Coordinated Cluster, ground-based instrumentation and low-altitude satellite observations of transient poleward-moving events in the ionosphere and in the tail lobe

During the interval between 8:00-9:30 on 14 January 2001, the four Cluster spacecraft were moving from the central magnetospheric lobe, through the dusk sector mantle, on their way towards intersecting the magnetopause near 15:00 MLT and 15:00 UT. Throughout this interval, the EIS-CAT Svalbard Radar (ESR) at Longyearbyen observed a series of poleward-moving transient events of enhanced F-region plasma concentration ("polar cap patches"), with a repetition period of the order of 10 min. Allowing for the estimated solar wind propagation delay of 75 ( 5) min, the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) had a southward component during most of the interval. The magnetic footprint of the Cluster spacecraft, mapped to the ionosphere using the Tsyganenko T96 model (with input conditions prevailing during this event), was to the east of the ESR beams. Around 09:05 UT, the DMSP-F12 satellite flew over the ESR and showed a sawtooth cusp ion dispersion signature that also extended into the electrons on the equatorward edge of the cusp, revealing a pulsed magnetopause reconnection. The consequent enhanced ionospheric flow events were imaged by the SuperDARN HF backscatter radars. The average convection patterns (derived using the AMIE technique on data from the magnetometers, the EISCAT and SuperDARN radars, and the DMSP satellites) show that the associated poleward-moving events also convected over the predicted footprint of the Cluster spacecraft. Cluster observed enhancements in the fluxes of both electrons and ions. These events were found to be essentially identical at all four spacecraft, indicating that they had a much larger spatial scale than the satellite separation of the order of 600 km. Some of the events show a correspondence between the lowest energy magnetosheath electrons detected by the PEACE instrument on Cluster (10-20 eV) and the topside ionospheric enhancements seen by the ESR (at 400-700 km). We suggest that a potential barrier at the magnetopause, which prevents the lowest energy electrons from entering the magnetosphere, is reduced when and where the boundary-normal magnetic field is enhanced and that the observed polar cap patches are produced by the consequent enhanced precipitation of the lowest energy electrons, making them and the low energy electron precipitation fossil remnants of the magnetopause reconnection rate pulses.

The neoliberal way of war: a critical analysis of contemporary British security in policy and practice.

Dominant paradigms of causal explanation for why and how Western liberal-democracies go to war in the post-Cold War era remain versions of the 'liberal peace' or 'democratic peace' thesis. Yet such explanations have been shown to rest upon deeply problematic epistemological and methodological assumptions. Of equal importance, however, is the failure of these dominant paradigms to account for the 'neoliberal revolution' that has gripped Western liberal-democracies since the 1970s. The transition from liberalism to neoliberalism remains neglected in analyses of the contemporary Western security constellation. Arguing that neoliberalism can be understood simultaneously through the Marxian concept of ideology and the Foucauldian concept of governmentality – that is, as a complementary set of 'ways of seeing' and 'ways of being' – the thesis goes on to analyse British security in policy and practice, considering it as an instantiation of a wider neoliberal way of war. In so doing, the thesis draws upon, but also challenges and develops, established critical discourse analytic methods, incorporating within its purview not only the textual data that is usually considered by discourse analysts, but also material practices of security. This analysis finds that contemporary British security policy is predicated on a neoliberal social ontology, morphology and morality – an ideology or 'way of seeing' – focused on the notion of a globalised 'network-market', and is aimed at rendering circulations through this network-market amenable to neoliberal techniques of government. It is further argued that security practices shaped by this ideology imperfectly and unevenly achieve the realisation of neoliberal 'ways of being' – especially modes of governing self and other or the 'conduct of conduct' – and the re-articulation of subjectivities in line with neoliberal principles of individualism, risk, responsibility and flexibility. The policy and practice of contemporary British 'security' is thus recontextualised as a component of a broader 'neoliberal way of war'.

Greek politics: economic crisis or crisis of democracy?

Greece’s economic instability has become the Western world’s longest-running monetary crisis. Will Germany allow the EU to keep propping up Greece’s unstable financial system? Will the country leave the eurozone? Will such a departure, if it occurs, unravel the idea of “Europe”? All valid questions. But behind them stands another equally profound social and political crisis that has made Greece the weak man of Europe.

Whose peace? Local ownership and UN peacebuilding

In recent years, there has been an increasing emphasis on the participation of national actors in United Nations peace operations, reflecting what has become a near orthodox commitment to ‘local ownership.’ Advocates of local ownership assert that it: (1) increases the legitimacy of UN peacebuilding efforts; (2) increases the sustainability of peacebuilding activities after the departure of the UN; and (3) increases democratic governance in post-conflict states. While such thinking about local ownership has informed UN peacebuilding policy to a large extent, the UN has, to date, assumed these positive benefits without critically examining the causal mechanisms that allegedly produce them, specifying the conditions under which this correlation holds, or providing convincing evidence for these assertions. Moreover, exactly what local ownership is, what is being owned, and who local ‘owners’ are remain unclear. Indeed a closer examination of ownership’s relation with legitimacy, sustainability, and democratization reveal a plethora of contradictions that imply that local ownership may in fact decrease the UN’s ability to deliver peacekeeping results. Crucially, however, the UN persists in adopting a local ownership approach to peacebuilding, suggesting that it does so because it is normatively appropriate rather than operationally effective.

The fractured lives of German Bohemian children, born 1933-40 in the area known as Sudetenland: a memory study, Nablonz-Neugablonz

At the Paris Peace Conferences of 1918-1919, new states aspiring to be nation-states were created for 60 million people, but at the same time 25 million people found themselves as ethnic minorities. This change of the old order in Europe had a considerable impact on one such group, more than 3 million Bohemian German-speakers, later referred to as Sudeten Germans. After the demise of the Habsburg Empire In 1918, they became part of the new state of Czechoslovakia. In 1938, the Munich Agreement – prelude to the Second World War – integrated them into Hitler’s Reich; in 1945-1946 they were expelled from the reconstituted state of Czechoslovakia. At the centre of this War Child case study are German children from the Northern Bohemian town and district, formerly known as Gablonz an der Neisse, famous for exquisite glass art, now Jablonec nad Nisou in the Czech Republic. After their expulsion they found new homes in the post-war Federal Republic of Germany. In addition, testimonies have been drawn upon of some Czech eyewitnesses from the same area, who provided their perspective from the other side, as it were. It turned out to be an insightful case study of the fate of these communities, previously studied mainly within the context of the national struggle between Germans and Czechs. The inter-disciplinary research methodology adopted here combines history and sociological research to demonstrate the effect of larger political and social developments on human lives, not shying away from addressing sensitive political and historical issues, as far as these are relevant within the context of the study. The expellees started new lives in what became Neugablonz in post-war Bavaria where they successfully re-established the industries they had had to leave behind in 1945-1946. Part 1 of the study sheds light on the complex Czech-German relationship of this important Central European region, addressing issues of democracy, ethnicity, race, nationalism, geopolitics, economics, human geography and ethnography. It also charts the developments leading to the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia after 1945. What is important in this War Child study is how the expellees remember their history while living as children in Sudetenland and later. The testimony data gained indicate that certain stereotypes often repeated within the context of Sudeten issues such as the confrontational nature of inter-ethnic relations are not reflected in the testimonies of the respondents from Gablonz. In Part 2 the War Child Study explores the memories of the former Sudeten war children using sociological research methods. It focuses on how they remember life in their Bohemian homeland and coped with the life-long effects of displacement after their expulsion. The study maps how they turned adversity into success by showing a remarkable degree of resilience and ingenuity in the face of testing circumstances due to the abrupt break in their lives. The thesis examines the reasons for the relatively positive outcome to respondents’ lives and what transferable lessons can be deduced from the results of this study.

Processes of feelings in a society with a violent past : A qualitative study of the communication for Societal healing in the Truth Commissions in East Timor, Sri Lanka and Ghana between 2002-2011

The research investigates in what extent and how communication for meeting feelings is provided in Truth Commission work. It examines if and in what way feelings are addressed in the communication officially published by the Truth Commissions in East Timor, Ghana and Sri Lanka, occurring between 2002-2011. The research is also looking at the healing processes in a time perspective to find out if there is a communication for Societal healing to be continued in a longer term. My conclusion is that two cases of three in my research, the TRCs in Ghana and East Timor, have communication clearly directed to meet feelings caused by the war. One of the three cases (East Timor) has a communication with a clear ambition to heal over a longer period, to continue after the existence of the Truth Commission. The research suggests that communication with a clear ambition to reach out widely in the society, a communication directed to meet and process feelings over a longer period, can make Societal healing more effective. It also concludes that, in the future, Societal healing, as a field in conflict resolution, will be more based on representational media than today, provided through web communication.

The Long Game: Hamas, The IRA, and the Politics of Radicalization in Palestine and Northern Ireland

The value of a comparative study of the two conflicts stems from a remarkable similarity in the structural organization of political violence by its most influential practitioners: the IRA and Hamas. At the core, I have merely tried my best to approach a beguiling question in a fresh, dynamic way. The stultifying discourse of conflict that serves as lingua franca for the Israeli‐Palestinian issue has largely reduced strategic debate to how best the conflict can be managed – not ended. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s focus on “economic peace” and unwillingness to commit to a two‐state solution – the consensus that has governed peacemaking for decades – belies such thinking. The Clinton Administration’s cadre of Mideast negotiators operated amidst the most rapid institutionalization of Palestinian democracy in history ‐ yet remained obsessed with Israeli‐Arab “confidence‐building” measures, doing little to legitimize the gains of Oslo. So long as Palestinians continue to view the creation of Israel as “al‐Nakba” – the catastrophe – whilst successive Israeli governments refuse to grant their aspirations any legitimacy, there can be no progress. Peace requires empathy, a substantial compromise in the context of internecine conflict. The “long war” both conflicts have become mandates an equally expansive, broad‐based and labor‐intensive approach – a demanding process that can only be called The Long Game.

Of Law, Lawlessness, and Sovereignty : Multinational Peacekeeping and International Law

Laws of war have been carefully defined by individual nations’ own codes of law as well as by supranational bodies. Yet the international scene has seen an increasing movement away from traditionally declared war toward multinational peacekeeping missions geared at containing local conflicts when perceived as potential threats to their respective regions’ political stability. While individual nations’ laws governing warfare presuppose national sovereignty, the multinational nature of peacekeeping scenarios can blur the lines of command structures, soldiers’ national loyalties, occupational jurisdiction, and raise profound questions as to which countries’ moral sense/governmental system is to be the one upheld. Historically increasingly complex international relations have driven increasingly detailed internationally drafted guidelines for countries’ interactions while at war, yet there are operational, legislative, and moral issues arising in multinational peacekeeping situations which these laws do not address at all. The author analyzes three unique peacekeeping operations in light of these legislative voids and suggests systematic points to consider to the end of protecting the peacekeepers, the national interests of the countries involved, operational matters, and clearly delineating both the objective and logical boundaries of a given multinational peacekeeping mission.

On the photonic dispersion of periodic superlattices made of left-handed materials

Studies of the band gap properties of one-dimensional superlattices with alternate layers of air and left-handed materials are carried out within the framework of Maxwell's equations. By left-handed material, we mean a material with dispersive negative electric and magnetic responses. Modeling them by Drude-type responses or by fabricated ones, we characterize the n(ω) = 0 gap, i.e., the zeroth order gap, which has been predicted and detected. The band structure and analytic equations for the band edges have been obtained in the long wavelength limit in case of periodic, Fibonacci, and Thue-Morse superlattices. Our studies reveal the nature of the width of the zeroth order band gap, whose edge equations are defined by null averages of the response functions. Oblique incidence is also investigated, yielding remarkable results. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Methodology for the comparison of military expenditures

Includes bibliography

Post-conflict peace-building: a challenge for the United Nations

Includes bibliography

Exploratory analysis of differences in sperm morphology in Nelore and Gir (Bos indicus) bulls

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of breed and season on semen quality parameters of zebu bulls. Data (1,632 registers) of semen production from Gir (n = 4) and Nelore (n = 15) bulls were collected between October 2005 and November 2009. The ejaculates were collected twice a week during various seasons (summer, fall, winter, and spring) and evaluated for the following semen parameters: ejaculate volume, sperm concentration, sperm motility, forward progressive motility (FPM), and sperm morphology. Factor analysis was used to determine the relationship among variables. The effect of breed (Gir and Nelore) and season and their cross effect on each parameter and extracted factor were tested using ANOVA. A negative correlation (P < 0.05) was observed between FPM and proximal droplet, as well as with abnormal loose head, abnormal small head, pouch formation, abnormal mid-peace, and strongly folded tail. Gir bull sperm showed more major defects, detached acrosome, and minor FPM (P < 0.01), whereas Nelore bulls showed a higher number of sperm with normally loose head.

Essays on the political economy of European integration

Recently, a rising interest in political and economic integration/disintegration issues has been developed in the political economy field. This growing strand of literature partly draws on traditional issues of fiscal federalism and optimum public good provision and focuses on a trade-off between the benefits of centralization, arising from economies of scale or externalities, and the costs of harmonizing policies as a consequence of the increased heterogeneity of individual preferences in an international union or in a country composed of at least two regions. This thesis stems from this strand of literature and aims to shed some light on two highly relevant aspects of the political economy of European integration. The first concerns the role of public opinion in the integration process; more precisely, how economic benefits and costs of integration shape citizens' support for European Union (EU) membership. The second is the allocation of policy competences among different levels of government: European, national and regional. Chapter 1 introduces the topics developed in this thesis by reviewing the main recent theoretical developments in the political economy analysis of integration processes. It is structured as follows. First, it briefly surveys a few relevant articles on economic theories of integration and disintegration processes (Alesina and Spolaore 1997, Bolton and Roland 1997, Alesina et al. 2000, Casella and Feinstein 2002) and discusses their relevance for the study of the impact of economic benefits and costs on public opinion attitude towards the EU. Subsequently, it explores the links existing between such political economy literature and theories of fiscal federalism, especially with regard to normative considerations concerning the optimal allocation of competences in a union. Chapter 2 firstly proposes a model of citizens’ support for membership of international unions, with explicit reference to the EU; subsequently it tests the model on a panel of EU countries. What are the factors that influence public opinion support for the European Union (EU)? In international relations theory, the idea that citizens' support for the EU depends on material benefits deriving from integration, i.e. whether European integration makes individuals economically better off (utilitarian support), has been common since the 1970s, but has never been the subject of a formal treatment (Hix 2005). A small number of studies in the 1990s have investigated econometrically the link between national economic performance and mass support for European integration (Eichenberg and Dalton 1993; Anderson and Kalthenthaler 1996), but only making informal assumptions. The main aim of Chapter 2 is thus to propose and test our model with a view to providing a more complete and theoretically grounded picture of public support for the EU. Following theories of utilitarian support, we assume that citizens are in favour of membership if they receive economic benefits from it. To develop this idea, we propose a simple political economic model drawing on the recent economic literature on integration and disintegration processes. The basic element is the existence of a trade-off between the benefits of centralisation and the costs of harmonising policies in presence of heterogeneous preferences among countries. The approach we follow is that of the recent literature on the political economy of international unions and the unification or break-up of nations (Bolton and Roland 1997, Alesina and Wacziarg 1999, Alesina et al. 2001, 2005a, to mention only the relevant). The general perspective is that unification provides returns to scale in the provision of public goods, but reduces each member state’s ability to determine its most favoured bundle of public goods. In the simple model presented in Chapter 2, support for membership of the union is increasing in the union’s average income and in the loss of efficiency stemming from being outside the union, and decreasing in a country’s average income, while increasing heterogeneity of preferences among countries points to a reduced scope of the union. Afterwards we empirically test the model with data on the EU; more precisely, we perform an econometric analysis employing a panel of member countries over time. The second part of Chapter 2 thus tries to answer the following question: does public opinion support for the EU really depend on economic factors? The findings are broadly consistent with our theoretical expectations: the conditions of the national economy, differences in income among member states and heterogeneity of preferences shape citizens’ attitude towards their country’s membership of the EU. Consequently, this analysis offers some interesting policy implications for the present debate about ratification of the European Constitution and, more generally, about how the EU could act in order to gain more support from the European public. Citizens in many member states are called to express their opinion in national referenda, which may well end up in rejection of the Constitution, as recently happened in France and the Netherlands, triggering a European-wide political crisis. These events show that nowadays understanding public attitude towards the EU is not only of academic interest, but has a strong relevance for policy-making too. Chapter 3 empirically investigates the link between European integration and regional autonomy in Italy. Over the last few decades, the double tendency towards supranationalism and regional autonomy, which has characterised some European States, has taken a very interesting form in this country, because Italy, besides being one of the founding members of the EU, also implemented a process of decentralisation during the 1970s, further strengthened by a constitutional reform in 2001. Moreover, the issue of the allocation of competences among the EU, the Member States and the regions is now especially topical. The process leading to the drafting of European Constitution (even if then it has not come into force) has attracted much attention from a constitutional political economy perspective both on a normative and positive point of view (Breuss and Eller 2004, Mueller 2005). The Italian parliament has recently passed a new thorough constitutional reform, still to be approved by citizens in a referendum, which includes, among other things, the so called “devolution”, i.e. granting the regions exclusive competence in public health care, education and local police. Following and extending the methodology proposed in a recent influential article by Alesina et al. (2005b), which only concentrated on the EU activity (treaties, legislation, and European Court of Justice’s rulings), we develop a set of quantitative indicators measuring the intensity of the legislative activity of the Italian State, the EU and the Italian regions from 1973 to 2005 in a large number of policy categories. By doing so, we seek to answer the following broad questions. Are European and regional legislations substitutes for state laws? To what extent are the competences attributed by the European treaties or the Italian Constitution actually exerted in the various policy areas? Is their exertion consistent with the normative recommendations from the economic literature about their optimum allocation among different levels of government? The main results show that, first, there seems to be a certain substitutability between EU and national legislations (even if not a very strong one), but not between regional and national ones. Second, the EU concentrates its legislative activity mainly in international trade and agriculture, whilst social policy is where the regions and the State (which is also the main actor in foreign policy) are more active. Third, at least two levels of government (in some cases all of them) are significantly involved in the legislative activity in many sectors, even where the rationale for that is, at best, very questionable, indicating that they actually share a larger number of policy tasks than that suggested by the economic theory. It appears therefore that an excessive number of competences are actually shared among different levels of government. From an economic perspective, it may well be recommended that some competences be shared, but only when the balance between scale or spillover effects and heterogeneity of preferences suggests so. When, on the contrary, too many levels of government are involved in a certain policy area, the distinction between their different responsibilities easily becomes unnecessarily blurred. This may not only leads to a slower and inefficient policy-making process, but also risks to make it too complicate to understand for citizens, who, on the contrary, should be able to know who is really responsible for a certain policy when they vote in national,local or European elections or in referenda on national or European constitutional issues.

Essays on the Empirical Analysis of Economic and Political Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

In Sub-Saharan Africa, non-democratic events, like civil wars and coup d'etat, destroy economic development. This study investigates both domestic and spatial effects on the likelihood of civil wars and coup d'etat. To civil wars, an increase of income growth is one of common research conclusions to stop wars. This study adds a concern on ethnic fractionalization. IV-2SLS is applied to overcome causality problem. The findings document that income growth is significant to reduce number and degree of violence in high ethnic fractionalized countries, otherwise they are trade-off. Income growth reduces amount of wars, but increases its violent level, in the countries with few large ethnic groups. Promoting growth should consider ethnic composition. This study also investigates the clustering and contagion of civil wars using spatial panel data models. Onset, incidence and end of civil conflicts spread across the network of neighboring countries while peace, the end of conflicts, diffuse only with the nearest neighbor. There is an evidence of indirect links from neighboring income growth, without too much inequality, to reduce the likelihood of civil wars. To coup d'etat, this study revisits its diffusion for both all types of coups and only successful ones. The results find an existence of both domestic and spatial determinants in different periods. Domestic income growth plays major role to reduce the likelihood of coup before cold war ends, while spatial effects do negative afterward. Results on probability to succeed coup are similar. After cold war ends, international organisations seriously promote democracy with pressure against coup d'etat, and it seems to be effective. In sum, this study indicates the role of domestic ethnic fractionalization and the spread of neighboring effects to the likelihood of non-democratic events in a country. Policy implementation should concern these factors.

Building Peace and/or Gender Equality. Changing Attitudes around Peace, Development and Security in International Cooperation in Rwanda.

The times following international or civil conflicts but also violent revolutions often come with unequal share of the peace dividend for men and women. Delusions for women who gained freedom of movement and of roles during conflict but had to step back during reconstruction and peace have been recorded in all regions of the world. The emergence of peacebuilding as a modality for the international community to ensure peace and security has slowly incorporated gender sensitivity at the level of legal and policy instruments. Focusing on Rwanda, a country that has obtained significant gender advancement in the years after the genocide while also obtaining to not relapse into conflict, this research explores to what extent the international community has contributed to this transformation. From a review of evaluations, findings are that many of the interventions did not purse gender equality, and overall the majority understood gender and designed actions is a quite superficial way which would hardly account for the significative advancement in combating gender discrimination that the Government, for its inner political will, is conducting. Then, after a critique from a feminist standpoint to the concept of human security, departing from the assumption (sustained by the Governemnt of Rwanda as well) that domestic violence is a variable influencing level of security relevant at the national level, a review of available secondary data on GBV is conducted an trends over the years analysed. The emerging trends signal a steep increase in prevalence of GBV and in domestic violence in particular. Although no conclusive interpretation can be formulated on these data, there are elements suggesting the increase might be due to augmented reporting. The research concludes outlining possible further research pathways to better understand the link in Rwanda between the changing gender norms and the GBV.