The downhill slide in the global price of crude oil in 2014 had major repercussions across the Middle East. Following the Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011, the oil price decline represented a second major shock for the region in the early twenty-first century - one that provides constraints and opportunities. Offering the first comprehensive analysis of the Middle Eastern political economy in response to the 2014 oil price decline, this book connects oil market dynamics with an understanding of socio-political changes. Inspired by rentierism, the contributors present original studies that reveal a large diversity of country-specific policy adjustment strategies: from the migrant workers in the Arab Gulf, who lost out in the post-2014 period, to Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, who have never been able to benefit from the 2014 oil price decline. With timely contributions on the COVID-19-induced oil price crash in 2020, this collection shows that rentierism still prevails. -- .

Since the early weeks of the so-called Arab Spring, high hopes for democratic, social, and political change in the Middle East have been met with varying degrees of frustration. In the sub-region of the Levant, regional uprisings have turned to violent conflict in places such as Syria, Iraq, and the Gaza Strip. In Syria, popular unrest has caused enormous human suffering in one of the most brutal civil wars the region ever has witnessed, yet the international community has shown an appalling inability to act. Taking the war in Syria as its central point of reference, this book raises the question of whether the developments in the Levant might lead not only to processes of regime change, but also to a fundamental alteration of its entire state system.

The downhill slide in the global price of crude oil, which started mid-2014, had major repercussions across the Middle East for net oil exporters, as well as importers closely connected to the oil-producing countries from the Gulf. Following the Arab uprisings of 2010 and 2011, the oil price decline represented a second major shock for the region in the early twenty-first century - one that has continued to impose constraints, but also provided opportunities. Offering the first comprehensive analysis of the Middle Eastern political economy in response to the 2014 oil price decline, this book connects oil market dynamics with an understanding of socio-political changes. Inspired by rentierism, the contributors present original studies on Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The studies reveal a large diversity of country-specific policy adjustment strategies: from the migrant workers in the Arab Gulf, who lost out in the post-2014 period but were incapable of repelling burdensome adjustment policies, to Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon, who have never been able to fulfil the expectation that they could benefit from the 2014 oil price decline. With timely contributions on the COVID-19-induced oil price crash in 2020, this collection signifies that rentierism still prevails with regard to both empirical dynamics in the Middle East and academic discussions on its political economy. -- .

Over the course of the last four decades, William Leon McBride has distinguished himself as a teacher, mentor, and scholar without peer. The author of seven books and more than two hundred book chapters, articles, and reviews, he is a world-renowned expert on the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and a leader in the international community of philosophers. This volume-which celebrates the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday-includes contributions from colleagues, friends, and formers students. Together, they pay tribute to the intellectual, philosophical, and professional achievements of one of the most esteemed and accomplished scholars of his generation.

This philosophical-political profile offers the first of its kind intellectual reconstruction of Habermas s defining existential and historical situations, his generational profile and interventions, his impact on as well as the discontents that his life work generates in others. Written as a lively dramatic engagement with major themes of Habermas s adult life in postwar Germany, the entire study occupies a unique place between the standard genres of a biography and a theoretical commentary on the oeuvre. In this work the reader is taken on a journey with Habermas through the 20th-century intellectual and political history from the defeat of Nazism, to the Cold War restoration of the '50s, the student movement of the '60s, the historical revisions of the '70s and '80s, the hope of the post-Wall era after 1989, all the way to the controversies surrounding the allied wars of intervention against Iraq and Serbia in the 1990s. Both beginning and advanced readers of 20th century socio-political thought gain greater insight into the existential, political, and philosophical influences that proved to be formative of Habermas s writing and activism in the public sphere. The first part of the study emphasizes the unfolding, linear view of Habermas s postwar history, punctuated by the major existential and political situations of his young adult life from 1945 to 2000. The second part returns to the same time-span in order to reconstruct Habermas s mature post-Wall intellectual profile in contrast to the profiles of the preceding generation of 1945 and the later protesting generation of 1968. The third part examines the tremendous Habermas-effect exercised on 20th-century thought and public policy. The concluding chapters discuss critically the lasting place as well as the limits of Habermas s achievement in contribution to a development of new critical theory. The book is enhanced by an introduction that provides a historical and conceptual background to the major themes discussed, twelve helpful thematic table"

This philosophical-political profile offers the first of its kind intellectual reconstruction of HabermasOs defining existential and historical situations, his generational profile and interventions, his impact on as well as the discontents that his life work generates in others. Written as a lively dramatic engagement with major themes of HabermasOs adult life in postwar Germany, the entire study occupies a unique place between the standard genres of a biography and a theoretical commentary on the oeuvre. In this work the reader is taken on a journey with Habermas through the 20th-century intellectual and political history from the defeat of Nazism, to the Cold War restoration of the '50s, the student movement of the '60s, the historical revisions of the '70s and '80s, the hope of the post-Wall era after 1989, all the way to the controversies surrounding the allied wars of intervention against Iraq and Serbia in the 1990s. Both beginning and advanced readers of 20th century socio-political thought gain greater insight into the existential, political, and philosophical influences that proved to be formative of HabermasOs writing and activism in the public sphere. The first part of the study emphasizes the unfolding, linear view of HabermasOs postwar history, punctuated by the major existential and political situations of his young adult life from 1945 to 2000. The second part returns to the same time-span in order to reconstruct HabermasOs mature post-Wall intellectual profile in contrast to the profiles of the preceding generation of 1945 and the later protesting generation of 1968. The third part examines the tremendous Habermas-effect exercised on 20th-century thought and public policy. The concluding chapters discuss critically the lasting place as well as the limits of HabermasOs achievement in contribution to a development of new critical theory. The book is enhanced by an introduction that provides a historical and conceptual background to the major themes discussed, twelve helpful thematic tables and figures, and a glossary of foreign terms.

This Festschrift presents papers by colleagues and friends of Hans-Christoph Schmitt on the history of the Old Testament from Genesis to 2 Kings and on the final conception of these books. The research findings presented here illuminate the processes responsible for the composition and collation of the Pentateuch and the Deuteronomic History or even - as the honoree proposed - of an enneateuch.

The study deals with the central Day of YHWH texts Am 5:18-20; Zp 1:2-18, 2:1-3, Jl 1:15-20, 2:1-11, 3:1-5, 4:14-17; Zc 14; Ml 2,17-3,5; 3:13-24. First, they are subjected to a literary analysis, and then their references are evaluated in a methodologically differentiated manner. Thus the study makes a contribution to the ongoing intensive debate about the genesis and unity of the Dodecapropheton.

This volume is an important contribution to the empirical research on what globalization means in different world regions. "Resistance" here has a double meaning: - Active, intentional resistance to tendencies which are rejected on political or moral grounds by presenting alternative discourses and concepts founded in specific cultural and national traditions. - Resilience with regard to globalization pressures in the sense that traditional patterns of development and politics are resistant to change and transform the impulses originating from globalization processes in a way that their results are very different when compared across regions and are not conducive to globalization. The book points out the possibility that the local, sub-national, national, and regional patterns of politics and development will coexist with globalized structures for quite a while without yielding very much ground and in ways which may turn out to be a serious barrier to further globalization. Case studies presented focus on Venezuela (A. Boeckh), Brazil (J. Faust), the Middle East (M. Beck, S. Hegasy), Iran (H. Furtig), and Russia (A. S. Makarychev, A. Shastitko, N. Zubarevich).

Dieser Band befasst sich mit den derzeit beobachtbaren tiefgreifenden sozialen, okonomischen und politischen Transformationen in der arabischen Welt, die jedoch auf der Ebene der politischen Systeme von Stagnation und Autoritarismus gekennzeichnet sind. Ziel der Beitrage ist es, innovative theoretische Ansatze aus den Politik- bzw. den Sozialwissenschaften mit konkreter empirischer Forschung zu aussenpolitischen, wirtschaftlichen und gesellschaftspolitischen Entwicklungen in der Region zu verknupfen. Drei Faktoren spielen dabei eine zentrale Rolle: innergesellschaftliche Transformationsprozesse, externe Einflussnahmen (insbesondere Demokratieforderung) und die Rolle von okonomischen und politischen Renten. Das Buch erscheint als Band 1 der Reihe Politik und Gesellschaft des Nahen Ostens.""

Im Zentrum der Arbeit steht die Bearbeitung dreier wissenschaftlicher Ratsel. Wieso haben sich Israel und die PLO im Jahre 1993 darauf verstandigt, ihren jahrzehntelang unregulierten Konfliktaustrag kunftig kooperativ zu bearbeiten? Warum hat sich in den palastinensischen Autonomiegebieten kein wirtschaftlicher Aufschwung eingestellt, und weshalb ist es nicht zur Herausbildung eines liberalen, geschweige denn demokratischen Systems gekommen? Warum schliesslich hat der so muhsam errungene und fur beide Seiten vorteilhafte Friedensprozess einerseits bereits kurze Zeit nach seiner Einrichtung wieder krisenhafte Entwicklungstendenzen aufgewiesen, warum andererseits hat er bis zum Herbst 2000 alle Krisen uberlebt. Weiterhin wird erklart, weshalb es zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts zum Niedergang des Friedensprozesses kam.
Antworten auf die aufgeworfenen Fragen findet der Autor, indem er seine empirische Analyse auf die Basis theoretischer Konzepte aus den Bereichen der Rationalismusforschung (Rational Choice), des situationsstrukturellen Ansatzes sowie der Rententheorie stellt.
"Vom Review-Panel der Zeitschrift fuer Internationale Beziehungen (2002, Heft 9.2, S. 381) als eine besonders wichtige und interessante Neuerscheinung empfohlen."
"

Der Autor demonstriert fur das relativ homogene Segment horizontale Bearbeitungszentren," wie Kosten- und Leistungsvorteile in Wertkettenprozessen zu Wettbewerbs- und Gewinnvorteilen fuhren."

The Second Edition Contradictory interpretations have been applied to history-making events that led to the end of the Cold War: Vaclav Havel, using Kierkegaardian terms, called the demise of totalitarianism in East-Central Europe an "existential revolution" (i.e. an awakening of human responsibility, spirit, and reason), while others hailed it as a victory for the "New World Order." Regardless of one's point of view, however, it is clear that the global landscape has been dramatically altered. Where once the competition between capitalism and communism provided a basis for establishing political- and self-identity, today the destructive forces of nationalist identity and religious and secular fundamentalism are filling the void. Offering the most extensive examination of Habermas's and Kierkegaard's critiques of nationalist identity available, Postnational Identity dramatically confronts the traditional view of existential philosophy as antisocial and uncritical. This book shows how Kierkegaardian theory and practice of radically honest communication allows us to rethink the existential in terms of Habermas's communicative action, and vice versa. As the author explains, the foundations of his work in the critical theory and existential philosophy, brought together in this book, engender two forms of suspicion of the present age. The critical theorist, such as Jurgen Habermas, unmasks the forms in which social and cultural life become systema-tically distorted by the imperatives of political power and economic gain. The existential critic, like Soren Kierkegaard and Vaclav Havel, is suspicious of the various ways in which individuals deceive themselves or other people. This study aims to integrate Kierkegaard's and Havel's existential critique of motives informing human identity formation with Habermas's critique of the colonialization of fragmented, anomic modern life by systems of power and money... The author's argument is that existential critique and social critique complement each other and overcome their respective limitations. One of the first works to treat seriously the existential thought of Havel, the book will hold enormous appeal for students and professionals involved in existential philosophy, critical theory, philosophy, and, more generally, political science, literary theory, communications, and cultural studies.

No one will deny that we live in a world where evil exists. But how are we to come to grips with human atrocity and its diabolical intensity? Martin Beck Matu tik considers evil to be even more radically evil than previously thought and to have become all too familiar in everyday life. While we can name various moral wrongs and specific cruelties, Matu tik maintains that radical evil understood as a religious phenomenon requires a religious response where the language of hope, forgiveness, redemption, and love can take us beyond unspeakable harm and irreparable violence. Drawing upon the work of Kant, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Levinas, Derrida, and Marion, this work is written as a series of meditations. Matu tik presents a bold new way of dealing with one of humanity's most intractable problems."

"This volume represents a fine assessment of the continuing applicability of Kierkegaard s thought for the 21st century." The Reader s Review

"Matustik and Westphal have set some agile minds to the task of drawing out the threads of Kierkegaard s influence on postmodern and contemporary philosophy, from gender to politics and from Buber to Derrida." Choice

..". Usefully and effectively establishes Kierkegaard as a living presence in contemporary thought. It will help students of Kierkegaard attend to aspects of his thought that have eluded their attention, and it will challenge those engaged with contemporary continental philosophy not to shelter themselves from the provocations and interrogrations still uncomfortably pressing in Kierkegaard s writings." International Philosophical Quarterly

"The standard of the essays and the calibre of the contributors are uniformly high. This is indeed one of the better collections relating to Kierkegaard published in recent years, and should do much to extend discussion of his work..." Modern Believing

..". a text of immense significance and value.... As a research tool it will surely prove indispensable." Soren Kierkegaard Newsletter

"It will be a helpful supplementary areading for teaching... the contemporary readings of Kierkegaard introduced here continue to reveal new and more exciting depths to his extraordinary philosophy." Teaching Philosophy

These essays engage Kierkegaard in conversation with critical social theory and postmodern thought. Covering a diversity of themes, this collection still reflects consensus Kierkegaard is to be taken seriously as a philosopher at the turn of the twenty-first century."

Improving outcomes for young children and their families may start with choosing evidence-based curricula, interventions, and practices--but it doesn't end there. To ensure sustained changes to early childhood programs and systems, interventions must be implemented effectively and consistently over time, which isn't an easy or straightforward task. This important book is the first research volume on applying implementation science--an evidence-based framework for bridging the research-to-practice gap--to early childhood programs and systems.

With contributions from 25+ early childhood researchers, this essential reference will help ensure that interventions are not only implemented effectively, but also scaled up and sustained so they help as many children as possible. Administrators, researchers, and policymakers will

• examine how the growing field of implementation science can help close the research-to-practice gap in early childhood
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• explore through specific examples how to build practitioner competency and promote high-fidelity implementation of early childhood innovations
• get in-depth guidance on replicating and scaling up programs at the district and state level
• learn from a helpful five-step model for assessing the fidelity of interventions
• understand how to create readiness for change and why it's so important
• see how implementation science can inform the process of systems change for early childhood professional development systems and Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS)

More than a how-to guide to effective implementation and scale-up, this volume also addresses the theoretical foundation of the stages of implementation science at all levels of early childhood systems and considers research, practice, and policy implications.

A foundational volume on the fundamentals of implementation science, this book will help improve long-term outcomes for all young children. Early childhood programs will learn how to replicate and sustain best practices, researchers will be ready to conduct more informed program evaluations, and policymakers will discover what it really takes to have effective, sustainable programs and systems.