European Parliament Electoral Turnout in Post-Communist Europe

The relatively low voter turnout rates in the June 2004 European Parliamentary elections in many of the post-communist states surprised observers. While the average turnout rate for these new-EU member states barely surpassed 30%, turnout exhibited much variance at the national and sub-national levels. In this article, we study the determinants of European Parliamentary election voter turnout rates in the post-communist countries at the regional level. Our central hypothesis is that regional turnout rates may be related to regional economic conditions and that in areas experiencing economic hardship, turnout will be lower. We also assess the extent that EU attitudes matter for turnout. A unique data set, compiled at the NUTS-3.Economics of voting;participation;European Parliamentary election; post-communist countries.

The Reappearance of the Khoesan in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Invention of Tradition and National Reconciliation

Volume entitled: Ten Years of Democratic South Africa. Transition Accomplished? edited by Aurelia Wa Kabwe-Segatti, Nicolas Péjout and Philippe GuillaumeThe return of Sarah Baartman's remains to South Africa in August 2002 has largely contributed to the reappearance of Khoesan identity claims and related issues. Illustrating the dynamics of identity crafting enabled by the end of apartheid, the new political consideration given to the Khoesan populations gives South Africa the opportunity to lay rather uncontentious historical foundations for the triple enterprise of reconciling the nation, establishing a collective memory and, in fi ne, hastening the building of a new nation.Le rapatriement des restes de Sarah Baartman vers l'Afrique du Sud en août 2002 a largement contribué à la réapparition des revendications identitaires Khoesan et de questions apparentées. Illustrant les dynamiques de bricolage identitaire rendues possibles par la fin de l'apartheid, le renouveau d'attention politique accordée aux populations Khoesan donne à l'Afrique du Sud une possibilité de creuser les fondements historiques consensuels d'une triple entreprise de réconciliation nationale, d'érection de la mémoire collective et, in fine, d'accélération de la construction nationale

Remote sensing techniques for determining landcover features: applications for a species at risk

Remote sensing techniques are becoming more advanced and commonplace in conservation biology, and are used to study spatial patterns of various taxa. The main objective of this study was to determine whether supervised classification of landcover types within Landsat imagery could be accurately used to find or locate islands on lakes that may have been overlooked during ground transects in central Saskatchewan. Additionally, we used telemetry data from collared female caribou to determine which islands were used and in which season(s), and to determine island char­acteristics that make caribou more likely to select them. We were able to successfully identify all islands within bodies of water relevant to collared caribou using a supervised classification method, which suggests that our methods were adequate. We also determined that none of the island characteristics significantly influenced caribou selection accord­ing to an occupancy model, however females tended to choose islands with a higher vegetation cover (NDVI) during the summer months and a proportionally lower snow cover during the winter months, likely as forage and predator avoidance strategies respectively. Finally, we suggest directions for future studies as well as implications for both wildlife managers and land-use planners in Saskatchewan, Canada

Turnout under semi-presidentialism: first- and second-order elections to national-level institutions

We test the effect of the importance of elections by focusing on turnout at presidential and legislative elections in countries with semi-presidential constitutions. These countries have two potentially first-order elections, but they vary considerably in the powers that are granted to their presidents and prime ministers. We hypothesise that turnout at legislative elections will vary inversely with presidential power and that above a certain degree of presidential power turnout at presidential elections will be higher than turnout at legislative elections. We test these hypotheses on the set of electoral democracies from 1989-2010 inclusive. Controlling for standard social, political and institutional variables, we find strong support for our propositions. The findings show that the importance of the electoral contest is a determining factor for turnout at legislative elections and that the relative importance of presidential and legislative elections can be understood as a continuous scale, and not merely dichotomously

European Parliament Electoral Turnout in Post-Communist Europe

URL des Cahiers : https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/CAHIERS-MSECahiers de la Maison des Sciences Economiques 2006.04 - ISSN 1624-0340The relatively low voter turnout rates in the June 2004 European Parliamentary elections in many of the post-communist states surprised observers. While the average turnout rate for these new-EU member states barely surpassed 30%, turnout exhibited much variance at the national and sub-national levels. In this article, we study the determinants of European Parliamentary election voter turnout rates in the post-communist countries at the regional level. Our central hypothesis is that regional turnout rates may be related to regional economic conditions and that in areas experiencing economic hardship, turnout will be lower. We also assess the extent that EU attitudes matter for turnout. A unique data set, compiled at the NUTS-3.Le niveau de participation relativement faible lors des élections parlementaires européennes de juin 2004 dans les pays d'Europe de l'Est a surpris de nombreux observateurs. Le taux de participation moyen dans ces nouveaux Etats membres dépassait à peine 30% et affichait de plus une forte variance aussi bien au niveau national que régional. Cet article analyse les déterminants du taux de participation lors des élections parlementaires européennes dans les régions des anciens pays communistes. Notre hypothèse centrale est que le taux de participation régional est fonction des conditions économiques régionales et que, dans les zones connaissant des difficultés économiques, le taux de participation sera plus bas. Nous évaluons aussi dans quelle mesure l'opinion à l'égard de l'Union Européenne influence la participation électorale. Ces hypothèses sont restées sur une base de données au niveau statistique régional NUTS 3

A heuristic algorithm imitating social behaviours for intelligent routing of application flows

Full understanding of this paper requires expertise in computer science, software engineering and algorithmics.The intelligent routing of application flows between, on the one hand, a fleet consisting of many equipments (fixed or mobile) equipped with a heavy client-side software or a light browser providing a service to end-users, and, on the other hand, a park of servers equipped with a server-side software contributing to this service, is a complex problem. A fleet may include, for example, users' computers accessing an e-commerce site, smartphones, payment terminals, ATMs and banking services, internet boxes, shopping terminals tickets, kiosks access public service, etc. The complexity of routing is inherent in the many constraints that this function should address. First, it must be adaptable to any client-side and server-side software via a single function point that interacts at the session and kinematic level. It must also take into account the compatibility matrix of the multiple deployed versions of the software. Second, it must be adaptable to any platform via a setting of topological rules incorporating the specifics of the software in the existing architecture, and allow a logical multi-criteria segmentation of the fleet and the park via a setting of rules of affinity and exclusion between any groups of equipments and servers (domains, markets, versions, service levels, etc.). Third, it must support an unlimited fleet with horizontal scaling capacity, and must dynamically enslave the load and load transfer with consideration of the overconsumption of resources generated by the software during rerouting, in order especially to avoid the cascaded spread of massive incidents (domino effect). Fourth, when necessary, it must be able to sacrifice certain flows, temporarily, to preserve a greater number of flows. Finally, the routing must offer a real-time vision of the state of the fleet and the park, and allow the automatic enrollment in the fleet of new discovered equipments. Because existing ADC (Application Delivery Controller) solutions insufficiently meet the requirements, this paper proposes a heuristic algorithm integrated into a reverse proxy, responding to the needs. This heuristic is presented in the context of automated banking machines, but can easily be transposed to any other context. Because the complexity of the problem does not allow to calculate routes in a reasonable time, the proposed heuristic does not seek the best mathematical solution but an effective and reactive routing that imitates social behaviour and maximizes availability, usability, quality of service. This inventive heuristic was implemented and tested successfully, jointly with a second invention playing the role of a distributed database (“A distributed, probabilistic, hysteretic, retroactive algorithm to locally weaken the CAP/Brewer’s theorem when reading data on a distributed computer system” ⟨hal-01966396⟩ https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01966396). Full understanding of this paper requires expertise in computer science, software engineering and algorithmics

THE VISIBILITY AND INVISIBILITY OF HERDERS' KRAALS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA, WITH REFERENCE TO A POSSIBLE EARLY CONTACT PERIOD KHOEKHOE KRAAL AT KFS 5, WESTERN CAPE

The Europeans who landed on the shores of the South African Cape from the late 15th century onwards encountered local herders whom they later referred to as the Hottentots (now known as the Khoekhoe). There are written references to the settlements and livestock of these pastoralists, but archaeologists have not had much success in discovering any such sites. This absence of archaeological evidence for recent Khoekhoe kraals has been interpreted by some scholars as an indication for a general archaeological invisibility of nomadic pastoralist sites. This article reports on the archaeology of an extensive, low density surface spread of artefacts, KFS 5 (Western Cape), which possibly represents a Khoekhoe kraal dating to the time of the first contact with Europeans. Data are compared to other archaeological evidence of cattle pens in southern Africa and the issues of the visibility of prehistoric and historic kraals are re-addresse

A distributed, probabilistic, hysteretic, retroactive algorithm to locally weaken the CAP/Brewer’s theorem when reading data on a distributed computer system

Full understanding of this paper requires expertise in computer science, software engineering and algorithmics.The CAP (Consistency, Availability, Partition tolerance) also known as Brewer's theorem, states that it is impossible, on a distributed computer system, to guarantee at the same time the three qualities mentioned above. This issue affects all existing distributed engines and systems, which forces the administrators of these engines and systems to favor two qualities to the detriment of a third, when possible, despite the consequences. This paper technically and formally describes an inventive algorithm to locally weaken the said theorem when reading the data. This process combines three elements: a real-time system of key-value pairs distributed in memory cloud; a multi-planar index with concurrency avoidance; a distributed consolidated reading method called "LC4" based on a hysterical retroactive probabilistic effect. This inventive algorithm was implemented and tested successfully, jointly with a second invention playing the role of an application delivery controller (“A heuristic algorithm imitating social behaviours for intelligent routing of application flows” ⟨hal-02471814⟩ https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02471814). Full understanding of this paper requires expertise in computer science, software engineering and algorithmics

Marie-Laure Derat, L’énigme d’une dynastie sainte et usurpatrice dans le royaume chrétien d’Éthiopie du xie au xiiie siècle

Entre le viie s., époque durant laquelle s’étiole le royaume d’Aksum, et le xive, où apparaît en pleine lumière un vigoureux royaume aux mains d’une dynastie que la tradition savante appelle salomonienne (parce qu’elle se déclare descendante, via les souverains d’Aksum, des rois hébreux de l’Ancien Testament), l’histoire de l’Éthiopie et de l’Érythrée des hauts plateaux paraît quelque peu embrumée. Il y a pourtant des éléments de continuité entre les périodes antique et tardo-médiévale : une ..