The curious case of Liechtenstein: A country caught between a prince and democracy

The Principality of Liechtenstein will hold elections on 5 February. Ahead of the elections, Wouter Veenendaal assesses the country’s political system, under which the Prince of Liechtenstein still retains a large degree of power over decision-making. He states that the system raises complex questions over whether a country can be classified as a democracy if its citizens voluntarily choose to assign important powers to an unelected ruler

Democracy in small states: why everything we think we know about democratisation is (mostly) wrong

Why do small states often rank highly in comparative measures of democracy? Jack Corbett and Wouter Veenendaal outline how their research into states with populations under one million challenges existing theories of why democracies can persist or fail

Democracy can and does take root in poor countries, but only if we look at small states

Does democracy fail in poor states, with weak economies and a lack of basic education? According to Jack Corbett and Wouter Veenendaal, this isn’t the case (though it is often thought to be). Sharing the findings of new research, they argue that smaller states particularly can create healthy and sustainable democracies, with more than half of low-income democracies coming under the definition of small states

A comparative study of legitimation strategies in hybrid regimes

The Institutions of Politics; Design, Workings, and implications ( do not use, ended 1-1-2020

VIDEO TRACKING USING ACOUSTIC TRIANGULATION

This study focuses on the detection and triangulation of sound sources. Specifically, we focus on the detection of sound in order to track a person’s position with a video camera. Acoustic tracking, an alternative to visual tracking, is relatively inexpensive, passive (does not emit energy), and effective in low lighting environments [3]. Our project is broken into two major aspects: accurately discerning input as opposed to background noise and the localization of the sound source. In order to focus on the input signal, we analyze two methods: time averaging and impulse culling. After the sound is analyzed and filtered we focus on the triangulation of the source in 2-D space using direct and estimation techniques requiring three microphones. This process is geared towards finding a compromise between performance and complexity which allows implementation on a standard micro-controller