A Hierarchy of Scheduler Classes for Stochastic Automata

Stochastic automata are a formal compositional model for concurrent stochastic timed systems, with general distributions and non-deterministic choices. Measures of interest are defined over schedulers that resolve the nondeterminism. In this paper we investigate the power of various theoretically and practically motivated classes of schedulers, considering the classic complete-information view and a restriction to non-prophetic schedulers. We prove a hierarchy of scheduler classes w.r.t. unbounded probabilistic reachability. We find that, unlike Markovian formalisms, stochastic automata distinguish most classes even in this basic setting. Verification and strategy synthesis methods thus face a tradeoff between powerful and efficient classes. Using lightweight scheduler sampling, we explore this tradeoff and demonstrate the concept of a useful approximative verification technique for stochastic automata

Institutionalisation of Social Movements: Co-option And Democratic Policy-making

Over the past 30 years, urban policy in Brazil has undergone a major transformation, both in terms of regulatory frameworks and the involvement of citizens in the process of policy-making. As an intense process of institutional innovation and mobilisation for decent publicservices took place, academics started to consider the impact of institutionalisation on the autonomy of social movements. Using empirical evidence from a city in the northeast of Brazil, this article addresses the wider literature on citizen participation and social movements to examine specifically the problem with co-optation. I examine the risks linked to co-optation, risks that can undermine the credibility of social movements as agents of change, and explore the tensions that go beyond the ‘co-optation versus autonomy’ divide, an issue frequently found in the practices of social movements, in their dealings with those in power. In particular, this article explores the learning processes and contentious relationships between mainly institutionally oriented urban movements and local government. This study found that the learning of deliberative skills not only led to changes in the objectives and repertoires of housing movements, but also to the inclusion of new components in their objectives that provide room for creative agency and which, in some cases, might allow them to maintain their autonomy from the state

Cidadania mediada : processos de democratização da política municipal no Brasil

This article discusses the notion that the persistence of &ldquo;traditional&rdquo; political practices weakens Brazil&rsquo;s democracy.Drawing on the cases of three Brazilian municipalities administered by the Workers&rsquo; Party (PT), the author examines the space between &ldquo;traditional&rdquo; and &ldquo;modern&rdquo; and argues that successful democratization does not eradicate practices such as clientelism and patronage, but it tends to incorporate and build on these traditional political elements. Moreover, the article maintains that the democratization of municipal politics is inextricably bound up with the eradication of poverty and the construction of a responsive, state-based social safety net.<br /