Public Support for Enlargement: Economic, Cultural, or Normative?

The current research questioned whether public opinion on enlargement can be adequately explained only by economic calculation and cultural/community identity. When the analytical viewpoint was expanded from the conventional individual level to state level, it was revealed that constructivist considerations-such as the democratization and reunification of Europe-play a critical role in pushing forward enlargement. Drawing on the perspective of international relations, this study introduced a synthetic model to analyze public opinion on enlargement in the EU's 15 old member states. The analysis using a Eurobarometer dataset showed that on public support for enlargement, constructivist attitudes held as much sway as cultural/community attitudes. In fact, expectations of democratization were the most important determinant of support for enlargement in the case of Turkey.

Behavioral economics: Reunifying psychology and economics

“Behavioral economics” improves the realism of the psychological assumptions underlying economic theory, promising to reunify psychology and economics in the process. Reunification should lead to better predictions about economic behavior and better policy prescriptions.

Archaeal-eubacterial mergers in the origin of Eukarya: phylogenetic classification of life.

A symbiosis-based phylogeny leads to a consistent, useful classification system for all life. "Kingdoms" and "Domains" are replaced by biological names for the most inclusive taxa: Prokarya (bacteria) and Eukarya (symbiosis-derived nucleated organisms). The earliest Eukarya, anaerobic mastigotes, hypothetically originated from permanent whole-cell fusion between members of Archaea (e.g., Thermoplasma-like organisms) and of Eubacteria (e.g., Spirochaeta-like organisms). Molecular biology, life-history, and fossil record evidence support the reunification of bacteria as Prokarya while subdividing Eukarya into uniquely defined subtaxa: Protoctista, Animalia, Fungi, and Plantae.

Medical Curriculum Change at Queen's-affiliated Medical Colleges: 1881 – 1910

This study explores the curriculum at Queen’s-affiliated medical colleges, specifically The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Kingston, the Kingston Women’s Medical College, and Queen’s Medical College, from 1881 to 1910, using the textbooks prescribed by these institutions as primary sources. The central question encompasses what factors primarily motivated the curriculum at Queen’s-affiliated medical colleges to change. Within the historiographical scholarship on Queen’s College, this question has not yet been addressed and, to my knowledge, this is the first medical education history to specifically address textbooks as part of a medical school curriculum. During this period, these institutions experienced reorganizational shifts, such as the reunification of Queen’s Medical College with The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Kingston, as well as the introduction and subsequent exclusion of female students. Within this context, this study examines how the forces of scientific innovation and co-education impacted the curriculum during the period under study, as measured by textbook change, specifically in the courses of obstetrics and gynaecology, the theory and practice of medicine, and surgery. To what degree was curriculum in these courses responsive to scientific inventions and discoveries, changing therapeutic practices, and possible gender biases? From 1881 to 1910, innovations such as x-ray and anaesthesia became commonplace within medical practice. Some technologies gained acceptance in the curriculum, while others fell out of favour. This study tracks these scientific discoveries through the textbooks used at Queen’s-affiliated medical colleges in order to demonstrate how the evolving nature of medicine was represented in the curriculum. To address how gender influenced the curriculum, textbooks from the Kingston Women’s Medical College and The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Kingston, were compared. For two out of the three examined courses, it was found that sections of textbooks discussing various topics at the Kingston Women’s Medical College contained significantly more detail than their corresponding sections within The Royal College’s textbooks. It was speculated that the instructors preferred to teach their female students through textbooks, rather than lectures.

Turkey's boycott of the Cyprus EU presidency: context, meaning and its consequences. EU Centre in Singapore Working Paper No. 9, September 2012

In 2011 Turkish officials began indicating their intention to suspend all contact with Cyprus’s presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU), slated for the second half of 2012, given the issues surrounding the unresolved Cyprus conflict. This came as the latest development in a long and arduous path of Turkey’s application for EU membership that began in 1987. This paper provides the context – the Cyprus conflict, Turkey’s EU accession negotiations, and the Cyprus reunification talks – in understanding the reasons and consequences of Ankara’s boycott of the Cyprus presidency. The article also considers the evolving nature and the role of the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, especially after the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, and how this may have played into Turkey’s calculations in calling for the boycott.

Narratives and counter-narratives on "marriage of convenience" : conjugality and (il)legality in portuguese migration policies and in couples’ experiences

Tese de doutoramento, Sociologia (Sociologia da Família, Juventude e das Relações do Género), Universidade de Lisboa, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, 2016

Lisbon Treaty: Year I

The completion of the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty (from now on the Treaty) in November and its entry into force on 1 December 2009 marked the end of an extraordinary and unprecedented lengthy process of institutional change of the European Union. The Treaty had been signed on 13 December 2007, almost two years before its entry into force, by no means an excessive duration compared to the ratification of previous modifications of the Treaties. But the Treaty – in strictly legal terms a substantial set of amendments to two previous treaties renamed in the process – has a long history. Initial proposals for institutional reform date back to the German reunification in 1989-1990. They went through lengthy debates that eventually led to the European Convention and the 'Draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe' of 20031 and from there to the 'Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe' of 20042. If the current form of the Treaty is a clear consequence of the difficulties of the ratification process of the Constitution, the ideas that provide the substance can be traced back to the final years of the past century. The pages that follow are not a legal analysis but an attempt to identify changes and to assess their significance3.

The NSA: the impact of the wiretapping scandal on German-American relations. OSW Commentary No. 124, 14.01.2014

Edward Snowden revealed that America’s National Security Agency (NSA) had tapped Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone and had collected date en masse. This has caused the largest crisis of confidence in relations between Germany and the US since the Iraq war. Due to the technological advantage which American intelligence services have, Germany wishes to continue close co-operation with the US but is making efforts to change the legal basis of this co-operation dating back to Cold War times. Berlin would like to secure part of provisions similar to the Five Eyes alliance – agreements signed between the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia in the second half of the 1940s, aimed at intelligence sharing and a ban mutual bugging. This could spell the end of the last (not including the military presence) relic of Germany’s dependence on the US which emerged following World War II and took shape in the shadow of the Cold War. The process of Germany’s emancipation in trans-Atlantic relations, which began after Germany’s reunification, would be complete. The US is however opposed to such far-reaching changes as it is interested in continued co-operation with Germany without limiting it. Were it not to sign agreements satisfactory for Berlin, this would lead to a protracted crisis of confidence in German-American relations.

The Future of Model Germany: Challenges to the Corporatist System of Business Labor Relations. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 07.4, 12 December 1996

Germany's economic and social system faces immense economic, social, and political demands. These may be encapsulated in challenges like "new management concepts and labor policies," "deregulation of the infrastructure sector," "globalization," and "reunification." The paper analyzes these challenges and changes to the corporatist system of industrial relations--a cornerstone in .Model Germany's specific economic success and social consensus until now.

Germany's European Policy: A Constructivist Perspective. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 08.1, 1998

This paper sets out a constructivist analytical framework and applies it to post-reunification German policy towards the European Union. Although the structural constraints facing Germany shifted dramatically with the end of the Cold War and reunification, the direction of its European policy did not. The more powerful Federal Republic continued to press for deeper economic and political integration, eschewing a more independent or assertive foreign policy course. Neorealism, neoliberalism, and liberalism cannot adequately explain this continuity in the face of structural change; a constructivist account centered around state identity can. During and after reunification, German leaders across the political spectrum identified the Federal Republic as part of an emergent supranational community. This European identity, with roots in the postwar decades, drove Germany's unflagging support for deeper integration across the 1989-90 divide.

Hanging Together, Falling Apart: Self-Understandings of German Society from 1800 to the Present. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 04.7 (Series 51), 1994

In recent years, interest in comtemporary conceptions and self-understandings of the social order has grown among historians, yet the field of an "intellectual history of society" is little expJored for modern Germany. This paper surveys the field and asks how Germans from the early modern era up to the present time of German reunification conceived of the social order they were building and living in, and it provides an overview of the developments of such major concepts as "estate" and "class," "community" and "society," "individual" and "mass," "state" and "nation." Three major points emerge as persistent and distinctive features of German social self-conception in the nineteenth cand twentieth centuries: the intellectual construction of dilemmas between social conformity and social fragmentation; the difficulties of conceiving of society as a plitical society; and the "futurization" of an idealized, utopian social roder of harmony that was hoped would one day replace the perceived social disintegration.

Our changing German problems.

Mode of access: Internet.

But somehow it was only television: West German Narratives of the fall of the Wall in recent novels and their screen adaptations

East Germans have long been criticised for harbouring a feeling of Ostalgie, a nostalgia for their old, Socialist state, but only recently has it become apparent that many west Germans obviously experience a similar sense of loss and longing for a seemingly simpler time before reunification. The texts that express these feelings tend to focus on the fall of the Wall as the pivotal point of change in German post-war history. Typically the characters in these books deny the significance and impact of this major political event and strive to reduce its importance, at best to a minor television moment. This attitude can be observed in the novels liegen lernen and Herr Lehmann and in their film adaptations. Despite having been accused of indulging a feeling of Westalgie, a closer analysis reveals that they are in fact deliberately provocative and challenge eastern and western stereotypes. In addition the films find ways to transport the books’ ironic narrative to the screen, and they also reinforce the authors’ implicitly critical attitude towards their characters’ political apathy by portraying the fall of the Wall in ways different to the books. The films react to the provocation voiced in the novels and function like an intertextual commentary as they integrate the opening of the border into a meaningful context for the protagonists and restore it to its historic importance.

Real options and demographic decisions:empirical evidence from East and West Germany

Iyer and Velu (2006) have convincingly argued that contemporary analyses of fertility behaviour fail to explain why a woman (or a couple) will choose to postpone childbirth, and in particular to consider the role of uncertainty in this regard. They have addressed this lacuna in the literature by using a real options approach to model fertility decisions by relating uncertainty experienced by individuals to the likelihood of childbirth. However, they did not present empirical evidence. Since the theory implies the existence of two offsetting effects of uncertainty on fertility decisions, a positive insurance effect and a negative option value effect, it is not easy to reject the theory on the basis of empirical analysis, when one of these effects offsets the other. We construct such a test for East (and also West) Germany during that country's reunification, which takes advantage of the fact that because of the country's strong welfare system, the insurance effect should be dominated by the option value effect, thereby suggesting that the net relationship should be negative. The results provide rather strong support for the real options link, especially for Eastern Germany.

Formação do profissional sanitarista: caminhos e percalços

The public health is a project that struggles for a fair, resolutive and democratic health and that aims to help the collective and social bodies starting from their real needs, being totally involved with inequality and social determination issues. Thus, it is of fundamental importance to form a professional commited to this project. This current study aims to understand the perception of teachers/militants of Public Health about the graduation of Healthcare professionals. Therefore, we look forward answering the following question: Which elements are relevant to the formation of the sanitarian professional? This is a field research, descriptive and exploratory, with a qualitative approach. For data collection, we used a semi-structured interview technique with veteran professionals as sanitarians and teachers of Public Health area. The data were analyzed based on the technique of thematic analysis of subject. This technique consists in structuring the text in units, in categories according analogic reunification. In this sense, were organized three analysis categories, whose titles were guided according to the study objectives, namely: "The Institutional Formation of Sanitarians"; "Elements that contribute to the Sanitarian formation " and "Possible Paths in Sanitarian Formation". Four main elements of sanitarian formation were emphasized: technical capacity to develop a sanitation work, based on three conceptual pillars of Public Health; Framework, foundation and support on Social Sciences, in the social concepts of health; Life history of the student, implication of this with the Public Health object; Field operation, in the territory, directly integrated to the service and the health system. The intervieweds imagine a path to the sanitarian formation: the Public Health should be well explored in its theory and practice in graduation, in any health area and obviously in the graduation of Public Health; the Lato Sensu courses, especially residency, would need a theoretical upgrading, given the creation of undergraduate courses on the area; the Stricto Sensu courses, while forming researchers and teachers in the area, should develop productions involved with the health system and the object of Public Health, in order to bring an effective return, in terms of applicability, in the health system. It is suggested that such a path should be complementary, in a sense of adding knowledge as it travels through graduation, postgraduation Lato Sensu and post-graduation Stricto Sensu. The idea, in general, is that the graduate-residence set / specialization-mastering / PhD compose a linear formation, ascending and complementary. To follow all this process effectively, it is necessary, and urgent, to think of regulation strategies of the formating procedures. It is also recommended that more studies are conducted in this area, specially a more careful evaluation of the undergraduate courses in Public Health, which is a current and relatively new issue on formation in the area.