The Boko Haram Insurgency in Nigeria: What could have been the precursors?

The problem of insurgency has for several decades occupied a good part of the attention of IR scholars. This paper explores the various perspectives on the formation and radicalization of Boko Haram in Nigeria. The focus is on the extent to which illiteracy, unemployment, poverty, weak state capability, the almajiri crisis and the mobilization of ethno-religious identity explain simmering insurgency in Nigeria. The group has experienced ferocious onslaught on their activities by the Nigerian Military. The article relies on secondary data. This has enabled the author to draw heavily from literature espousing the diverse perspectives put forth as explanations for the uprising. Fragile state theory serves as a framework for analysis. On this basis, the article demonstrates the low-cost availability of foot soldiers from the almajiri pool, resulting from the state’s inability or unwillingness to provide better education, and employment opportunities, and widespread poverty has exposed youths to indoctrination, criminalization and terrorism. In order to ensure the effectiveness of counter terrorism efforts, the military option should not be solely relied on. Rather, efforts should be geared towards addressing the various underlying social, political and economic triggers of violent insurgency, especially in northern Nigeria where such triggers are pervasive

Fear voting: Securitization of migration in the context of European parliament election 2019 in the Czech Republic

This thesis is devoted to the phenomenon of securitization of migration. This phenomenon is observed on a case study of Election campaigns before the EU Parliament election in May 2019 in the Czech Republic. The thesis looks into if and how the relevant political parties used securitization of migration in their election manifestos. By using a combination of a disciplined interpretive case study and content analysis, a framework is created based on Thierry Balzacq\u27s theory on securitization. The content analysis uses the scope of various levels (context, attributes, statements) to identify individual securitization speech acts. This thesis sees securitization on as a one-way process but instead incorporates the process of communication between the political party and the electorate. The results show that majority of the researched parties used securitization of migration in their manifestos and created a notion of a direct threat to security caused by either those migrants who already got into Europe or those who are deemed to come according to some of the political parties. It also shows that more prone to accepting securitization of migration are older voters with lower levels of education who are in general dissatisfied with the development of their living situation after the 1989 revolution. Further significant factors are described using the theories of various researchers, e.g. deep-history theory, a theory of peripherality and feeling of being left out. These theories offer possible additional explanations on voters\u27 preferences and the vulnerability towards accepting the securitization of migration. Even though this thesis focuses only on the case of the Czech Republic, it can be expected that the results can be generalized and to some extent applied to other countries in the region, mainly on the other members of the Visegrad group, given their shared history as well as similar challenges faced by today\u27s political representations in these countries

The Future of Agent-Based Modeling

In this paper, I elaborate on the role of agent-based (AB) modeling for macroeconomic research. My main tenet is that the full potential of the AB approach has not been realized yet. This potential lies in the modular nature of the models, which is bought by abandoning the straitjacket of rational expectations and embracing an evolutionary perspective. I envisage the foundation of a Modular Macroeconomic Science, where new models with heterogeneous interacting agents, endowed with partial information and limited computational ability, can be created by recombining and extending existing models in a unified computational framework

Future coevolution of higher education and technology: case Catalonia

It is widely recognized that today the higher education is going through several struc-tural as well as seasonal problems and weaknesses. The Catalan university system is not an exception since there are some relevant issues creating pressures between different actors and systems inside the sector such as an increase of the tuition prices, or a low attendance rate of students. Thus, the main goal of the thesis is to analyse and evaluate how the entrance of different technologies may improve the actual situation of the Cata-lan higher education and provide some worthwhile ideas for decision-makers. The theoretical basis that supports the whole study is the multi-level perspective of technological transitions. The first part of the thesis aims to collect all the information needed to apply the framework, and structure it for the later analysis. The second part constitutes the analysis itself which has been specifically designed for this case since the multi-level perspective does not specify how it has to be done. In the first part of the analysis, the theoretical potential and influence of the technologies over the higher edu-cation system are corroborated matching their features with the needs present in the sector. Then, due to the existence of an important degree of uncertainty, three possible future states of the Catalan higher education are created using scenarios building. The thesis mainly concludes that all the five technologies considered may have influ-ence in the higher education and change the actual teaching and learning paradigm. Hence, all three scenarios are positive in terms of needs fulfilled although they have some downsides like the investment costs required. Overall, it is suggested to decision-makers to give financial and political support to develop MOOCs, more effective virtual learning environments, and make use of multi-touch screens in order to move towards internationalisation, more interaction, and less overhead costs in the long-term.Outgoin