The French fifth Republic as an opportunity structure:a neo-institutional and cultural approach to the study of leadership politics

The Gaullist settlement of 1958 reconfigured the political institutions of France, introducing into the republican mainstream a new form of leadership politics. Adapting the literature on political opportunity structure (POS) theory, and using the French left as a case study, can help us understand how political parties, ideology and leadership adapt to political institutions and norms. It also illuminates what the consequences are of such adaptation in the contemporary period, particularly as regards the institutionally bound roles of political 'character', protocol and discourse. The paper appraises the relevance and appropriateness of POS theory to leadership politics in France.

Determinants of civil society influence:the case of international development and humanitarian NGOs in the Czech Republic and Hungary

Accession to the EU has had ambiguous effects on civil society organizations (CSOs) in the East Central European countries. A general observation is that accession has not led to the systematic empowerment of CSOs in terms of growing influence on national policy making. This article investigates the determinants of successful CSO advocacy by looking at international development and humanitarian NGOs (NGDOs) in the Czech Republic and Hungary. Reforms in the past decade in the Czech Republic have created an international development policy largely in line with NGDO interests, while Hungary’s ministry of foreign affairs seems to have been unresponsive to reform demands from civil society. The article argues that there is clear evidence of NGDO influence in the Czech Republic on international development policy, which is because of the fact that Czech NGDOs have been able solve problems of collective actions, while the Hungarian NGDO sector remains fragmented. They also have relatively stronger capacities, can rely on greater public support and can thus present more legitimate demands towards their government.

A world full of surprises:Bayesian theory of surprise to quantify degrees of uncertainty

In the specific area of software engineering (SE) for self-adaptive systems (SASs) there is a growing research awareness about the synergy between SE and artificial intelligence (AI). However, just few significant results have been published so far. In this paper, we propose a novel and formal Bayesian definition of surprise as the basis for quantitative analysis to measure degrees of uncertainty and deviations of self-adaptive systems from normal behavior. A surprise measures how observed data affects the models or assumptions of the world during runtime. The key idea is that a "surprising" event can be defined as one that causes a large divergence between the belief distributions prior to and posterior to the event occurring. In such a case the system may decide either to adapt accordingly or to flag that an abnormal situation is happening. In this paper, we discuss possible applications of Bayesian theory of surprise for the case of self-adaptive systems using Bayesian dynamic decision networks. Copyright © 2014 ACM.

On the theory of autosoliton propagation in optical fibers guided by in-line nonlinear devices

A theoretical model is developed to describe the propagation of ultra-short optical pulses in fiber transmission systems in the quasi-linear regime, with periodically inserted in-line lumped nonlinear optical devices. Stable autosoliton solutions are obtained for a particular application of the general theory.

On the theory of the modulation instability in optical fiber and laser amplifiers

The modulation instability (MI) in optical fiber amplifiers and lasers with anomalous dispersion leads to CW beam breakup and the growth of multiple pulses. This can be both a detrimental effect, limiting the performance of amplifiers, and also an underlying physical mechanism in the operation of MI-based devices. Here we revisit the analytical theory of MI in fiber optical amplifiers. The results of the exact theory are compared with the previously used adiabatic approximation model, and the range of applicability of the latter is determined. The same technique is applicable to the study of spatial MI in solid state laser amplifiers and MI in non-uniform media. © 2011 SPIE.

On the theory of the modulation instability in optical fiber amplifiers

The modulation instability (MI) in optical fiber amplifiers and lasers with anomalous dispersion leads to cw radiation breakup. This can be both a detrimental effect limiting the performance of amplifiers and an underlying physical mechanism in the operation of MI-based devices. Here we revisit the analytical theory of MI in fiber optical amplifiers. The results of the exact theory are compared with the previously used adiabatic approximation model, and the range of applicability of the latter is determined. © 2010 Optical Society of America.