Backlash Against International Courts in West, East and Southern Africa: Causes and Consequences

This paper discusses three credible attempts by African governments to restrict the jurisdiction of three similarly-situated sub-regional courts in response to politically controversial rulings. In West Africa, when the ECOWAS Court upheld allegations of torture by opposition journalists in the Gambia, that country’s political leaders sought to restrict the Court’s power to review human rights complaints. The other member states ultimately defeated the Gambia’s proposal. In East Africa, Kenya failed in its efforts to eliminate the EACJ and to remove some of its judges after a decision challenging an election to a sub-regional legislature. However, the member states agreed to restructure the EACJ in ways that have significantly affected the court’s subsequent trajectory. In Southern Africa, after the SADC Tribunal ruled in favor of white farmers in disputes over land seizure, Zimbabwe prevailed upon SADC member states to suspend the Tribunal and strip its power to review complaints from private litigants. Variations in the mobilization efforts of Community secretariats, civil society groups and sub-regional Parliaments explain why efforts to eliminate the three courts or narrow their jurisdiction were defeated in ECOWAS, scaled back in the EAC, and largely succeeded in SADC

Trajectories of institutional design in policy networks

This article focuses on the strategies and processes of institutional design. It starts by recognizing that politicians often try to change institutional structures of networks and therefore more theoretical and empirical attention for these strategies is needed. First, t

The System Kato: Detecting Cases of Plagiarism for Answer-Set Programs

Plagiarism detection is a growing need among educational institutions and solutions for different purposes exist. An important field in this direction is detecting cases of source-code plagiarism. In this paper, we present the tool Kato for supporting the detection of this kind of plagiarism in the area of answer-set programming (ASP). Currently, the tool is implemented for DLV programs but it is designed to handle other logic-programming dialects as well. We review the basic features of Kato, introduce its theoretical underpinnings, and discuss an application of Kato for plagiarism detection in the context of courses on logic programming at the Vienna University of Technology

Dilemmas of the Hungarian-Serbian crossborder area from the perspective of the labour market

Variable angle Mueller matrix spectroscopic ellipsometry is used to study the properties of light reflected from the exoskeleton (cuticle) of the scarab beetle Cotinis mutabilis. For unpolarized incident light, the ellipticity and degree of polarization of the reflected light reveal a lefthanded helical structure in the beetle cuticle. Analysis of the spectral position of the maxima and minima in the interference oscillations of the Mueller-matrix elements provides evidence for a dispersion relation similar to that of optical modes in chiral nematic liquid crystals calculated within a two-wave approximation. Additionally, a structural model for the cuticle of C. mutabilis is derived from the properties of the optical modes for nonattenuated propagation or selective reflection

Kapitein in de Storm? : Een institutionele analyse van de rol van het Productschap Vis in een veranderend zeevisserijnetwerk

De positie van het Productschap Vis is in de afgelopen jaren sterk onder druk komen te staan. Deze positiewijziging is terug te voeren op veranderingen in de institutionele structuur van het netwerk. Deze wijzigt onder invloed van netwerkexterne en –interne ontwikkelingen en dwingt het schap tot een andere rolinvulling

Trajectories of institutional design in policy networks. European interventions in the Dutch fisheries network as an example.

There are important reasons to look at the phenomenon of institutional design more closely both theoretically and empirically. We do that in this paper by first exploring the phenomenon theoretically. We build on network theory to work out a conceptual scheme with which we can analyse interventions in the institutional characteristics of networks. With this conceptual scheme we analyse the institutional design interventions of the European Union in the national fishery networks. In this case we trace the influence of these interventions on the Dutch fishery network between 1990 and 2000. For that we make a detailed analysis of the changes in r

Managing knowledge in policy networks. Organising joint fact-finding in the Scheldt Estuary.

In this paper we analyse the role of knowledge management in the policy process about the Development Plan 2010 for the Scheldt Estuary (a Dutch-Flemish river basin). The conflicts of interests around this package of measures are sharp. Therefore, knowledge is often strategically used in order to defend stakeholders’ own preferences. The project organisation (ProSes) that prepares the Development Plan organised a joint fact-finding process in order to reach ‘shared knowledge’. In this paper we evaluate this process. Especially the relations between the joint fact-finding process and the traditional democratic decision-making process and the separate organisations, which form part of the policy network, seem to be problematic. We formulate some conclusions about the possibilities and limitations of knowledge management within complex policy processes

Exploiting the Feller Coupling for the Ewens Sampling Formula

This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from the Institute of Mathematical Statistics via http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/15-STS53

Sum decomposition of Mueller-matrix images and spectra of beetle cuticles

International audienceSpectral Mueller matrices measured at multiple angles of incidence as well as Mueller matrix images are recorded on the exoskeletons (cuticles) of the scarab beetles Cetonia aurata and Chrysina argenteola. Cetonia aurata is green whereas Chrysina argenteola is gold-colored. When illuminated with natural (unpolarized) light, both species reflect left-handed and near-circularly polarized light originating from helicoidal structures in their cuticles. These structures are referred to as circular Bragg reflectors. For both species the Mueller matrices are found to be nondiagonal depolarizers. The matrices are Cloude decomposed to a sum of non-depolarizing matrices and it is found that the cuticle optical response, in a first approximation can be described as a sum of Mueller matrices from an ideal mirror and an ideal circular polarizer with relative weights determined by the eigenvalues of the covariance matrices of the measured Mueller matrices. The spectral and image decompositions are consistent with each other. A regression-based decomposition of the spectral and image Mueller matrices is also presented whereby the basic optical components are assumed to be a mirror and a circular polarizer as suggested by the Cloude decomposition. The advantage with a regression decomposition compared to a Cloude decomposition is its better stability as the matrices in the decomposition are determined a priori. The origin of the depolarizing features are discussed but from present data it is not possible to conclude whether the two major components, the mirror and the circular polarizer are laterally separated in domains in the cuticle or if the depolarization originates from the intrinsic properties of the helicoidal structure.-matrix characterization of bee-tle cuticle: polarized and unpolarized reflections from representative architectures," Appl. Opt. 49, 4558–4567 (2010).-induced polarization effects in the cuticle of scarab beetles: 100 years after Michelson," Phil. Mag. 92, 1583–1599 (2012). 4. H. Arwin, T. Berlind, B. Johs, and K. Järrendahl, "Cuticle structure of the scarab beetle Cetonia aurata analyzed by regression analysis of Mueller-matrix ellipsometric data," Opt. Express 21, 22645–22656 (2013). 5. matrices: how to decompose them?," Phys. Status Solidi A 205, 720–727 (2008). 6. S. R. Cloude, "Group theory and polarization algebra," Optik (Stuttgart) 75, 26–36 (1986). 7. S. R. Cloude and E. Pottier, "A review of target decomposition theorems in radar polarimetry," IEEE Trans