Petitions from Peripheries of Empire: Louisiana and Québec

As stress on water resources increases from growing human demands and a changing climate, recognition of the need to develop effective strategies for water governance is expanding. Consequently, it is timely to consider the legacy of effective instances of water policy innovation that have been highly influential in water resource management in Canada. We present two historical examples of policy transfer – that is, when policy employed in one jurisdiction is adapted for use in another. The first is the late nineteenth-century adoption of water allocation law in the North-West Territories that was a noteworthy departure from how water had been allocated in eastern Canada. The second is the twentieth-century introduction of conservation authorities in Ontario as regional watershed-based management entities. These examples illustrate how, in an era of expert-driven natural resources management, notions of governance were adapted from Australia and the United States. They also reveal how the biophysically-based policy context of water influences which policy transfer mechanisms are appropriate for lesson-learning. We conclude that the potential for policy transfer and lesson-learning to shorten the policy innovation timeline must be viewed as a critical response to urgent and evolving demands on water.     

Going Against the Flow: Sinn Féin’s Unusual Hungarian ‘Roots’

Can states as well as non-state political ‘actors’ learn from the history of cognate entities elsewhere in time and space, and if so how and when does this policy knowledge get ‘transferred’ across international borders? This article deals with this question, addressing a short-lived Hungarian ‘tutorial’ that, during the early twentieth century, certain policy elites in Ireland imagined might have great applicability to the political transformation of the Emerald Isle, in effect ushering in an era of political autonomy from the United Kingdom, and doing so via a ‘third way’ that skirted both the Scylla of parliamentary formulations aimed at securing ‘home rule’ for Ireland and the Charybdis of revolutionary violence. In the political agenda of Sinn Féin during its first decade of existence, Hungary loomed as a desirable political model for Ireland, with the party’s leading intellectual, Arthur Griffith, insisting that the means by which Hungary had achieved autonomy within the Hapsburg Empire in 1867 could also serve as the means for securing Ireland’s own autonomy in the first decades of the twentieth century. This article explores what policy initiatives Arthur Griffith thought he saw in the Hungarian experience that were worthy of being ‘transferred’ to the Irish situation.     

The Extreme Right in Interwar France: The Faisceau and the Croix de Feu

While most discussions of the international efforts at post-war exploitation of German science and technology by the Allied occupation powers assume similar methods and aims across the nations involved, the French case diverges in important ways because of a fundamentally different understanding of technology transfer. The Americans and British hoped to enlist the French in exploitation programmes similar to their own, and to an extent succeeded, but persistent distrust of French motives largely prevented this co-operation from forging similarities beyond the surface level. French policy-makers’ alternate conception of science and technology as socially embedded led to very different strategies for exploiting German advances, and despite post-war antagonism, led to Franco-German research collaboration that would prove valuable building relationships between these nations.     

Implementation of Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems to Preserve Cultural Heritage — Pilot Motte Montferland

The shallow subsurface in historic cities often contains extensive archaeological remains, also known as cultural deposits. Preservation conditions for naturally degradable archaeological remains are strongly dependent on the presence or absence of groundwater. One of the main goals at such heritage sites is to establish a stable hydrological environment. Green infrastructural solutions such as Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) can support preservation of cultural deposits. Several cases show that implementation of SUDS can be cost effective at preservation of cultural deposits. These include Motte of Montferland, City mound of Vlaardingen, Weiwerd in Delfzijl, and the Leidse Rijn area. In all cases, the amount of underground infrastructure is minimised to prevent damaging cultural layers. SUDS have been implemented to preserve cultural heritage. The first monitoring results and evaluation of the processes give valuable lessons learned, transnational knowledge exchange is an important element to bring the experiences across boundaries.     

‘You Kick the Bucket; We Do the Rest!’: Jokes and the Culture of Reprinting in the Transatlantic Press

In December 1893 the Conservative candidate for Flintshire addressed an audience at Mold Constitutional Club. After he had finished attacking Gladstone and the local Liberal incumbent, he ended his speech with a joke. He advised the Conservative party to adopt, with regard to the government, the sign of an American undertaker: ‘You kick the bucket; we do the rest’. How did a sign belonging to a Nevadan undertaker become the subject of a joke told at a political meeting in North Wales? This unlikely question forms the basis of this article. Using new digital archives, it tracks the journey of the gag from its origins in New York, its travels around America, its trip across the Atlantic, its circulation throughout Britain and its eventual leap into political discourse. The article uses the joke to illuminate the workings of a broader culture of transatlantic reprinting. During the final quarter of the nineteenth century miscellaneous ‘snippets’ cut from the pages of the American press became a staple feature of Britain's bestselling newspapers and magazines. This article explores how these texts were imported, circulated and continually rewritten in dynamic partnership between authors, editors and their readers.     

SHAKING TABLE DYNAMICS: RESULTS FROM A TEST-ANALYSIS COMPARISON STUDY

This paper presents the results of a comprehensive comparison study between the analytically predicted and experimentally identified dynamics of the shaking table system built recently in the Structural Engineering Laboratory at Rice University in Houston, Texas. The primary objectives of the research presented here are two-fold: (1) to shed light into the dynamic performance of asmall-tc-medium size, uni-axial, servo-hydraulic, displacement-controlled shaking table system, and (2) to validate a linearised dynamic model of the system (in the form of the total shaking table transfer function) developed earlier by the authors from basic principles. The analytical model incorporates the inherent dynamic characteristics of the various components of the shaking table system (i.e. controller, servovalve, actuator, test specimen, and reaction mass) and their dynamic interaction.

The test-analysis correlation study performed over a wide range of operating and payload conditions provides useful information on the sensitivity of the shaking table transfer function to control gain parameters and how it can be used to tune the shaking table controller for optimum performance under various payload conditions. The good test-analysis correlation results obtained validate the analytical shaking table model, show its robustness, and provide keen insight into the underlying coupled dynamics of a shaking table system. In order to achieve this good test-analysis correlation, it was crucial to include a time delay in the analytical model of the shaking table system (innovative feature of the model to account for the time lag in the response of the servovalve-actuator system). The expected significant dynamic interaction between payload and shaking table is also confirmed by this study.     

知识经济时代与城市地理研究的新视角

21世纪将是知识经济的时代,以知识为基础的经济正广泛而深刻地影响着人类社会和城市发展的方方面面。这既为城市地理学的发展提供了机遇,同时也提出了严峻的挑战。本文阐述了知识经济的基本内涵,分析和预测了知识经济时代城市发展的若干趋势,并指出在新形势下,城市地理学只有开拓进取,积极创新,以全新的视角审视学科的研究理论、内容与方法,才能在知识经济浪潮中立于不败之地。     

区域知识管理的目标、原则与方式研究

为了能动响应信息化、全球化带来的机遇与挑战,在动态市场中持续发展,以及解决区域内部知识生产、知识交换和知识分配等方面的问题,区域必须进行有效的知识管理。作为知识系统,区域知识管理目标应该是如何设计出一个适应系统,强化私人主体和公共机构的知识生产能力和知识价值实现能力,管理的核心在于激励私人创造知识的积极性和公共管理的核心在于激励私人的创造知识的积极性和公共知识流通与分配方面。区域知识管理必须遵循人本主义原则、遵循市场规律原则、区域性原则和制度学习原则,并相应采用多级管理模式。     

21世纪经济地域景观形态研究

知识经济是21世纪的主导经济。新经济的出现必然会给人类的产业活动带来深远的影响。作为经济活动载体的经济地域必将伴随着这种影响发生深刻的"变革"。最终引起经济地域景观形态的全新变化。一方面表现为经济地域空间结构(即其核心、外围、网络及三者组合关系)将发生根本性的变化;另一方面,经济地域空间结构的变化将使得经济地域的外观形态以全新的面貌展现给世人。本文在明确经济地域景观形态基本内涵的基础上,对知识经济带来的经济地域景观要素及其组合关系的新变化作了较系统地阐述。进而对知识经济时代经济地域的景观形态作了定性、定量的展望。