A longitudinal analysis of piracy in shipping

Using a dataset of 3,404 acts of maritime piracy from 1996 to 2008, this paper investigates whether piracy is related to the economic development and socio-political status of countries where attacks occur.maritime piracy

Redefining Puerto Rico\u27s Political Status

Almost four decades after the U.S. government announced to the United nations that Puerto Rico had ceased to be a colony, Congress reconsidered the country\u27s political status. In 1989, the 101st Congress initiated a legislative process that was designed to produce a bill to authorize a referendum on the political status of Puerto Rico

Forgotten status of many: Kosovo's economy under the UN and the EU administration

After eight years of the United Nations (UN) administration, Kosovo again is returned to the international centre of attention - this time about her future political status. The document presented by the UN Special Envoy for Kosovo, Martti Ahtisaari, proposed an ambiguous status settlement that is portrayed and understood as a supervised independence. Whatever expectations from political perspective will be, that is of secondary importance for this paper - the aim is in Kosovo's aggregate uncertainty about her economic sustainability, namely to investigate the relationship between fragile institutions, poor governance and weak economic performance. With a foreign aid since the second half of 1999 amounting to 22 billion, Kosovo still has massive unemployment and widespread poverty. How the UN's largest experiment ever undertaken, involving considerable resources and long time, left the economy in such a poor state? --Kosovo,UNMIK,Provisional Institutions of Self-government,poverty,political status settlement

The Future Political Status of Puerto Rico

This thesis is an analysis of current events regarding the future political status of Puerto Rico. It examines the various actors in Puerto Rico and in the United States congress, as well as international and United Nations positions. Ultimately, the paper assesses the possibility of determining the permanent political status of Puerto Rico and the indecision on the part of the United States Congress, concluding that a permanent decision is unlikely before the end of the 20th century

A New Political Status for the Basque Country?

The Basque Country can be said to have entered a new post-violence political scenario in 2012. In this context, a new opportunity for debating about the political status of the Country re-emerges. Electoral behavior and additional social evidence show that the accommodation of the Basque Country within the current Spanish constitutional system is far from being settled. While Catalonia claims for recognition as an independent nation, the debate about the future political relationship between the Basque Country and Spain will be a central feature during the mandate of the Basque prime minister, newly elected in 2012. However, given the different positions of the main political families of this fragmented society, the possibility for a broad agreement that could also be driven through the current constitutional system seems very remote, and major future developments in this field remain uncertain and unlikely. Such a process would face two significant obstacles. On the one hand, there is the deep political fragmentation and distrust among the main political forces in the Basque Country, whose electoral expression seems to remain significantly stable. On the other hand, there is the resistance of Spanish society to recognize or accomodate asymmetry at the constitutional level

George Higoumenakis (1895-1983): Greek dermatologist

This paper describes the Higoumenakis sign, enlargement of the sternal end of the clavicle in patients with late congenital syphilis and the dermatologist after whom it is named. Several professors and doctors from the Medical School of the University of Athens opposed his actions especially at the University in Greece. His persistence led him to productive scientific activity in syphilis, leishmaniasis and psoriasis. fie became a member of the Greek Parliament from 1964 to 1967 and eventually Minister of Hygiene - even though this may have been an imprudent political choice, due to the unstable socio-political status of that period. He died on 27 December 1983 at the age of 88

The basis of equality

It is often said that justice requires equality. Which kind of equality justice requires is, of course, a matter of dispute: it is widely held that in a just society there must be equality before the law, and equality of opportunity; many have claimed that justice requires equality of concern for the welfare of each person; and some have argued that significant inequalities in the allocation of resources must be avoided. And, of course, many believe that justice requires public affairs to be conducted through democratic institutions-for only such arrangements express an equality of political status, and seek to provide an equality of influence

National in form, Putinist in content: minority institutions ‘outside politics’

Over the past three decades, Russia has developed a set of institutions for the management of ethno-linguistic diversity based on the principle of ‘national cultural autonomy’. This article examines the positioning of these institutions within Russian society, arguing that while state-endorsed discourses locate them within the culture sphere—treated as distinct from political processes—there is in fact an interpenetration of ‘politics’ and ‘culture’. The article identifies why these institutions position themselves within the ‘cultural sphere’ while also supporting the country’s meta-narratives on inter-ethnic tolerance and, effectively, the political status quo. Soviet legacies of inter-ethnic relations continue to be socially embedded, yet within this framework some dissenting voices are also discerned

The Political Status of Puerto Rico: An International Issue

The intention of this paper is to establish why the political status of Puerto Rico is an international issue, rather than a purely internal matter of the United States and provide a possible transition plan that will permit the U.S. and Puerto Rico to make a decision that would modify the status quo. The arguments assert that the political status of Puerto Rico can be resolve if the United States takes a genuine interest by working on a domestic policy to address the situation and finally end the inattentive policy. On the other hand, the main Puerto Rican parties should all agree to work on a local political process in order to come up with a consensus on a formula that expresses the will of the people of Puerto Rico. There has been a tendency to believe that only those Puerto Ricans who support independence consider the status quo an international issue. At the present time the argument asserts that the actual status of Puerto Rico provided a significant change in 1952 from a purely colonial government to certain degree self-government, but 51 years of this formula have not resolve the issue. The island is considered the oldest colony in the world. Regardless of the Puerto Rican preferences for the following options: commonwealth, statehood or independence; the people of Puerto Rico consider this issue a domestic matter that has evolved into an international issue that needs to be resolve in the near future

Cyprus and Moldova: political status and reintegration

Διπλωματική εργασία--Πανεπιστήμιο Μακεδονίας, Θεσσαλονίκη, 2009.The political system in Moldova and Cyprus in late 2009, provides an opportunity for starting an reintegration process. The political status is given through elections