The United States after unipolarity: American democracy promotion and the ‘Arab Spring’

In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks the United States increasingly sought to promote democracy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). However, although this strategy came to be largely associated with the invasion of Iraq, and the belief that a benign domino effect would spread throughout the region, there was far more nuance to the policy President Obama inherited. President George W. Bush’s democracy promotion legacy is one of institutional construction within the US foreign policy bureaucracy, creating the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI), the Middle East Free Trade Area (MEFTA), and the Broader Middle East and North Africa initiative (BMENA). Furthermore, it was President Bush who codified his democracy promotion strategy in National Security Presidential Directive 58, entitled Institutionalising the Freedom Agenda, and who signed the ADVANCE Democracy Act of 2007 into law.1 By the time that President Bush left office hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent on promoting democracy in the MENA, and the US had declared with the force of law that it would prioritise, along with other foreign policy goals, the promotion of democracy and human rights around the world

Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking, Conformal Anomaly and Incompressible Fluid Turbulence

We propose an effective conformal field theory (CFT) description of steady state incompressible fluid turbulence at the inertial range of scales in any number of spatial dimensions. We derive a KPZ-type equation for the anomalous scaling of the longitudinal velocity structure functions and relate the intermittency parameter to the boundary Euler (A-type) conformal anomaly coefficient. The proposed theory consists of a mean field CFT that exhibits Kolmogorov linear scaling (K41 theory) coupled to a dilaton. The dilaton is a Nambu-Goldstone gapless mode that arises from a spontaneous breaking due to the energy flux of the separate scale and time symmetries of the inviscid Navier-Stokes equations to a K41 scaling with a dynamical exponent $z=\frac{2}{3}$. The dilaton acts as a random measure that dresses the K41 theory and introduces intermittency. We discuss the two, three and large number of space dimensions cases and how entanglement entropy can be used to characterize the intermittency strength.Comment: 27 pages, revtex; added discussions, added formulas, added referenc

On Scale Versus Conformal Symmetry in Turbulence

We consider the statistical description of steady state fully developed incompressible fluid turbulence at the inertial range of scales in any number of spatial dimensions. We show that turbulence statistics is scale but not conformally covariant, with the only possible exception being the direct enstrophy cascade in two space dimensions. We argue that the same conclusions hold for compressible non-relativistic turbulence as well as for relativistic turbulence. We discuss the modification of our conclusions in the presence of vacuum expectation values of negative dimension operators. We consider the issue of non-locality of the stress-energy tensor of inertial range turbulence field theory.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, ref. added. We discuss the modification of our conclusions in the presence of vacuum expectation values of negative dimension operator

Dynamic Models of Religious Conformity and Conversion: Theory and Calibrations

This paper develops behavioral and deterministic overlapping generations models to explain and simulate changes in the proportion of secular and religious people. Under the behavioral approach, the role of the church is to generate an externality associated with the investment in enhancing the conformity rate among young believers. Under the deterministic approach, changes in the number of nonbelievers are explained by different birth rates among secular and religious parents as well as the relative proportion of nonconformists among the young in each group. This model is then used to calibrate for (non)conformity rates among secular and religious people. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG - (Dynamische Modelle religiöser Konformität und Konversion: Theorie und Simulationen) Diese Arbeit entwickelt deterministische und Verhaltensmodelle mit überlappenden Generationen, welche die Veränderungen des Zahlenverhältnisses von nicht religiösen zu religiösen Menschen erklären und simulieren. Im Verhaltensansatz wird aufgezeigt, dass der Kirche die Aufgabe zukommt, einen externen Effekt zu erzeugen, der dafür sorgt, dass junge Gläubige mit der Glaubenseinstellung ihrer Eltern konform gehen. Der deterministische Ansatz erklärt die Veränderungen in der Anzahl Nichtgläubiger einerseits mit den unterschiedlichen Geburtenraten unter nichtgläubigen Eltern im Vergleich zu religiösen Eltern und andererseits durch den relativen Anteil von Nichtkonformen unter der jungen Generation in jeder Gruppe. Dieses Modell wird verwandt, um (Nicht-)Konformitätsraten--nach denen junge Menschen ihren Eltern im Glauben folgen oder nicht--innerhalb der Gruppen weltlicher sowie religiöser Menschen zu berechnen.Conversion, Religious conformity, Role of the Church, Nonconformity, Nonreligious people, Religious Affiliation, Parents’ education, Believers, Nonbelievers.

Consistent Bargaining

This short paper demonstrates that the equilibrium payoffs of an alternating-offers bargaining game over a unit of surplus converge to equal division provided that the parties are allowed to bargain over all the surpluses generated by the "right" to be the first to make offers. The result obtained in the present paper may provide some "justification" for other division procedures such as the divide-and-choose or the moving-knife mechanisms.Bargaining theory, Alternating offers, First-mover advantage, Equal division.