724 research outputs found
Reconstructing World Politics: Norms, Discourse, and Community
This Article argues that the conventional (rationalist) approach to world politics characterized by political bargain cannot fully capture the new social reality under the contemporary global ambience where ideational factors such as ideas, values, culture, and norms have become more salient and influential not only in explaining but also in prescribing state behaviors. After bringing rationalism’s paradigmatic limitations into relief, the Article offers a sociological framework that highlights a reflective, intersubjective communication among states and consequent norm-building process. Under this new paradigm, one can understand an international organization as a “community” (Gemeinschaft), not as a mere contractual instrument of its contracting parties (Gesellschaft). The Article applies the new paradigm to the World Trade Organization (WTO) as it describes the WTO’s institutional evolution from a power-oriented, tariff-reducing contract to a norm-oriented world trade community
Bubbles from Nothing
Within the framework of flux compactifications, we construct an instanton
describing the quantum creation of an open universe from nothing. The solution
has many features in common with the smooth 6d bubble of nothing solutions
discussed recently, where the spacetime is described by a 4d compactification
of a 6d Einstein-Maxwell theory on S^2 stabilized by flux. The four-dimensional
description of this instanton reduces to that of Hawking and Turok. The choice
of parameters uniquely determines all future evolution, which we additionally
find to be stable against bubble of nothing instabilities.Comment: 19 pages, 6 figure
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