The Shield that Never Was: Societies with Single-Peaked Preferences are More Open to Manipulation and Control

Much work has been devoted, during the past twenty years, to using complexity to protect elections from manipulation and control. Many results have been obtained showing NP-hardness shields, and recently there has been much focus on whether such worst-case hardness protections can be bypassed by frequently correct heuristics or by approximations. This paper takes a very different approach: We argue that when electorates follow the canonical political science model of societal preferences the complexity shield never existed in the first place. In particular, we show that for electorates having single-peaked preferences, many existing NP-hardness results on manipulation and control evaporate.Comment: 38 pages, 2 figure

Path integral regularization of pure Yang-Mills theory

In enlarging the field content of pure Yang-Mills theory to a cutoff dependent matrix valued complex scalar field, we construct a vectorial operator, which is by definition invariant with respect to the gauge transformation of the Yang-Mills field and with respect to a Stueckelberg type gauge transformation of the scalar field. This invariant operator converges to the original Yang-Mills field as the cutoff goes to infinity. With the help of cutoff functions, we construct with this invariant a regularized action for the pure Yang-Mills theory. In order to be able to define both the gauge and scalar fields kinetic terms, other invariant terms are added to the action. Since the scalar fields flat measure is invariant under the Stueckelberg type gauge transformation, we obtain a regularized gauge-invariant path integral for pure Yang-Mills theory that is mathematically well defined. Moreover, the regularized Ward-Takahashi identities describing the dynamics of the gauge fields are exactly the same as the formal Ward-Takahashi identities of the unregularized theory.Comment: LaTeX file, 24 pages, improved version, to be published in Phys. Rev.

Beyond the Juristic Orientation of International Criminal Justice: The Relevance of Criminological Insight to International Criminal Law and its Control

This article draws attention to the relevance of criminological insight on issues of international criminal law and criminal justice. In particular, the ideology and theory of deterrence, legitimacy, and international criminal law are drawn from. After all, the deterrent effect has been touted as a solid empirical fact with the progression and development of \u27international criminal justice\u27, the international tribunals since the mid 1990s, and the International Criminal Court. Yet, the current rather blind belief in the deterrent impact of international criminal justice remains, regretfully, a bit premature. Additionally, beyond the concepts of deterrence and legitimacy, criminologists have much to contribute to international criminal justice. As noted, there are social, political, cultural, and geographical issues that play a role in not only crime commission, but in the hindrance of and/or facilitation of deterrence. Criminologists are well positioned to show how these connections may facilitate or hinder the broader goals of the legal community

The Death of State Sovereignty? An Empirical Exploration

As academics have become increasingly interested in globalization, scholars in many fields have turned their attention to theorizations of the state and state power. Admittedly, most criminologists have paid relatively attention to theories of the state, its function, role, or issues of sovereignty (save for Barak, 1991; Chambliss and Zatz, 1993; Friedrichs, 1992; Michalowski and Kramer, 1987; Mullins and Rothe, 2008; Rothe and Mullins, 2006, 2007, 2008). With the growing criminological interest in and focus on transnational crimes (Friedrichs, 2007), crimes of globalization (Friedrichs and Friedrichs, 2002; Rothe, Mullins, and Muzzatti, 2006; Rothe, Mullins and Sandstrom, 2008), and crime of the state (Kramer et. al., 2005; Michalowski and Kramer, 2006; Rothe and Mullins, 2008), there has been a corresponding shift in the view of the state: one in a ‘globalized’ framework. Many scholars have suggested that the state has been reduced to nothing more than a facilitator of global political, legal, and economic system. As criminologists of state crime, we find this position problematic for the conceptualization and study of governmental crime. We feel that proclaiming states and state sovereignty as eroding and/or dead is premature. In this paper we explore one area in which states seem to be voluntarily abdicating certain elements of sovereignty—the entering into of international treaties. Specifically, we examine how states protect their sovereignty through entering reservations to treaties being signed and ratified. Our findings suggest that despite greater attention in global consciousness amongst countries and economies, states intensely protect their right to self-determination while signing and ratifying treaties, compacts and other international agreements. After providing a detailed discussion of these findings, we conclude that state sovereignty is not eroding and is far from dead

Toward a Criminology of International Criminal Law: An Integrated Theory of International Criminal Violations

Violations of international criminal law (i.e., genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes) are a common occurrence around the globe. One need only to read international news, visit intra‐governmental (e.g., United Nations or the International Committee Red Cross), or nongovernmental organizations (e.g., Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International) to be exposed to the vast numbers of crimes of states, paramilitaries, and/or militias. Nonetheless, there has been relatively little attention paid to these types of offenses by criminologists. While there have been developments in creating typologies (Smeulers, 2008) and predictive models for genocide (Harf, 2005), due to the complexities and various forms of these types of crimes, there has been little to no development of a criminological theoretical model that can aid in the analysis of such crimes. Our goal is to firmly place international crimes on the criminological agenda by creating additional awareness of and interest in the most massive, systematic, and gruesome types of crime‐genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression‐and to introduce an integrated theory that can provide a frame for a systematic analysis and understanding of the etiological factors at play

How States Facilitate Small Arms Trafficking in Africa: A Theoretical and Juristic Interpretation

Small arms’ trafficking is complex and involves a host of actors. As numerous court documents, transcripts, United Nations and NGO reports have revealed, many state institutions play a prominent role in the facilitation of, complicity in, and implicit involvement in black and grey arms trafficking. We suggest that if we are to consider the vast number of actors involved in the trafficking of small arms, the issue of controls is highly problematic, given the extent of limited applicable international legal doctrines, such as joint criminal enterprise, criminal organization, or collective criminality. Furthermore, there are broader political issues that hinder efforts of control as highlighted by the state crime literature, including issues of enforcement, political will and states’ positions to hinder the advancement of levels of accountability for their own behaviors. Consequentially, our focus here is not to empirically test the etiological factors of states complicit or implicit involvement in arms trafficking, but instead to move the discussion forward to broader theoretical and juristic issues associated with efforts to control arms trafficking. If the goal is to reduce illegal arms trafficking (and subsequent numbers of civilian deaths) policies and controls must be based, not only on the immediate or apparent actors, the role of states in the facilitation of this type of crime

Hilbert Space of Isomorphic Representations of Bosonized Chiral QCD2QCD_2

We analyse the Hilbert space structure of the isomorphic gauge non-invariant and gauge invariant bosonized formulations of chiral $QCD_2$ for the particular case of the Jackiw-Rajaraman parameter $a = 2$. The BRST subsidiary conditions are found not to provide a sufficient criterium for defining physical states in the Hilbert space and additional superselection rules must to be taken into account. We examine the effect of the use of a redundant field algebra in deriving basic properties of the model. We also discuss the constraint structure of the gauge invariant formulation and show that the only primary constraints are of first class.Comment: LaTeX, 19 page

Euler angles for G2

We provide a simple parametrization for the group G2, which is analogous to the Euler parametrization for SU(2). We show how to obtain the general element of the group in a form emphasizing the structure of the fibration of G2 with fiber SO(4) and base H, the variety of quaternionic subalgebras of octonions. In particular this allows us to obtain a simple expression for the Haar measure on G2. Moreover, as a by-product it yields a concrete realization and an Einstein metric for H.Comment: 21 pages, 2 figures, some misprints correcte

Cold atoms in non-Abelian gauge potentials: From the Hofstadter "moth" to lattice gauge theory

We demonstrate how to create artificial external non-Abelian gauge potentials acting on cold atoms in optical lattices. The method employs $n$ internal states of atoms and laser assisted state sensitive tunneling. Thus, dynamics are communicated by unitary $n\times n$-matrices. By experimental control of the tunneling parameters, the system can be made truly non-Abelian. We show that single particle dynamics in the case of intense U(2) vector potentials lead to a generalized Hofstadter butterfly spectrum which shows a complex ``moth''-like structure. We discuss the possibility to employ non-Abelian interferometry (Aharonov-Bohm effect) and address methods to realize matter dynamics in specific classes of lattice gauge fields.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

HOW DO ENTREPRENEURIAL FIRMS APPROPRIATE VALUE IN BIO DATA INFRASTRUCTURES: AN EXPLORATORY QUALITATIVE STUDY

Recent technological advances such as in genome sequencing have exploded bio data infra-structures including those that comprise of generic - anonymized or pseudonymized - data. As open data, the bio data infrastructures do not constrain the final application context for their data. Rather it is up to complementors, taking the role of digital entrepreneurs, to appropriate value from this data through their revenue streams while at the same time scaling their opera-tions and ventures. We undertake a qualitative explorative study of bio data ventures examining the tension of applying open generic genome data to specific contexts for customers while being able to scale their businesses. The study uses primary data from 26 interviews and secondary data to reveal six strategies that complementors use for value appropriation. We derive three mechanisms of appropriating value at different stages of the value chain for bio data analysis on open data infrastructures: data contextualizing, data decontextualizing, and data recontex-tualizing. The study sheds light to how bio data – which has received limited attention in infor-mation systems research – can be an important source of value appropriation in digital ecosys-tems