Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The paper will examine the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of the ISA 2005 conference theme and argue how the theme adopts a restrictive notion of 'Power'. It will critique the notion of power as a tangible entity to be possessed and make a case for shifting the focus from how power is possessed and exercised to how power is experienced, appropriated and resisted. Great Powers not only have to deal with great violence but they great in dealing with violence. What makes them 'great' is their ability to frame the debate where their exercise of violence is seen as maintaining stability and order and hence justified. Through the empirical study of UK, USA, China, and India - (past, present and potential) candidates for Great Power status, the paper will highlight the silent and structural violence underlining their 'greatness'.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Why do poor regions exist within rich countries? The new economic geography offers a reason, but it has not been tested. Test results show it fails to comprehensively explain the Great Plains and Great Lakes core-periphery dynamic.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines the relationship between statutory monopoly and collective action as a multi-person assurance game culminating in an end to British Empire in India. In a simple theoretical model, it is demonstrated whether or not a collective good enjoys (or is perceived to enjoy) pure jointness of production and why the evolutionary stable strategy of non-violence was supposed to work on the principle that the coordinated reaction of a ethnically differentiated religious crowd to a conflict between two parties (of colonizer and colonized) over confiscatory salt taxation would significantly affect its course. Following Mancur Olson (1965) and Dennis Chong (1991), a model of strategic civil disobedience is created which is used to demonstrate how collective action can be used to produce an all-or-nothing public good to achieve economic and political independence.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Invasive species are a major driver of changes in freshwater community structure, ecosystem function, and ecosystem services. This applies not only to small lakes but also to the Laurentian and African Great Lakes. Until recently, however, ecologists had little capacity to forecast—and therefore prevent—the introduction, spread and impact of species likely to cause net financial or environmental harm. Forecasting capacity is now well developed for some stages of invasions, some ecosystems, and some taxonomic groups. This is especially true for intentional pathways (e.g., pet and horticultural industries). Forecasting capacity for introductions via unintentional pathways (e.g., ship ballast water or hull fouling) is also growing rapidly, but many logistical and technical challenges remain in research. Finally, management decisions and policy frameworks must incorporate costs and benefits, but financial quantification of ecosystem goods and services—and especially how these are affected by invasive species—is poorly developed for most of the world’s lakes. Recent progress in more fully accounting for costs and benefits of some pathways of species introduction into the Laurentian Great Lakes suggest however that invasion-induced losses of ecosystem goods and services may outweigh benefits of transportation-related pathways.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A previous article has shown that certain cognitive and personality traits have a measurable effect on perceived greatness of American presidents. This study investigates questions left unanswered by the previous results, showing that inside the group of presidents deemed great by historians in a 2000 C-SPAN survey there are significant differences between the modern presidents and the older ones in several dimensions of personality. This at-a-distance content analysis of 90 verbal materials finds that although they score high on perceived performance and overall are different in leadership traits from the presidents that ranked low in greatness, modern great presidents have higher belief in their ability to control events, lower conceptual complexity, higher need for power and are more task-oriented than the leaders from the early era of American presidency. In terms of operational code beliefs, older presidents are more open to cooperation, whereas their modern counterparts are more conflict-prone.