Unravelling personified development policies in East Africa: a theoretical and empirical study

The record failure of development aid, massive corruption, escalating poverty rates, resource-related conflicts, systematic exclusion, and general disenfranchisement across the East African Community (EAC) puzzle many development experts, as they do concerned citizens. Instead of espousing inclusive citizen participation, cyclic rounds of national leaders have governed EAC countries using retrograde ideologies, depictive of restrictive leadership interests. Underlying these interests is usually a deep-seated desire for self-entrenchment that crafty leaders impose on hapless masses. In the process, the leaders methodically personify state institutions and systems, rendering them acquiescent to their desires. Over time, destitute citizens also submit to the status quo, yielding a cadre of “acquiesced citizens”. With respect to the above, the three objectives of this study were to analyse how personified leadership styles influence governance and development policies in East Africa; to assess the degree of citizen involvement in public governance, and how this influences development in East Africa; and to develop criteria for citizen-driven development policies that transcend personified governance in East Africa. The findings of this thesis will enable citizens, academia, development practitioners and other stakeholders to unconditionally determine or guide national governance and development agenda. Most importantly, this study has unravelled a new approach for analysing national leadership, in a manner that can potentially enable a country to identify leaders who can champion effective principles of good governance and simultaneously achieve sustainable development.Development StudiesD. Phil. (Development Studies

Sustainable development under the conditions of European integration. Part I

This collective monograph offers the description of sustainable development in the condition of European integration. The authors of individual chapters have chosen such point of view for the topic which they considered as the most important and specific for their field of study using the methods of logical and semantic analysis of concepts, the method of reflection, textual reconstruction and comparative analysis. The theoretical and applied problems of sustainable development in the condition of European integration are investigated in the context of economics, education, cultural, politics and law

Social Perspective Taking

The current mindset of the Army is that it must be able to win our Nation’s wars while at the same time ready to assist in stability operations (U.S. Department of the Army, 2008). A challenge is that Soldiers often have to bridge large cultural gaps and may lack the language skills to effectively engage with the host of individuals now present in these operations including the local populace, host nation security forces, coalition partners and other foreign governmental and nongovernmental agencies. Perspective taking – described more formally as “Social Perspective Taking” (SPT) – is an interpersonal technique which may address these challenges. SPT is a skill often learned throughout life but may be very difficult in cross-cultural interactions. This report describes the results of a literature review and SME and Soldier interviews regarding the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) needed to develop SPT and the methods used to train SPT. Based on this information a four module curriculum is proposed which utilizes a four-step method for the development of SPT. The curriculum trains Soldiers how to accurately consider the host-national’s perspective without cultural bias and erroneous assumptions and allows Soldiers to meet host-national goals while accomplishing U.S. missions and objectives

Into the Black Box: Designing for Transparency in Artificial Intelligence

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)The rapid infusion of artificial intelligence into everyday technologies means that consumers are likely to interact with intelligent systems that provide suggestions and recommendations on a daily basis in the very near future. While these technologies promise much, current issues in low transparency create high potential to confuse end-users, limiting the market viability of these technologies. While efforts are underway to make machine learning models more transparent, HCI currently lacks an understanding of how these model-generated explanations should best translate into the practicalities of system design. To address this gap, my research took a pragmatic approach to improving system transparency for end-users. Through a series of three studies, I investigated the need and value of transparency to end-users, and explored methods to improve system designs to accomplish greater transparency in intelligent systems offering recommendations. My research resulted in a summarized taxonomy that outlines a variety of motivations for why users ask questions of intelligent systems; useful for considering the type and category of information users might appreciate when interacting with AI-based recommendations. I also developed a categorization of explanation types, known as explanation vectors, that is organized into groups that correspond to user knowledge goals. Explanation vectors provide system designers options for delivering explanations of system processes beyond those of basic explainability. I developed a detailed user typology, which is a four-factor categorization of the predominant attitudes and opinion schemes of everyday users interacting with AI-based recommendations; useful to understand the range of user sentiment towards AI-based recommender features, and possibly useful for tailoring interface design by user type. Lastly, I developed and tested an evaluation method known as the System Transparency Evaluation Method (STEv), which allows for real-world systems and prototypes to be evaluated and improved through a low-cost query method. Results from this dissertation offer concrete direction to interaction designers as to how these results might manifest in the design of interfaces that are more transparent to end users. These studies provide a framework and methodology that is complementary to existing HCI evaluation methods, and lay the groundwork upon which other research into improving system transparency might build

Technical assistance in the field of risk communication

This report assesses peer-reviewed and grey literature on risk communication concepts and practices, as requested by the European Commission to support the implementation of a ‘General Plan for Risk Communication’, i.e. an integrated framework for EU food safety risk assessors and risk managers at Union and national level, as required by the revised EU General Food Law Regulation. We conducted a scoping review of social research studies and official reports in relation to risk communication in the following areas: understanding and awareness of risk analysis roles and tasks, reducing misunderstanding of the different meaning of the terms ‘hazard’ and ‘risk’, tackling misinformation and disinformation, enhancing confidence in EU food safety, taking account of risk perceptions, key factors in trade-offs about risks, audience segmentation and tools, channels and mechanisms for coordinated risk communications. We structured our findings as follows: i) definitions of key concepts, ii) audience analysis and information requirements, iii) risk profiling, models and mechanisms, iv) contributions to communication strategies. We make several recommendations for consideration by the Commission, both in terms of actions to support the design and implementation of the general plan, and research needs that we consider crucial to further inform appropriate risk communication in the EU. EFSA carried out a targeted consultation of experts and a public consultation open to all interested parties including the general public, in preparing and finalising this report

"There is evil there that does not sleep": The construction of evil in American popular cinema from 1989 to 2002

In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Boromir refers to the lands of Mordor as the place where evil never sleeps. Cinematic evil itself never sleeps, always arising in new forms, to the extent that there exist as many types of evil as there are films. This thesis examines this constantly shifting construction of evil in American popular cinema between 1989 and 2002 - roughly, the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the attack on the World Trade Center - and how this cinema engaged with representations of enemies and of evil per se. The thesis uses content and thematic analysis on a sample of the 201 most successful films at the U.S. box office during the period. In these films, cinematic evil is constructed according to a visual aesthetic that attempts to engage with societal values, but fails to do so due to the emphasis on its visual construction and its commodification. As Baudrillard argues, evil has become a hollow concept devoid of meaning, and this is especially so for cinematic evil. It is recognised, and is recognisable, by the visual excessiveness of its violence (or potentiality for violence), and by certain codes that are created in reference to intertextual patterns and in relationship to discourses of paranoia and malaise. But cinema in this period failed to engage with the concept of evil itself in any meaningful way. Cinematic evil mirrors the descent into the chaos and disorder of a postmodern society. All cinematic evil can do is to connect with this sense of unease in which the 'reality of evil' cannot be represented. Instead, it draws on earlier icons and narratives of evil in a conflation of narrative and spectacle that produces a cinema of nostalgia. Moreover, stripped of narrative causality, these films express a belief, unproved and unprovable, that evil things and evil people may arise in any form, in any place and at any time: a cinema of paranoia. Together, these factors produce a cinema of malaise, perpetually confronting an evil it is unable to define or locate

Juridical gyroscopic orientation of transnational business negotiations

L'hypothèse de notre doctorat pose qu’il y a une meilleure moyen pour le droit de régler TBN. Pour cet amélioration, un cadre juridique alternatif est nécessaire pour le règlement de négociations commerciales transnationales [TBN] entre des parties privées dans le contexte de vente internationale de marchandises. La prémisse fondamentale réside dans la manière dont les négociations sont généralement mal comprise dans la complexité du pluralisme, contradictoires ou le chevauchement des régimes juridiques entraînant l'incohérence des remèdes de mesures pour les parties commerciales. Même les parties commerciales sophistiquées labeur d’un façon nébuleux de quand et comment les droits et obligations juridiques sont créés. Les parties souvent ne sont pas suffisamment anticiper les obstacles qui peuvent surgir, et comptent souvent sur des accords oraux ou incomplètes qui peut conduire à une interprétation erronée de l'étendue de leurs droits et de leurs obligations les uns envers les autres. La loi a un intérêt dans cette activité innée pour trois raisons : (1) pour protéger les exigences du marché en matière d'efficacité ; (2) en raison de son caractère opportuniste, pour orienter la conduite entre TBN parties; et (3) d'appuyer l'autonomie des parties. Nous mettrons l'accent sur l'expansion de la théorie juridique actuel des négociations dans la recherche d'une nouvelle théorie normative qui pourraient contribuer à l'amélioration du règlement de TBN. Le projet comprendra l'analyse de la théorie de la négociation juridique actuel pour atteindre un portrait de la façon dont le droit juridique vues négociations d'affaires. Nous avons observé la pauvreté des outils juridiques disponibles pour peser des conséquences juridiques de mouvements de négociation. Négociations tangibles peuvent se révéler dans diverses formes d'accords; certains qui sont reconnus par les arbitres si elles passent des tests de validité du contrat alors que d'autres omettent de produire la reconnaissance. Lorsque des accords apparaissent incomplètes, les arbitres sont obligés de refuser l'exécution des accords de négociation ou se tourner vers les rationalisations fictive. À l'inverse, des obligations juridiques au cours des négociations peut être interprétée dans le cadre général du droit des obligations qu'elles ont été prévues entre les parties ou non. Cette étude devrait mettre à jour les menaces de se heurter et normes contradictoires ainsi que des facteurs qui concilie les sources de réglementation juridique vers une culture marchande juridique mondial. L'éclairage d'une nouvelle compréhension des négociations peut être accompli par le biais d'une approche interdisciplinaire des stratégies opérationnelles et de perception, de même que l'examen de l'étique et les séquences comportementales de négociation émique identifiées par les scientifiques du comportement. Les patrons d'affacturage de négociations commerciales séquentiel normative peut fournir des éléments fondamentaux pour exposer l'intangibilité des négociations par la fusion des valeurs normatives émanant de l'autonomie des parties. Les négociations sont souvent considérées comme un phénomène inadapté en droit; voyageant entre les doctrines juridiques traditionnellement séparées. Remontant aux transformations historiques dans la recherche des racines des sources de réglementation peut s'éclairer les négociations à partir de " l'ombre de la loi " dans un modèle révélant l'expansion vers l'interdépendance et de la coopération. La compréhension des facteurs qui influent sur le système normatif que les parties présupposent tout en négociant contribueront ensemble à notre tridimensionnelle analyse de droit comparé. Une nouvelle conscience critique du portrait de négociations seront proposés par l'intermédiaire de l'application de Hogg's co-operative theory of contracts à des négociations, ouvrant la porte à une vision nouvelle de négociations. Configuration par défaut de normes de conduite par le biais d'une théorie de la négociation juridique normative pourrait éventuellement conduire à l'examen de règles sui generis pour surveiller l'évolution de notre société globale afin de la loi de fournir de l'efficacité et l'autonomie nécessaire titrisés par TBN parties. Entre-temps, l'autonomie des parties menant grâce à de nouveaux mécanismes de commerce que nous avons appelé "Bills of Negotiation [BON]", fournissant TBN parties avec des normes claires de communications qui fonctionnent à travers exprimé parti choix pour exprimer les intentions des parties, qui devraient soutenir les normes d'affaires et servir le droit d’inestimables de données empiriques et de preuves.The hypothesis of our doctorate posits that there is a better manner for law to regulate TBN. We posit to improve legal regulation of TBN that an alternative legal framework is necessary for the regulation of transnational business negotiations [TBN] between private parties in context of international sale of goods. The fundamental premise lies in the manner in which negotiations are commonly misunderstood within the complexity of pluralistic, conflicting or overlapping legal regimes causing inconsistent measurement and enforcement of remedies to business parties. Even the most sophisticated business parties toil with the nebulous line of when and how legal rights and obligations are created. Parties do not sufficiently anticipate obstacles that may arise, and often rely on oral or incomplete agreements which may lead to the misinterpretation of the extent of their rights and obligations to one another. The law has an interest in this innate activity for three reasons: (1) to protect market requirements of efficiency; (2) because of its opportunist nature, to guide conduct between TBN parties; and (3) to support party autonomy. We will be focusing on the expansion of current legal theory of negotiations in search of a new normative theory that could contribute to the improvement of regulation of TBN. The project will comprise an analysis of current legal negotiation theory to attain a legal portrait of how law views business negotiations. We have observed the poverty of legal tools available to weigh juridical consequences of negotiation movements. Tangible negotiations may reveal themselves in various forms of agreements; some that are recognized by adjudicators if they pass tests of validity of contract while others fail to produce recognition. When agreements appear incomplete, adjudicators are forced to either deny enforcement of negotiating agreements or turn to fictitious rationalizations. Conversely, legal obligations during negotiations may be construed within the general scope of the law of obligations whether they have been intended between the parties or not. This study is expected to reveal the threats of colliding and conflicting norms as well as factors that reconcile the legal regulatory sources towards a global legal merchant culture. Illuminating a new understanding of negotiations can be accomplished through an interdisciplinary glimpse of business strategies and perception, along with examination of the etic and emic negotiating behavioral sequences identified by behavioral scientists. Factoring patterns of normative sequential business negotiations may provide fundamental elements to expose the intangibility of negotiations by amalgamating normative values emanating from party autonomy. Negotiations are often considered a phenomenon misfit in law; traveling between traditionally separated legal doctrines. Reaching back to historical transformations in search of the roots of the regulatory sources may illuminate negotiations from the “shadow of the law” into a model revealing the expansion into interdependency and cooperation. Comprehension of the factors that influence the normative frameworks that parties presuppose while negotiating together will contribute to our tri-dimensional comparative law analysis. A new critical awareness of the portrait of negotiations will be proposed through the application of Hogg’s co-operative theory of contracts to negotiations, opening the door to a fresh vision of negotiations. Setting default standards of conduct through a normative legal negotiation theory may eventually lead to the consideration of sui generis rules to monitor our evolving global society in order for law to provide the securitized efficiency and autonomy required by TBN parties. Meanwhile, party autonomy may seize leadership through new trade mechanisms which we have termed "Bills of Negotiations [BON]", providing TBN parties with transparent standards of communications that operate through expressed party choice to record parties’ intentions, which are expected to support business norms and serve law with invaluable empirical data and evidence