Varieties of democratic understanding and political participation: multi-level evidence from the world

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Kursat Cinar ◽  
Asya Bulbul
2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 673-688
Author(s):  
Auqib Hamid Lone ◽  
Roohie Naaz

Academic credentials are precious assets as they form an evidence for one’s identity and eligibility. Fraud inissuance and verification of academic certificates have been a long-standing issue in academic community. Due to lack of antiforgery mechanisms there has been substantial increase in fraudulent certificates. The need of the hour is to have a transparent and reliable model for issuing and verifying academic certificates to eliminate fraud in the process. Decentralized, Auditable and Tamper-proof properties of Blockchain makes it possibly the best choice for issuing and verifying academic certificates. In this paper we propose a model, where regulatory body authorizes higher education Institutes (universities and colleges) for issuing academic certificates to students in a decentralized way. Anyone in the world can verify the authenticity of the certificate by triggering appropriate smart contract functions, thus eliminating any possibility of fraud in the process. In addition we used multi signature scheme where certificates are required to be signed by designated authority from Higher Education Institutes, thus allowing for multi-level checks on certificate contents before being successfully deployed on Blockchain. We have also provide Proof of Concept in Ethereum Blockchain and evaluated its performance in terms of cost, security and scalability.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Kwabena Ameyaw

Abstract Background Malaria in pregnancy is a crucial public health concern due to the enormous risk it poses to maternal and newborn health. The World Health Organisation therefore recommends insecticide-treated net (ITN) for pregnant women. The world over, sub-Saharan Africa bears the highest prevalence of malaria and its associated complications. This study investigated the individual, community and society level factors associated with ITN use among pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa. Methods The study was conducted with Demographic and Health Survey data of 21 sub-Saharan African countries. A total of 17,731 pregnant women who possessed ITN participated in the study. Descriptive computation of ITN use by survey country and socio-demographic characteristics was conducted. Further, five multi-level binary logistic regression models were fitted with MLwiN 3.05 package in STATA. The Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) estimation procedure was used in estimating the parameters whilst the Bayesian Deviance Information Criterion was used for the model fitness test. Results On average, 74.2% pregnant women in SSA used ITN. The highest prevalence of ITN use occurred in Mali (83.7%) whilst the least usage occurred in Namibia (7%). Women aged 30–34 were more likely to use ITN compared with those aged 45–49 [aOR = 1.14; Crl = 1.07–1.50]. Poorest women were less probable to use ITN relative to richest women [aOR = 0.79; Crl = 0.70–0.89]. Compared to women who did not want their pregnancies at all, women who wanted their pregnancies [aOR = 1.06; Crl = 1.04–1.19] were more probable to use ITN. Women in male-headed households had higher likelihood of ITN use compared to those from female-headed households [aOR = 1.28; Crl = 1.19–1.39]. On the whole, 38.1% variation in ITN use was attributable to societal level factors whilst 20.9% variation was attributable to community level factors. Conclusion The study has revealed that in addition to individual level factors, community and society level factors affect ITN use in SSA. In as much as the study points towards the need to incorporate community and societal variations in ITN interventions, active involvement of men can yield better outcome for ITN utilisation interventions in SSA.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-143
Author(s):  
Vania Markarian

This paper – focused on a deep analysis of the student movement that occupied the streets of Montevideo in 1968 – aims at proposing some analytical lines to understand this and other contemporary cycles of protest in different places of the world. After locating these events in a wide geography characterized both by political acceleration and the dramatic display of cultural change, four relevant themes in the growing body of literature on the «global Sixties» are raised. First, it is addressed the relationship between social movements and groups or political parties in these «short cycles» of protest. Second, the idea that violence was rather a catalyzer of political innovation rather than the result of political polarization is proposed. Third, it breaks down the diversity of possible links between culture, in a broad sense, and the forms of political participation in youth mobilizations. Finally, it can be more rewarding to look at different scales of analysis of these processes, from the strictly national to the transnational circulation of ideas and people.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 169
Author(s):  
Danyl Mallisza

short message service (SMS) plays an important role in the field of IT in the future, SMS GATEWAY can be used as a mobile device for collecting data in the population census in achieving the availability and effectiveness. This research is about the development of software based on short message service (SMS) system to send messages via SMS gateway. The main objective of the proposed system is to provide a multi-level local authentication services to the SMS gateway. This service can be implemented in multi-departmental organizations where SMS service is used for system notifications. The proposed system has a web interface and encryption methods to provide services. Census information system that uses a computerized system is an effort to help smooth in the world of government so that the data obtained more precise and accurate. It can be expected to facilitate the penyensusan population in Koto village of Padang Pauh Subdistrict Affairs effectively, efficiently and accurately to improve government performance.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Imhoff ◽  
Lea Dieterle ◽  
Pia Lamberty

It is a hitherto open and debated question whether the belief in conspiracies increases or attenuates the willingness to engage in political action. In the present paper, we tested the notion, whether a) the relation between belief in conspiracies and general political engagement is curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) and b) there may be opposing relations to normative vs. non-normative forms of political engagement. Two pre-registered experiments (N = 194; N = 402) support both propositions and show that the hypothetical adoption of a worldview that sees the world as governed by secret plots attenuates reported intentions to participate in normative, legal forms of political participation but increases reported intentions to employ non-normative, illegal means of political articulation. These results provide first evidence for the notion that political extremism and violence might seem an almost logical conclusion when seeing the world as governed by conspiracies.


Author(s):  
Lamis Elmy Abdelaaty

What explains state responses to the refugees they receive? This book identifies two puzzling patterns: states open their borders to some refugee groups while blocking others (discrimination), and a number of countries have given the United Nations (UN) control of asylum procedures and refugee camps on their territory (delegation). To explain this selective exercise of sovereignty, the book develops a two-part theoretical framework in which policymakers in refugee-receiving countries weigh international and domestic concerns. Internationally, leaders use refugees to reassure allies and exert pressure on rivals. Domestically, policymakers have incentives to favor those refugee groups with whom they share an ethnic identity. When these international and domestic incentives conflict, shifting responsibility to the UN allows policymakers to placate both refugee-sending countries and domestic constituencies. The book then carries out a “three-stage, multi-level” research design in which each successive step corroborates and elaborates the findings of the preceding stage. The first stage involves statistical analysis of asylum admissions worldwide. The second stage presents two country case studies: Egypt (a country that is broadly representative of most refugee recipients) and Turkey (an outlier that has limited the geographic application of the Refugee Convention). The third stage zooms in on sub- or within-country dynamics in Kenya (home to one of the largest refugee populations in the world) through content analysis of parliamentary proceedings. Studying state responses to refugees is instructive because it can help explain why states sometimes assert, and at other times cede, their sovereignty in the face of refugee rights.


2013 ◽  
pp. 885-902
Author(s):  
Hiroko Nakamura ◽  
Yuya Kajikawa ◽  
Shinji Suzuki

In this chapter, the shared visions and the latest activities for sustainability in the aviation sector are presented and perspectives on the innovations that this sector should achieve are discussed. To do this, the latest experts’ talks are collected from four international meetings for aviation and the environment held around the world between September 2009 and May 2010, which invited experts and researchers from Japan, Europe, and North America. The expansion of networks between agents of the sector, which is considered to be essential for the success of innovation transition, is found in the latest projects for aviation sustainability. To smooth the transition of innovation from sector’s initiatives including radical change such as low-carbon alternative fuels, we emphasize the need for more discussion about new economic measurements. Finally, we discuss directions for future research, using multi-level perspectives for a transition management of aviation innovation for sustainability.


Author(s):  
Rachel Baarda

Digital media is expected to promote political participation in government. Around the world, from the United States to Europe, governments have been implementing e-government (use of of the Internet to make bureaucracy more efficient) and promising e-democracy (increased political participation by citizens). Does digital media enable citizens to participate more easily in government, or can authoritarian governments interfere with citizens' ability to speak freely and obtain information? This study of digital media in Russia will show that while digital media can be used by Russian citizens to gain information and express opinions, Kremlin ownership of print media, along with censorship laws and Internet surveillance, can stifle the growth of digital democracy. Though digital media appears to hold promise for increasing citizen participation, this study will show that greater consideration needs to be given to the power of authoritarian governments to suppress civic discourse on the Internet.


On Universals ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 96-120
Author(s):  
Étienne Balibar

This chapter assesses the new “quarrel of universals” that now occupies philosophy and other overlapping disciplines. In this new quarrel, the question today is not only whether one is for or against the universal; the question is also how one defines the universal—a term whose surprising equivocity has become increasingly clear. Still more fundamentally, the question is how one should articulate the relationship between three related but heterogeneous terms whose widespread use has prompted conflicting claims: the universal, universality, and universalisms. The chapter begins by situating the question of the universal and its variations within the field that seems to constitute the strategic site of intersecting domains: philosophical anthropology, understood as the analysis of the historical differences of the human and of the problem that those differences pose to their bearers. It then outlines the difficulties which can be identified in every philosophical and political usage of the universal and its “doubles” according to three aporias. The first is the aporia of the multiplicity of the “world,” or of the universe as multiversum; the second is that of Allgemeinheit or All(en)gemeinheit, in other words, the irreducible gap between the universal and the common (or community); and, finally, that of co-citizenship, the form of belonging to a political unity to come, a unity whose law of belonging (membership) would be the heterogeneity within equality or the political participation of those foreign to the community.


2021 ◽  
pp. 136-146
Author(s):  
Tom Ginsburg

This chapter focuses on the abuse of international rights to political participation so as to facilitate a leader's remaining in office beyond the constitutionally mandated term. This involves not only the abuse of the interpretation of rights, but also the abuse of the doctrine of unconstitutional constitutional amendments, which has spread around the world in recent years. How does this happen and what, if anything, can international law do about it? After introducing a motivating case — the famous decision of the Colombian Constitutional Court in the second re-election decision, in which courts stood for the protection of democracy — the chapter examines recent 'bad' cases in which rights and constitutional amendments are abused to extend leaders' terms. It surveys recent developments in the law of term limits, and briefly proposes a normative interpretation of the right to political participation which ought to be consistent with the emerging doctrine. The chapter suggests that there is an emerging consensus, at least in some regions of the world, that there are limits in states' ability to modify term limits unconditionally.


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