80 research outputs found

    The Changing Dynamics of the Perception of U.S. Foreign Policy towards Kurds in Syria: Developing Relations in Light of Ignorance, Cooperation and Desertion (2011-2020) [védés előtt]

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    Kurds have played an significant role in the Syrian conflict since the 2011 crisis, mainly through their strong participation in the fight against ISIS. During the war against ISIS, the U.S. made significant gains both under President Obama and President Trump’s administrations but did not strive to establish long-term strategies about Syria, especially the Syrian Kurds. After the collapse of the ISIS caliphate in 2019, Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. forces from Syria left the Syrian Kurds with tough domestic and external challenges. This decision raised the question of whether the United States has a clear policy and strategy for dealing with the Kurds in Syria. Thus, the objectives of this study are to find reasons and factors that have led to shifts in US foreign policy towards Syrian Kurds. In addition to exploring the outcomes of changing USFP dynamics post-2011, this research also investigates the ramifications and implications of ISIS's rise for the US-Syrian Kurdish strategy. Through employing a qualitative methodology, this research examines the application of the neoclassical realism theory on the relations under study. In this regard, semi-structured interviews were conducted with politicians, policy makers, academics, and journalists, mainly in Syria and Iraqi Kurdistan. It can be inferred that changes in the US foreign policy from direct military intervention to “no boot on the ground” and “America First'' alternatives arose from accomplishing the primary objective of defeating ISIS. Under the presidencies of Obama & Trump, Washington has tactically used Syrian Kurds to maintain regional hegemony and combating ISIS. This is the main reason behind the absence of a coherent American policy for Kurds. The withdrawal of US forces left the Kurds exceedingly vulnerable. They were trapped between Assad's regime and Turkey's desire for vengeance without the presence of US troops to act as a buffer. Deserting Kurds has possible ramifications for other American allies throughout the world. It is vital for the United States to regain its reputation as a reliable partner. Indeed, if the US does not want to serve as the world’s policeman, it will need allies

    Materials of Culture: Approaches to Materials in Cultural Studies

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    While the so-called material turn in the humanities and the social sciences has inspired a vibrant discourse on objects, things, and the concept of materiality in general, less attention has been paid to materials, particularly in cultural studies scholarship. With each of its chapters taking a particular material as its point of departure, this volume offers a palette of fresh approaches to materials within the realm of cultural studies. The contributors call for a materials-based perspective on culture, which has become all the more pertinent in times of climate change, energy crisis, conflict, migration, and the lingering coronavirus pandemic

    LIPIcs, Volume 244, ESA 2022, Complete Volume

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    LIPIcs, Volume 244, ESA 2022, Complete Volum

    Como as coligações ciclistas modificam a cultura da bicicleta: análise da mudança na política de mobilidade em Lisboa 2009-2021

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    Cycling is currently recognised as a vital part of most developed sustainable urban mobility systems, contributing to acknowledged gains in climate change mitigation, health, social, economic, environmental, and travel speed issues, explaining in part its recent resurgence in cities worldwide. Despite the benefits, public policy on cycling has not developed smoothly. Many cities continue to stall or ignore effective output implementation to promote cycling as a legitimate mobility mode. Most research and policy focus on infrastructure solutions to implement change. This research, by contrast, focuses on an innovative approach to advance scholarship, namely how cyclists’ advocacy coalitions shape decision-making and place cycling on the political agenda where it was previously ignored or side-lined. The dissertation applies the concept of the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to analyse the mechanisms which activate and sustain policy change. This thesis analyses the city of Lisbon in Portugal as a case-study of conurbation to analyse how change has been leveraged during the thirteen-year time frame between 2009 and 2021, using both detailed comparative analysis and advancing scholarship on cycling more generally. The qualitative analysis employs the scholarship, documents, notes taken from personal professional experience in policy formulation and implementation, and eleven anonymous interviews with policy actors involved to different extents in the process during the study period. These quantitative outcomes are gauged using available data from several surveys and counts to substantiate the relation between the outputs produced and outcomes achieved in combination with detailed data from cycle traffic moving counts I have carried out since 2009. The research structure is designed to provide insights on how the broad-based cyclists’ coalition has shaped policy formulation and implementation in a city where cycling had a low cultural status and low rates to generate ‘new knowledge’ regarding the subsystem in Portugal and other comparable contexts.A utilização da bicicleta é atualmente reconhecida como parte vital do sistema de mobilidade urbana sustentável das cidades mais desenvolvidas, contribuindo para ganhos na mitigação das alterações climáticas, benefícios de saúde, sociais, económicos, ambientais, e na velocidade das deslocações, explicando em parte o recente ressurgimento deste modo em cidades por todo o mundo. Apesar destes benefícios, as políticas públicas não se têm desenvolvido facilmente nesta matéria. Muitas cidades continuam a atrasar ou a excluir a implementação de medidas efetivas para promover a bicicleta como modo de mobilidade legítimo. A maioria das investigações e políticas remetem para soluções infraestruturais para fomentar a transição. Esta investigação, por outro lado, emprega uma abordagem inovadora para o avanço do conhecimento, designadamente, como as coligações de utilizadores de bicicleta transformam o processo de decisão e colocam a bicicleta na agenda política onde antes este modo de mobilidade era ignorado ou marginalizado. A dissertação adota a base teórica do ‘advocacy coalition framework’ (ACF) para analisar os mecanismos que ativam e sustentam a mudança de políticas. Esta tese analisa a cidade de Lisboa em Portugal como caso de estudo, considerando a conurbação, para analisar como a mudança foi realizada durante o período de treze anos entre 2009 e 2021, empregando análises comparativas detalhadas para avançar no conhecimento sobre a utilização da bicicleta em geral. A análise qualitativa analisou a literatura científica, documentos, notas provenientes da experiência pessoal e profissional na formulação e implementação de políticas, e onze entrevistas anónimas com variados atores políticos, envolvidos no processo durante o período do estudo de diferentes formas. Os resultados quantitativos são analisados através de dados disponíveis provenientes de diferentes pesquisas e contagens para fundamentar a relação entre as medidas implementadas e os resultados alcançados, complementados com dados pormenorizados de contagens de tráfego ciclável realizados desde 2009. A estrutura desta investigação foi projetada para aprofundar o conhecimento sobre a ampla coligação de utilizadores de bicicleta e como esta transformou a formulação e implementação de políticas, numa cidade onde o status cultural e as taxas de utilização da bicicleta eram reduzidos, para gerar 'novo conhecimento' sobre o subsistema em Portugal e outros contextos comparáveis.Programa Doutoral em Políticas Pública

    Organizing for Societal Grand Challenges

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    "The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Societal grand challenges have moved from a marginal concern to a mainstream issue within the field of organization and management studies. Organizing for Societal Grand Challenges unpacks how diverse forms of organizing help tackle - or reinforce - grand challenges, while emphasizing the need for researchers to expand their methodological repertoire and reflect upon scholarly practices. This edited collection offers an organizational perspective on societal grand challenges in three sections: Diverse Forms of Organizing and Societal Grand Challenges; Scholarship and Societal Grand Challenges; Reflections and Outlook. The articles offer empirical and conceptual work that focus on a wide variety of regions including Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America, and engage with multiple grand challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, decent work, hunger, inequality, and poverty. Drawing on varied theoretical lenses, the authors take stock of recent developments in the literature, present an overview of the current thinking, and set a foundation for future research on grand challenges in organization and management studies. The articles provide inspiration, insights, and instruments for developing timely and relevant knowledge to engage with the pressing societal grand challenges of our time.

    Bounding and Computing Obstacle Numbers of Graphs

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    An obstacle representation of a graph G consists of a set of pairwise disjoint simply-connected closed regions and a one-to-one mapping of the vertices of G to points such that two vertices are adjacent in G if and only if the line segment connecting the two corresponding points does not intersect any obstacle. The obstacle number of a graph is the smallest number of obstacles in an obstacle representation of the graph in the plane such that all obstacles are simple polygons. It is known that the obstacle number of each n-vertex graph is O(n log n) [Balko, Cibulka, and Valtr, 2018] and that there are n-vertex graphs whose obstacle number is Ω(n/(log log n)²) [Dujmović and Morin, 2015]. We improve this lower bound to Ω(n/log log n) for simple polygons and to Ω(n) for convex polygons. To obtain these stronger bounds, we improve known estimates on the number of n-vertex graphs with bounded obstacle number, solving a conjecture by Dujmović and Morin. We also show that if the drawing of some n-vertex graph is given as part of the input, then for some drawings Ω(n²) obstacles are required to turn them into an obstacle representation of the graph. Our bounds are asymptotically tight in several instances. We complement these combinatorial bounds by two complexity results. First, we show that computing the obstacle number of a graph G is fixed-parameter tractable in the vertex cover number of G. Second, we show that, given a graph G and a simple polygon P, it is NP-hard to decide whether G admits an obstacle representation using P as the only obstacle

    Programming Languages and Systems

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    This open access book constitutes the proceedings of the 29th European Symposium on Programming, ESOP 2020, which was planned to take place in Dublin, Ireland, in April 2020, as Part of the European Joint Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2020. The actual ETAPS 2020 meeting was postponed due to the Corona pandemic. The papers deal with fundamental issues in the specification, design, analysis, and implementation of programming languages and systems
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