Who Owns the State? Understanding Ethnic Conflict in Post-Colonial Societies

Abstract. This article aims to integrate different explanatory approaches to ethnic conflicts: studies on ethnic clientelism and discrimination, on political mobilisation by minority elites, on unequal relations between ethnoregions, and on the effects that different political systems have on the dynamics of ethnic conflicts. For each of these approaches, the relevant research is reviewed and illustrated by selected examples from post-imperial societies. Propositions that seem empirically plausible are integrated into a comparative model which is in turn based on a specific theory of political modernity. The premise holds that the politicisation of ethnicity is to be interpreted as a central aspect of modem state-building. For only when ‘people’ and state are mutually related within the ideal of a legitimate order does the question arise for which ethnic group the state has to act, who is regarded as its legitimate owner, and who is entitled to have access to its services. Ethnic conflicts can thus be interpreted as struggles for the collective goods of the nation-state. Within this paradigmatical frame, a step-by-step analysis at a medium level of abstraction tries to show under which conditions state-building leads to an ethnicisation of political conflicts and in some cases to an escalation into rebellions and wars.     

ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS: A NEW APPROACH TO MODELING INTERREGIONAL TELECOMMUNICATION FLOWS*

ABSTRACT. During the last thirty years there has been much research effort in regional science devoted to modeling interactions over geographic space. Theoretical approaches for studying these phenomena have been modified considerably. This paper suggests a new modeling approach, based upon a general nested sigmoid neural network model. Its feasibility is illustrated in the context of modeling interregional telecommunication traffic in Austria, and its performance is evaluated in comparison with the classical regression approach of the gravity type. The application of this neural network approach may be viewed as a three-stage process. The first stage refers to the identification of an appropriate network from the family of two-layered feedforward networks with 3 input nodes, one layer of (sigmoidal) intermediate nodes and one (sigmoidal) output node (logistic activation function). There is no general procedure to address this problem. We solved this issue experimentally. The input-output dimensions have been chosen in order to make the comparison with the gravity model as close as possible. The second stage involves the estimation of the network parameters of the selected neural network model. This is performed via the adaptive setting of the network parameters (training, estimation) by means of the application of a least mean squared error goal and the error back propagating technique, a recursive learning procedure using a gradient search to minimize the error goal. Particular emphasis is laid on the sensitivity of the network performance to the choice of the initial network parameters, as well as on the problem of overfitting. The final stage of applying the neural network approach refers to the testing of the interregional teletraffic flows predicted. Prediction quality is analyzed by means of two performance measures, average relative variance and the coefficient of determination, as well as by the use of residual analysis. The analysis shows that the neural network model approach outperforms the classical regression approach to modeling telecommunication traffic in Austria.     

Archaeometallurgical Investigations in Nakhchivan,Azerbaijan: What Does the Evidence from Late Chalcolithic Ovçular Tepesi Tell Us about the Beginning of Extractive Metallurgy?

The Late Chalcolithic (4400–3950 b.c.) occupation levels from Ovçular Tepesi have yielded a significant assemblage of copper objects and remains of copper production. Together with ore finds, two fragments of nozzle, crucible remains, and a number of small metal artifacts, this assemblage includes the unexpected discovery of three copper axes in an infant burial jar. These axes are the earliest examples of large copper tools known to date in southwestern Asia, whether it is in the Caucasus, Iran, or the Anatolian highlands. More importantly, the fact that these objects were locally produced suggests that significant metallurgical activities were being carried out at Ovçular as early as the second half of the 5th millennium b.c. After presenting the evidence from Ovçular Tepesi, this paper will proceed to a reassessment of the available archaeological and geochemical data concerning the emergence of extractive metallurgy in the southern Caucasus.     

Wissenstransfer auf dem Prüfstand. Europäische Mediziner im Kampf gegen die Pest von Moskau 1771

Foreign knowledge being tested: European physicians fighting the Moscow plague of 1771. – The transfer of Western medicine to Russia increased significantly in the Eighteenth century. Foreign doctors were employed, their writings translated, their education standards copied. But who regarded that knowledge as superior and why? Taking the Moscow Plague of 1771 as a case study, this article examines the crucial role foreign and Russian medical practitioners played during the epidemic. It argues that especially those ideas and practices that were useful for social control filtered into politics and public discourse, but failed to convince the majority of the population.     

The Geography of Knowledge Spillovers Between High-Technology Firms in Europe: Evidence from a Spatial Interaction Modeling Perspective

The focus in this article is on knowledge spillovers between high-technology firms in Europe, as captured by patent citations. The European coverage is given by patent applications at the European Patent Office that are assigned to high-technology firms located in the EU-25 member states (except Cyprus and Malta), the two accession countries Bulgaria and Romania, and Norway and Switzerland. By following the paper trail left by citations between these high-technology patents we adopt a Poisson spatial interaction modeling perspective to identify and measure spatial separation effects to interregional knowledge spillovers. In doing so we control for technological proximity between the regions, as geographical distance could be just proxying for technological proximity. The study produces prima facie evidence that geography matters. First, geographical distance has a significant impact on knowledge spillovers, and this effect is substantial. Second, national border effects are important and dominate geographical distance effects. Knowledge flows within European countries more easily than across. Not only geography, but also technological proximity matters. Interregional knowledge flows are industry specific and occur most often between regions located close to each other in technological space.