THE CONTINENT OF MASTERS DECISION-MAKING POWERS OVER EUROPE

Europe has been ruled in the past centuries from different centers depending on the dominant power, from within or outside the continent, from: Rome, Venice, Madrid, Paris, London, Vienna, Berlin and finally from Moscow and Washington. Now with the formation of the European Union, it seemed that the center was established in Brussels, but this city is far from having decision-making power, often: Berlin, Frankfurt, Washington, Paris or more recently: Istanbul, Beijing, Warsaw, Cairo, Jerusalem or Dubai are getting better rated, Brussels being only the scene in which the decisions already established in other centers are presented, without reaching a central leadership dominated by a single state.

POST-SOVIET DRAMA OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS (IN CONNECTION WITH THE 99TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FORMATION OF THE USSR AND THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF ITS ABOLISHMENT)

The article was prepared in connection with the 99th anniversary of the formation of the USSR and the 30th anniversary of the termination of its existence. The article reveals the relationship between the norms of the Constitution of the USSR of 1924 (and subsequent versions of the document) on the self-determination of nations and their right to secede from the Union with the real process of destruction of a single state. It is shown that the disintegration of the Union was carried out not in connection with the constitutional right of the union republics to self-determination, not with the observance of the appropriate procedures for leaving the single state, but, on the contrary, on an anti-constitutional basis. The author reveals the artificial and politically motivated nature of the arguments regarding the «mines» laid down in their time by the Bolsheviks under the national state structure of the USSR. This device turned out to be productive both for repelling military aggression and for peaceful construction, because it was formed taking into account the totality of the binding circumstances of its time, on the principles of equality and voluntary self-determination. It has been proven that the absence of the right to secede from parts of a single state does not provide any guarantees against the collapse of this state, an example of which is the European monarchies that ended their journey at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as the events in the USSR and around the Chechen Republic. The fundamental difference between constitutional multinational formations, one of which was the Soviet Union, and formations built on a contractual basis following the example of the Gorbachev SSG, the Belovezhskaya agreement on the creation of the CIS and the Union State of Russia and Belarus, is revealed.

The Union State within the modern political discourse of Russia

The article is devoted to the analysis of the issues of integration interaction between Russia and Belarus through the lens of perception of the existence and functioning of the Union State by the power institutions and political parties of the Russian Federation. A study of the content of the official websites of state authorities, the information and analytical portal of the Union State and party programming was conducted on the example of pre-election documents of political parties admitted to participate in the elections to the State Duma of the eighth convocation. The official interpretation assumes, first of all, building up integration ties with Belarus in various spheres and directions, without creating a single state and emphasizing the issue of deepening political integration. In the party discourse, integration issues are less in demand at the present stage, although some parties offer more radical approaches, up to the “restoration” one.

Examining the Effects of Electoral Systems on Minority Representation in U.S. City Councils Using a Large Sample

In recent decades, reform movements have lobbied to remove at-large elections from local governing bodies and replace them with elections by district—in which a city’s electorate is divided into geographic regions that each elect their own council member. Prior social science research has somewhat concluded that in most cases, district elections more reliably elect non- white city councilors than at-large elections. However, these studies are limited by their use of small samples of municipalities, usually only the largest ones (pop. > 25,000) or those from a single state. I hope to overcome this limitation by employing a massive sample of more than 15,000 municipal governments across 49 states. My findings are consistent with and build upon previous research in that I conclude that as the proportion of non-white residents within a city’s population increases, district elections are predicted to elect higher proportions of non-white council members than wholly at-large elections.

Persuasion and administrative coercion as methods of public (state) administration

The article reveals the essence, purpose and content of these management methods, their objective conditionality by material and superstructure factors, the state structure of society, which can be democratic or totalitarian. It follows from this that not a single state, including the Russian Federation, is free in the choice of methods of managing the affairs of society. The main method of influencing public relations, the interaction of people is persuasion. The slogan of the classic — “We must at all costs first convince, and then compel” — remains unshakable in our days. The article provides specific signs of persuasion and administrative coercion, which make it possible to clearly distinguish them, not to oppose and not to lose, as happened in modern life with persuasion and its most important form — education.

Shifting Peaks and Cumulative Consequences: Disqualifying Convictions in High-security Jobs

Objectives: Disqualifying conviction lists (DCLs) bar applicants with certain convictions within specified timeframes from employment. Using proposed federal legislative changes in the aviation sector as a case study, we examine whether convictions under the existing policy are associated with subsequent arrest. Then we consider the implications of proposed expansions—arrests instead of convictions and a longer look-back window—on employment restrictions. Methods: Since DCLs exclude ineligible applicants with conviction records, we use a large, single-state sample of diverse criminal histories. We compare subsequent arrest rates across offense types, consider variations in hazard patterns, and project exclusion estimates based on current and anticipated policy reforms. Results: Only half of the disqualifying offenses have consistently higher recidivism rates than non-disqualifying offense types. Over 20 percent of the sample would be barred from employment, policy extensions double this estimate, and exclusions are age-graded, shifting a peak conviction age of 20 years old to a peak “consequence age” of 28. Conclusions: Including a narrower set of offenses would reduce those automatically disqualified in our study context by nearly 20 percent, or 39,000 individuals. Instead of expanding the DCL scope, successful criteria should be both effective in prediction and narrow in application.

IS OTT IN INDIA ‘OVER-THE-TOP’? RE-PRESENTATION, REGULATION AND RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS IN INDIAN OTT

The recent OTT regulation measures in India brings Netflix India and Amazon Prime Video, among other subscription based video platforms under the ambit of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Analyzing how negotiations of culture interact with the discourse of ‘protecting sensibilities’ in 21st century India, I argue that the discourse of regulation fabricates “representation” and a ‘global’ Indian identity. Manipulating “the terms of appearance”, these images accused of hurting religious sentiments are ‘framed’ to unwittingly reveal themselves , causing a dent in the post-colonial perception of India being a “country where diverse faiths, languages, and cultures co-exist peacefully within the boundaries of a single peacefully within the boundaries of a single state.” Relaying pre-existing panoptic cultural policing that brings India dangerously close to right-wing nationalist propaganda, I examine the role of “religious sentiments” and the dependence on cultural policing in this precarious political climate. I explore what it would mean to submit or to resist this new reality in the seemingly (in)dependent internet age.

Single-state state machines in model-driven software engineering: an exploratory study

Context Models, as the main artifact in model-driven engineering, have been extensively used in the area of embedded systems for code generation and verification. One of the most popular behavioral modeling techniques is the state machine. Many state machine modeling guidelines recommend that a state machine should have more than one state in order to be meaningful. However, single-state state machines (SSSMs) violating this recommendation have been used in modeling cases reported in the literature. Objective We aim for understanding the phenomenon of using SSSMs in practice as understanding why developers violate the modeling guidelines is the first step towards improvement of modeling tools and practice. Method To study the phenomenon, we conducted an exploratory study which consists of two complementary studies. The first study investigated the prevalence and role of SSSMs in the domain of embedded systems, as well as the reasons why developers use them and their perceived advantages and disadvantages. We employed the sequential explanatory strategy, including repository mining and interview, to study 1500 state machines from 26 components at ASML, a leading company in manufacturing lithography machines from the semiconductor industry. In the second study, we investigated the evolutionary aspects of SSSMs, exploring when SSSMs are introduced to the systems and how developers modify them by mining the largest state-machine-based component from the company. Results We observe that 25 out of 26 components contain SSSMs. Our interviews suggest that SSSMs are used to interface with the existing code, to deal with tool limitations, to facilitate maintenance and to ease verification. Our study on the evolutionary aspects of SSSMs reveals that the need for SSSMs to deal with tool limitations grew continuously over the years. Moreover, only a minority of SSSMs have been changed between SSSM and multiple-state state machine (MSSM) during their evolution. The most frequent modifications developers made to SSSMs is inserting events with constraints on the execution of the events. Conclusions Based on our results, we provide implications for developers and tool builders. Furthermore, we formulate hypotheses about the effectiveness of SSSMs, the impacts of SSSMs on development, maintenance and verification as well as the evolution of SSSMs.