Political parties do represent their voters, but the degree of representation varies across issues and parties

Politicians are frequently castigated as being ‘out of touch with voters’, with populist movements of both the left and the right prospering in recent years at least in part due to this perception. But how valid is it? Russell Dalton looks at European political parties and in his study found that, on the whole, political parties do a decent job of representing the views of their constituents across a range of issues, even during times of acute crisis

The realignment of European voters and parties over cultural values is transforming political competition

Over the past 40 years, both citizen and party elite opinions on economic and cultural issues have shifted, with increasing cultural cleavages gaining particular significance. Russell J Dalton demonstrates how these changes are transforming current European party competition and electoral dynamics

The secret of better government? Citizens who complain

Citizens are becoming more sceptical and critical of their governments. Chris Welzel and Russell Dalton examine whether this phenomenon is good or bad for democratic stability by looking at the relationship between assertive and allegiant citizen norms and effective governance. They challenge the Burkean view that good government requires an obedient citizenry to function properly. Assertive citizens hold their politicians accountable – and their rising numbers should improve the quality of democracy

Defeat data poisoning attacks on facial recognition applications

In the modern era, facial photos are used for a wide array of applications, from logging into a smartphone to bragging about a weekend getaway. With the vast amount of use cases for facial images, adversaries will attack these applications for profit. This dissertation focuses on two major applications of facial photos: facial authentication and deepfakes. Facial authentication has become increasingly popular on personal devices. Due to the ease of use, it has great potential to be widely deployed for web-service authentication in the near future in which people can easily log on to online accounts from different devices without memorizing lengthy passwords. However, the growing number of attacks targeting machine learning, especially Deep Neural Networks (DNN), which is commonly used for facial recognition, imposes big challenges on the successful roll-out of such web-service facial authentication. We demonstrate a new data poisoning attack, called replacement data poisoning, which does not require the adversary to have any knowledge of the server-side and simply needs a handful of malicious photo injections to enable an attacker to impersonate the victim in existing facial authentication systems. We then propose a novel defensive approach called DEFEAT that leverages deep learning techniques to automatically detect such attacks. Our experiments using real-world datasets achieve a detection accuracy of over 90 percent. Deepfakes target specific individuals to cause shame or misinformation. With the spread of fake news, deepfakes have become incredibly prevalent in recent years. With deepfakes, an adversary could have photographic or even video-graphic \proof" of someone, such as a politician, committing a devious act or saying untrue words. Our deepfake work consists of two parts. First, we propose a label ipping data poisoning attack targeting deepfake detectors. With over a 99 percent poison success rate in most cases, this attack demonstrates the devastating effects a data poisoning attack can have on deepfake detectors and how important a need to defend against this assault is. Our second contribution revolves around defending deepfake detectors from such an attack. We propose several defense strategies, most notably a convolutional neural network (CNN) based strategy to detect poisoned images. Our CNN-based approach achieves a greater than 98 percent poison detection rate while keeping the number of false positives to a minimum with a precision rate of over 99 percent in most cases.Includes bibliographical references

An Intensive Cultural Resources Survey of a Rerouted Alignment of Plains All American Pipeline, LP’s Proposed Earthstone Benedum CTP to Tie-In Line Project Located on UT Land in Upton County, Texas

On 30 September 2020, Horizon Environmental Services, Inc. (Horizon) conducted an intensive cultural resources survey of a rerouted alignment of Plains All American Pipeline, LP’s (Plains) proposed Earthstone Benedum CTP to Tie-In Line Right-of-way (ROW) Project located on University of Texas property (UT land) in southeastern Upton County, Texas (Project Area). Overall, the proposed rerouted alignment on UT land measures 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers [km]) long by 100.0 feet (30.5 meters [m]) wide, with a total area of approximately 41.2 acres. However, as the majority of the rerouted alignment follows the same general path as the original alignment, the Texas Historical Commission (THC) indicated that only the southeasternmost portion of the rerouted alignment where it extends away from the original project terminus would require a cultural resources survey. As such, the new Project Area measured approximately 1.2 miles (1.9 km) long by 100.0 feet (30.5 m) wide within an overall area of approximately 14.5 acres. The cultural resources survey of the Project Area was conducted under Texas Antiquities Committee (TAC) permit number 9616 in compliance with the Antiquities Code of Texas (ACT). The purpose of the survey was to determine if any archeological sites were located within the Project Area and, if any existed, to determine if the project had the potential to have any adverse impacts on sites considered eligible for formal designation as State Antiquities Landmarks (SALs). The cultural resources survey resulted in entirely negative findings. No cultural materials were observed on the surface of the Project Area or within any of the 23 excavated shovel tests. Based on the negative survey results, it is Horizon’s opinion that the construction of the rerouted alignment of the proposed Earthstone Benedum CTP to Tie-In Line Project across UT land will have no adverse effect on significant cultural resources designated as or considered eligible for designation as SALs. Horizon therefore recommends that Plains be allowed to proceed with the construction of the proposed pipeline relative to the jurisdiction of the ACT. All records produced during the investigations have been curated at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory (TARL) in accordance with the TAC Permit-Terms and Conditions and the Texas Administrative Code Title 13, Part 2, Chapter 26.C.26.17

An Intensive Cultural Resources Survey of the USACE Jurisdictional Areas within Western Midstream Partners, LP’s Proposed Red Bluff HP Pipeline Reroute Project in Reeves County, Texas

On 5 May and 2 June 2020, Horizon Environmental Services, Inc. (Horizon) conducted an intensive cultural resources survey of the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) jurisdictional areas within Western Midstream Partners, LP’s (WMP) proposed Red Bluff HP Pipeline Reroute Project located in northwestern Reeves County, Texas (Project Area). Although the undertaking is located entirely on private property and will be constructed with private funds, its development may require the usage of a Regional General Permit (RGP) and/or Nationwide Permit (NWP) issued by the USACE. As these are federal permits, the portions of the undertaking under the purview of the USACE also fall under the regulations of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) of 1966, as amended. At the request of Whitenton Group, Inc. (Whitenton), Horizon conducted the cultural resources survey of the USACE jurisdictional areas on behalf of WMP in compliance with Section 106 of the NHPA. The purpose of the survey was to determine if any archeological sites were located within the USACE jurisdictional areas and, if any existed, to determine if the project had the potential to have any adverse impacts on sites eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The proposed pipeline right-of-way (ROW) reroute measures approximately 4,022.0 feet (1,226.0 meters [m]) in length and approximately 100.0 feet (30.5 m) wide, with a total area of 9.2 acres. In addition, the project has approximately 3.0 acres of additional temporary workspaces (ATWS) on opposing sides of Salt Creek, resulting in an overall all area of 12.2 acres for the undertaking. However, the Project Area (i.e., the portions of the undertaking within the purview of the USACE) consists of Salt Creek and four adjacent jurisdictional “waters of the US” (WOUS) that are traversed by the proposed ROW reroute and ATWS as well as a portion of the proposed ROW reroute adjacent to previously recorded archeological site 41RV209. To assess all areas that the USACE could determine to be within their purview, Horizon surveyed the vast majority of the proposed ROW reroute and ATWS with the exception of the easternmost 700.0 feet (213.4 m) of the proposed ROW reroute where no WOUS were delineated. This Survey Area totaled approximately 10.6 acres. The cultural resources survey resulted in the expansion of the boundaries of previously recorded site 41RV209. This site was found to be a low-density scatter of prehistoric lithic debris on a terrace situated to the north and west of the channel of Salt Creek. The presence of lithic debris (cores and debitage) on the site suggests that the surface gravels of the area were utilized as a source of raw material for stone tools. In addition, the presence of scattered firecracked rock (FCR) across the site, the presence of one FCR concentration, and a sandstone metate fragment on the site also indicate that the location served as a campsite where food was prepared. Based on the surficial, sparse, and generally disturbed nature of this site’s deposits in addition to its lack of temporally diagnostic materials, intact features, and preserved floral/faunal remains, it is Horizon’s opinion that the portion of site 41RV209 within the limits of the current Project Area is considered to be ineligible for inclusion in the NRHP and that no additional cultural resources investigations are warranted on the site in connection with the current undertaking. Based on the assessment that the portion of site 41RV209 within the current Project Area is ineligible for inclusion in the NRHP, it is Horizon’s opinion that development of the Project Area will have no adverse effects on any significant cultural resources located within the USACE jurisdictional areas. Horizon therefore recommends that WMP be allowed to proceed with the development of the proposed pipeline ROW reroute relative to the jurisdiction of the USACE and Section 106 of the NHPA

When who and how matter: explaining the success of referendums in Europe

This article aims to identify the institutional factors that make a referendum successful. This comparative analysis seeks to explain the success of top-down referendums organized in Europe between 2001 and 2013. It argues and tests for the main effect of three institutional factors (popularity of the initiator, size of parliamentary majority, and political cues during referendum campaigns) and controls for the type of referendum and voter turnout. The analysis uses data collected from referendums and electoral databases, public opinion surveys, and newspaper articles. Results show that referendums proposed by a large parliamentary majority or with clear messages from political parties during campaign are likely to be successful