Oxford University Press's Blog, page 828

The economics of sanctions

By Richard S. Grossman

Russia’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine has left its neighbors—particularly those with sizable Russian-speaking populations such as Kazakhstan, Latvia, Estonia, and what is left of Ukraine—looking over their shoulder wondering if they are next on Vladimir Putin’s list of territorial acquisitions. The seizure has also left Europe and United States looking for a coherent response.

Neither the Americans nor the Europeans will go to war over Crimea. Military intervention would be costly, unpopular at home, and not necessarily successful. Unless a fellow member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (which includes Latvia and Estonia) were attacked by Russia, thereby requiring a military response under the terms of the NATO treaty, the West will not go to war to check Putin’s land grabs.

So far, the West’s response—aside from harsh rhetoric—has been economic, not military. Both the United States and Europe have imposed travel and financial sanctions on a handful of close associates of Putin (which have had limited effect), with promises of escalation should Russia continue on its expansionist path.

What is the historical record on sanctions? And what are the chances for success if the West does escalate?

The earliest known use of economic sanctions was Pericles’s Megarian decree, enacted in 432 BCE, in which the Athenian leader “…banished [the Megarians] both from our land and from our markets and from the sea and from the continent” (Aristophanes, The Acharnians). The results of these sanctions, according to Aristophanes, was starvation among the Megarians.

Hufbauer, Schott, Elliot, and Oegg (2008) catalogue more than 170 instances of economic sanctions between 1910 and 2000. They find that only about one third of all sanctions efforts were even partially successful, although the success depends critically on the sanction’s goal. Limited goals (e.g. the release of a political prisoner) have been successful about half of the time; more ambitious goals (e.g. disruption of a military adventure, military impairment, regime change, or democratization) are successful between a fifth and a third of the time. Of course, these figures depend crucially on a whole host of additional factors, including the cost borne by the country imposing sanctions, the resilience of the country being sanctioned, and the necessity of international cooperation for the sanctions to be fully implemented.

Despite these cautionary statistics, sanctions can sometimes be effective. According to the US Congressional Research Service, recent US sanctions reduced Iranian oil exports by 60% and led to a decline in the value of the Iranian currency by 50%, forcing Iranian leaders to accept an interim agreement with the United States and its allies in November 2013. On the other hand, US sanctions against Cuba have been in place for more than 50 years and, although having helped to impoverish the island, they have not brought about the hoped for regime change.

Current thinking on sanctions favors what are known as “targeted” or “smart” sanctions. That is, rather than embargoing an entire economy (e.g. the US embargo of Cuba), targeted sanctions aim to hit particular individuals or sectors of the economy via travel bans, asset freezes, arms embargo, etc. Russian human rights campaigner and former World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov suggested in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that the way to get to Putin through such smart sanctions, writing:

“If the West punishes Russia with sanctions and a trade war, that might be effective eventually, but it would also be cruel to the 140 million Russians who live under Mr. Putin’s rule. And it would be unnecessary. Instead, sanction the 140 oligarchs who would dump Mr. Putin in the trash tomorrow if he cannot protect their assets abroad. Target their visas, their mansions and IPOs in London, their yachts and Swiss bank accounts. Use banks, not tanks.”

If such sanctions were technically and legally possible—and that the expansionist urge comes from Putin himself and would not be echoed by his successor—this could be the quickest and most effective way to solve the problem.

A slower, but nonetheless sensible course is to squeeze Russia’s most important economic sector—energy. Russian energy exports in 2012 accounted for half of all government revenues. Sanctions that restrict Russia’s ability to export oil and gas would deal a devastating blow to the economy, which has already suffered from the uncertainty surrounding Russian intervention in Ukraine. By mid-March the Russian stock market was down over 10% for the year; the ruble was close to its record low against the dollar; and 10-year Russian borrowing costs were nearly 10%–more than 3% higher than those of the still crippled Greek economy—indicating that international lenders are already wary of the Russian economy.

A difficulty in targeting the Russian energy sector—aside from the widespread pain imposed on ordinary Russians–is that the Europeans are heavily dependent on it, importing nearly one third of their energy from Russia. Given the precarious position of its economy at the moment, an energy crisis is the last thing Europe needs. Although alternative energy sources not will appear overnight, old and new sources could eventually fill the gap, including greater domestic production and rethinking Germany’s plans to close its nuclear plants. Loosening export restrictions on the now-booming US natural gas industry would provide yet another alternative energy source to Europe and increase the effectiveness of sanctions. Freeing the industrialized world from dependence on dictators to fulfill their energy needs can only help the West’s long-term growth prospects and make it less susceptible to threats from rogue states.

If we are patient, squeezing Russia’s energy sector might work. In the short run, however, sanctioning the oligarchs may be the West’s best shot.

Richard S. Grossman is Professor of Economics at Wesleyan University and a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University. He is the author of WRONG: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them and Unsettled Account: The Evolution of Banking in the Industrialized World since 1800. His homepage is RichardSGrossman.com, he blogs at UnsettledAccount.com, and you can follow him on Twitter at @RSGrossman. You can also read his previous OUPblog posts.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only business and economics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credits: (1) Vladimir Putin. Russian Presidential Press and Information Office. CC BY 3.0 by kremlin.ru. (2) Abrakupchinskaya oil exploration drilling rig in Evenkiysky District. Photo by ShavPS. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia.

The post The economics of sanctions appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesIs there a “cyber war” between Ukraine and Russia?The political economy of policy transitionsThe Ukraine crisis and the rules great powers play by 

Politics to reconnect communities

By Matthew Flinders

Why does art and culture matter in the twenty-first century? What does it actually deliver in terms of social benefits? An innovative new participatory arts project in South Yorkshire is examining the ‘politics of art’ and the ‘art of politics’ from a number of new angles.

“The general value of arts and culture to society has long been assumed,” a recent report from the Arts Council acknowledges, “while the specifics have just as long been debated.” It is this focus on ‘the specifics’ that is most interesting because in times of relative prosperity there was little pressure from neither public nor private funders to demonstrate the broader social impact or relevance of the arts. In times of austerity, however, the situation is very different. A focus on the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) risks eviscerating the funding for the arts and humanities unless these more creative and less tangible intellectual pursuits can demonstrate their clear social value. The vocabulary of ‘social return’, ‘intellectual productive capacity’, ‘economic generation’ may well grate against the traditional values and assumptions of the arts and culture community but it is a shadow that cannot be ignored.

The publication of The Impact of the Social Sciences (Sage, 2014) provides more than a sophisticated analysis of the value of the social sciences across a range of economic, cultural, and civic dimensions. It provides a political treatise and a strategic piece of evidence-based leverage that may play an important role in future debates over the distribution of diminishing public funds. I have no doubt that the impact of the arts and humanities is equally significant. But the problem is that the systematic creation of an evidence base remains embryonic. My personal belief that the arts and humanities are educationally critical is, in many quarters, meaningless without demonstrable evidence to support these beliefs. The methodological and epistemological challenges of delivering that research are clearly significant but as the Arts Council emphasizes ‘it is something that arts and culture organizations will have to do in order to secure funding from both public and private sources’.

As a political scientist I have always been fascinated with the relationship between art and politics. Though heretical to suggest to the arts community, I have often thought that the role of the professional politician and the professional artist (indeed, with the amateur politician and the amateur artist) were more similar than was often acknowledged. Both seek to express values and visions, to inspire hope and disgust, and both wish to present a message. It is only the medium through which that message is presented that differs (and relationships of co-option, patronage, and dependency are common between these professions). But having (crudely) established a relationship between art and politics, could it be that the true value of the arts lies not in how it responds to the needs of the economy but in how it responds to the rise of ‘disaffected democrats’ and the constellation of concerns that come together in the ‘why we hate politics’ narrative?

In a time of increasing social anomie and political disengagement, especially amongst the young and the poor, can participatory arts projects provide a way of reconnecting communities?

François Matarasso’s Use or Ornament (1997) provides one of the most systematic explorations of this question and concluded that “one of the most important outcomes of [the public’s] involvement in the arts was finding their own voice, or perhaps, the courage to use it.” More recently, the New Economics Foundation’s report Diversity and Integration (2013) suggested that young people who participated in arts programmes were more likely to see themselves as “holding the potential to do anything I want to do” and being “able to influence a group of people to get things done.” Other studies tentatively offer similarly positive conclusions but with little analytical depth in terms of identifying between political reconnection, civic reconnection or personal reconnection (in terms of personal understanding, confidence and aspiration). To return to the Arts Council’s recent report – The Wider Benefits of Art and Culture to Society – the existing research base is light on ‘the specifics’.

It is for exactly this reason that the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics has joined forces with ‘Art in the Park’ as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s ‘Civic Value’ programme. Young people from all across South Yorkshire will be brought together to participate in an eight week arts project that uses music, film making, dance, writing, painting or whatever medium the young people select to explore social and political issues. Artists are embedded in the research and current and former politicians can be brought into the project to facilitate sessions if that is something the young people request. Surveys, focus groups, and interviews will capture how participating in the project affects political attitudes and understandings – positive, negative, political, civic, or personal – with the aim being able to answer if the arts can breathe life back into politics and reconnect communities. Now that really would be a wider benefit for society.

Matthew Flinders is Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics at the University of Sheffield and also Visiting Distinguished Professor in Governance and Public Policy at Murdoch University, Western Australia. He is the author of Defending Politics (2012). He was recently a winner in the ‘This is Democracy’ International Photography Competition – but his wife now claims she took the picture. Malaika Cunningham is the Research Officer for the project discussed in this article.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only politics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: Parliament at sunset, public domain via WikiCommons.

The post Politics to reconnect communities appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesElection 2015: ‘Don’t vote, it just encourages the b**tards’Look beneath the voteMad politics 

In memoriam: Harm de Blij

Oxford University Press is saddened to hear of the passing of Harm de Blij on Thursday, 27 March 2014. De Blij was a giant in geography and had an illustrious career as a teacher, researcher, writer, public speaker, and TV personality. He was passionate, and one of those people who brought out the best in those around him.

“I know that was certainly true for me,” noted Dan Kaveney, Executive Editor-Higher Education. “When I was with Harm I always felt like a better and more capable person than I am. I worked just a little bit harder and more carefully to live up to his standard, and feel very fortunate to have had him as a colleague and a friend.”

“Harm was one of the most upbeat misanthropes I have ever known, and I’m very glad that I did,” added Tim Bent, OUP’s Executive Trade Editor. “He was in my office once and spotted the Longerich biography of Heinrich Himmler on a shelf. De Blij said that he had been out walking with his father in the Hague one day in 1943 and that they had seen Himmler drive by in his staff car; Himmler apparently was visiting the former homes of deported Jews and picking out art to steal. Harm always knew how to lend personal and historical depth to his geography.”

Former OUP Editor Ben Keene remarked, “Harm was one of my favorite authors to work with at OUP and in fact the first that I managed on my own, many years ago. I learned so much from him and still remember our first lunch when he ordered steak with a glass of red wine and asked the waitress to hold the green beans.”

Harm de Blij was the John A. Hannah Professor of Geography at Michigan State University. He authored 30 books, including Why Geography Matters, The Power of Place, and Physical Geography.

Harm de Blij


1935 – 2014

Image courtesy of deblij.net

The post In memoriam: Harm de Blij appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesAfrican American demography [infographic]Elinor and Vincent Ostrom: federalists for all seasonsSex and the ancient teenager 

Sherlock Holmes’ beginnings

Here at Oxford University Press we occasionally get the chance to discover a new and exciting piece of literary history. We’re excited to share the newest short story addition to the Sherlock Holmes mysteries in Sherlock Holmes: Selected Stories. Never before published, our editorial team has acquired The Mystery of the Green Garden, now believed to be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first use of the Sherlock Holmes’ character in his writing. Written during Doyle’s time at Stonyhurst College before entering medical school, the short story displays an early, amateur style of writing not seen in his later published works.

The Mystery of the Green Garden is set during Sherlock Holmes’ childhood – a rarely discussed part of Holmes’ life. Holmes’ is only sixteen years old when he is called to his first case. Unlike many of the stories in the Holmes series which are narrated by the loyal Dr. Watson, Holmes himself tells the short, endearing tale of his mother’s beloved garden. Getting our first look at his parents, Holmes briefly describes his mother as a “lively but often brooding woman.” We catch only a glimpse of his father who he calls a tireless civil serviceman with, “rarely enough time to fix even a long ago missing board in the kitchen’s creaking floor.”

Before attending university where he first acquired his detective skills, and moving to 221S Baker Street to practice his craft, Holmes lived at 45 Tilly Lane overlooking “a lush, never ignored garden.” Described as his mother’s favorite pastime, she gardened tirelessly day in and day out. As a young boy he recalls “spending countless hours playing in the dirt as mother tended to her beloved flowers and ferns.”

One morning, Holmes wakes to discover the garden destroyed. Flower beds are overturned, and shrubbery and plants are ripped apart. His mother is beside herself upon seeing her hard work demolished, and Holmes vows to discover the foolish culprit behind the dastardly act. A neighbor provides the first clue that sets the wheels in motion. His elderly neighbor who often wakes “before the sun has met the sky,” describes to Holmes a “tall, lean man with a crooked gray cap” that he saw running down the pathway between their two houses in the early hours of the morning while everyone in town still slept. Without any experience at solving cases, Doyle displays the first use of Holmes’ abductive reasoning skills later developed in the stories. As Holmes gathers clues as to what seems to be a random act, a story bigger than anyone can imagine slowly unravels.

April Fools! We hope we haven’t disappointed you too much. Although The Mystery in the Green Garden is just the work of a fool’s mind, there are seven Sherlock Holmes novels in the Oxford World’s Classics series. Sherlock Holmes: Selected Stories includes over a dozen stories truly written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford’s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. You can follow Oxford World’s Classics on Twitter, Facebook, or here on the OUPblog. Subscribe to only Oxford World’s Classics articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only literature articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post Sherlock Holmes’ beginnings appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesSex and the ancient teenager“A peaceful sun gilded her evening”An Irish literature reading list from Oxford World’s Classics 

OUP to publish Root Vegetables: A Very Short Introduction

The popular Very Short Introductions series is due to publish the latest in their ever increasing list of titles. Root Vegetables: A Very Short Introduction is to be written by Professor John Onions and publish in October this year.

Have you ever wondered why root vegetables are as popular as they are today? The Very Short Introduction will take the reader through a history of planting, growing, and eating them as well as delving into the economic and social aspects of this humble food.

The demand from the public for a short introduction to this subject was so high that it was decided a VSI to root vegetables must be commissioned. Andrea Keegan, series editor, explains “The interest in root vegetables cannot be underestimated. As well as the obvious health benefits of root vegetables, there is interest in their history and their provenance. Taking a global look at the many varieties of root vegetable, this Very Short Introduction will explore all aspects of this fascinating subject, including the relationship of the root vegetable to the leaf vegetable, the sea vegetable, bulbs and stems.”

The title will sit along other essential subjects such as Globalization, Microeconomics, Physical Chemistry, and English Literature.

April Fools! We hope we haven’t disappointed you too much. Although Root Vegetables: A Very Short Introduction is just a bit of April foolery, there are many other topics covered in the Very Short Introductions series.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday, subscribe to Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS, and like Very Short Introductions on Facebook.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to on Very Short Introductions articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credits: (1) Root z05 pastinaken by Zyance CC-BY-SA-2.5 via Wikimedia Commons (2) CarrotDiversityLg. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post OUP to publish Root Vegetables: A Very Short Introduction appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesIs our language too masculine?Ice timeThinking more about our teeth 

Georges Pierre des Clozets: the 17th century conman

By Daniel Parker

Be honest: did you once believe that spaghetti could grow on trees? That cats needed headphones? Or that the moon was made of cheese? Actually, don’t worry about that last one; I’m still sure that’s true. However embarrassingly you may have been hoodwinked on April Fool’s Day in the past, it is incredibly unlikely that you’ll have ever been swindled by French confidence trickster Georges Pierre des Clozets, who represented a completely fictional secret Alchemy society called ‘The Asterism’. That dubious honour fell to Robert Boyle, philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor, who was duped in the latter part of the 17th century.

Between 1677 and 1678 Robert Boyle became the victim of a progressive French confidence trickster from Caen called Pierre, who claimed to be the agent of a secret international society of alchemists known mysteriously as ‘The Asterism’. The leader of The Asterism was described as the ‘Patriarch of Antioch’, resident in Constantinople. Pierre claimed to be able to work as an intermediary between Robert Boyle and the head of this exclusive society, Georges du Mesnillet, who Pierre referred to as the Patriarch of Antioch. The Asterism was, allegedly, a society comprised of the leading alchemists from around the world, a society that held the secrets to the riddles that had notoriously plagued Robert Boyle throughout his career. Pierre promised that Boyle would be made a member of The Asterism and, therefore, be privy to these alchemical secrets if he followed his orders.

There were a few problems with this. Firstly, The Asterism was an entirely fictional society made up by Pierre. Secondly, Georges du Mesnillet was not the Patriarch of Antioch (nor was there ever a French Patriarch of Antioch). Georges du Mesnillet was just an old acquaintance of Pierre’s. And thirdly, many of the alchemical secrets Pierre promised to impart were chemically impossible. Of course, Robert Boyle wasn’t to know any of this. Pierre expertly played on Robert Boyle’s obsessive fascination with alchemy, and toyed with Boyle’s perception of what was plausible and, more importantly, what was implausible. At one point during their correspondence, Pierre even managed to convince Boyle that one of the Chinese members of the society based in France had grown a fully formed homunculus in a jar.

So how did Pierre manage to successfully dupe the otherwise incredibly intelligent Robert Boyle?

As well as making a good personal impression on Boyle when the two met in early 1677 – Pierre is alluded to as the ‘illustrious stranger’ and ‘foreign virtuoso’ in Boyle’s An Historical Account of a Degradation of Gold by an Anti-Elixir – the French conman manipulated leading European periodicals to corroborate his fanciful tale. For instance, the stories Pierre told Boyle, such as the Patriarch of Antioch working towards the “reunification of the Greek and Latin Churches”, were backed up in France’s Mercure Galant and Holland’s Haerlemse Courant. The latter was published by Haarlem printer Abraham Casteleyn and it had an excellent reputation for reliability, and for acquiring sensitive international information ahead of its rivals. We also know that Robert Boyle read this publication during the years that Pierre fed ‘information’ to the publishers, and that Boyle was an irenic Christian, so these stories would have appealed to him and helped him believe the lies Pierre was telling him. The artifice of Pierre was such that he made Boyle trust him implicitly.

In early 1678 Robert Boyle was promised by Pierre that a triple-locked chest containing the alchemical secrets of The Asterism would be delivered to him as his membership had been approved by the (pseudo) Patriarch of Antioch. It was at this point that Pierre’s letters to Boyle started to dry up. Pierre’s silence was only punctuated by his bizarre excuse that the delays were due to a freak canon accident that had resulted in him breaking his lower jaw bone and losing part of his forehead. Needless to say, this triggered Boyle’s long overdue scepticism, and soon he found out the embarrassing nature of his correspondence with Pierre and the fictional society of The Asterism.

This embarrassing episode did not just impact on Robert Boyle’s pride, but his bank balance too. Pierre, and the fictional Patriarch of Antioch, swindled Robert Boyle to the tune of several hundred pounds worth of gifts. Amongst many other things, here are a few items Robert Boyle sent Pierre, on the ‘request’ of the Patriarch of Antioch: a telescope, assay balances, a globe, one hundred glass vials, jackets of fine fabric, eight rods of gold-coloured moiré, and a chiming clock over three feet tall. The only gift that we can be sure Boyle received in return, based on the correspondence between them, was a basket of fruits and cheeses. I think it’s fairly obvious who came out on top of that exchange.

Pierre used the gifts and money he had received from Robert Boyle, and numerous other victims throughout the 1670’s, to purchase an extravagant estate in Bretteville in the spring of 1680. While building and planting on the site, Pierre became ill with inflammation of the lung and died in May 1680. His family inherited the estate and the missive that announced his death summed up his mysterious existence perfectly: “Such was the end of this man, whose character had been so little known, and after his death we know even less than when he was alive”.

This article was written by Daniel Parker, Publicity Assistant at OUP, with the help and guidance of the Electronic Enlightenment team. Electronic Enlightenment currently has 13 letters from Georges Pierre Des Clozets to Robert Boyle written in French, along with their English translations. Electronic Enlightenment is a scholarly research project of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, and is available exclusively from Oxford University Press. It is the most wide-ranging online collection of edited correspondence of the early modern period, linking people across Europe, the Americas, and Asia from the early 17th to the mid-19th century.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only history articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: Robert Boyle by Johann Kerseboom via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Georges Pierre des Clozets: the 17th century conman appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesApril Fool’s! Announcing winner of the second annual Grove Music spoof contestEight facts about the synthesizer and electronic musicEntitling early modern women writers 

April Fool’s! Announcing winner of the second annual Grove Music spoof contest

By the Grove Music Online editorial team

Just in time for April Fool’s Day we are pleased to announce the results of this year’s Grove Music Online Spoof Article contest.

This year’s submissions were all biographies, perhaps because Grove’s stylistic prescriptions for biographies lend themselves well to parody. Competition was fierce and hilarious. One of our judges reports, “You all made me spill my coffee. Twice.”

Song thrush. Digital ID: 1132614. New York Public Library.

The judges:

Deane Root, editor in chief of Grove Music Online, and Professor of Music, Director and Fletcher Hodges, Jr. Curator of the Center for American Music, University of Pittsburgh, has been immersed in Grove style since he worked under Stanley Sadie on the first New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.
Charles Hiroshi Garrett, Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance served as editor in chief for The Grove Dictionary of American Music, Second Edition. He is currently working on Joking Matters, a book that explores music, humor, and contemporary culture.
Anna-Lise Santella edits Grove Music/Oxford Music Online as well as the music modules of Oxford Bibliographies and Oxford Handbooks Online. She spends a lot of time with style guides and once read the 1927 edition of Grove cover to cover for fun.

We received a number of excellent selections, all of which observed Grove style and took care to include some plausible details among the ludicrous so that they might pass muster.

Judge Root noted, “It’s very difficult to choose among these four offerings. Indeed, in wit and prose most seem to have flowed from the fingertips of the same inspired author.” Judge Root was right about that: Three of our four shortlisted articles were written by a single author. Root added, “This year brings us brief biographical entries, thumbnail sketches of inspired beings in whom some of us might find our imaginary Doppelgänger.”

***

Third runner up:

Bach, Davide Adolphus Iestyn (b Rimsting, Bavaria 29 Feb 1764, d Merthyr Tydfil, Wales 22 Apr 1833), German composer, organist, and political agitator. A distant relative of J.S. Bach, D.A.I. Bach’s early career is veiled in obscurity. It is known from the personal letters of his father, Johann Maldwyn Bach (1740 – 1800) that D.A.I. Bach moved to the home of his paternal great grandmother in Fochriw, Wales in 1785 following a failed attempt to poison the Elector of Rimsting in protest about the feudal laws still employed in Bavaria at that time. He is credited with establishing the tradition of Lutheran hymn singing in Wales, translating Ein Feste Burg into Welsh for the Eisteddfod at Corwen in 1789. His most famous work is the ‘Steam’ Cantata (Schnell, Schneller, am Schnellsten!) written to celebrate the first journey of Richard Trevithick’s steam engine from Merthyr Tydfil to Penydarren in 1804. He was implicated as a ring leader of the Merthyr Riots of 1831, describing himself as a ‘solider for freedom’. He escaped punishment by disguising himself as an iron worker at the famous Dowlais works. His opera Uumo di Ferro, a semi-autobiographical account of this episode, was revived in 1987 as part of the Urdd Eisteddfod in Merthyr Tydfil. Bach’s involvement in Welsh political protest earned him a reference in the folk song Sospan Fach (‘D.A.I. Bach y sowldiwr’). In a cruel twist of fate, D.A.I. Bach died on the same day as Trevithick in 1833, following a railway accident.

Bibliography


ed. Llewellyn Ein Brief Aus Rimsting: the letters of Johann Maldwyn Bach (Treorchy, 1933)


Cyfansoddiadau llenyddol buddugol: Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Urdd Gobaith Cymru, Merthyr


Tudful a’r Cylch 1987 (Cardiff 1987)


V. Jones The Iron Men of Merthyr (Bangor, 2009)

Root notes, “Another long-lost member of the prolific family: a cwrthed Bach perhaps? Surely those lacking facility with the Welsh language are missing some humor here (“dai bach” means little David, raising expectations for references to slingshots and giants).” Judge Santella added, “This article gets bonus points for including references to actual events that leant it the air of plausibility and for including Welsh phrases that stood up to my (admittedly limited) translation abilities. It lacked, however, a signature, which is not only a missed opportunity for additional hilarity, but also against Grove’s preferred style for an article that includes bibliography. This article was submitted by Steven Griffin.

***

Second runner up:

Humble, Maria Felicity (b Hampshire, 1762, d Hampshire, 1813). English composer and pianist. Initially denied the musical tuition bestowed on her four brothers, Humble was eventually permitted to attend lessons by her parents, a vicar and his wife, after her threat to hold her breath for a dangerously long time led to an incident in which the parish doctor had to be called, at considerable expense and embarrassment to the family. This was the last in a series of subversive acts undertaken by Humble in protest at her exclusion; others included doctoring her father’s sermons shortly before church services, resulting in some unfortunate declarations from the pulpit.

Humble proved to be skilful and naturally musical, soon outstripping her brothers in her aptitude at the keyboard, and in her understanding of harmony, counterpoint, singing, and composition. The resultant humiliation felt by her brothers manifested itself in a number of resentful gestures, including the destruction or defacement of many of Humble’s scores. Of those that survive, most bear the marks of sibling rage, with one set of handwriting in particular – identified to be that of her youngest brother, Percy – revealing a highly scatological mind.

Humble resorted to keeping her works locked in a bureau; as a consequence, none were performed or published during her lifetime. Pieces include numerous highly accomplished songs and piano sonatas, some of which have been hailed by Charles Rosen as ‘superior even to Beethoven’.

Bibliography


C. Rosen, Forgotten Classical Masters (London and New York, 1972), 56–62


F. Tinkle, From Humble Origins to an Even Humbler Reputation (London, 1964)

JOSEPH KERMAN

Judge Root observes, “Reflecting timely concerns about sexist male suppression of female creativity and sibling rivalry among composers, this bio presents a remarkable amount of familial dirty linen for someone whose birth and death dates are unknown, and draws in two late male authorities who might have been reluctant to be associated with this Humble musician, no matter the sardonic Felicity.” Judge Santella concurs that the level of detail combined with the signature would have made her suspicious. “This would not have gotten by us, but I am 100% in favor of the title of F. Tinkle’s biography.”

***

First runner up:

Fogger-Houndsmilk, George (b Guildford, 24 August 1937, d Kingston upon Hull, 26 December 1999). English composer, pianist and folksong collector. He was educated at Winchester College and then at Hull, where he encountered the poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985). Fogger-Houndsmilk, who was published under the name George Houndsmilk, set Larkin’s poetry to music in his song cycle, The Librarian (1956), but Larkin dismissed him as ‘a second-rate churner of dubious ditties’. The cycle was published incorrectly as The Libertarian, but was so successful in that guise that Houndsmilk made no attempt to alter the title in later editions.

Houndsmilk enjoyed considerable commercial success with his settings of English folk music. Songs include Rosemary Cheesecloth, Plump Puddens, Bishop Littlebreath’s Farewell, The Saucy Skipper of Scarborough, Lewisham Fair, Shropshire Blue, Sweet Catford Sue, Newcassel Town Hall, The Red-breasted Merganser of Merseyside, Slippy Willie, and Seven Farmers Went A-Drinking and Never Came Back. Houndsmilk’s settings were issued by the eminent publisher Henry Cassocks.

Houndsmilk married Hattie Bloxham, a former barmaid celebrated for her forthright singing style. Bloxham gave numerous recitals of Houndsmilk’s songs, with her husband at the piano. They had six children, including the poet and literary critic Celia Bloxham-Houndsmilk. George Houndsmilk died of injuries sustained during the collapse of a negligently-constructed wheelbarrow.

Bibliography


S.L. St Bernard: To Hull and Back: The Cultural Life of England’s Most Underrated City (Cambridge, 1972), 72–81


M. Bowdler: Plump Puddens: The Tawdry World of George “Foggy” Houndsmilk and Hattie Bloxham (London, 1991)

VALERIE LANGFIELD

“Those consummate British folksong collectors with their school ties and countrified lineage; where does the real end, and the imaginary begin?” asked Judge Root. “With Larkin as the poet one might have expected this composer to jazz it up, but the list of cheesy settings reveals other interests. And what the composer was doing beneath the barrow we’d best not know.”

***

And the winner is:

Henderson, Lucas John (b Philadelphia, 19 June, 1910, d Appenzell, Switzerland, 27 November, 1987). American composer. His style encompassed the avant garde and, later, post-modernism, including works which paid tribute to, or satirised, the music of other composers. His 1956 piece, Cage, an homage to John Cage, consists of a cage, the bars of which have been loosely interwoven with violin strings. The performer, who need not be a violinist, is required to pluck the strings while emulating the movements of a bird. In a follow-up to this work, Byrd-Cage (for performer, cage and tape, 1958), a recording of Byrd’s motet Siderum rector is played throughout the performance. When the original score to Henderson’s satirical fusion of Stravinsky and Beethoven, Oiseau de für Elise (for voice and Bunsen burner) was destroyed by fire, Henderson ceased composing altogether, retiring to a life of quiet solitude in the Swiss village of Appenzell.

Bibliography


N. Doggerel, The Anechoic Chambers of the Mind (New York, 1967)

KEITH G. GRAFING

Judge Root opined, “The name puns here are surprising and delightful, as are the inventively prepared birdcage and the implied hazards of modern-music performance. This mashup of music composers, styles, and titles—brief though it be—earns my nod as our spoof-of-the-year.” The rest of the judges agreed. “It’s the only one that made me laugh out loud,” said Judge Garrett, and Judge Santella admitted it was the perpetrator of the aforementioned coffee incident.

***

Congratulations to author Joanna Wyld, who also wrote the First and Second runner up entries. She is the winner of $100 in OUP books and a year’s subscription to Grove Music Online.

Many thanks to all of our entrants for your creativity! We hope you’ll join us again next year!

And finally, our original contest announcement elicited our first ever errata correction for an earlier spoof article. William Walderman wrote to correct the article on Dag Esrum-Hellerup, which appeared in the first printing of New Grove 1.

Original:

William Walderman:

The Grove article on Dag Henrik Esrum-Hellerup contains a serious flaw. Dag Henrik’s father, Johann Henrik (1773-1843), supposedly appointed chamber flautist to Christian IX, died 20 years before Christian’s accession to the throne in 1863.

We tried to slip one by him by stating that it must have been Johann Henrik’s long lost identical twin brother, Johann Maria, who lived to the ripe old age of 110, that served under Christian IX, but he was too quick for us!

William Walderman:

Are you sure it was Johann Maria – a Catholic name in a Protestant country? With the surname Esrum-Hellerup, these twins weren’t arrivals in Denmark from Bavaria or the Electoral Palatinate. Maybe his name was Johan Martin Esrum-Hellerup (probably Johan, with just one n, or else Hans or Jens).

It’s certainly difficult not to admire the lungs of a 90-year old flautist.

We certainly can’t argue with that. Thanks for your comments, Mr. Walderman!

Oxford Music Online is the gateway offering users the ability to access and cross-search multiple music reference resources in one location. With Grove Music Online as its cornerstone, Oxford Music Online also contains The Oxford Companion to Music, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, and The Encyclopedia of Popular Music.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only music articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

The post April Fool’s! Announcing winner of the second annual Grove Music spoof contest appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesGrove announces its Second Annual Spoof Article ContestWhy we should dive deep into studying music historyEponymous Instrument Makers 

Elinor and Vincent Ostrom: federalists for all seasons

By John Kincaid

When Elinor Ostrom visited Lafayette College in 2010, the number of my non-political science colleagues who announced familiarity with her work astonished me. Anthropologists, biologists, economists, engineers, environmentalists, historians, philosophers, sociologists, and others flocked to see her.

Elinor’s work cut across disciplines and fields of governance because she deftly employed and developed interrelated concepts having applications in multiple settings. A key foundation of these concepts is federalism—an idea central also to the work of her mentor and husband, Vincent Ostrom.

Vincent understood federalism to be a covenantal relationship that establishes unity for collective action while preserving diversity for local self-governance by constitutionally uniting separate political communities into a limited but encompassing political community. Power is divided and shared between concurrent jurisdictions—a general government having certain nationwide duties and multiple constituent governments having broad local responsibilities. These jurisdictions both cooperate and compete. The arrangement is non-hierarchical and animated by multiple centers of power, which, often competing, exhibit flexibility and responsiveness.

From this foundation, one can understand why the Ostroms embraced the concept of polycentricity advanced in Michael Polanyi’s The Logic of Liberty (1951), namely, a political or social system consisting of many decision-making centers possessing autonomous, but limited, powers that operate within an encompassing framework of constitutional rules.

This general principle can be applied to the global arena where, like true federalists, the Ostroms rejected the need for a single global institution to solve collective action problems such as environmental protection and common-pool resource management. They advocated polycentric arrangements that enable local actors to make important decisions as close to the affected situation as possible. Hence, the Ostroms also anticipated the revival of the notion of subsidiarity in European federal theory.

But polycentricity also applies to small arenas, such as irrigation districts and metropolitan areas. Elinor and Vincent worked on water governance early in their careers, and both argued that metropolitan areas are best organized polycentrically because urban services have different economies of scale, large bureaucracies have inherent pathologies, and citizens are often crucial in co-producing public services, especially policing (the subject of empirical studies by Elinor and colleagues).

The Ostroms valued largely self-organizing social systems that border on but do not topple into sheer anarchy. Anarchy is a great bugaboo of centralists, who de-value the capacity of citizens to organize for self-governance. Without expert instructions from above, citizens are headless chickens. But this centralist notion exposes citizens to the depredations of vanguard parties and budget-maximizing bureaucrats.

This is why Vincent placed Hamilton’s famous statement in Federalist No. 1 at the heart of his work, namely, “whether societies of men are really capable or not, of establishing good government from reflection and choice” rather than “accident and force.” The Ostroms expressed abiding confidence in the ability of citizens to organize for self-governance in multi-sized arenas if given opportunities to reflect on their common dilemmas, make reasoned constitutional choices, and acquire resources to follow through with joint action.

Making such arrangements work also requires what Vincent especially emphasized as covenantal values, such as open communication, mutual trust, and reciprocity among the covenanted partners. Thus, polycentric governance, like federal governance, requires both good institutions and healthy processes.

As such, the Ostroms also placed great value on Alexis de Tocqueville’s notion of self-interest rightly understood. Indeed, it is the process of self-organizing and engaging one’s fellow citizens that helps participants to understand their self-interest rightly so as to act in collectively beneficial ways without central dictates.

Consequently, another major contribution of the Ostroms was to point out that governance choices are not limited to potentially gargantuan government regulation or potentially selfish privatization. There is a third way grounded in federalism.

John Kincaid is the Robert B. and Helen S. Meyner Professor of Government and Public Service at Lafayette College and Director of the Meyner Center for the Study of State and Local Government. He served as Associate Editor and Editor of Publius: The Journal of Federalism, and has written and lectured extensively on federalism and state and local government.

More on the applications and reflections on the work of Elinor and Vincent Ostrom can be found in this recently released special issue from Publius: The Journal of Federalism. An addition to this, Publius has also just released a free virtual collection of the most influential articles written by the Ostroms and published in Publiues over the past 23 years.

Publius: The Journal of Federalism is the world’s leading journal devoted to federalism. It is required reading for scholars of many disciplines who want the latest developments, trends, and empirical and theoretical work on federalism and intergovernmental relations.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to social sciences articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: Social network background. © bekir gürgen via iStockphoto.

The post Elinor and Vincent Ostrom: federalists for all seasons appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesIs there a “cyber war” between Ukraine and Russia?The political economy of policy transitionsOral history, collective memory, and community among cloistered nuns 

Sex and the ancient teenager

By Jane Alison

Jane Fonda spoke passionately about teenage sexuality this week on the Diane Rehm Show. (Her new book is Being A Teen: Everything Teen Girls & Boys Should Know About Relationships, Sex, Love, Health, Identity & More.) Fonda’s book and words are very much of our age, yet some of her most moving points evoke the ghost of Ovid and his mythic stories of young sexuality that are over two thousand years old. His tales tell of the awful desire to melt into someone else, or the misery of living in the wrong sexual form, or the terror of first being touched by another. If someone can pierce you in sex and in love, how do you survive?

Here’s Jane Fonda on girls and anorexia:

It’s interesting that the eating disorders start with girls when they enter puberty, which is the time when girls very often lose their voice. Their voice goes underground, and they become what they think other people want them to be.

Echo and Narcissus, John William Waterhouse, 1903. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK.

And here’s Ovid, telling the story of Echo and the beautiful boy Narcissus, who is wanted by girls and boys alike but has no need for anyone:

Seeing Narcissus drive frightened deer into nets


was that chattery nymph who couldn’t keep quiet


or start talking herself, poor clamoring Echo.


She still had a body, she wasn’t just voice,


yet could use her mouth then only as she does now:


helplessly repeating the last words someone says. . . .


Echo singsongs back


another’s voice and parrots the words she’s heard.


When she saw Narcissus roam alone in the woods


she was excited at once and secretly trailed,


and the closer she followed the hotter she grew,


as when sulfur is daubed at the top


of a torch and snatches the dancing flames.


Oh, how she wanted to go with sweet words and say


how she longed for him! But her nature stopped this,


would let her start nothing. So she would wait


and do all she could: cry back any words he said.


The boy had somehow lost his close gang of friends


so called, “Is anyone here?” “Here!” called Echo.


He was surprised, looked around, and then shouted


“Come!”—and she shouted it back to him shouting.


He looked again, and when nobody came, he called


“Why stay away from me?”—she called the same.


He stood still, tricked by the sense of an answering voice,


and cried, “Be with me, come!” Never more lustily


would Echo cry any words: “Be with me, come!”


And she herself followed these words from the woods,


rushing to throw her arms around his sweet neck.


But he bolted and, bolting, shouted, “Hands off!


I would die before I’d give you anything.”


Stricken, she could only say, “I’d give you anything . . .”


Then she hid in the woods, kept her mortified face


muffled in leaves, and lived only in lonely caves.


But her love clung, swelled with painful rejection;


sleeplessness wasted away her poor flesh


and pulled her gaunt and tight. Her freshness and sap


drifted into air; only voice and bones remained.


Then voice alone—they say her bones became rock.

Now here’s Jane Fonda on teenagers and sexual orientation:

The suicides, the depression, the cutting, the damage to self for young people who question their sexual orientation is absolutely heartbreaking . . . Some people are born into the wrong apparent gender. They appear to be one gender but everything about them knows that they’re really another gender . . . More and more young people are saying to their parents, I’m not a girl, or I’m not a boy—I won’t wear those clothes . . .

And here’s Ovid, telling (with irony) the story of Iphis, whose mother has raised her secretly as a boy to save her from being killed. Iphis is now betrothed to an unsuspecting girl, Ianthe, and is utterly perplexed:

The two had the same age and same looks; the same


teachers had taught them their letters and numbers.


Love struck each fresh heart and gave each the same


longing—but in hopes they were far from the same.


Ianthe wants her wedding, bridal torches and all,


certain the one she takes for a man will be one.


Iphis loves, too, but can’t hope to savor that love,


and this kindles her hotter, girl burning for girl.


Barely holding back tears, she says, “What will become


of me, smitten with this freakish, unheard of new


love? If the gods had wanted to ruin me, they


could just have given me a natural problem.


Cows don’t itch for cows, or mares for other mares.


A ram craves a ewe; a hind follows her stag.


Birds mate like this, too—in the animal world


no female’s overcome with lust for a female.


I wish I just weren’t! In case there’s some monster Crete


didn’t yet have, Pasiphaë fixed her heart on a bull.


But that was female-on-male, and my love’s truly


more brainsick than that. . . .


If all the world’s cleverness poured down upon me


or Daedalus flew his wax wings right here, what


could he do? Make a boy of this girl with clever


contraptions? Or is it you he’d change, Ianthe?


Pull yourself together, Iphis. Toughen your soul.


Give up this stupid obsession, this hopeless hope.


You see what you are. Or do you fool yourself, too?”

At the last minute, though, Iphis is transformed into a boy: a happily magical ending.

Bodies do change, and who feels this more acutely than teenagers? Ways of talking about sexual changes and encounters—the strange borders of the self when first touching another—change too, from the metaphorical psychologies of Ovid to the popular teachings of a modern icon. But the truths inside both bodies and the tales we tell about them seem indeed to stay the same.

Jane Alison is author of Change Me: Stories of Sexual Transformation from Ovid. Her previous works on Ovid include her first novel, The Love-Artist (2001) and a song-cycle entitled “XENIA” (with composer Thomas Sleeper, 2010). Her other books include a memoir, The Sisters Antipodes (2009), and two novels, Natives and Exotics (2005) and The Marriage of the Sea (2003). She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only classics and archaeology articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.

Image: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The post Sex and the ancient teenager appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesOvid the naturalist“You’ll be mine forever”: A reading of Ovid’s AmoresLove: First sights in Ovid 

Is there a “cyber war” between Ukraine and Russia?

By Marco Roscini

Alarming headlines have recently started to appear in the media (see, for example, the CNN’s “Cyberwar hits Ukraine”). This, however, is sensationalism. What has actually happened so far is limited disruption of mobile communications through Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. In addition, certain state-run news websites and social media have been defaced and their content replaced with pro-Russian propaganda. In the months that preceded the current crisis, Ukrainian computer systems were also allegedly targeted by “cyberspies”.

If the above scenario sounds familiar it is because it isn’t the first time that cyber operations have occurred during a military crisis involving the Russian Federation. In 2008, immediately before and after the Russian troops entered the secessionist Georgian province of South Ossetia, several Georgian governmental websites were defaced and their content replaced with anti-Georgian propaganda, while DDoS attacks crippled the Caucasian nation’s ability to disseminate information. Estonia was also the target of severe DDoS attacks in 2007, although in the context of a political, and not military, confrontation with Russia. In neither case has it been convincingly demonstrated that Russia (or any other state) was responsible for the cyber operations. The same can be said of the cyber operations against Ukrainian computer systems and websites, which have also been, at least until now, far less severe than those on Georgia and on Estonia, leading some to suggest that Russia is exercising restraint in the use of its cyber capabilities.

Does international law apply in this scenario?

While the DDoS attacks and the defacement of websites obviously don’t establish on their own an armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the fact that they have been conducted in the context of kinetic exchanges of fire and a situation of occupation may potentially lead to the application of the law of armed conflict (jus in bello). Two points are important from this perspective. First, although there have been no extensive armed hostilities between Ukraine and Russia yet, it has been reported that at least one Ukrainian soldier has been killed and another wounded, allegedly by Russian military forces or pro-Russian militias. Unlike in non-international armed conflicts, the jus in bello applies to any shot fired between states, regardless of intensity thresholds. The Commentary to Article 2 common to the 1949 Geneva Conventions on the Protection of the Victims of War clearly states that “[i]t makes no difference how long the conflict lasts, or how much slaughter takes place, or how numerous are the participating forces” (p. 23). Secondly, the fact that Crimea is now under the control of the Russian forces determines a situation of occupation that also falls under the scope of the law of armed conflict (Article 2(2) of the Geneva Conventions).

However, the law of armed conflict would extend to the DDoS attacks and other cyber operations against Ukraine only if these have a “belligerent nexus” with the hostilities and the occupation. Otherwise, they would be mere cyber crimes and would fall under the scope of domestic criminal laws. To have a belligerent nexus, the cyber operations must have been designed to cause a certain threshold of harm to a belligerent (Ukraine) in support of another (Russia) (see Recommendation V(3) of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)’s Interpretive Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities). Harm must be either death, injury, or destruction on civilian persons or objects, or military harm, whether physical or not (Recommendation V(1)). Even though they didn’t result in material damage on protected persons and property, then, the threshold of harm would have been crossed if the DDoS attacks and other cyber operations had at least aimed at affecting the Ukrainian government’s ability to communicate with and the operability of its armed forces, so to disrupt Ukraine’s military operations or military capacity. From the information available, we don’t know whether this is the case.

Do the DDoS operations against Ukraine amount to “attacks” under the law of armed conflict? The question is important because the rules on targeting and protecting civilians, including the principles of distinction and proportionality and the duty to take precautions, only apply to “attacks”, defined in Article 49(1) of Protocol I Additional to the Geneva Conventions as “acts of violence against the adversary, whether in offence or in defence”. I have argued elsewhere that a cyber operation is an “attack” in this sense whenever it employs cyber capabilities that produce or are reasonably likely to produce “violent” consequences in the form of loss of life or injury of persons, more than minimal material damage to property, or loss of functionality of infrastructures. From the available information, this doesn’t seem to be the case of the DDoS attacks against the Ukrainian communication systems and, even less, of the defacement operations. Cyber “espionage” also doesn’t normally affect the functionality of the accessed system or amend/delete the data resident therein. It doesn’t have “violent” consequences and is therefore not an “attack”, although it may be an act of hostilities.

To conclude, we can’t establish for sure whether the international law of armed conflict applies to the cyber operations conducted so far against Ukraine because we don’t know whether they were designed to militarily support Russia to the detriment of Ukraine. What we do know is that the operations in questions are not “attacks”, and therefore the rules on targeting don’t apply to them, whether or not they have a belligerent nexus.

Dr. Marco Roscini is Reader in International Law at the University of Westminster. He has written extensively in international security law, including cyber warfare and nuclear non-proliferation law. His most recent book, Cyber Operations and the Use of Force in International Law, has just been published by OUP. He is also the author of ‘Cyber Operations as Nuclear Counterproliferation Measures’, published in the Journal of Conflict and Security Law (2014). Dr. Roscini regularly blogs at Arms Control Law and can be followed on Twitter at @marcoroscini.

Oxford University Press is a leading publisher in international law, including the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, latest titles from thought leaders in the field, and a wide range of law journals and online products. We publish original works across key areas of study, from humanitarian to international economic to environmental law, developing outstanding resources to support students, scholars, and practitioners worldwide. For the latest news, commentary, and insights follow the International Law team on Twitter @OUPIntLaw.

Subscribe to the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Subscribe to only law articles on the OUPblog via email or RSS.


Image credit: Fingers on a keyboard, via iStockphoto.

The post Is there a “cyber war” between Ukraine and Russia? appeared first on OUPblog.

                Related StoriesThe political economy of policy transitionsThe Ukraine crisis and the rules great powers play byUnlearned lessons from the McMartin Preschool case