DVD features highlights from the conference held at Columbia University.

Changes in words, changes in the world, and changes in minds: transitions between states of speaking, writing, thinking, and being are the subjects of the 14 essays in this collection, which celebrates and was inspired by the work of Allen J. Frantzen. Ranging from individual word-studies to investigations of artifacts and material culture, to historical, philosophical and theological syntheses, the essays are characterized by the same combination of multi-disciplinarity and meticulous attention to detail as the scholarship of the honorand. Transitional States shows how the interplay of tradition and innovation, historical currents and individuality, loss, memory and memorialization combine to produce both the culture of the Middle Ages and our understanding of it.

Analyzing nineteen cases, this title offers practical perspective on the implications of constitution-making procedure, and explores emerging international legal norms.

This informative book examines examples of law reform projects in post-socialist and post-authoritarian states in Asia, identifies common problems, and proposes analytical frameworks for understanding them.

This book examines the complex relationship that exists between the construction of judicial power, and the institutional characteristics of the courts and their regime setting. It examines the intriguing connection between the construction of judicial power on the one hand, and the institutional characteristics of the courts and regime setting on the other. The book asks whether courts are rendered powerful by virtue of their institutional characteristics or by a supportive, perhaps acquiescent, regime setting. By analyzing the historical pathways of courts in Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi, this book argues that the emergence of judicial power since the colonial period, though fraught with many challenges, presents a unique opportunity for consolidating democracy. The book examines in detail the significant political decisions of the upper-level courts in Uganda, Tanzania and Malawi from the colonial period to the present day, analyzing them in relation to changes in the political environment over time. Analysis of these decisions is also supplemented by in-depth interviews with judges, lawyers and other important stakeholders in the judicial processes. This book demonstrates that even in the most challenging regime environments, effective institutions and determined individuals can push back against interference and issue politically powerful, independent decisions but the way in which judiciaries respond to this regime pressure varies enormously across countries and regions.

The transition state is the critical configuration of a reaction system situated at the highest point of the most favorable reaction path on the potential-energy surface, its characteristics governing the dynamic behavior of reacting systems decisively. This text presents an accurate survey of current theoretical investigations of chemical reactions, with a focus on the nature of the transition state. Its scope ranges from general basic theories associated with the transition states, to their computer-assisted applications, through to a number of reactions in a state-of-the-art fashion. It covers various types of gas-phase elementary reactions, as well as some specific types of chemical processes taking place in the liquid phase. Also investigated is the recently developing transition state spectroscopy. This text will not only serve as a contemporary reference book on the concept of the transition state, but will also assist the readers in gaining valuable key principles regarding the essence of chemical kinetics and dynamics.

Much attention has been paid to globalization, yet little has been focused on the relationship between the national and sub-national levels of politics. This publication has separate sections on the state in transition; on regionalism, nationalism and separatism; and on the security forces and the maintenance of order. The three states chosen - Britain, France and Spain - have historical similarities as ex-imperial, Atlantic seaboard states with weighty historical and institutional traditions. But they also differ in their institutions, in their centre-periphery relations and in their varying responses to the new phase of change. The authors assess the new constitutional configurations in each state - decentralisation, devolution or autonomous governments - and analyse the effect on the peripheries and the maintenance of order. The book also includes chapters on conflict in Northern Ireland and the Spanish Basque country and discussion of nationalist identity and assertion in the three countries.

Once heralded in the 1950s and 1960s as a model welfare state, Sweden is now in transition and in trouble since its economic plunge in the early 1990s. This volume presents ten essays that examine Sweden's economic problems from a U.S. perspective. Exploring such diverse topics as income equalization and efficiency, welfare and tax policy, wage determination and unemployment, and international competitiveness and growth, they consider how Sweden's welfare state succeeded in eliminating poverty and became a role model for other countries. They then reflect on Sweden's past economic problems, such as the increase in government spending and the fall in industrial productivity, warning of problems to come. Finally they review the consequences of the collapse of Sweden's economy in the early 1990s, exploring the implications of its efforts to reform its welfare state and reestablish a healthy economy. This volume will be of interest to policymakers and analysts, social scientists, and economists interested in welfare states.

The transItIOn-state theory has been, from the point of its inception, the most influential principle in the development of our knowledge of reaction mechanisms in solution. It is natural that as the field of biochemical dynamics has achieved new levels of refinement its students have increasingly adopted the concepts and methods of transition-state theory. Indeed, every dynamical problem of biochemistry finds its most elegant and economical statement in the terms of this theory. Enzyme catalytic power, for example, derives from the interaction of enzyme and substrate structures in the transition state, so that an understanding of this power must grow from a knowledge of these structures and interactions. Similarly, transition-state interactions, and the way in which they change as protein structure is altered, constitute the pivotal feature upon which molecular evolution must turn. The complete, coupled dynamical system of the organism, incorporating the transport of matter and energy as well as local chemical processes, will eventually have to yield to a description of its component transition-state structures and their energetic response characteristics, even if the form of the description goes beyond present-day transition-state theory. Finally, the importance of biochemical effectors in medicine and agriculture carries the subject into the world of practical affairs, in the use of transition-state information for the construction of ultra potent biological agents.

China’s rising status in the global economy alongside recent economic stagnation in Europe and the United States has led to considerable speculation that we are in the early stages of a transition in power relations. Commentators have tended to treat this transitional period as a novelty, but history is in fact replete with such systemic transitions—sometimes with perilous results. Can we predict the future by using the past? And, if so, what might history teach us? With Transition Scenarios, David P. Rapkin and William R. Thompson identify some predictors for power transitions and take readers through possible scenarios for future relations between China and the United States. Each scenario is embedded within a particular theoretical framework, inviting readers to consider the assumptions underlying it. Despite recent interest in the topic, the probability and timing of a power transition—and the processes that might bring it about—remain woefully unclear. Rapkin and Thompson’s use of the theoretical tools of international relations to crucial transitions in history helps clarify the current situation and also sheds light on possible future scenarios.