Defense against small parties: electoral reforms and their impact on Tunisia’s electoral system since the Arab Spring

Tunisia's political system suffers from recurrent problems with governability and proportionality. A volatile party landscape, frequent cabinet reshuffles, and political gridlocks repeatedly jeopardized stability and democratic progress since the Arab Spring. Major and minor electoral reforms were undertaken in 2014, 2017, 2019, and 2022, but they were unable to diffuse either of these issues. This analysis is therefore driven by two central questions: How have Tunisia's electoral laws changed since the Arab Spring? And why have these reforms failed to improve both governability and proportionality? It will be argued that because Tunisia's party landscape is fractured and volatile only on the secularist side of the spectrum, coalitions with and against Ennahda are costly to all parties involved, worsening the overall quality of political representation. By analyzing the trajectory of major and minor electoral reforms longitudinally, this paper finds that Tunisia's electoral reforms incrementally restricted the electoral system by limiting parties' and candidates' capacity to compete in elections. Through modifying legislation on campaign finance and subsidies, gender parity, and candidacy requirements, and finally abolishing Tunisia's closed list PR-system in 2022, reforms benefit established older parties and wealthier candidates while fortifying the electoral system against newer and less wealthy contenders. Tunisia's electoral reforms are inadequate in addressing governability and proportionality because restricting electoral competition alone cannot improve the quality of representation through political parties.Seit dem Arabischen Frühling wird Tunesiens demokratische Stabilität durch häufige Kabinettsumbildungen, politische Stagnation, und einer volatilen Parteienlandschaft gefährdet. Regierungsfähigkeit und Proportionalität sind wiederkehrende Herausforderungen geblieben. Obwohl in den Jahren 2014, 2017, 2019, und 2022 Wahlrechtsreformen durchgeführt wurden, konnten diese Probleme jedoch nicht tiefergehend behoben werden. Diese Analyse verfolgt daher zwei Leitfragen: Wie hat sich Tunesiens Wahlgesetzgebung seit 2011 verändert? Und warum konnten diese Reformen weder Regierungsfähigkeit noch Proportionalität in der politischen Repräsentation verbessern? Da die tunesische Parteienlandschaft hauptsächlich auf der säkularen Seite fragmentiert und volatil ist, werden Koalitionen sowohl mit als auch gegen die konservative Ennahda-Partei kostspielig für alle Beteiligten. Das vermindert die Repräsentationsfähigkeit vieler Parteien und begünstigt politische Gridlocks. Die Analyse des tunesischen Wahlrechts und dessen Verlauf zeigt auf, dass der Zugang zu politischem Wettbewerb zunehmend restriktiver wurde. Änderungen in der Gesetzgebung zur Finanzierung von Kampagnen, Genderparität, und den Voraussetzungen für Kandidaturen bringen Wettbewerbsvorteile für etabliertere und wohlhabendere Kandidaten und Parteien. Neuere Wettbewerber mit weniger finanziellen Ressourcen werden hingegen strukturell benachteiligt und so vom Wettbewerb ausgeschlossen. Tunesiens Wahlgesetzgebung trug daher wenig zur Verbesserung von Proportionalität und Regierungsfähigkeit bei, da eine restriktivere Wahlarena die durch intra-parteiliche Zersplitterung verminderte Repräsentationsfähigheit von Parteien nicht beheben kann

Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan failed long before the Taliban took over

Just days after the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Taliban seized power. Hager Ali argues that the US army and its allies foundered because they couldn't resolve two simple questions: What was the democratic end state actually supposed to look like? And was it ever attainable through military involvement

Egypt after the Arab Spring: A Legacy of No Advancement

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi came to power after the military ousted President Morsi in July 2013 following widespread protests and strikes. With the tenth anniversary of the Arab Spring uprising approaching, it has become clear that civil-military relations, infrastructure development, and population growth remain three interrelated challenges for Egypt that have persisted throughout the last decade. The military is historically tied to politics and remains a highly popular institution in Egyptian society. Simultaneously, socio-economic grievances and its importance as an employer continue to push the military into Egypt's domestic politics. Infrastructure development is on a split course: On one hand, because of its resources and manpower, the military can invest in mega-projects in hopes of long-term economic benefits. On the other hand, urbanisation has remained stagnant due to the crackdown on booming illegal, albeit urgently needed, housing. There is acknowledgement among policymakers that population growth is stifling infrastructure and development, yet there is little incentive for change. Measures targeting women fail to gain traction because of societal pressure to bear children, and because access to education, employment, and political participation remain unsafe given rampant sexual violence in public spaces. Through supporting socio-economic advancement in Egypt, Germany and the EU can facilitate the military's withdrawal from politics over the long term. Active support for infrastructure development implemented by civilian actors will over time reduce the need for the military's economic engagement. Improving women's safety will enable their access to work and political participation, which in turn can lower birthrates more effectively than the provision of birth control alone

CIFAR-10: KNN-based Ensemble of Classifiers

In this paper, we study the performance of different classifiers on the CIFAR-10 dataset, and build an ensemble of classifiers to reach a better performance. We show that, on CIFAR-10, K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN) and Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), on some classes, are mutually exclusive, thus yield in higher accuracy when combined. We reduce KNN overfitting using Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and ensemble it with a CNN to increase its accuracy. Our approach improves our best CNN model from 93.33% to 94.03%

Stopping the War in Sudan: civilian actors, not just the parties to the conflict, should lead the peace negotiations

Sudan's two main security forces are fighting each other. A swift military outcome is not to be expected in view of the relatively balanced power between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). This strategic stalemate means that the chances for successful mediation are not hopeless. For this to happen, however, Sudan's international partners would have to abandon the approach that dominated negotiations for decades, namely giving violent actors a leading role in negotiations. Civilian actors formed a broad anti-war coalition that should set the tone for peace talks from the very beginning. This could well be in the interest of the parties to the conflict, as they will need a third actor to arbitrate their relationship in the future. The German government should strive for stronger coordination of the international mediation approaches under civilian leadership from Sudan, while the European Union (EU) should initiate constrains on the financial leeway of Sudan’s violent actors. (author's abstract

Ägypten nach dem Arabischen Frühling: Vermächtnis ohne Aufbruch

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi kam im Juni 2013 an die Macht, nachdem das Militär Präsident Morsi im Kontext anhaltender Massenproteste des Amtes enthoben hatte. Zehn Jahre nach dem Beginn des Arabischen Frühlings wird deutlich, dass die zivil-militärischen Beziehungen, die Entwicklung der Infrastruktur sowie das Bevölkerungswachstum drei weiterhin ungelöste und miteinander in Verbindung stehende Herausforderungen für Ägypten darstellen. Das ägyptische Militär ist historisch eng mit dem politischen System verzahnt und genießt nach wie vor eine große Beliebtheit in der Bevölkerung. Aufgrund sozio-ökonomischer Missstände und seiner Bedeutung als Arbeitgeber ist das Militär kontinuierlich in die Politik involviert. Die Problemlagen bei der Infrastrukturentwicklung sind vielschichtig. Einerseits engagiert sich das Militär mit seinen finanziellen und menschlichen Ressourcen in Großprojekten, die langfristig ökonomische Vorteile versprechen. Andererseits wird die urbane Entwicklung massiv blockiert, weil die Regierung den Bau von dringend benötigtem Wohnraum, der bisher vorwiegend illegal stattfindet, behindert. Zwar erkennen politische Entscheidungsträger an, dass das Bevölkerungswachstum infrastrukturelle und entwicklungspolitische Impulse konterkariert, allerdings gibt es kaum Anreize, dies zu ändern. Maßnahmen zur Bevölkerungskontrolle, die sich an Frauen richten, laufen ins Leere, da diese einem immensen gesellschaftlichen Druck ausgesetzt sind, Kinder zu gebären. Der Zugang zu Bildung, Arbeit und politischer Teilhabe wird Frauen zudem durch weitverbreitete sexualisierte Gewalt im öffentlichen Raum genommen. Deutschland und die EU können den Rückzug des ägyptischen Militärs aus der Politik durch langfristig orientierte sozioökonomische Entwicklungsmaßnahmen unterstützen. Eine Förderung von zivilen Akteuren, die Infrastrukturprojekte implementieren, kann zukünftig die Notwendigkeit eines ökonomischen Engagements des Militärs verringern. Eine Verbesserung der Sicherheitslage für Frauen würde deren berufliche und politische Teilhabe verbessern, was wiederum die Geburtenrate effektiver absenkt als das Verteilen von Verhütungsmitteln

Expert and Corpus-Based Evaluation of a 3-Space Model of Conceptual Blending

This paper presents the 3-space model of conceptual blending that estimates the figurative similarity between Input spaces 1 and 2 using both their analogical similarity and the interconnecting Generic Space. We describe how our Dr Inventor model is being evaluated as a model of lexically based figurative similarity. We describe distinct but related evaluation tasks focused on 1) identifying novel and quality analogies between computer graphics publications 2) evaluation of machine generated translations of text documents 3) evaluation of documents in a plagiarism corpus. Our results show that Dr Inventor is capable of generating novel comparisons between publications but also appears to be a useful tool for evaluating machine translation systems and for detecting and assessing the level of plagiarism between documents. We also outline another more recent evaluation, using a corpus of patent applications

Patient-centered pharmacovigilance: A review

Purpose: To determine through a literature review, the current status of patients’ involvement in adverse drug reactions (ADRs) reporting.Methods: Eighteen (18) studies which were published within the period from 2010 to 2016 were reviewed. The studies were extracted from seven databases, viz, Google Scholars, Medline, Academic Search Complete “EBSCO”, Health and Medical Complete ProQuest, Science Direct- Elsevier, SCOPUS and Wiley Online Library.Results: The review revealed that although the reports by patients were of good quality, the patients’ awareness of, and attitude towards, ADR reporting were generally poor.Conclusion: The results of this review suggest the need for patients’ enlightenment on ADRs reporting. Information on how to improve ADRs reporting is provided.Keywords: Adverse drug reaction, Patients’ reporting; Systematic review, Patient-centeredpharmacovigilanc