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| 1 |
ID:
169213
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| Summary/Abstract |
Ronald Dore’s work on education in Japan centred on themes of selection and equality. In his work on Tokugawa education, Dore presaged some of the emphasis he gave in his later work on quality and social and moral content in modern education. The argument of The Diploma Disease concerned the “late development effect” as a tool in understanding the emphasis on qualification and selection that led to Japan’s postwar examination hypertrophy, and in understanding the distortions and inequities that ensued. “Late ascription”—tracking and determining one’s life chances with a single examination—was one such distortion, narrowing the gate to educational and occupational success, belying the notion that Japan demonstrates a pure “meritocracy.”
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| 2 |
ID:
184666
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Built on the exclusive funding of 1,000 large transnational corporations, the World Economic Forum is a not-for-profit Swiss foundation, aiming to shape the direction of globalization. Its events are characterized by low degrees of formality and transparency. Research on what this organization does is scarce. This article suggests the term discretionary governance to capture the precarious, yet existing, social order that the organization shapes. By discretionary governance, we mean a set of discreet practices based on the organization’s judgement in ways that escape established democratic controls. Drawing on ethnographic data the paper demonstrates how selection, secrecy, and status form key components of this tenuous ordering. Selection processes and secrecy contribute to status elevation of the individuals and organizations chosen to participate. Upon them and the organization itself is bestowed a symbolic capital that is practical and possibly profitable in the world of global governance.
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| 3 |
ID:
149602
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This article presents a novel application of an inspection game to find optimally efficient nuclear safeguard strategies. It describes a methodology that allocates resources at and across nuclear fuel cycle facilities for a cost-constrained inspectorate seeking to detect a state-facilitated diversion or misuse. The methodology couples a simultaneous-play game theoretic solver with a probabilistic model for simulating state violation scenarios at a gas centrifuge enrichment plant. The simulation model features a suite of defender options based on current International Atomic Energy Agency practices and an analogous menu of attacker proliferation pathway options. The simulation informs the game theoretic solver by calculating the detection probability for a given inspector-proliferator strategy pair. To generate a scenario payoff, it weights the detection probability by the quantity and quality of material obtained. Using a modified fictitious play algorithm, the game iteratively calls the simulation model until Nash equilibrium is reached and outputs the optimal inspection and proliferation strategies. The value the attacker places on material quantity and quality is varied to generate results representative of states with different capabilities and goals. Sample model results are shown to illustrate the sensitivity of defender and attacker strategy to attacker characteristics.
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| 4 |
ID:
153301
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| Summary/Abstract |
Initially, four plausible reasons for introducing selection in secondary education are examined, three of which are irrelevant to contemporary debates about expanding grammar-school education. These are: first, to ration education in less advanced economies; second, to increase the supply of skilled labour within an expanded national elite; third, as part of a ‘segmented’ system of education. A fourth—increasing upward social mobility—is open to two objections: first, the May government's proposals are so limited as to have little likely impact on mobility and, second, upward mobility in the twentieth century was possible only because of structural change in the British labour market, and that will probably not continue in this century. Finally, it is argued that attempts to select the ‘best’ in any activity or skill are necessarily highly imperfect, and are far less accurate than testing who does and does not meet some minimum level of competence.
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| 5 |
ID:
133086
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2014.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Recent interest in biofuels and bio-refineries has been building upon the technology of biomass gasification. This technology developed since the 1980s in three periods, but failed to break through. We try to explain this by studying the technological development from a quasi-evolutionary perspective, drawing upon the concepts of technological paradigms and technological trajectories. We show that the socio-economic context was most important, as it both offered windows of opportunity as well as provided direction to developments. Changes in this context resulted in paradigm shifts, characterized by a change in considered end-products and technologies, as well as a change in companies involved. Other influences on the technological trajectory were firm specific differences, like the focus on a specific feedstock, scale and more recently biofuels to be produced. These were strengthened by the national focus of supporting policies, as well as specific attention for multiple technologies in policies of the USA and European Commission. Over each period we see strong variation that likely benefitted the long term development of the technology. Despite policy efforts that included variation and institutionalization, our case shows that the large changes in socio-economic context and the technological challenges were hard to overcome.
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| 6 |
ID:
120125
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2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Recent scholarship suggests that democracies tend to fight shorter conflicts that can be easily won. This is most likely due to the accountability incentives that constrain democratic leaders. Fearing removal from office, democratic leaders will try to choose short conflicts against weaker opponents. The authors question this argument by presenting an alternative explanation for the connection between democracy and shorter disputes and victories. Building on prior works that have identified a territorial peace, this article argues that democracies often have few territorial issues over which to contend. In fact, rarely do democracies have territorial disputes with their neighbors. Thus, democracies have less difficult issues to resolve, and this makes conflict escalation less likely against neighbors. Without neighbors ready to attack the homeland, states at territorial peace can more easily choose favorable conflicts to escalate. This logic applies to all states at territorial peace, of which democratic states are just a subset. Analyses of directed-dispute dyads between 1816 and 2001 provide confirmation for our argument. Regime type does not predict conflict selection or victory once controls are added for issue salience.
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| 7 |
ID:
145841
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| Summary/Abstract |
The authors examine the process of planning flight routes of unmanned aerial vehicles using high-precision systems. The quality indicator set to select the Pareto-optimal flight routes of unmanned aerial vehicles to targets is determined.
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