fish for different purposes, including adding and enhancing the beauty in their homes, and for educational purposes. In all the cases, it is important to understand the right species of fish to keep.

De creativiteit van de politieke cultuur †Nederlandse Essay

De creativiteit van de politieke cultuur – Nederlandse Essay Free Online Research Papers De creativiteit van de politieke cultuur Nederlandse Essay Als we proberen om het domein te omschrijven dat wordt bestudeerd door de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur, dan zullen in deze omschrijving de termen ‘politiek’ en ‘maatschappij’ niet mogen ontbreken. De geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur bestudeert immers de wisselwerking tussen enerzijds staat (of, inderdaad, politiek) en anderzijds maatschappij. Hierbij zijn ook informele aspecten van belang: zonder inzicht in de informele aspecten van politiek en maatschappij kunnen we nog maar weinig begrijpen van het daadwerkelijke functioneren van de politieke cultuur. Maar waarom is de bestudering van de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur zo belangrijk? Wat is het dat maakt dat dit profiel een grotere verklarende kracht heeft dan de andere profielen? Voordat ik deze vragen beantwoord moet eerst duidelijk worden dat de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur iets anders is dan de politieke filosofie – hoewel de geschiedenis van de politieke filosofie een inherent onderdeel is van de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur. De politieke filosofie houdt zich immers bezig met de beantwoording van de vraag hoe samenlevingen het beste kunnen worden ingericht. De geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur houdt zich vervolgens bezig met de bestudering van het daadwerkelijke functioneren van deze inrichting. Uit deze omschrijvingen blijkt evenwel dat de domeinen van de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur en de politieke filosofie zeer dicht bij elkaar kunnen liggen. Dat is echter niet noodzakelijkerwijs zo. In dit essay zal ik proberen aan te geven wat ik aantrekkelijk vind aan de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur. Hiertoe zal ik allereerst het bereik van dit profiel schetsen. Vervolgens zal ik aandacht schenken aan een benaderingswijze waarbij zowel wordt verwezen naar de politieke filosofie als naar de politieke realiteit. Hierbij zal ook het belang van deze benadering worden aangekaart; deze benadering geeft ons zeer specifieke inzichten in het functioneren van de historische en de hedendaagse politiek. In de conclusie zal getracht worden tot een omschrijving te komen van de aantrekkingskracht van geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur. Het bereik van de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur Wat betreft het bereik van de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur is het veelzeggend dat beoefenaars van de andere profielen aangeven dat de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur relevante antwoorden verschaft op vragen uit deze andere profielen. Laten we eerst kijken naar de studie van de internationale context. Carl von Clausewitz, de grote Pruisische strateeg, heeft geschreven dat â€Å"†¦ war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means. †¦ The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose.† Als we oorlog als een voortzetting van diplomatie zien, dan kunnen we vervolgens deze uitspraak ook van toepassing laten zijn op het functioneren van internationale organisaties. En het functioneren van deze organisaties als instrument is afhankelijk van de doelstellingen zoals die in de verschillende pol itieke centra zijn vastgesteld. Het zijn de politici die het beleid bepalen, de diplomaten voeren het slechts uit – althans, dat proberen ze. Kortom: wie ook maar iets van het doen en laten van internationale organisaties wil begrijpen zal te rade moeten gaan bij de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur. Beoefenaars van de economische en sociale geschiedenis zijn decennia lang op zoek geweest naar de heilige graal: met behulp van mathematische modellen wilden zij de verklaring voor economische groei vinden. Vandaag de dag wordt echter – ironisch genoeg als uitkomst van de zogenaamde cliometrische revolutie – gewezen op tekortkomingen van deze methode. Historisch onderzoek is echter meer dan het bestuderen van cijferreeksen. In de economische en sociale geschiedenis hebben we immers niet te maken met abstracte modellen maar met de realiteit – wiskundige modellen zijn eenvoudigweg niet opgewassen tegen de complexiteit van economische activiteiten en economische verandering. Volgens de vooraanstaande New Economic Historian Douglass C. North zullen we om deze complexiteit enigszins te kunnen begrijpen aandacht moeten schenken aan instituties en hun werking op de sociaal-economische werkelijkheid. Maar wat zijn instituties? North omschrijft instituties als †¦ the humanly devised constraints that structure political, economic and social interaction. They consist of both informal constraints (sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct) and formal rules (constitutions, laws, property rights). Throughout history, institutions have been devised by human beings to create order and reduce uncertainty in exchange. Together with the standard constraints of economics they define the choice set and therefore determine transaction and production costs and hence the profitability and feasibility of engaging in economic activity. They evolve incrementally, connecting the past with the present and the future; history in consequence is largely a story of institutional evolution in which the historical performance of economies can only be understood as a part of a sequential story. Institutions provide the incentive structure of an economy; as that structure evolves, it shapes the direction of economic change towards growth, stag nation, or decline. Als we deze instituties aan het domein van een van de profielen moeten verbinden, dan komen we onverbiddelijk uit bij de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur. De geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur is immers bij uitstek het profiel dat zich richt op de inrichting en het functioneren van onze maatschappij. Problemen en oplossingen Hoe moeten we de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur benaderen? Ankersmit weet ons in het vierde hoofdstuk van zijn in 2002 verschenen boek Political representation te vertellen dat ieder politiek systeem kan – en moet – worden beschouwd als een specifiek antwoord op een specifieke politieke uitdaging. We begrijpen het functioneren van deze politieke systemen (en dus ook instituties) dan ook beter als we nagaan hoe ze zijn ingericht om specifieke problemen op te lossen. Volgens Ankersmit kunnen we de wortels van deze benadering vinden in een artikel uit 1953 van Quentin Skinner. Dit artikel wordt wel beschouwd als de grondtekst van de Cambridge school of political theory: The essential question which we therefore confront, in studying any given text, is what its author, in writing at the time he did write for the audience he intended to address, could in practice have been intending to communicate by the utterance of this given utterance. It follows that the essential aim, in any attempt to understand the utterances themselves, must be to recover this complex intention on the part of the author. And it follows from this that the appropriate methodology for the history of ideas must be concerned, first of all, to delineate the whole range of communications which could have been conventionally performed on the given occasion by the utterance of the given utterance, and, next, to trace the relations between the given utterance and this wider linguistic context as a means of decoding the actual intention of the given writer. De gedachtegang van Skinner komt er op neer, zo stelt Ankersmit in zijn Denken over geschiedenis, dat de teksten die politieke filosofen en theoretici schreven specifieke antwoorden waren op de voor hun tijd specifieke problemen. De gelijkenis tussen de in 1953 geà ¯ntroduceerde benadering van Skinner en de bijna vijftig jaar later voorgestelde benadering van Ankersmit is inderdaad opmerkelijk. Eigenlijk benaderen zij twee verschillende fenomenen op dezelfde manier: daar waar Skinner zich beweegt op het niveau van teksten, heeft Ankersmit juist aandacht voor de politieke praktijk. De vraag is waarom deze benaderingswijze nooit eerder is toegepast op representatieve democratie. Volgens Ankersmit is dit zo omdat we het feodalisme en het absolutisme veelal beschouwen als een soort flogiston. We hoefden de democratie maar (opnieuw) te ontdekken en iedereen zag in dat de andere twee systemen een dwaling waren geweest. Deze twee oudere praktijken werden dan ook niet serieus genomen. Het succes van de representatieve democratie hoefde dan ook niet verklaard te worden omdat het als vanzelfsprekend werd gezien. In een recensie betwijfeld Andrew Rehfeld of de door Ankersmit voorgestelde benadering wel zo nieuw is. Hierbij vraagt Rehfeld zich af wat het verschil is tussen de ‘nieuwe benadering’ van Ankersmit en de these van de padafhankelijkheid. Als deze benadering inderdaad een vorm is van padafhankelijkheid, dan zou Ankersmit (waarschijnlijk) onbedoeld tegemoet komen aan de suggestie van North om de idee van padafhankelijkheid te verbreden naar de institutionele context. Laten we eerst recapituleren wat padafhankelijkheid behelst. J.W. Drukker omschrijft in zijn De revolutie die in haar eigen staart beet hoe Paul David op het formuleren van deze these kwam. Het uitgangspunt van David was de configuratie van het qwerty-toetsenbord. Bij dit toetsenbord zijn de letters zo geplaatst dat bij het schrijven van een willekeurige Engelse tekst de kans op het jammen van de stalen armen van de machine zo klein mogelijk is. qwerty garandeerde zo een efficià «ntieoptimum en werd de wer eldwijde standaard. En we zitten er nu nog steeds aan vast, terwijl de beperkingen van de ouderwetse typemachine geen rol meer spelen en efficià «ntere systemen mogelijk zijn. De oorzaak hiervan is dat we destijds hebben gekozen voor qwerty. Samengevat door Paul David: â€Å"History matters.† De these van de padafhankelijkheid komt er in het kort dus op neer dat in het verleden gemaakte keuzes invloed hebben op de keuzes die we in het heden (kunnen) maken. Of, zoals Drukker het formuleert: â€Å"als de mens uit de giraf was geà «volueerd en niet uit de mensapen, dan had hij er nu anders uitgezien.† Toegepast op politieke systemen: als we willen weten waarom representatieve democratie zo is zoals ze is, dan zullen we naar haar verleden moeten kijken. Tot zo ver houdt de door Rehfeld geconstateerde analogie stand (we kunnen immers het jammen als het specifieke probleem zien en qwerty als de oplossing). Er is echter sprake van een belangrijk verschil tussen de benadering van de padafhankelijkheid en de probleem-oplossing-benadering van Ankersmit. We maken immers gebruik van de these van padafhankelijkheid als we willen verklaren waarom we nog steeds gebruik maken van een verouderde oplossing voor een probleem dat niet meer aan de orde is of inmiddels op efficià «ntere manieren kan worden opgelost: we gebruiken qwerty, maar het dient nergens meer toe omdat de stalen hamers zijn verdwenen. qwerty staat zo de ingebruikname van efficià «ntere systemen in de weg. En dat is wat Paul David heeft willen verklaren. Ankersmit wil met zijn benadering juist laten zien dat we door aandacht te schenken aan de problemen die aan de vestiging van politieke systemen ten grondslag liggen te weten kunnen komen hoe deze politieke systemen zijn afgestemd. Zoals Ankersmit stelt: de problemen die opgelost moeten worden bepalen de ‘politieke psychologie’ van het systeem. Als we weten wat het op te lossen probleem is, zoals de jammende stalen armen van de typemachine, begrijpen we ook beter hoe de oplossing, qwerty, functioneert. Samengevat: de these van de padafhankelijkheid wil ons verklaren waarom we aan een bepaalde (inefficià «nte) oplossing vastzitten terwijl de benadering van Ankersmit juist duidelijk maakt hoe een bepaalde oplossing functioneert. Een ander punt dat Rehfeld aansnijdt is dat Ankersmit niet de eerste is die aandacht schenkt aan de historische wortels van politieke verschijnselen. Tocqueville, Guizot en Mill hadden hier ook aandacht voor, zo schrijft Rehfeld, en recentelijk hebben ook auteurs als Stephen Holmes en Bernard Manin succesvolle analyses gegeven van het verleden van de representatieve democratie. Rehfeld lijkt Ankersmit te verwijten dat hij niet bijster origineel is met zijn benaderingswijze. Kijken we echter naar bijvoorbeeld The principles of representative government van Manin dan blijkt dit boek een geschiedenis, of beter, een genealogie te bieden van het verschijnsel representatieve democratie. In zijn werk wijst hij op een aantal praktijken en instituties die in de late achttiende eeuw zijn geconcretiseerd, en die hij omschrijft als de ‘principes’ van representatief bestuur. Deze zijn: (1) de representanten worden gekozen door de staatsburgers, (2) de representanten behouden een zek ere onafhankelijkheid ten opzichte van hun kiezers, (3) er is vrijheid van meningsuiting en (4) beleid komt voort uit discussie. Wat betreft de toepassing van het boven beschreven systeem heeft Rehfeld ook een opmerking. Het is immers zo dat als politieke systemen een specifieke oplossing zijn voor specifieke problemen, dat we dan de vraag kunnen stellen voor welke specifieke problemen de totalitaire systemen van de twintigste eeuw de oplossing vormden. Ankersmit lijkt het hiermee eens te zijn: â€Å"No less than all these other political systems – forgotten, ridiculed, or even abhorred – it [democratie, JdB] also is a product of a unique and specific set of historical circumstances and should be assessed accordingly.† En als we vervolgens kijken naar de westerse democratieà «n, dan kunnen we de vraag stellen hoe zij zijn omgegaan met dit totalitaire probleem en hoe zij de oplossing hiervoor in hun ‘politieke psychologie’ hebben geà ¯ncorporeerd. Herinneren we ons echter Ankersmits voorstel, dan wordt duidelijk dat hij ons juist aanspoort de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur te benaderen vanuit haar ‘wortels’. Met andere woorden, de ‘politieke psychologie’ van de systemen die met het totalitarisme werden geconfronteerd was eerder gevormd, namelijk als de romantische poging om de verschillen in de post-revolutionaire samenleving te overbruggen. Democratie door representatie Laten we eens kijken hoe Ankersmit dit voorstel verder uitwerkt. Allereerst maakt hij duidelijk dat de absolute monarchie het antwoord vormde op de religieoorlogen. De staat slaagde erin zich los te maken van de civil society en kon zich daarna verheffen boven het religieuze conflict. Ankersmit is zelfs bereid te stellen dat we wel iets gunstiger mogen oordelen over de absolute monarchie, al was het alleen maar omdat de vestiging van de absolute monarchie de scheiding tussen staat en samenleving teweeg had gebracht. Vervolgens maakt Ankersmit duidelijk dat in 1815 de staat zelf de inzet van politieke strijd was geworden. Aangezien de staat de ‘beloning’ voor de winnaar van dit politieke conflict zou worden, moest de oplossing voor dit conflict elders liggen. Er waren twee mogelijkheden: of de staat zou ten onder gaan in dit politieke conflict, of de staat zou worden gecontroleerd door à ©Ãƒ ©n van de strijdende partijen. Beide oplossingen zouden tot burgeroorlog leide n waardoor het probleem onoplosbaar leek. Vandaar ook dat Tocqueville schreef: â€Å"The organization and the establishment of democracy is the great political problem of our time.† De parlementaire, representatieve democratie was nu een poging om de pijnpunten uit de post-revolutionaire samenleving weg te nemen. De conflicten werden als het ware uit de samenleving genomen en zouden nu in het parlement worden uitgevochten. In het parlement was het enige waar men naar kon streven het compromis, zo stelt Ankersmit: â€Å"†¦ compromise is governed by a kind of political logic other than consensus: for compromise, unlike consensus, retains the possibility of cooperation even when people hold different views and are also determined to maintain these.† Nu is Ankersmit in een situatie beland waar het lijkt dat representatieve democratie een product is van het (romantische) negentiende-eeuwse continent. En dat terwijl het Engelse Parliament toch ‘the mother of all parliaments’ is? Ankersmit erkent dit probleem en wijst op het werk van Michel Albert. Albert maakt in zijn Les deux capitalismes een onderscheid tussen de zogenaamde Angelsaksische democratieà «n (Groot-Brittannià «, Verenigde Staten) en de ‘Rijndemocratieà «n’, oftewel de democratieà «n van het West-Europese continent en Japan. Angelsaksische democratieà «n ingericht als antwoord op te machtige leiders: er was geen sprake van verdeling onder de bevolking, maar van een samenwerken onder de bevolking om de macht van de koning of de president binnen acceptabele grenzen te houden. Daarom is de politieke partij met de meerderheid te zien als de opvolger van de absolute vorst. Het continentale model is er daarentegen op gericht om problemen binn en de samenleving op te lossen door middel van het compromis. Aangezien onze vertegenwoordigers in het parlement compromissen moeten kunnen sluiten, is de autonomie van representanten ten opzichte van de gerepresenteerden een noodzakelijkheid voor het voeren van een zinvolle discussie in het parlement. Zoals Jeremy Bentham schreef is de enige manier om de overwegingen van een representant te beà ¯nvloeden het recht om deze niet te herkiezen. De representatie is immers geen belangenbehartiging (van een segment van de samenleving) en de representant is geen delegaat maar een gevolmachtigde. De afgevaardigde moet met andere woorden compleet vrij zijn in zijn pogingen om compromis te bereiken met de andere spelers in het maatschappelijke conflict: â€Å"it [representatief bestuur, JdB] is an exercise in principled unprincipledness, an exploration of where agreements can be attained, an organization of truths previously thought immiscible.† Mits aan de voorwaarde van autonomie is voldaan kan een representatie daadwerkelijk op een effectiev e wijze optreden in het belang van alle gerepresenteerden. Zoals Sià ©yà ¨s ons weet te vertellen: â€Å"It is thus incontestable that the deputies are at the National Assembly not in order to announce the already formed wishes of their constituents, but to freely deliberate and vote according to their present judgment, enlightened by all the lights the assembly can provide to each person.† Dat betekent dat de kloof tussen de representatie en de gerepresenteerden van daadwerkelijk belang is: â€Å"†¦ legitimate political power wells up †¦ in the hollow between the two groups.† Precies op deze laatste zinsnede heeft Rehfeld commentaar: â€Å"Precisely what does it mean for political power to ‘well up’ in the ‘hollow between . . . groups’? Many of Ankersmit’s arguments are best captured by what Georges Cuvier termed ‘metaphors mistaken for reasoning.’† Door de metafoor te beschouwen als een mislukte rede nering mist Rehfeld precies het punt dat wordt gemaakt. Door te stellen dat legitieme politieke macht in de kloof tussen representatie en gerepresenteerden ontstaat, wordt immers duidelijk dat legitieme politieke macht niet iets is dat à ©Ãƒ ©n van beide groepen toebehoort – en probeer die gedachte maar eens duidelijk te verwoorden zonder gebruik van metaforen. Centraal in de besluitvorming van representatief bestuur staat het uitgangspunt dat beleid voortkomt uit discussie in de representatie, waarna, ‘enlightened by all the lights the assembly can provide,’ het voorstel met de meeste steun doorgang zal vinden. Dit meerderheidsbeginsel is in democratische theorieà «n ingebracht om het (praktische) probleem van unanieme legitimatie te voorkomen, en, zoals John Locke ons meedeelt, sorteert een efficià «ntere beslissingsprocedure: For that which acts any community being only the consent of the individuals of it, and it being necessary to that which is one body to move one way; it is necessary the body should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent of the majority: or else it is impossible it should continue act or continue one body, one community†¦ De legitimiteit van de uitslag van de beslissingsprocedure ligt in de confrontatie tussen voorstellen. Een legitieme beslissing representeert dus niet een unanieme wil, maar is het resultaat van een weloverwogen meningsvorming van allen. En juist omdat in de politieke cultuur nieuwe, originele ‘organizations of truths’ worden gemaakt, dat wil zeggen, op creatieve wijze oplossingen worden voortgebracht, heeft de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur de historicus het meest te bieden. Nieuwe problemen Zoals gezegd is het het voorstel van Skinner om teksten op het gebied van de politieke filosofie te beschouwen als specifieke antwoorden op specifieke problemen. Laten we nu de methodologie van Skinner eens toepassen op dit hoofdstuk van Ankersmit. Als we dat doen, dan kunnen we immers achterhalen waarom deze tekst is geschreven en welk specifieke doel de auteur met deze tekst voor ogen had. En Ankersmit geeft ook het antwoord op deze vragen. Hij stelt dat tegenwoordig het conflict tussen verschillende belangen in de samenleving is vervangen door verschillende belangen binnen de mensen zelf. We hebben allemaal dezelfde problemen (de problemen zijn dus democratischer geworden) en moeten nu een keuze maken tussen onze belangen op de korte en op de lange termijn. De verschillende politieke partijen zullen zich langs deze nieuwe scheidslijn moeten opstellen willen zij nog relevant zijn voor de burger: het conflict dat zich afspeelt binnen de burger dient ook zichtbaar te zijn in de poli tieke arena wil de representatieve democratie overleven. En dat laatste is volgens Ankersmit van het allergrootste belang: â€Å"For I remain convinced that we cannot do without representative democracy.† Het is echter de vraag of de oude oplossingen geschikt zijn om de nieuwe problemen op te lossen. Wat betreft deze vraag is het werk van de Duitse socioloog Ulrich Beck uitermate interessant. In de moderne industrià «le samenleving speelde het idee van solidariteit een grote rol, in de risicosamenleving heeft men daarentegen aandacht voor risico’s en de minimalisering van deze risico’s. Het draait kortom om de verschillende â€Å"Verteilungslogiken der goods (Gà ¼ter, Einkommen) und bads (Krankheits- und Katastrophenwahrscheinlichkeiten).â€Å" Beck vat de implicaties van de zogeheten Weltrisikogesellschaft in vijf punten samen, waarvan ik de relevante hier zal noemen. In de eerste plaats stelt hij dat individuele landen niet meer in staat zijn om hun problemen alleen op te lossen. De problemen overstijgen nu immers de nationale grenzen, en dat brengt ons bij Becks tweede punt: we zullen moeten samenwerken om deze problemen te kunnen oplossen. Daarnaast is het zo dat deze internationale samenwerking een uitdrukking, een bundeling is van nationale belangen. We kunnen dus voorlopig vaststellen dat er veel problemen zijn die buiten het bereik van individuele natiestaten liggen. Ook Jà ¼rgen Habermas stelde vast dat veel verschijnselen zich nog maar weinig aantrekken van nationale grenzen: â€Å"This broad â€Å"de-bordering† of economy, society, and culture thus touches upon the very existential presuppositions of a state system that had been constructed according to a territorial principle, and still comprises the most important collective actors on the political stage.† Cruciaal bij Habermas is echter dat hij stelt dat staten steeds verder verstrengeld raken in de interdependenties van de mondiale economie en samenleving, waardoor het autonome optreden van staten steeds meer wordt belemmerd en hun democratische gehalte in gevaar zou komen. Beck stelt dat â€Å"Globale Interdependenzrisiken machen den uneingeladenen, nicht-anwesenden Anderen zum Nachbarn, Mitbewohner, Stà ¶renfried in der Falle, zu der die Welt geworden ist. Anerkennte Risiken zwingen zum kommunikativen Brà ¼ckenbau, wo keine oder kaum Brà ¼cken existierenâ€Å" Groepen mensen die geconfronteerd worden met dezelfde risico’s zullen een soort verbondenheid met elkaar voelen, en uit deze verbondenheid kan vervolgens een poging voortkomen om de risico’s te minimaliseren. Met deze gedachte begrijpen we ook waarom Beck schrijft dat â€Å"Risikoà ¶ffentlichkeiten dis-aggregieren und re-aggregieren Demokratie. Sie wiederlegen das nationaalstaatliche Postulat, demzufolge Demokratie nur im Gesellschaftsbehlter des Nationalstaats mà ¶glich ist.â€Å" In het kielzog van de erkenning van risico’s kan dus ook democratie transnationaal worden en zo een antwoord vormen op â€Å"die Krise des rumlich bestimmten Machtsbegriff†¦.†Å" Ook na het achter ons laten van de natiestaat kunnen we volgens Beck democratisch blijven. Representatieve democratie behoort hier echter niet meer tot de mogelijkheden. Zelfs als het door Beck en Habermas geschetste toekomstbeeld correct zou zijn doet dat niets af aan de taak die de historicus van de politieke cultuur op zich heeft genomen. De expertise van deze soort historicus is gedurende tijden van crises, en dus ook gedurende de ‘crisis van het ruimtelijk bepaalde machtsbegrip’ immers van onvergelijkelijk groot belang om de aard van zulk soort crises te kunnen doorgronden en om oplossingen voor dergelijke crises te kunnen aandragen. Conclusie Wat is het nu dat de bestudering van de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur voor mij zo aantrekkelijk maakt? Volgens mij komt deze aantrekkingskracht voort uit de mogelijkheid om tot een combinatie te komen, waarin zowel de intellectuele geschiedenis (in dit geval de geschiedenis van de politieke filosofie) als de geschiedenis van de politieke praktijk, waarin op een creatieve wijze met de realiteiten van de economische, sociale, culturele en internationale wereld moet worden omgegaan, een rol spelen. Deze combinatie maakt het mogelijk om inzichten te verkrijgen in de psychologie van onze hedendaagse democratische systemen. Deze inzichten zijn niet alleen voor de discipline van de geschiedenis van de politieke cultuur van belang, maar, zoals we zagen, ook voor andere profielen. Zonder deze inzichten hebben deze profielen grote problemen om bepaalde verschijnselen in de eigen discipline te kunnen begrijpen. Bibliografie Ankersmit, F.R., Denken over geschiedenis. Een overzicht van moderne geschiedfilosofische opvattingen (Groningen 1986). , ‘Representational democracy. An aesthetic approach to conflict and compromise’ Common knowledge 8:1 (2002) 24-46. , Political representation (Stanford 2002). Beck, Ulrich, Was ist Globalisierung? (Frankfurt am Main 1998). , en Edgar Grande, Das kosmopolitische Europa (Frankfurt am Main 2004). Clausewitz, Carl von, On war ed. Michael Howard en Peter Paret (Londen 1993). Drukker, J.W., De revolutie die in haar eigen staart beet. Hoe de economische geschiedenis onze ideeà «n over economische groei veranderde (Utrecht 2003). Habermas, Jà ¼rgen, ‘Toward a cosmopolitan Europe’ Journal of democracy 14:4 (2003) 86-100. Manin, Bernard, ‘On legitimacy and political deliberation’ Political theory 15 (1987) 338-368. , ‘The metamorphoses of representative government’ Economy and society 23 (1994) 133-171. , The principles of representative government (Cambridge 1998). North, Douglass C., ‘Institutions’ Journal of economic perspectives 5:1 (1991) 97-112. Rehfeld, Andrew, ‘Book reviews’ Ethics 113 (2003) 865-868. Skinner, Quentin, ‘Meaning and understanding in the history of ideas’ History and theory 8 (1969) 3-53. Research Papers on De creativiteit van de politieke cultuur - Nederlandse EssayQuebec and CanadaAppeasement Policy Towards the Outbreak of World War 2Personal Experience with Teen PregnancyPETSTEL analysis of IndiaAssess the importance of Nationalism 1815-1850 EuropeBringing Democracy to AfricaRelationship between Media Coverage and Social andResearch Process Part OneCanaanite Influence on the Early Israelite ReligionCapital Punishment

Lysander the Spartan General

Lysander the Spartan General Lysander was one of the Heraclidae at Sparta, but not a member of the royal families. Not much is known about his early life. His family was not wealthy, and we dont know how Lysander came to be entrusted with military commands. The Spartan Fleet in the Aegean When Alcibiades rejoined the Athenian side towards the end of the Peloponnesian War, Lysander was put in charge of the Spartan fleet in the Aegean, based at Ephesus (407). It was Lysanders decree that merchant shipping put into Ephesus and his foundation of shipyards there, that started its rise to prosperity. Persuading Cyrus to Help the Spartans Lysander persuaded Cyrus, the Great Kings son, to help the Spartans. When Lysander was leaving, Cyrus wanted to give him a present, and Lysander asked for Cyrus to fund an increase in the sailors pay, thus inducing sailors serving in the Athenian fleet to come over to the higher-paying Spartan fleet. While Alcibiades was away, his lieutenant Antiochus provoked Lysander into a sea battle which Lysander won. The Athenians thereupon removed Alcibiades from his command. Callicratides  as Lysanders Successor Lysander gained partisans for Sparta amongst the cities subject to Athens by promising to install decemvirates, and promoting the interests of potentially useful allies amongst their citizens. When the Spartans chose Callicratides as Lysanders successor, Lysander undermined his position by sending the funds for the increase in payback to Cyrus and taking the fleet back to the Peloponnese with him. The Battle of Arginusae (406) When Callicratides died after the battle of Arginusae (406), Spartas allies requested that Lysander is made admiral again. This was against Spartan law, so Aracus was made admiral, with Lysander as his deputy in name, but the actual commander. Ending the  Peloponnesian War It was Lysander who was responsible for the final defeat of the Athenian navy at Aegospotami, thus ending the Peloponnesian War. He joined the Spartan kings, Agis and Pausanias, in Attica. When Athens finally succumbed after the siege, Lysander installed a government of thirty, later remembered as the Thirty Tyrants (404). Unpopular Throughout Greece Lysanders promotion of his friends interests and vindictiveness against those who displeased him made him unpopular throughout Greece. When the Persian satrap Pharnabazus complained, the Spartan ephors recalled Lysander. There resulted in a power struggle within Sparta itself, with the kings favoring more democratic regimes in Greece in order to diminish Lysanders influence. King Agesilaus Instead of  Leontychides On the death of King Agis, Lysander was instrumental in Agis brother Agesilaus being made king instead of Leontychides, who was popularly supposed to be Alcibiades son rather than the kings. Lysander persuaded Agesilaus to mount an expedition to Asia to attack Persia, but when they arrived in the Greek Asian cities, Agesilaus grew jealous of the attention paid to Lysander and did everything he could to undermine Lysanders position. Finding himself unwanted there, Lysander returned to Sparta (396), where he may or may not have started a conspiracy to make the kingship elective amongst all Heraclidae or possibly all Spartiates, rather than confined to the royal families. War Between Sparta and Thebes   War broke out between Sparta and Thebes in 395, and Lysander was killed when his troops were surprised by a Theban ambush.

American Heritage Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

American Heritage - Essay Example There is need to have zoning regulations based on major morals population. Seldom, ethnics use zoning provision to blockade bars, pornography, strip clubs, distilleries, and dislikes of other things for moral grounds. The laws of United States basis on morals should not be persuasive. The sentiments contravening laws based on uprightness are misleading because moral judgments stand for legitimate laws (Viroli 31). Recognizing that regulations in general are based on moral judgments has vital consequences. Hence, the meaning those objections to a law for reason of being inclined on morality do not make any sense on the mind of non-anarchist. The same have different meaning on experts in public policy, law, and economics that they are not necessarily experts based on legitimacy of regulations; professionals on the legitimacy of regulations are those with an evident, deep comprehension of moral fact (Viroli 40). Perhaps most momentous, recognizing that regulations are finally inclined to moral judgments put upright and immoral people on an equal ground when explaining politics. Patriotism is the love of someone’s birthplace, country and childhood’s place of recollections and dreams, aspirations and, hopes, it is a place where, a childlike timidity, we would view the fleeting. Indeed, egotism, arrogance, and conceit are the fundamentals of patriotism. Patriotism assumes that our planet is divided into small spots, each one enclosed with Iron Gate. Those fortune ate to be born certain spot, consider themselves grander, nobler, better, more intelligent than others inhabiting the other spot. Therefore, it is the responsibility of everyone residing on that chosen part to kill, die, and fight in trying to impose his sovereignty upon others (Viroli 39). Patriotism is though a costly institution considering the statistics, no one ever doubts it. The progressive enhanced

Aggregate demand and aggregate supply Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Aggregate demand and aggregate supply - Essay Example Aggregate demand represents the demand for final goods and services within a nation at a specified time and price. It shows the purchasing power of goods and services of people within an economy at the given price.Policy makers within the economy must understand the concepts for the better allocation of resources. In many occasions, the government of a nation usually sustains the economy of a country using the fiscal policy. This happens on the demand side. Use of government expenditures in stimulating the economy is one of the significant activities that the government uses in stabilizing the economy. Additionally, the central bank can also stabilize the economy using the monetary policy. All these policies relate to aggregate demand and supply concepts. Thus, studying the topic will help in giving the policy makers with ideas on how to stabilize the economy. This paper will focus on the aggregate demand and aggregate supply. The writer, will analysis the topic basing on articles th at discusses the topic. A conclusion, which assesses the topic basing the judgments on the articles, will follow. In most cases, the concept of aggregate demand and supply is very common within different nations and they employ various components of the concept in stabilizing the economy. The first analysis will focus on R.A Washington’s idea on â€Å"The stimulus question†, published in The Economist on February 2nd 2012. For many years, fiscal policy has formed a major subject within the political arena. People from various fields always question the advancement of the policy makers in their way to stabilize the economy. The questions rise because of the recession that affected the Americans intensely. The questions generally revolve around the significance of aggregate demand and supply in stabilizing the economy. The first inquiry is about the suitable time that the government should act to balance their budget. From the economic point of view, the government will always encounter problems in balancing the budget especially when the economy is in recession. Within this point, the revenues collected from the taxpayers reduce, as the government expenditure increases. There will be an imbalance at this point. Thus, the government will have to consider many things for the budget to balance. Putting in place various activities that will help in increasing the government revenue, the government will have to work harder on their spending, thus giving an automatic stabilization to the economy. Therefore, the balance process should be given time for it to act automatically. The second question revolved around the sustainability of government borrowing as a threat to the economy. True to the statement, too much of the government borrowing may pose a threat to the economy. The explanation behind this notion relies on the unwillingness of the private sector to lend to the government, thus affecting the economy. Contrary to the behavior of the economy, th e private sectors will be affected. Since borrowing will be expensive to the private sector, the recovery process of economy will take long. An immediate stop to lending has an adverse effect to the economy of a country. The third topic inquires if discretionary fiscal policy can cause an increase in aggregate demand. Discussing this question requires many assumptions. Various economists have different ideas concerning the effect of discretionary fiscal policy to aggregate demand. In theoretical terms, the possibility is complicated, but empirically as the writer said, the policy can increase aggregate demand. The fourth question required a response if the policy makers

Comparison of To Live and farewell to my concubine Essay

Comparison of To Live and farewell to my concubine - Essay Example It highlights the achievements that have been developed in these nations in competing in the industry to contribute towards entertainment industry. Zhang in the book analyzes the contribution of the film industry in promoting cultural values and ideologies (Zhang 103). The depictions of actual values within the plot of the cinemas have issued contribution towards the development within the society and a rich history that has been highlighted in production. In these regions, there is a strong provision to uphold cultural values that define the basis of formation in the nations. The development of the plot and the characters uphold societal values and help in selling the culture as are characteristic of the society. This paper is based on a comparison of two such films, To Live, and Farewell My Concubine, to compare the contents that they present. This was Zhang Yimou’s sixth production whose plot development is centred on the struggles presented in the union of a married couple. The setting is based on a period that was marked with the tyrannical rule of the ruthless Mao Zedong, as had been presented in some movies of the time. Zhang (287) explains, â€Å"To Live highlights the absolute necessity of tolerance as a time honoured survival skill for ordinary people in socialist China†. The other films from Beijing film graduates had stressed on the regime of the turbulent era in China highlighting; the positions held in the government that promoted the unjust presentations. However, the film had been based on the consideration placed on the people under the government. Zhang breaks the tension as he prepares a plot that is based on the family level in the struggling individual. The film delves on the intimate thee as it presents the effects of the struggling family class. Through the family of Fugui and Jiazhen, the effects of the affected economy and societal struggles of the Chinese

Summary Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 131

Summary - Essay Example he normative call in most of the alternative views on representation is that those in office should reflect and respond to the views of those who have elected them. Obviously, answering the question of whether public opinion has a connection to the voting patterns of legislators is important in political science. Myriad studies have looked into the two areas in examining the connection between the two important variables and the article records several authors behind the inquiries. As the article reports, most of them clinch that legislators are indeed reactive to the opinions of the public as they depict a positive correlation between the variables (Butler and Nickerson, 56–57). After a conclusive examination of related literature, the researchers finally choose a methodology fit to investigate the query at hand. The study involves 10,690 New Mexicans who are asked to give their views regarding the Governor’s outlay plans for a unique summer session in 2008’s summer. The survey results, which reflect District-specific opinions, are shared with legislators, who are selected randomly. Findings from the research show that legislators tended to vote in line with the opinions of the members of their constituency (Butler and Nickerson, 72). This then proves that legislators work towards being responsive to the opinions of the public than to their natural states. The results have myriad implications for comprehension as well as improving the manner in which represent the preferences of their constituents. Butler, Daniel M., and David Nickerson. â€Å"Can Learning Constituency Opinion Affect How Legislators Vote? Results from a Field Experiment.† Quarterly Journal of Political Science 6.1 (2011): 55–83. Web. 5 Oct.

Political Science Chinese Nationalism as topdownbottomup phenomenon Essay

Political Science Chinese Nationalism as topdownbottomup phenomenon - Essay Example There are waves of nationalism that move from the grass-roots to political leadership, and waves that move in the opposite direction. One of the major challenges for the twenty-first century will be finding ways to channel the energies of the world's most populous nation into positive directions. There are many perspectives on the potential motivations, and possible outcomes, of Chinese nationalism. There are some that see this movement as a "reckless movement driven by China's traditional Sino-centrism and contemporary aspirations for great-power status" (Zhao, p. 131). Bernstein and Munro conclude, for example, that China is "[d]riven by nationalist sentiment, a yearning to redeem the humiliations of the past, and the simple urge for international power" (Bernstein and Munro, p. 19). This has led the Chinese to demonstrate with particular urgency against the United States, whom it wishes to replace as the dominant power in Asia. One example of this would be the massive demonstrations in front of the U.S. diplomatic missions in China after the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by NATO forces under the command of the U.S. Western diplomats were shocked to find that the Chinese assumed that the bombing had been intentional (Zhao, p. 132). After a U.S. Navy s urveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet over the South China Sea in April 2001, similar demonstrations broke out, with the Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, honored as a "martyr of the revolution" (Pomfret, p. A1). James Lilley's 2004 article in Public Affairs and Maria Hsia Chang's book Return of the Dragon: China's Wounded Nationalism are two examples of anxious observations of the fervent nationalism that has arisen at the end of the twentieth century, which was seen by many Chinese as one of humiliation. However, it would be short-sighted to describe the new Chinese nationalism as nothing more than emotionalism running rampant in the streets and squares of China. After all, the Chinese government has shown considerable skill in managing the public outbursts of its citizens. The idea that Suisheng Zhao has termed "pragmatic nationalism" refers to the ways in which the Chinese government actually organizes the shows of patriotism. This nationalism, according to Zhao, is a force used to "hold the country together during its period of rapid and turbulent transformation into a post-Communist society" (Zhao, p. 132). However, the leaders of China want peace and development, and they realize that if Chinese nationalism is perceived as being out of control, the ideals of political stability and economic development would be threatened, as other countries would tend to distance themselves from what they saw as an unstable situation. Nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon in Chinese culture, particularly given the ancient times in which the Chinese Empire began. The Opium War with Great Britain (1840-1842), however, was a disaster. China was occupied and incorporated into Western empires, and it was only at this point in time that