This book offers a case study in foreign policy change: It examines why the Bush administration suddenly redirected its nuclear nonproliferation policy toward North Korea in the aftermath of North Korea s first nuclear test in October 2006, abandoning its former confrontational approach in favor of a more accommodating line. Existing explanations of this course reversal draw on the security implications of a growing crisis on the Korean Peninsula, U.S. domestic politics, and changing decision-making dynamics within the Bush administration. Employing before-after comparison, the study refutes...

This collection of articles presents two central perspectives in the current sociolinguistic study of youth language, both of which are comparatively new to sociolinguistics. One tendency is the study of the effects of new technology on the linguistic behaviors of late modern, particularly urban, youth, including mobile telephones and computers. The other tendency is the study of the effects of increasing diversity in linguistic resources available in late modern societies, again particularly evident among urban youth. Both of these sets of effects are richly documented and analyzed in the...

This book summarizes scholarly achievements of the author by confronting two descriptive models of linguistic research. Against the background of a language-centered view dealing with its external conditionings in the life of nations and nationalities the author puts forward a human-centered conception of grammar which focuses on the ecosystem of communicating individuals who aggregate into interpersonal and intersubjective groupings for the realization of common tasks. Such a grammar manifests itself in linguistic-communicational properties of people through changeable practices of...

The articles collected in this volume offer the most various access to the discussed questions on norm and variation. In their entirety, they reflect the current discussion of the topic. Focusing on the object languages German and English ensures a high level of topical consistency. On the other hand, the four large topic areas (emergence and change of norms and grammatical constructions; relationship of codes of norms and real language usage; competition of standard and non-standard language norms; and subsistent norms of minority languages and -institutionalised second-language varieties-)...

The emission trading scheme is the most recent instrument of the EU environmental policy. Its underlying mechanisms and economic consequences are yet less straightforward than policymakers initially had expected: As this study shows, the regulation probably yields unintended distributional effects and imposes additional risk on the regulated companies. Consequently, meaningful accounting for emission rights is not only a necessity for regulators and customers, who need transparency, but also for investors on capital markets, who bear the additional regulatory risk. This study empirically...

As sectarian and political tensions rose after March of 2005, scholars and journalists began to speculate that Lebanon was heading back into civil war. Much academic literature, in fact showed that the probability of regressing into such a state was very high. Although tensions did escalate and violence broke out on a number of occasions (culminating in several days of fighting in May 2008) the Doha agreement provided a peaceful political solution to the country s crisis. This book offers an answer to the question of why no renewed civil war occurred in Lebanon as well as to the larger...

How does good teamwork emerge?
Can we control mechanisms of teamwork?
The author has analyzed these questions in a study involving 227 participants of 55 software development teams. First, he empirically confirmed his teamwork model based on innovation research, goal setting and control theory. Second, he measured the impact of a wide selection of agile practices on these teamwork mechanisms. Third, he explained these impacts based on a thorough review of current psychological research.
This book is intended for people working in agile contexts as they will gain insight into the...

This book presents an overview of regulation of standard form contracts in the selected jurisdictions of the European Union. Generally, the term regulation of standard form contracts refers to the techniques and procedures that are established by the government and case law to control the fairness and reasonableness of contracting or contractual arrangements. The necessity of regulating standard form contracts is explained by arguing that absolute freedom of contract does not contribute enough to the welfare of society, even if we assume that such freedom exists in reality. Four jurisdictions...

This volume, entitled The Effect of Palimpsest: Culture, Literature, History, undertakes the pioneering task of employing the notion of palimpsest in the multi-layered and changing cultural landscape specific to East Central Europe. The multifarious readings presented in the collection, which evolved from a 2009 conference at the University of Chicago, contribute to a critical reframing of the origins, history and theory of the concept of the palimpsest. Beyond being viewed as an epistemological metaphor, the palimpsest reveals its potential to generate and engage a complex network of...

Is two-way immersion education associated with social and intercultural benefits? This book examines social and intercultural benefits of bilingual or two-way immersion (TWI) schooling in Staatliche Europa-Schule Berlin (SESB). The author uses quantitative methods to compare SESB with mainstream education and identifies a series of statistically significant differences between the two. These findings contribute to the well-structured argument that SESB programmes can play a role in promoting social integration and group cohesiveness within schools and potentially in the...