The G20

This revised and updated edition presents detailed analysis of the history and current state of the G20, and the challenges it faces. The emergence of the G20 was the result of calls for full inclusion of major developing and other systemically important countries and to reflect new global economic and political realities. The growth of Chinese power, growing significance of other major developing countries and new concerns concerning anti-globalization and rising protectionism in the West have all resulted in important changes to the dynamics of the institution. The suspension of Russia’s membership in the G8 has also necessitated a change in G7/G20 dynamics and the G20’s processes, agenda priorities and role in global governance. Providing a historical overview and analysis of the evolving agenda, methods of performance evaluation, relationship with structured international organizations and other external actors, Hajnal’s text is an authoritative work of history, analysis and reference on the G20 and also G7/G8/G20 reform. This book is an essential source for researchers and students focusing on the G20, international organizations and global governance, and more generally for scholars in the fields of political science, economics, and finance

Can civil society influence G8 accountability?

This study outlines the mandate and activities of the Group of Eight (G8), examines for what and to whom the G8 is accountable, reviews the range and types of civil society groups interacting with the G8, and discusses how and to what extent this engagement has promoted or failed to promote G8 accountability through various actions: policy studies, evaluation and monitoring of commitments; petitions, lobbying, mobilisation and media campaigns; demonstrations and protests; dialogue; alternative summits; and participation in multi-stakeholder partnerships. The paper than analyses attitudes, procedures, structures and other factors that have helped or hindered civil society’s contribution to G8 accountability. The study concludes that the concept of accountability, although problematic, is applicable to the G8: leaders are individually accountable to their national electorates, to the global community, to regional and global governance agencies and to their fellow leaders. G8 transparency is still inadequate, but answerability for actions is stronger. Accountability for other global governance agencies is weaker, and accountability to the leaders’ peers is nebulous. Accountability to those affected by G8 decisions varies by issue area but generally is not particularly strong. The greatest accountability gap is the lack of an enforcement mechanism. The most important conclusion is that civil society has enhanced G8 accountability but that this role has not yet reached its potential

The G20

This revised and updated edition presents detailed analysis of the history and current state of the G20, and the challenges it faces. The emergence of the G20 was the result of calls for full inclusion of major developing and other systemically important countries and to reflect new global economic and political realities. The growth of Chinese power, growing significance of other major developing countries and new concerns concerning anti-globalization and rising protectionism in the West have all resulted in important changes to the dynamics of the institution. The suspension of Russia’s membership in the G8 has also necessitated a change in G7/G20 dynamics and the G20’s processes, agenda priorities and role in global governance. Providing a historical overview and analysis of the evolving agenda, methods of performance evaluation, relationship with structured international organizations and other external actors, Hajnal’s text is an authoritative work of history, analysis and reference on the G20 and also G7/G8/G20 reform. This book is an essential source for researchers and students focusing on the G20, international organizations and global governance, and more generally for scholars in the fields of political science, economics, and finance

Effect of mixing and spatial dimension on the glass transition

We study the influence of composition changes on the glass transition of binary hard disc and hard sphere mixtures in the framework of mode coupling theory. We derive a general expression for the slope of a glass transition line. Applied to the binary mixture in the low concentration limits, this new method allows a fast prediction of some properties of the glass transition lines. The glass transition diagram we find for binary hard discs strongly resembles the random close packing diagram. Compared to 3D from previous studies, the extension of the glass regime due to mixing is much more pronounced in 2D where plasticization only sets in at larger size disparities. For small size disparities we find a stabilization of the glass phase quadratic in the deviation of the size disparity from unity.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, Phys. Rev. E (in print

A tabu search heuristic for the Equitable Coloring Problem

The Equitable Coloring Problem is a variant of the Graph Coloring Problem where the sizes of two arbitrary color classes differ in at most one unit. This additional condition, called equity constraints, arises naturally in several applications. Due to the hardness of the problem, current exact algorithms can not solve large-sized instances. Such instances must be addressed only via heuristic methods. In this paper we present a tabu search heuristic for the Equitable Coloring Problem. This algorithm is an adaptation of the dynamic TabuCol version of Galinier and Hao. In order to satisfy equity constraints, new local search criteria are given. Computational experiments are carried out in order to find the best combination of parameters involved in the dynamic tenure of the heuristic. Finally, we show the good performance of our heuristic over known benchmark instances

Role of oxygen vacancy defect states in the n-type conduction of β-Ga[sub 2]O[sub 3]

Based on semiempirical quantum-chemical calculations, the electronic band structure of β-Ga2O3 is presented and the formation and properties of oxygen vacancies are analyzed. The equilibrium geometries and formation energies of neutral and doubly ionized vacancies were calculated. Using the calculated donor level positions of the vacancies, the high temperature n-type conduction is explained. The vacancy concentration is obtained by fitting to the experimental resistivity and electron mobility

The roots of "Western European societal evolution". A concept of Europe by Jenő Szűcs

Jenő Szűcs wrote his essay entitled Sketch on the three regions of Europe in the early 1980s in Hungary. During these years, a historically well-argued opinion emphasising a substantial difference between Central European and Eastern European societies was warmly received in various circles of the political opposition. In a wider European perspective Szűcs used the old “liberty topos” which claims that the history of Europe is no other than the fulfillment of liberty. In his Sketch, Szűcs does not only concentrate on questions concerning the Middle Ages in Western Europe. Yet it is this stream of thought which brought a new perspective to explaining European history. His picture of the Middle Ages represents well that there is a way to integrate all typical Western motifs of post-war self-definition into a single theory. Mainly, the “liberty motif”, as a sign of “Europeanism” – in the interpretation of Bibó’s concept, Anglo-saxon Marxists and Weber’s social theory –, developed from medieval concepts of state and society and from an analysis of economic and social structures. Szűcs’s historical aspect was a typical intellectual product of the 1980s: this was the time when a few Central European historians started to outline non-Marxist aspects of social theory and categories of modernisation theories, but concealing them with Marxist terminology

Closed Timelike Curves in Relativistic Computation

In this paper, we investigate the possibility of using closed timelike curves (CTCs) in relativistic hypercomputation. We introduce a wormhole based hypercomputation scenario which is free from the common worries, such as the blueshift problem. We also discuss the physical reasonability of our scenario, and why we cannot simply ignore the possibility of the existence of spacetimes containing CTCs.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figure

Helicity, polarization, and Riemann-Silberstein vortices

Riemann-Silberstein (RS) vortices have been defined as surfaces in spacetime where the complex form of a free electromagnetic field given by F=E+iB is null (F.F=0), and they can indeed be interpreted as the collective history swept out by moving vortex lines of the field. Formally, the nullity condition is similar to the definition of "C-lines" associated with a monochromatic electric or magnetic field, which are curves in space where the polarization ellipses degenerate to circles. However, it was noted that RS vortices of monochromatic fields generally oscillate at optical frequencies and are therefore unobservable while electric and magnetic C-lines are steady. Here I show that under the additional assumption of having definite helicity, RS vortices are not only steady but they coincide with both sets of C-lines, electric and magnetic. The two concepts therefore become one for waves of definite frequency and helicity. Since the definition of RS vortices is relativistically invariant while that of C-lines is not, it may be useful to regard the vortices as a wideband generalization of C-lines for waves of definite helicity.Comment: 5 pages, no figures. Submitted to J of Optics A, special issue on Singular Optics; minor changes from v.

Dynamics of localized structures in vector waves

Dynamical properties of topological defects in a twodimensional complex vector field are considered. These objects naturally arise in the study of polarized transverse light waves. Dynamics is modeled by a Vector Complex Ginzburg-Landau Equation with parameter values appropriate for linearly polarized laser emission. Creation and annihilation processes, and selforganization of defects in lattice structures, are described. We find "glassy" configurations dominated by vectorial defects and a melting process associated to topological-charge unbinding.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures included in the text. To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett. (2000). Related material at http://www.imedea.uib.es/Nonlinear and http://www.imedea.uib.es/Photonics . In this new version, Fig. 3 has been replaced by a better on