Response to Critiques and Avenues for Future Research

I would like to start my response by expressing my profound gratitude to the three commentators for their in-depth engagement with my book, their generous comments, and the rich variety of though-provoking challenges and critiques. Their contributions urge me to refine the theoretical and empirical implications of the book in novel ways. Responding to all of their excellent observations would go beyond the scope of this short essay, but I will address what I identify as the most fundamental arguments, clustered in three main themes, according to which I will structure my response. The first part will address the comments of the reviewers that relate to key definitions and case classifications. The second part focuses on challenges to the theoretical argument, including alternative explanations. Finally, the third part addresses unresolved questions in the book identified by the reviewers, which open up promising avenues for future research

The Politics of Extractivism: Mining, Institutional Responsiveness, and Social Resistance

Natural resource exploitation often generates negative externalities and fuels social conflict. Yet, patterns of social resistance against mining differ considerably within and across countries. What explains differences in the occurrence and duration of anti-mining protest? Distinguishing explicitly between protest onset and continuation, we theorize that communities affected by mining engage in social protest to signal their grievances to political decision-makers. Yet, once protests have erupted, their duration depends on the institutional setup that shapes these decision-makers’ likelihood of responding to grievances. Under conditions of high decentralized responsiveness, where regional governments have both the competences to enact policies and the electoral incentives to make use of them, regional governments are likely to rely on “policy side payments” in mining-unrelated domains to assuage mining-related grievances. Thus, decentralized responsiveness should reduce the duration of anti-mining protest. To test our argument, we introduce novel subnational data on mining activities and anti-mining protests in Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador from 2000 to 2013. Using dynamic logit and Weibull regression models, we find that the determinants of protest onset and continuation differ systematically. While the volume of mining activities impacts protest onset, the duration of anti-mining protests decreases significantly under conditions of high decentralized responsiveness

Knowledge Graph Building Blocks: An easy-to-use Framework for developing FAIREr Knowledge Graphs

Knowledge graphs and ontologies provide promising technical solutions for implementing the FAIR Principles for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable data and metadata. However, they also come with their own challenges. Nine such challenges are discussed and associated with the criterion of cognitive interoperability and specific FAIREr principles (FAIR + Explorability raised) that they fail to meet. We introduce an easy-to-use, open source knowledge graph framework that is based on knowledge graph building blocks (KGBBs). KGBBs are small information modules for knowledge-processing, each based on a specific type of semantic unit. By interrelating several KGBBs, one can specify a KGBB-driven FAIREr knowledge graph. Besides implementing semantic units, the KGBB Framework clearly distinguishes and decouples an internal in-memory data model from data storage, data display, and data access/export models. We argue that this decoupling is essential for solving many problems of knowledge management systems. We discuss the architecture of the KGBB Framework as we envision it, comprising (i) an openly accessible KGBB-Repository for different types of KGBBs, (ii) a KGBB-Engine for managing and operating FAIREr knowledge graphs (including automatic provenance tracking, editing changelog, and versioning of semantic units); (iii) a repository for KGBB-Functions; (iv) a low-code KGBB-Editor with which domain experts can create new KGBBs and specify their own FAIREr knowledge graph without having to think about semantic modelling. We conclude with discussing the nine challenges and how the KGBB Framework provides solutions for the issues they raise. While most of what we discuss here is entirely conceptual, we can point to two prototypes that demonstrate the principle feasibility of using semantic units and KGBBs to manage and structure knowledge graphs

Exploring the Willingness-to-Share Data of Digitized Products in B2B Manufacturing Industries

In the digital age, physical products of all kind become infiltrated by technology. Especially for the sophisticated manufacturing industries manifold opportunities, yet in the same way defiances originate. While academia and practice on the one hand show that the value of digitized products for an ecosystem participant increases with the access to data from the surrounding ecosystem, on the other hand research to understand and manage this willingness-to-share data is limited. Accordingly, the Research-in-Progress Paper at hand explores the willingness-to-share data of digitized products in B2B manufacturing industries. In particular, an exploratory case study research design in the Swiss B2B manufacturing industries is carved out. Considering the inherent limitations of this qualitative research approach, preliminary findings show that highly different aspects influence the willingness-to-share data of digitized products in these environments

Staat und Volk – was sonst?

Is democracy the best form of government? What are the hallmarks of a good democracy? These questions were asked in ancient times and we are still trying to find the answers today. We have learned, at least, that there is no “perfect” democracy! Democratically-ruled nations try to strike a difficult balance between equality and liberty, as well as between majority and minorities. They try to maintain order in society while allowing for the greatest possible expressions of opinion. Democracy demands and democracy challenges—and as a system of government, democracy is itself challenged today by globalization and the development of digital media. Against this background, and in light of political and economic events in Asia or in the Arab world, there is another incessant question: is democracy still up-to-date? But of course! Democracies perform generally better and ensure peace more successfully than other forms of government. Democracy: An Ongoing Challenge illustrates why. This visual reader uses the power of images to complement text, resulting in a compendium of the history and development of democracy, and offering insight into contemporary debates

Dynamical effects in heavy-ion interactions at bombarding energies near the Coulomb barrier: A study for the 16O + 120Sn system

Abstract We investigate the magnitude of the effective interactions for elastic and inelastic processes at bombarding energies in the vicinity of the nominal Coulomb barrier. The relevance of higher-order inelastic and transfer processes in defining the strength of the effective couplings is explored in a reaction with a superfluid target, 16 O on 120 Sn, at center-of-mass energies of 46, 50 and 54 MeV. Significant dynamical effects are found and these appear to be more pronounced in the off-diagonal matrix elements than in the diagonal ones. Theoretical arguments related to the data are presented

Iron distribution through the developmental stages of Medicago truncatula nodules.

Paramount to symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF) is the synthesis of a number of metalloenzymes that use iron as a critical component of their catalytical core. Since this process is carried out by endosymbiotic rhizobia living in legume root nodules, the mechanisms involved in iron delivery to the rhizobia-containing cells are critical for SNF. In order to gain insight into iron transport to the nodule, we have used synchrotron-based X-ray fluorescence to determine the spatio-temporal distribution of this metal in nodules of the legume Medicago truncatula with hitherto unattained sensitivity and resolution. The data support a model in which iron is released from the vasculature into the apoplast of the infection/differentiation zone of the nodule (zone II). The infected cell subsequently takes up this apoplastic iron and delivers it to the symbiosome and the secretory system to synthesize ferroproteins. Upon senescence, iron is relocated to the vasculature to be reused by the shoot. These observations highlight the important role of yet to be discovered metal transporters in iron compartmentalization in the nodule and in the recovery of an essential and scarce nutrient for flowering and seed production