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"Public Administration, Turbulence, and the European Union" published on by Oxford University Press.

"Opportunity and Willingness: From "Ordering Concepts" to an Analytical Perspective for the Study of Politics" published on by Oxford University Press.

This article aims to point out some of the implications of the appearance of governmental perspective in Michel Foucault's work. To achieve that objective, we will specify some predicates associated with the concepts of "governance" and "governmentality", and its relations with certain significant notions such as "power" and "conduct". We will review the methodological assumptions adopted by Foucault as he looks to the State as an inquiry object. We will explain why, in the interpretation proposed by the author, the governmentality of the State plays the role of a specifically modern problem. Finally, we will highlight the link between the emergence of governmentality and the form of critical thinking that involves a commitment to the present time, that intellectual practice identified by Foucault as a characteristic of the Enlightenment. ; El presente artículo tiene por objetivo estipular algunas de las implicacionesque, dentro de la obra de Michel Foucault, supone la aparición de laperspectiva gubernamental. Para ello se especificarán algunos predicadosasociados a los conceptos de "gobierno" y "gubernamentalidad" ensu relación con ciertas nociones significativas como las de "poder" y"conducta". Se señalarán los supuestos metodológicos que Foucault asumeal tomar al Estado como objeto de indagación. Se procurará explicitar porqué, en la reconstrucción propuesta por el autor, la gubernamentalidadestatal constituye un problema específicamente moderno. Por último, seseñalará la vinculación entre el surgimiento de la gubernamentalidad y laaparición de aquella forma de reflexión crítica que implica un compromisocon el tiempo actual y que Foucault identifica con la impronta de laIlustración.

Abstract: The Quebec government considers program evaluations to be a necessity if public organizations are to monitor and improve their performances (Lalande, 2010). However, relatively few evaluations are conducted in prisons, despite the important need for programs in such an environment (Cortoni & Lafortune, 2009). The numerous challenges that face researchers who attempt such evaluations may partially explain the reluctance to undertake them. This article traces and explains the process used by a team of researchers in evaluating an addiction program in a provincial prison. Th e article describes the challenges and problems faced by the team and the strategies that were implemented to overcome these challenges.Résumé : Pour le gouvernement du Québec, l'évaluation de programme est incontournable pour que les organisations rendent compte de leurs performances et les améliorent (Lalande, 2010). Pourtant, peu de démarches évaluatives sont réalisées en contexte carcéral, malgré les besoins importants (Cortoni & Lafortune, 2009), les nombreux défi s qui y guettent les chercheurs pouvant expliquer la réticence de plusieurs chercheurs. L'expérience d'une équipe de recherche à travers l'évaluation d'un programme spécialisé en toxicomanie off ert dans un établissement de détention québécois est présentée afi n d'illustrer les diff érents défi s auxquels elle fut confrontée, mais surtout, de quelles façons ces défi s ont été surmontés. ; Abstract: The Quebec government considers program evaluations to be a necessity if public organizations are to monitor and improve their performances (Lalande, 2010). However, relatively few evaluations are conducted in prisons, despite the important need for programs in such an environment ( Cortoni & Lafortune, 2009 ). The numerous challenges that face researchers who attempt such evaluations may partially explain the reluctance to undertake them. This article traces and explains the process used by a team of researchers in evaluating an addiction program in a provincial prison. Th e article describes the challenges and problems faced by the team and the strategies that were implemented to overcome these challenges.Résumé : Pour le gouvernement du Québec, l'évaluation de programme est incontournable pour que les organisations rendent compte de leurs performances et les améliorent (Lalande, 2010). Pourtant, peu de démarches évaluatives sont réalisées en contexte carcéral, malgré les besoins importants (Cortoni & Lafortune, 2009), les nombreux défi s qui y guettent les chercheurs pouvant expliquer la réticence de plusieurs chercheurs. L'expérience d'une équipe de recherche à travers l'évaluation d'un programme spécialisé en toxicomanie off ert dans un établissement de détention québécois est présentée afi n d'illustrer les diff érents défi s auxquels elle fut confrontée, mais surtout, de quelles façons ces défi s ont été surmontés.

A pesar de su frecuente confusión, los paradigmas de totalitarismo y biopolítica resultan muy heterogéneos. Mientras el libro de Hannah Arendt, Los orígenes del totalitarismo, todavía parece inscrito dentro del marco de la filosofía de la historia, aunque sea invertido y vuelto hacia el origen perdido (la polis griega), la categoría de biopolítica, tematizada a mitad de los años setenta por Michel Foucault, pero anticipada ya en la obra de Nietzsche, impide toda reconstrucción lineal de la relación entre pasado y presente. La conexión directa entre política y vida biológica, que se establece desde un cierto punto de vista, altera radicalmente la filosofía política moderna y la aprehende desde un nuevo horizonte de sentido. Por otra parte, mientras Arendt, pese a la deconstrucción de la idea de derechos humanos, no elabora una verdadera crítica del derecho, Foucault discute explícitamente el nexo entre derecho individual y soberanía estatal. ; Despite his frequent confusion, the paradigms of totalitarianism and biopolitics are very heterogenous. While the book of Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, still seems inscribed inside the framework of the philosophy of history, although inverted and turned toward the lost origin (the Greek polis), the category of biopolitics, themed in the middle of seventy`s by Michel Foucault, but already anticipated in the work of Nietzsche, prevents all linear reconstruction of the relationship between past and future. Is the direct connection between politics and biological life, which is established from a certain point of view, radically alters the modern political philosophy and apprehends it from a new horizon of sense. On the other hand, while Arendt, despite the deconstruction of the idea of human rights, doesn't make a real critique of right, Foucault explicitly discussed the link between individual rights and State sovereignty.

,Was können Soziolog_innen Nützliches für die Gesellschaft tun?' Es gibt verschiedene Möglichkeiten und Perspektiven auf diese Frage zu antworten. Ich wähle eine gesellschafttheoretische und setzte an bei der Systemtheorie von Niklas Luhmann. ,Etwas Nützliches tun?', dies können Soziolog_innen nicht nur, und vielleicht auch nicht in erster Linie, indem Sie sich als Expert_innen für bestimmte Themenbereiche zu Wort melden und fest strukturiertes Fachwissen zur konkreten Problemlösung anbieten. Folgt man der systemtheoretischen Perspektive von Niklas Luhmann, so erhält man zunächst eher einen ,Überblick' über die ,Gesellschaft' als Ganzes und ihrer Ausdifferenzierung in verschiedene funktionale Teilsysteme (Wirtschaft, Politik, Wissenschaft, Kunst, Erziehung, u.a.), sowie deren Autonomie und dann deren dennoch wechselseitiger aufeinander bezogene Angewiesenheit, im Sinne des füreinander Zur – Verfügung- Stellens von Möglichkeitsbedingungen des je eigenen Operierens. Ein derartig abstrakter Blick, lässt die Frage nach der ,Nützlichkeit' soziologischer Reflektion schnell in den Hintergrund treten und man richtet es sich bequem ein im Elfenbeinturm faszinierender akademischer Begriffsspiele. Was man dabei schnell übersehen kann, ist, dass gerade der begrifflichen Abstraktion ein Potential inhärent ist, einen Beitrag für die Bearbeitung konkreter komplexer gesellschaftlicher Probleme zu liefern. In der vorliegenden Dissertation versuche ich, für diese Möglichkeit der Systemtheorie durch Arbeit an den Grundbegriffen quasi eine Vorarbeit zu leisten und mit Hilfe einer Integration pragmatistischer Modelle eine Perspektive zu entwickeln, die in der Lage ist, brückenbildende Kommunikationsprozesse zwischen den (relativ) autonomen Funktionssystemen zunächst theoretisch- begrifflich zu beschreiben. Die Arbeit ist so konzipiert, dass in einem weiteren Schritt im Anschluss an die durchgeführte Theoriearbeit ein Konzept ,soziologischer Gesellschaftsberatung' entwickelt werden kann, das sich der Aufgabe widmet, komplexe, langfristige Problemkonstellationen soziologisch zu beobachten und zu bearbeiten.

Inter-ethnic relations in today's diversifying urban societies are of major political concern, as inequalities and feelings of displacement and discrimination are leading to increasing polarisation. In the past decade, governments in the Netherlands and other western countries have addressed these problems by creating 'mixed' neighbourhoods to facilitate inter-ethnic contacts and reduce inequalities and irreconcilable cultural differences through such bridging ties. Past studies looking from a supply-side or demand-side perspective have however been inconclusive about the effectiveness of such area-based policies for promoting inter-ethnic ties. In this dissertation inter-ethnic contact and experiences of individuals and the role of the neighbourhood are analysed from a situational, activity-based approach, focusing on the main question: What is the meaning of spatio-temporal situations including the residential neighbourhood, for social networks and physical and virtual inter-ethnic contacts and experiences? Chapter 2 discusses the role of residential neighbourhoods in inter-ethnic contacts, when taking into account activity and travel patterns of individuals with a quantitative analysis of existing survey data. 'Traditional models' models that analyse the effect of neighbourhood population composition on the chance of having inter-ethnic contacts are compared with models that incorporate individual activity patterns. In Chapter 3 the role of individual spatio-temporal trajectories for the development of ties with members of other ethnic groups is discussed, and how this is related to the ethnic composition of the neighbourhood. A qualitative analysis of the composition and geographical distribution of the social networks of respondents of native and Turkish-Dutch respondents in two Rotterdam neighbourhoods is made. The path-dependency of individual activity-patterns and social networks and the role of pre-existing ties is emphasized. Chapter 4 discusses what strategies individuals apply to experience belonging ...

This paper presents an overview of the coding aspects of a GNSS receiver. Coding allows detection and correction of channel-induced errors at the receiver, here the focus is on the mitigation of threats from malicious interferences. Although the effects of interference at different stages of GNSS baseband processing has been deeply analyzed in the literature, little attention was devoted to its impact on the navigation message decoding stage. Theis paper provides an introduction to the various coding schemes employed by current GNSS signals, discussing their performance in the presence of noise in terms of block-error rate. Additionally, the benefits of soft-decoding schemes for navigation message decoding are highlighted when jamming interferences are present. The proposed scheme requires estimating the noise plus interference power, yielding to enhanced decoding performances under severe jamming conditions. Finally, cryptographic schemes as a means of providing anti-spoofing for geosecurity location-based services, and their potential vulnerability are discussed, with particular emphasis on the dependence on the dependence of the scheme on successful navigation message decoding. ; Grant numbers : This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through project TEC2015-69868-C2-2-R (ADVENTURE) and by the Government of Catalonia under Grant 2014–SGR–1567.© 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.

English culture and politics in the last decade of the sixteenth century were both patriarchal and patrilineal, in spite of— or, perhaps, in part, because of—the so-called bastard queen sitting on the throne. The prevailing political questions of the day concerned Elizabeth's successor and the fate of the nation that, so many believed, hung precariously in the balance. Questions of legality, legitimacy, and fitness formed the crux of these debates, but almost all claimants attempted to justify their right by tracing their bloodlines back to either Henry VII or Edward III, the respective patriarchs of the Tudor dynasty and the houses of York and Lancaster. These debates hinged on the 1543 Third Act of Succession, in which Henry VIII stipulated that the heirs of his younger sister Mary (the Grey line) should take precedence over the heirs of his elder sister Margaret (the Stuart line). After Elizabeth suffered a dangerous bout with fever in 1593, these discussions intensified.

This article presents a normative critique of the coherence of democracy promotion in the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). As an immanent critique, the paper derives its normative standards internally from an analysis of key ENP policy documents. It is argued that democracy promotion is in conflict with some of the other goals of the ENP such as market liberalisation, trade policy reforms and private sector development. Further, the incentive of market integration is argued to undermine democracy promotion. Though the ENP's current way of pursuing the goal of democratisation is normatively incoherent, this article also argues that incentivising democratisation through conditionality is not inherently contradictory. Two potential ways democratisation could be coherently promoted are suggested: delimiting the policy to unilateral transfers conditional on democratisation alone ('simple transfers'), or offering EU membership to ENP countries ('no integration without incorporation').

Based on the cultural criticism elaborated in the second half of the 20th century, this article analyzes two of the major Latin American theoretical discussions on community and politics, namely decolonialism and posthegemony. The main argument of this paper is that both currents need to be examined without losing sight of the weight of the unknowable. By comparing those two currents with Ernesto Laclau's definition of populism, we explain the possibilities and the limitations of the alternative political subjects sketched by both tendencies in order to replace the populist subject with a more democratic discourse practice. ; Partiendo del marco de la crítica cultural elaborada desde la segunda mitad del siglo xx, este artículo analiza dos de las principales discusiones teóricas latinoamericanas relacionadas con la comunidad y lo político, la decolonialidad y la poshegemonía. La principal hipótesis de este texto consiste en afirmar que ambas corrientes actuales deben ser confrontadas sin dejar de considerar el peso de un elemento incognoscible. Al compararlas con la definición de populismo planteada por Ernesto Laclau, se pretenden esbozar las posibilidades y las limitaciones de los sujetos políticos alternativos propuestos por ambas tendencias a la hora de reemplazar al sujeto populista en aras de una práctica político discursiva más democratizadora.

Colorful ornaments have been the focus of sexual selection studies since the work of Darwin. Yellow to red coloration is often produced by carotenoid pigments. Different hypotheses have been formulated to explain the evolution of these traits as signals of individual quality. Many of these hypotheses involve the existence of a signal production cost. The carotenoids necessary for signaling can only be obtained from food. In this line, carotenoid-based signals could reveal an individual's capacity to find sufficient dietary pigments. However, the ingested carotenoids are often yellow and became transformed by the organism to produce pigments of more intense color (red ketocarotenoids). Biotransformation should involve oxidation reactions, although the exact mechanism is poorly known. We tested the hypothesis that carotenoid biotransformation could be costly because a certain level of oxidative stress is required to correctly perform the conversion. The carotenoid-based signals could thus reveal the efficiency of the owner in successfully managing this challenge. In a bird with ketocarotenoid-based ornaments (the red-legged partridge Alectoris rufa), the availability of different carotenoids in the diet (i.e. astaxanthin, zeaxanthin and lutein) and oxidative stress were manipulated. The carotenoid composition was analyzed and quantified in the ornaments, blood, liver and fat. A number of oxidative stress biomarkers were also measured in the same tissues. First, we found that color and pigment levels in the ornaments depended on food levels of those carotenoids used as substrates in biotransformation. Second, we found that birds exposed to mild levels of a free radical generator (diquat) developed redder bills and deposited higher amounts of ketocarotenoids (astaxanthin) in ornaments. Moreover, the same diquat-exposed birds also showed a weaker resistance to hemolysis when their erythrocytes were exposed to free radicals, with females also enduring higher oxidative damage in plasma lipids. Thus, higher color production would be linked to higher oxidative stress, supporting the biotransformation hypothesis. The recent discovery of an avian oxygenase enzyme involved in converting yellow to red carotenoids may support our results. Nonetheless, the effect could also depend on the abundance of specific substrate carotenoids in the diet. Birds fed with proportionally higher levels of zeaxanthin showed the reddest ornaments with the highest astaxanthin concentrations. Moreover, these birds tended to show the strongest diquat-mediated effect. Therefore, in the evolution of carotenoid-based sexual signals, a biotransformation cost derived from maintaining a well-adjusted redox machinery could coexist with a cost linked to carotenoid acquisition and allocation (i.e. a resource allocation trade-off). ; Esther García-de Blas was supported by a predoctoral grant (JAE-PRE) from the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) co-financed by Fondo Social Europeo (EU). This study was funded by Consejería de Educación y Ciencia, Junta de Comunidades de Castilla la Mancha (project ref.: PII1I09-0271-5037) and Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (CGL2009-10883-C02-02 and CGL2015-69338-C2-2-P) from the Spanish Government. ; Peer Reviewed

Background: The transition from high school to post-secondary education and work is difficult for adolescents on the autism spectrum. Transition planning can be an effective way of supporting adolescents on the autism spectrum to prepare for leaving school and to succeed in obtaining employment; however, there is a need for an autism-specific transition planning program with proven effectiveness. This paper describes a trial protocol for evaluating the Better OutcOmes amp; Successful Transitions for Autism (BOOST-A (TM)); an online interactive program that empowers adolescents on the autism spectrum to plan their transition from school to further study, training, or employment. Methods: The trial will involve adolescents on the autism spectrum in high school and their parents, who will be alternately assigned to a control group (regular practice) or an intervention group (using the BOOST-A (TM)). The BOOST-A (TM) was developed using the PRECEDE-PROCEED model, and is based on the self-determination model, and the strengths-and technology-based approaches. It involves participants completing a series of online modules. The primary outcome will be self-determination, because high self-determination has been linked to successful transition to employment among adolescents on the autism spectrum. Secondary outcomes will include domain-specific self-determination, career planning and exploration, quality of life, and environmental support. Data will be obtained from questionnaires completed by the adolescent on the autism spectrum and their parent/s. Data collection will take place at baseline (Time point 1) and 12 months later (Time point 2). Discussion and conclusions: This trial will provide evidence of the effectiveness of the BOOST-A T to assist adolescents on the autism spectrum to successfully transition from school. ; Funding Agencies|Australian Federal Government; Curtin University; Cooperative Research Centre for Living with Autism (Autism CRC) under the Australian Governments Cooperative Research Centers Program

Several authors have recently come to the conclusion that the linguistic human rights approach that has so far been followed in South Africa has largely failed. English has become the dominant language in all spheres of life despite the fact that the South African Constitution recognises 11 languages as having official status. Afrikaans, as the language of one of the minority groups in the country, has so far not enjoyed the same status as English and it is unlikely that it ever will, in view of the recognition which English enjoys as an international language of trade and commerce. Although the South African Constitution provides all the means required to entrench and promote Afrikaans (as well as the other 10 languages) and the rights of their speakers, there seems to be no political will to do so.In view of this, another strategy should be considered to improve the status of Afrikaans as an official language and also as a language of learning and teaching (LOLT) in schools and universities. To do this, the linguistic human rights approach should be relinquished in favour of a linguistic civil rights approach. This is an approach that embodies strategic actions and steps taken at ground level, in their everyday lives, by members of the Afrikaans community for the purpose of promoting the status of Afrikaans in South Africa, particularly as LOLT in schools and other institutions of learning. A linguistic civil rights approach utilises the space offered by the statutory fundamental human rights framework of the country for its strategy, but deviates from a linguistic human rights approach in that it does not look to the government to promote the status of the minority languages, but looks to the community in question (in this case, the Afrikaans community) to take up cudgels for Afrikaans, particularly as LOLT in schools and universities. Put differently, it uses the existing statutory framework as the space within which to work towards the retention and the promotion of Afrikaans as an official language and as LOLT in schools and universities.

Building on prior thinking about political representation in democratic deliberation, we argue for four ideals of inclusion, each of which is most appropriate to a different situation. These principles of inclusion depend not only on the goals of a deliberation, but also on its level of empowerment in the political system, and its openness to all who want to participate. Holistic and open deliberations can most legitimately incorporate and decide for the people as a whole if they are open to all who want to participate and affirmatively recruit perspectives that would be underrepresented otherwise. Chicago Community Policing beat meetings offer an example. Holistic and restricted forums (such as the latter stages of some participatory budgeting processes) should recruit stratified random samples of the demos, but must also ensure that problems of tokenism are overcome by including a critical mass of the least powerful perspectives, so that their views can be aired and heard more fully and effectively. Forums that aim to improve relations between social sectors and peoples should provide open access for all who are affected by the issues (relational and open), if possible, or recruit a stratified random sample of all affected, when necessary (relational and restricted). In either case, proportional representation of the least advantaged perspectives is necessary. However, when deliberation focuses on relations between a disempowered group and the rest of society, or between unequal peoples, it is often most legitimate to over-sample the least powerful and even to create opportunities for the disempowered to deliberate among themselves so that their perspectives can be adequately represented in small and large group discussions. We illustrate this discussion with examples of atypical Deliberative Polls on Australia's reconciliation with its indigenous community and the Roma ethnic minority in Europe.