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[The English constitution]--Political essays: The character of Lord Brougham; The character of Sir Robert Peel. ; Mode of access: Internet.

"Questions adapted to Paley's Moral and political philosophy, by A citizen at Massachusetts" : p. [1]-37. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Corruption scandals seem to abound in countries that have undergone reform. However, there has been no study of whether different combinations of reforms cause an increase in corruption. Theory provides some guidance as to the direction of causality -- on the one hand, reforms make politicians accountable to voters as well as introducing more competition, which should decrease corruption. On the other hand, reforms may not be credible, which provides for an incentive for corruption. This paper uses the numerous cases of political and economic liberalizations that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s to examine this issue. The findings are that undertaking both types of reforms in rapid succession leads to a decrease in corruption, while countries that liberalized more than 5years after democratizing experienced an increase in corruption. [Copyright 2007 Elsevier B.V.]

The article examines the deteriorating economic and social situation in Latin America after the "golden decade" (2003 – 2013) and political shifts in the region. During the last electoral cycle, there was a reformatting of the political landscape, including the "right drift" on one hand and the strengthening of the positions of the left forces on the other. At the same time, political polarization at the national and regional levels sharply increased, integration blocks have disintegrated or are in a state of crisis. As a result, the region is no longer a "unity in diversity". Based on an analysis of the latest sources and bibliography, the author shows the reasons for the intensification of European politics in Latin America. He comes to conclusion that the EU tries to play an independent role in the emerging new bipolarity. Although the economy remains a priority in interregional cooperation, political aspects are becoming increasingly important. Both regions actively cooperate in solving global problems, but the priorities of each of them differ significantly. The European Union cooperates with Latin America in strengthening multilateralism and improving global governance, both partners try to reform international institutions, reject protectionism and underline the priority of international law. In the absence of "unity in diversity" and the crisis of integration associations on the continent, the EU pays more attention to bilateral relations with Latin American countries.

"Welsh Writing, Political Action and Incarceration examines the prison literature of certain iconic Welsh authors whose political lives and creative writings are linked to ideas about Wales and the Welsh language. Through this case study, the author interrogates the nature of political activism and social movements, including the use of violence and non-violent approaches to protest. Also examined are the function and significance of variations in literary form, style and language in this prison literature along with the motivations driving each of these prison authors and the effects of their texts on their readers - their community outside of prison, and upon society more widely. This work successfully challenges orthodox perspectives on this body of prison literature. In adopting a case study approach the author universalizes the Welsh experience, drawing insights from international research on prison literature, the political science of protest and the sociology of language"--

"Seit 1989 ist die Entwicklung demokratischer Regierungen in Osteuropa dauerhafter Gegenstand politischer und sozialwissenschaftlicher Diskussionen. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei die Stabilität und die zukünftige Entwicklung der Demokratie innerhalb der gesellschaftlichen Transformationsprozesse dieser Staaten (Huntington 1991), die einerseits auf der Institutionalisierung der Demokratie, d.h. der Internalisierung demokratischer Verhaltensweisen in der Bevölkerung und der Ausbildung demokratisch legitimierter politischer Institutionen (Lipset 1981), andererseits auf der Unterstützung des politischen und wirtschaftlichen Transformationsprozesses durch die Bevölkerung (Easton 1979) beruht. Die Unterstützung und das Vertrauen der Bürger zeigt sich ihren Einstellungen zu den Maßnahmen, dem Erscheinungsbild und den neuen demokratischen Repräsentanten ebenso wie in der Beurteilung des neuen demokratischen Systems und seiner Institutionen. Substantielle empirische Ergebnisse zur politischen Unterstützung folgen einer vergleichenden Betrachtungsweise und reflektieren Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede zwischen den Staaten. Um einen Überblick über den zeitlichen Verlauf und die Situation des Demokratisierungsprozesses anhand der politischen Unterstützung in den verschiedenen osteuropäischen Staaten geben können, werden drei zentrale Zugänge miteinander verbunden: a) eine quantitativ-empirisch komparative Betrachtungsweise über verschiedene osteuropäische Staaten b) eine Betrachtung der Entwicklung von Indikatoren politischer Unterstützung seit 1990 c) eine sozialstrukturelle Verortung der politischen Unterstützung in den Bevölkerungen. Durch diese Kombination von Daten der Makro- und Mikroebene einerseits und der Verbindung von Zeitverlaufs-, Vergleichs- und Sozialstrukturdaten andererseits, ist es möglich, ein fundiertes Bild der Entwicklung politischer Unterstützung und Demokratisierung in den neuen Demokratien zu geben." (Autorenreferat)

The six monarchies on the Arabian Peninsula have devoted enormous sums to defense in past decades. Nevertheless, the gap between their expensive armaments and their capacity to deter aggression and/or project military strength has narrowed but little in that time. This Element takes a political economy approach and argues that structural factors inherent in the Gulf states' political systems prohibit civilian oversight of the defense sector and are responsible for this outcome. Lax restraints on military outlays, in turn, enable widespread corruption, lead to large-scale waste, and account for the purchasing of unneeded, unsuitable, and incompatible weapons systems. The Element explores the challenges caused by plummeting oil prices and the resulting budget cuts and considers the development of domestic defense industries in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, intended as a part of their economic diversification program. The setbacks of the Saudi-led coalition's on-going war in Yemen starkly illustrate the narrative.

"This book introduces readers to analytical interpretation of seminal writings and thinkers in the history of political thought, including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Bible, Thomas Aquinas, Machiavelli, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, Marx, and Nietzsche. Chronologically arranged, each chapter in the book is devoted to the work of a single thinker. The selected texts together engage with 2000 years of debate on fundamental questions including: what is the purpose of political life? What is justice? What is a right? Do human beings have rights? What kinds of human virtues are there and which regimes best promote them? The difficulty of accessing the texts included in this volume is the result not only of their subtlety but also of the dramatic change in everyday life. The authors shed light on the texts' vocabulary and complexities of thought and help students understand and weigh the various interpretations of each philosopher's thought"--

AbstractA growing body of evidence shows that politicians use motivated reasoning to fit evidence with prior beliefs. In this, they are not unlike other people. We use survey experiments to reaffirm prior work showing that politicians, like the public they represent, engage in motivated reasoning. However, we also show that politicians are more resistant to debiasing interventions than others. When required to justify their evaluations, politicians rely more on prior political attitudes and less on policy information, increasing the probability of erroneous decisions. The results raise the troubling implication that the specialized role of elected officials makes them more immune to the correction of biases, and in this way less representative of the voters they serve when they process policy information.

Ideas of Open Science have gained popularity and become ever more accepted as a model for conducting research in the 21st century. Its acceptance at all stages of the research process and scholarly communication gets ever stronger in international institutions, OECD and European Commission, in particular. There are many initiatives constituting awareness on those processes, and good practices of implementing the ideas of Open Science are promoted. In Poland, we could observe several actions in the course of implementation, ranging from a set-up of national ICT platforms for scientific and technical information, that are expected to constitute a core of the national knowledge infrastructure, up to appropriate underlying legislation changes. Apart from ever more numerous activities contributing to the development of specific technical solutions, analyses are lacking in Poland that would show and provide diagnosis of the acceptance for those changes. The same lack is the case for the overall distribution of Open Science models in research work. It is our aim to present initial results of a quantitative survey addressing the social context of Open Science. A study undertaken was focused on the attitude and awareness level among the Polish academic and research communities on broadly viewed general idea of Open Science, open access to research publications, research data and problems of Science 2.0. ; Ośrodek Przetwarzania Informacji - Państwowy Instytut Badawczy ; Maciej Ostaszewski

This study examines the financing choices of firms operating in a weak institutional environment. We argue that in relationship-based systems, global financing and political connections are substitutes: Well-connected firms are less likely to access foreign capital markets because (state-owned) domestic banks provide capital at low cost. Moreover, the additional scrutiny that comes with foreign securities might be at odds with close political ties at home. Using data from Indonesia, we provide strong support for this hypothesis. Firms with close political ties to former President Soeharto are significantly less likely than non-connected firms to have publicly traded foreign securities. We also examine how returns before and during the Asian financial crisis differ between firms with and without foreign securities. The former performed significantly better during the crisis, and their performance advantage increases considerably once we control for a firm's closeness to the Soeharto regime. We show that simple return regressions in earlier work are downward biased if domestic opportunities such as political connections are ignored.