Showing papers on "Rivalry published in 1973"

Industry Structure, Market Rivalry, and Public Policy

Abstract: UANTITATIVE work in industrial organization has been directed mainly to the task of searching for monopoly even though a vast number of other interesting topics have been available to the student of economic organization. The motives for this preoccupation with monopoly are numerous, but important among them are the desire to be policy-relevant and the ease with which industrial concentration data can be secured. This paper takes a critical view of contemporary doctrine in this area and presents data which suggest that this doctrine offers a dangerous base upon which to build a public policy toward business.

Distributions of durations of perception in the binocular rivalry of contours.

Abstract: Summary Durations of four categories of perceptions in the binocular rivalry of 3.9° bright contours were considered. Distributions of durations of perceptions of each of the rivalry categories and of all rivalry reports together were tested against five standard distributions. The empirical distributions showed no tendency to fit any of the standard theoretical distributions well. The results suggest that speculations concerning the underlying mechanisms of binocular rivalry based on observations of the durations of rivalry reports may not be useful until the distributions of durations are satisfactorily described.

Induced semantic-associative states and resolution of binocular-rivalry conflicts between letters

Abstract: Rommetveit, R. & Blakar, R. M. Induced semanticassociative states and resolution of binocular-rivalry conflicts between letters. Scand. J. Psychol., 1973, 14, 185–194. MdashPairs of rivaling words such as hell/tell were presented in conjunction with context words, appearing 0, 1, and 4 sec before the rivalry pair. In addition, nonword pairs such as shap/shar were employed. Contextually appropriate resolutions (such as seeing only hell in hell/tell) were induced by syntagmatically related context words (e.g. dark-hell), by contrast contexts (e. g. heaven-hell), and by contingency contexts (e.g. devil-hell). The latter had an unequivocal effect only when appearing 4 sec before the rivalry pair, whereas syntagmatic and contrast contexts affected resolution most strongly when context and rivalry pair appeared simultaneously and the subject tried deliberately to counteract contextual influence. The findings are discussed in the light of related previous experiments, and interpreted as evidence for and further specification of superordinate cognitive control of perceptual operations.

The Idea of a Protestant Foreign Policy

Abstract: IN ENGLISH HISTORIOGRAPHY “the idea of a Protestant foreign policy” may be referred to the concept of Oliver Cromwell’s diplomacy as being inspired more by religious than by commercial or geopolitical considerations. As such it implies condemnation. With the eccentric exception of Carlyle, historians writing since the middle part of the nineteenth century have called Cromwell’s foreign policy Protestant principally as an aid to pointing out, and explaining, its deficiencies. This interpretation has had for its theme that Cromwell’s view of the European situation was anachronistically orientated toward that of Elizabeth’s day, or at least of the Thirty Years’ War, when religious antipathies were more relevant to national interests. In consequence the words “Elizabethan” and “anachronistic” have been used here as virtual synonyms for “Protestant.” Gardiner made the identification explicitly: “His mind still worked on the lines of the Elizabethan period, when the championship of Protestantism was imposed on Englishmen by interest as well as by duty.”1 The idea is that Cromwell, pursuing this “chimera,”2 was led to neglect real problems, such as the trade rivalry of the Dutch and the danger of French domination of the Continent, for involvement in a Spanish war destructive of English commerce, and an alliance with France detrimental to the balance of power.

Chinese Railways and the Townley Agreement of 1903

Abstract: British financial interests in China, since 1895, had been closely linked with political and strategic considerations. As the political and financial rivalry between the European powers intensified, the link tightened, becoming increasingly essential for mutual preservation. European finance meant railways, mineral rights, arms, and support for the ailing Manchu Dynasty; it was clear to successive British governments that British political supremacy in China could not survive the passing of such important financial concessions into foreign hands. In 1898, with the international scramble for concessions at its peak, the leading representatives of British finance in China co-operated fully with the Foreign Office to gain the bulk of Chinese railway contracts and concessions. Such respectable British enterprises as the British and Chinese Corporation and the Pekin Syndicate received active diplomatic support at Peking and the encouragement of the Foreign Office in London. Short of actually negotiating financial contracts on behalf of private companies British diplomacy could do little more to improve the competitive standing of these leading British firms vis-a-vis their foreign rivals.

The Foreign Office and the First Chinese Indemnity Loan, 1895

Abstract: IN tle i89os the concept of laissez-faire still dominated the attitude of the Foreign Office to the question of overseas loans and investment. Unlike its European counterparts, the British Government had no tradition of interference in the world of high finance, nor were there any formal channels of communication between the City and the Foreign Office whereby a community of interests might be established or policies correlated.' In the mid-nineteenth century there had been little need for closer contact. The power of British finance had ensured ample opportunities for British investment in fields where foreign competition was virtually non-existent. Such communication as had been considered necessary could be effected through hints in speeches, social contacts, or personal relationships strictly informal procedures which, apart from Disraeli's bid for the Suez canal shares, had produced minor and unspectacular results. It was at the point where the spheres of politics and finance overlapped that British officials and financiers were drawn together by mutual interests. More particularly this was becoming the case in the I89os when the background of international rivalry seemed to make a closer association more urgent. International finance, when it became a means for the growth of political influence, was no longer a realm from which the Foreign Office could remain officially aloof. The danger was that in those regions of the world where the governments of the other European powers stood firmly behind their bankers and financiers the British Government might face the choice either of actively supporting British financial interests or of conceding by default its influence over the governments of weaker nations. After I895 China suddenly became such an area. The supremacy of both British financial and political interests there was threatened. Humiliated in war, China was now exposed to the imperial ambitions of the European powers, and in Europe it was realized that political influence over a tottering regime in Peking would rest to a large extent with the power best able to finance the Chinese Government. Such finance became necessary immediately the hostilities with Japan had ceased. British private enterprise could not, however, without some

Rivalry among deep structures

Abstract: Choice between different but equally informative proposals of 'deep' (or 'underlying') structures appears to be arbitrary as well as undesirable. The appearance of rivalry among them is due to misrepresenting, in terms of alternative rules (constraints), what are in fact compatible tendencies. Realization of these tendencies, unlike the operation of rules, depends on specific lexical choice and context. Semantic tendencies operate within the framework of grammatical rules, but are no part of it. It is the freedom of ad-hoc choice among them, rather than any generative mechanism, that constitutes the truly creative aspect of language. Anyone surveying present-day linguistic studies will find that linguists of the most diverse persuasions tend to view syntactic constructions in some such way as Saussure viewed the linguistic sign-Janus-like, facing in two directions: each sentence or phrase being endowed with, on the one hand, a surface structure adapted to its phonetic representation, and, on the other, a deep structure which is adapted to its semantic representation. Clearly, there is something uncontroversial about this view; in SOME sense, a sentence or phrase-like any sign-has meaning as well as form. Yet how exactly to make sense of this truism is more problematic; more especially, the assumption that we can make sense of the two aspects of a sentence or phrase, its form and its meaning, by ascribing two transformationally related structures to it, seems dubious. Through being divided and related in this way, both seem to suffer from arbitrariness: the surface structures for lack of functional semantic controls, and the deep structures for lack of decisive formal evidence. As to surface structures, we are told explicitly that they are inadequate; and everyone will agree. But we are also told that their 'labeled bracketing' (which is, on the whole, traditional IC-analysis) is more or less uncontroversial. The deficiencies are not to be amended or replaced; they are to be cured by SUPPLEMENTATION: by deriving those labeled bracketings from more informative deep structures. This uncritical acceptance of traditional IC-analyses-so very different from the attitude of those who first proposed them-is of course difficult to justify. The placing of the brackets is very largely inexplicit guesswork, and the labeling very largely dogmatic orthodoxy-not to speak of the arbitrary assumption that constituents must be continuous, for the purely notational reason that discontinuous constituents would not sit comfortably on the branches of tree diagrams. All this seems to be so unprincipled and obscure as to be incapable of a cure by mere supplementation. For the present, however, I propose to ignore this side of the dichotomy, and turn to an examination of Janus's other face. (For some further discussion of the problem of 'surface structure', cf. Haas 1972, 1973.) It seems to be generally accepted that the supplementary information provided by deep structures is primarily semantic information. The much discussed difference between those who, like Chomsky, stipulate a further interpretive 282

Russia and Indochina in International Perspective

Abstract: HAT are Soviet interests in Indochina? How do they fit into W1J the world-wide pattern of great power relations? And what, T w in turn, are effects of recent developments in Indochina, whether 'autonomous' or responsive to activities from outside, both on the great powers individually and on the emerging 'multi-polar' balance? Now it may be felt that the formulation of these questions gives undue weight to a particular view of international affairs. Indeed, Soviet writers object to the concept of ' balance of power' because it fails to take account of what they see as the over-riding struggle between two systems, socialism and capitalism. The clash of two systems is of course most evident in Indochina, with civil war or strife in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Yet class or ideological conflict cannot on its own explain the immediate complexities, if not the underlying issues, of the diplomacy of the post-cold war era. To understand the latter, both concepts are needed. For the purpose of this article I have therefore considered ideology, perhaps somewhat arbitrarily, as part of the 'balance'. South-east Asia in itself is not of major interest to the Soviet Union ;(in this it is very different from South Asia) apart from two aspects: first, Soviet solidarity with North Vietnam and the effect this has on the continuing political-military struggles in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, although this is counter-balanced, to some extent, by the desire not to jeopardise constructive relations in other fields with the United States. And, second, the area considered as an arena of rivalry with China and the United States.' To the Soviet Union, Indochina signifies a number of not always compatible elements: a socialist state attacked by the leader of imperialism; national liberation movements in various stages of growth; friendly relations with governments of countries with different social systems; an opportunity to reduce American power and prestige, but within a global framework of peaceful co-existence; a similar opportunity