The Weeks When Decades Happened: A Theoretical Consideration of the 2011 Egyptian Uprising

<p>In 2011, the Middle East was plunged into turmoil with a series of popular uprisings ousting a number of long standing dictators. Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s 30 year reign was toppled in just over two weeks. This thesis takes a theoretical approach to the Egyptian Revolution, assessing the extent to which the Egyptian case lends support to various theories which consider transitions away from authoritarianism and towards democracy, and the extent to which these theories can assist us in understanding why democracy has not resulted in Egypt. There are a number of strands of theoretical work which consider both transitions away from authoritarianism and towards democracy, and the factors influencing the timing and mode of transition. These include structural theories related to economic modernisation, inequality and crisis; those related to the role of elites and civil society in influencing transitions, whether from above or below; ideas surrounding the diffusion of, and international influences on, democratisation; and arguments considering the role of religion and culture. This thesis argues that theories of authoritarian breakdown garner more support from the Egyptian case than theories of democratisation. Ideas related to the diffusion of contentious politics and international influences on transition, as well as the role of both elites and civil society, garner support from the Egyptian case. Structural theories related to economic conditions, and the role of religion and culture, garner less support from events in Egypt.</p>

The Weeks When Decades Happened: A Theoretical Consideration of the 2011 Egyptian Uprising

<p>In 2011, the Middle East was plunged into turmoil with a series of popular uprisings ousting a number of long standing dictators. Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s 30 year reign was toppled in just over two weeks. This thesis takes a theoretical approach to the Egyptian Revolution, assessing the extent to which the Egyptian case lends support to various theories which consider transitions away from authoritarianism and towards democracy, and the extent to which these theories can assist us in understanding why democracy has not resulted in Egypt. There are a number of strands of theoretical work which consider both transitions away from authoritarianism and towards democracy, and the factors influencing the timing and mode of transition. These include structural theories related to economic modernisation, inequality and crisis; those related to the role of elites and civil society in influencing transitions, whether from above or below; ideas surrounding the diffusion of, and international influences on, democratisation; and arguments considering the role of religion and culture. This thesis argues that theories of authoritarian breakdown garner more support from the Egyptian case than theories of democratisation. Ideas related to the diffusion of contentious politics and international influences on transition, as well as the role of both elites and civil society, garner support from the Egyptian case. Structural theories related to economic conditions, and the role of religion and culture, garner less support from events in Egypt.</p>

Static analysis of thin-walled beams accounting for nonlinearities

This paper presents numerical results concerning the nonlinear analysis of thin-walled isotropic structures via 1 D structural theories built with the Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF). Both geometrical and material nonlinearities are accounted for, and square, C- and T-shaped beams are considered. The results focus on equilibrium curves, displacement, and stress distributions. Comparisons with literature and 3 D finite elements (FE) are provided to assess the formulation’s accuracy and computational efficiency. It is shown how 1 D models based on Lagrange expansions of the displacement field are comparable to 3 D FE regarding the accuracy but require considerably fewer degrees of freedom.

17. Sociological positivism

This chapter examines sociological positivism, studying how society or social processes might affect behaviour. Decisions by governments and companies and sociological issues (such as poverty) affect individuals but may also affect whole communities; they may influence the likelihood of many people to choose to offend or be law-abiding. Therefore, the health of the economy or the rate of unemployment, for example, may influence the behaviour of an entire population not just one individual and so may lead to a rise or fall in criminal behaviour. If we can identify which factors in society influence crime, and how they do so, it may be possible to alter those social factors and so decrease criminal behaviour. The chapter looks at three types of sociological theory: social interaction or social process theories, social structural theories, and social conflict theories.

Emotionality and Change

Incorporating emotions into our theorizing on change is important because emotional perspectives explain dynamics that cannot be easily explained with purely cognitive or structural theories. At the individual level, people take various actions, such as eating unhealthy food or shouting at their spouse, due to an emotional impulse, even though they are cognitively aware of their harmful consequences. At the organizational level, communication patterns between different organizational groups can be influenced by how the groups feel toward one another, rather than by rational considerations of what is best for the organization as a whole or even in the best interests of a particular group (e.g., Vuori and Huy 2016a). The goal of the research on emotionality and change is to increase understanding of how change triggers emotions and how those emotions influence change-related behaviors and influence change outcomes. The practical benefit of such a theory is that it helps leaders to manage change in ways that generate change-enabling rather than change-resisting emotions.

Does aid support democracy? A systematic review of the literature

This study draws on a rigorous systematic review—to our knowledge the first in this area—to take stock of the literature on aid and democracy. It asks: Does aid—especially democracy aid—have positive impact on democracy? How? What factors most influence its impact? In so doing, it considers studies that explicitly focus on ‘democracy aid’ as an aggregate category, its subcomponents (e.g. aid to elections), and ‘developmental aid’. Overall, the evidence suggests that i) democracy aid generally supports rather than hinders democracy building around the world; ii) aid modalities influence the effectiveness of democracy aid; and iii) democracy aid is more associated with positive impact on democracy than developmental aid, probably because it targets key institutions and agents of democratic change. The review presents a new analytical framework for considering the evidence, bringing together core theories of democratization with work on foreign aid effectiveness. Overall, the evidence is most consistent with institutional and agent-based theories of exogenous democratization, and least consistent with expectations drawn from structural theories that would imply stronger positive impact for developmental aid on democratization.

Language in Digital Motion: From ABCs to Intermediality and Why This Matters for Language Learning

Linguistic communication has moved beyond simple alphabetic encoding to multimedia design, challenging the fit of structural theories of language to digital communication. This transition is barely evident in mobile language learning contexts where top-selling apps present language as a linguistic structure to be drilled, ironically bypassing the complex communicative potential of smart devices. This chapter overviews changing language norms from language as structure to language within multimodality and comparatively discusses multimodality from a social semiotics paradigm nested in linguistic theory and from Elleström’s intermediality paradigm. To illustrate how one could conceptualize multimodality from a perspective decentred from linguistics and leveraged to explain language use in multimedia contexts, the author examines two novel features of digital communication: emoji and conversational digital agents.