The accession of Cyprus to the EU in 2004 is the single most important strategic development in the country’s turbulent history since independence in 1960. It affirmed Cyprus’s place in Europe and its importance in the security of the Eastern Mediterranean, therefore proving to be a win-win development, both for the Island and for the region.
Dr Lindsay Whitfield examines the emergence and trajectory of a new agro-industry in Ghana, the pineapple export industry, using the technological capabilities approach. It explains the limited expansion of the industry and its declining competitiveness in the face of new competition by looking at how Ghanaian exporters developed technological capabilities initially and the incentives and disincentives to building on those capabilities.
In exploring competitiveness, Governor of Croatian National Bank Boris Vujčić examines European productivity trends relative to the U.S. and Asia, as well as productivity catch-up and divergence across different European economies, including the newer EU states. In exploring diverging trends in productivity across Europe both pre and post EMU, Boris argues that any lasting solution to Europe's growth shortfalls can only be addressed via structural reforms.
Sheila A. Smith, a senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, discusses her new book, "Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China."
Ideas shape human behavior in many circumstances, including those involving political violence. Yet they have usually been underplayed in studies of the causes of armed mobilization. Likewise, emotions have been overlooked in most analyses of intrastate conflict. A mixed-methods analysis of Italian resistance during the Fascist regime and the Nazi occupation (1943–45) provides the opportunity to theorize and analyze empirical evidence on the role of indignation and radical ideologies in the process of armed mobilization.
Dr Micah Muscolino discusses his new book entitled "The Ecology of War in China: Henan Province, the Yellow River, and Beyond, 1938–1950."
Professor Sarah Chartock discusses ethnodevelopment policies--policies that recognize or address the entrenched overlap between ethnicity and poverty--illustrated with the cases of Peru, Ecuador and Guatemala.
In 2013, the UK Parliament legalized same-sex marriage in England and Wales. Dr Scot Peterson discusses whether this is the first time there has been a divergence in the general understanding of marriage and the definition enshrined in law.
Drawing on her long diplomatic career, former Canadian Ambassdor Jillian Stirk discusses the role that pluralism plays in shaping foreign policy.
"And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die." The biblical story of the flood crystalizes--in its terrifying, dramatic simplicity--the universally recognized concept of divine punishment. For millennia human civilizations have relied on such beliefs to create moral order. People who commit crimes or other bad deeds, we are told, will suffer retribution, while rewards--abstract or material--await those who do good.
