Why do oil-dependent developing countries exhibit divergent responses to oil crises? This study employs a comparative case study approach and utilizes a ‘most similar system design’ to examine the varying state responses to the 1973 oil shock in Turkey and South Korea. While the former refrained from implementing radical short-term adjustment policies and reforms, the latter adopted proactive measures to mitigate the worsening impact of escalating oil prices. This research contends that the existing literature, which emphasizes distinctions in industrialization strategies and fiscal policies among developing nations, offers an incomplete explanation for the divergent reactions of states to external price shocks. Instead, the study proposes a sociological perspective, focusing on the influence of varying degrees of state autonomy and the characteristics of bureaucratic systems on the decision-making processes of states. The key finding suggests that while pre-crisis economic policies and industrialization strategies may limit the array of policy tools available to counteract the adverse effects of an oil crisis, the extent of state autonomy and the organization of the bureaucracy – whether adhering to Weberian or non-Weberian principles – impact the efficacy of these policy tools and the determination of decision-makers to act in the best interests of the long-term public good.

Defensive infrastructure in the hinterland of the late Roman province of Germania Secunda hinged upon the widespread use of burgi. These defended settlements played a role in transforming villa estates, depopulated zones, and the expansion of the military footprint. They are common in the late third- and fourth-century landscape, spread throughout the loess belt of Belgium, Dutch Limburg, and the Rhineland, yet little has been done to quantify them. This article is dedicated to the chronology, morphology, and functional aspects of burgi, primarily in the loess plain of the Lower Rhine region. The author assembles data from a wide variety of burgi, to characterize them and reach meaningful conclusions about what they represent within the landscape, in the hope that it will act as a pilot project for future work in the field.

Compilers and editors of hymnals and scholars of hymnology have often lacked suitable tools for identifying the earliest sources of spirituals, or even key sources that serve as models for later arrangements. In the twenty-first century, the development of internet-based repositories of digital books has enabled the ability to search for publications of spirituals using strings of lyrics or keywords, but more importantly, these repositories allow researchers to examine the relevant sources and glean contextual information about those spirituals beyond what might exist in any list or index. Although African slaves had been present in North America since 1619, this unique musical artform was not considered a national treasure worth preserving and publishing until the onset of the Civil War, thus any study of sources of antebellum plantation spirituals really begins at the end of that era and moves forward from there. In order to understand the problem and the digital solution to tracing these songs, a brief overview of the longstanding publishing standard will be presented, followed by an overview of older research materials, then a detailed examination of three existing repositories (HathiTrust, Google, Internet Archive), and one forthcoming repository (Sounding Spirit). The publications located in these repositories have been tied together through a pair of web-based bibliographies at Hymnology Archive, covering the years 1862–1900 and 1901–1942.