Ukrainian Economic Policy after the Orange Revolution: A Commentary on Åslund's Analysis

One of the leading Western observers of Ukrainian affairs, before and after the dis-integration of the Soviet Union, discusses the preceding paper by Anders Åslund devoted to the economic policies of Ukraine after the Orange Revolution. The commentary covers in some detail the pervasive corruption, largely traced to Ukrainian oligarchs but also endemic in the administration and among the military. Relatively recent 2005 polls are cited to illustrate the citizenry's support for some of the government's policies and regulations pertaining to prices, privatization, and organized crime, as well as those showing presidential and ministerial approval ratings. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H10, H80, O52, P30. 16 references.     

Settlement studies and the archaeological survey of North Norway — A discussion based on the survey of North Troms

By the end of the 1984 field season a systematic archaeological survey of the county of Troms was completed. At the same time a revision of the survey was started. The survey of Troms is part of a nation‐wide archaeological survey, connected with the production of an Economic Map of Norway. Though the validity of the methods and the results of this survey have been questioned, few attempts have been made at evaluating the archaeological data base produced by the survey. The current total revision of the survey makes this task even more urgent. The aim of this paper is to contribute towards such an evaluation, by utilizing the survey data from six North Troms municipalities in an attempt at constructing a history of settlement for this area.     

A nuclear North Korea and the stability of East Asia: a tsunami on the horizon?

This article aims to assess the strategic implications of North Korea's nuclear development. It calls into question the conventional wisdom that Pyongyang's atomic weapons will not only undermine the state of deterrence on the Korean peninsula, but also will trigger a nuclear domino effect throughout East Asia. A nuclear-armed North Korea, I argue, still cannot win a major victory over the South and the United States; Pyongyang's bombs somewhat decrease—rather than increase, as many believe—the risk of US preventive attack. And the regional US military presence as well as the available missile defence technology is sufficient to persuade Seoul and Tokyo not to pursue nuclear arsenals for the foreseeable future. While I reject the alarmist view, I find that North Korea's armament nevertheless carries two significant—albeit less grave—risks that have received little scholarly scrutiny. First, I argue that the risk of inadvertent war through pre-emption will increase with Pyongyang's armament. I also argue that the strengthening of US alliances in the region as well as the US development of a missile defence capability in response to the North Korean threat could exacerbate the security dilemmas among major powers. I conclude, however, that these potential dangers do not markedly threaten regional stability.     

Beyond the crabgrass frontier: industry and the spread of North American cities, 1850–1950

The conventional story of suburbanization in Canada and the United States portrays an outward movement of residences from the cities that only since World War II has been fuelled by the dispersal of employment to the urban fringe. This prevailing wisdom needs considerable revision. In this essay we present a theoretical interpretation of industrial suburbanization. We argue that the outward spread of factories and manuÍfacturing districts has been a distinctive and important feature of North American urbanization since the middle of the nineteenth century. The paper begins with a discussion of how industrial decentralization has been repeatedly misinterpreted as new and unprecedented, rather than an extension of past trends. In contrast to the prevailing interpretation, we claim that industrial suburbanization is the product of a combination of the economic logic of geographical industrialization, investment in real estate, and political guidance by business and government leaders. The result has been extensive, multinodal metropolitan regions.