The following research project examines the development strategies in three Eastern European states after the fall of the Soviet Union. By examining the development path of each state, it is possible to evaluate successful paths toward development. The study researches not only economic development, but also social and political development. The three states chosen depict a variety of success rates in different areas. It will be important to notice that the state that has the most success developing economically is not the state that has the best equal rights for men and women. Finally, by exploring the different avenues for development, it may be possible to find a universal basis for successful development. This paper attempts to reach a consensus without forgetting the uniqueness of each state and the specific historical backgrounds that have led to successes and failures. To understand the diverging success rates, one must understand the difficulty of instituting a successful government within a state that had been ruled by a central power for decades. Independence is a difficult advantage.

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The 2008-2009 global financial crisis, and the protracted European sovereign debt and banking crisis that followed, re-shaped the institutions that govern Europe’s financial system. Despite demands for comprehensive and integrated reform, patterns of regulatory change varied significantly across core elements of the financial system. Through case studies of the banking, securities, insurance and pensions sectors, this study documents the emergence of a patchwork of European financial regulatory institutions that entail new divisions in the responsibilities held by the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB), and domestic governments. Employing an historical institutional framework, the study finds that the distribution of financial regulatory authority between member states and the European Union preceding the onset of the 2008 global financial crisis was instrumental in shaping changes to EU regulatory institutions during and in the immediate aftermath of the crises. Sectoral variation in levels of regulatory integration among member states prior to the crises shaped state preferences and predisposed institutions to particular patterns of institutional change. Where high levels of regulatory integration existed before the crisis, EU institutions expanded through a process of institutional layering, gradually hardening enforcement mechanisms, extending regulation to new markets, and issuing more binding technical standards. This contrasts with the displacement in the locus of supervisory authority experienced in the creation of a European banking union in 2013, in which supervisory control over eurozone banks was transferred from domestic authorities to the ECB. Low-levels of regulatory integration are found to have been a necessary condition for this transformative change to occur, while the protracted eurozone sovereign debt crisis is found to have provided a period of heightened contingency during which the ECB was able to exert significant political agency at the European Council to effect the resulting shift. In explaining the emergence of a complex financial regulatory system in Europe after 2008, the study contributes to deeper understanding of the political processes that shape the evolution and integration of national and international institutions of economic governance in the early 21st century. / Political Science

This dissertation examines a series of interchurch consultations that took place between 1999 and 2009 with the participation of the Evangelical Church in Germany, the Roman Catholic German Bishops' Conference and the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Protestant-Catholic-Orthodox ecumenical encounters began in the immediate aftermath of the Kosovo crisis, and aimed to support Serbia's democratization and European integration. At a total of nine meetings, delegates from the participating churches, together with politicians, representatives of non-governmental organizations, and scholars from various fields, discussed the role of churches and religion in the two countries. The meetings provided a forum for exchanging knowledge and addressing the challenges confronting the churches and their social organizations. Through lectures, discussions, and meetings in working groups, the consultations focused on theological, legal, political, and social topics, such as church and state relations in Serbia, the role of churches in secularized society, Serbia's relationship to the rest of Europe, reconciliation, and the healing of memories. Focusing on the content and the outcomes of the consultations, the author places them into the broader ecumenical, social and political context in which they took place. All available texts from the consultations are studied through the lens of critical discourse analysis. In addition, in-depth qualitative interviews are conducted with key initiators, organizers and participants of the consultations from the three primary participating churches. The dissertation also interacts with the existing theoretical framework for ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, theories of secularization and the sociology of religion in Europe, as well as nationalism and memory studies. The Serbian-German consultations represent a unique, hybrid form of interchurch contact. The author argues that existing theories of ecumenical and interreligious dialogue should be reconsidered to include such meetings, which represent a broadened understanding of dialogue focused on both theoretical and practical aspects of life. Furthermore, the consultations may serve as a potential blueprint for similar future encounters in post-conflict societies and in countries undergoing political transition. / Religion

This dissertation examines the relationship between Minoan art and Art Nouveau. The Minoan civilization was rediscovered at the turn of the twentieth century when the Art Nouveau movement reached its peak. Due to this coincidental timing, their artistic resemblance has raised questions about whether Minoan art had inspired Art Nouveau and whether Art Nouveau played a role in the restoration of Minoan art. The possibility of a Minoan influence on Art Nouveau is considered through a number of aspects, which include news reports on the excavations, Minoan collections acquired by museums, reference to the Minoans in various fields, application of Minoan motifs, and the attractiveness of the Minoans to Art Nouveau artists. As for the reversed influence, the research analyzes how archaeologists came to see the Minoans as a “modern” civilization, investigates the background of the restorers of Minoan objects, and provides examples of fresco restorations that illustrate an Art Nouveau preference of the early archaeologists and restorers. With the evidence and the discussion, I argue that the existing connection between Minoan art and Art Nouveau is beyond doubt. / Art History

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among the individuals, groups, and institutions that comprise Moscow's contemporary restaurant industry, this dissertation explores the production and consumption of Moscow's postsocialist culinary culture and landscape. Approaching cuisine as both a social product and a cultural process, I examine the agents and avenues of the local globalization of culinary culture. In my analysis, these "agents" include restaurateurs, chefs, cooks, professional associations, and educators and educational institutions, among others. I attend to the various meanings, practices, and contexts of their work, as well as to the political, aesthetic, and performative dimensions of cooking, cuisine and restaurants. I also examine how Russian consumers engage with and make sense of Moscow's emerging culinary culture and restaurant scene. I see these producers of cuisine and restaurants as authors of the capital's postsocialist consumer landscape and intermediaries between the local and the global. Articulating global culinary culture into local contexts, these cultural producers redeploy contemporary and historical culinary practices, aesthetics, and forms as representations of culture on both local and global stages. I call these practices culinary strategies and argue that they are vehicles through which new social actors struggle over the meanings and values at stake in the marketization of Russian society. Cuisine and restaurants are thus contested sites for the construction of Moscow as a world-class city and the production, dissemination, and negotiation of community, nation, identity, and class. I suggest that cuisine and restaurants play important roles in processes of globalization, serving as sites for reproduction and contestation of global hegemonies of form. Drawing on and expanding work in the anthropologies of food, visual communication, postsocialism, and globalization, my project suggests how ethnography and micro-analysis of the visual, sensual, performative, and structural dimensions of cultural production can open critical understandings of the complex and shifting interactions between local, national, and global contexts. / Anthropology

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