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This essay explores and assesses the connection between accountability and the quality of democracy in modern Greece along three key dimensions: vertical, horizontal, and social. Vertical involves elected officials and the three branches of government; horizontal deals with the nonelected arms of government and bureaucratic agencies; and social addresses civil society, the mass media, and nongovernmental organizations. Examination and analysis of the relevant data indicate that the state of accountability in Greece is weak in all three dimensions, and a host of structural, social, and attitudinal factors contributes to this weakness. Accountability problems undermine the quality of democracy. The essay expresses hope that reforms initiated under pressure from the European Union eventually would strengthen accountability and Greece's quality of democracy.

We examined the relationship between personality and worry, and tested a mediation model in which intolerance of uncertainty (IU) mediated this relationship. Participants comprised 1,135 Chinese college undergraduates who completed the Chinese versions of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire,
the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale, and the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Short Scale for Chinese. Results showed that neuroticism, extraversion, and IU were significantly correlated with worry. The paths between personality (neuroticism and extraversion) and worry, and the paths
mediated by IU, were significant. Participants' IU mediated the relationship between personality factors of neuroticism and extraversion, and worry. The results indicated that IU can be considered as a partial mediator of the relationship between personality and worry.

The Philippines and the United States maintain close ties that are grounded in a Mutual Defense Treaty signed in 1951. Security cooperation has been a hallmark despite evolving dynamics in the bilateral relationship, including a US colonial legacy that continues to cast a long shadow for many Filipinos. While contentious politics and domestic limitations present a potential constraint on the upward trajectory of the alliance relationship, there are indications that this expanded engagement can continue beyond the Aquino administration. The paper examines the condition of Philippine forces under President Aquino, the International Peace and Security Plan to pursue a credible external defense capability, the process of security sector reform, and matters pursuing a strong Philippine-US alliance.

Different theories have been developed, mainly in the context of the United States, to explain judicial decision-making. In this respect, there is an important ongoing debate over whether judges are guided by the law or by personal ideology. The analysis of the decision-making in the Polish Constitutional Tribunal seems to support the existence of some party alignment. It is to say that judicial behavior is influenced by the ideology, either because judges' preferences coincide with the interests of a specific party or because the judges are incentivized to show their loyalty to a party. Party alignment exists but subject to institutional influences. These results are in line with previous findings for other constitutional courts in Europe.

This article investigates the relations of power and resistance manifest by the WikiLeaks network. The primary research question of this inquiry is, 'what power relations and possibilities for resistance are presented by WikiLeaks as a novel form of network organization?' The article shows that WikiLeaks has been able to exert influence from the periphery of existing networks by exploiting vectors of 'deterritorialization' to destabilize existing power relations. The article contributes to the literature on the network organization by developing an account of resistance to State and corporate power in terms of an 'absolute deterritorialization'. This idea has important implications for the tactics of resistance in network organizations, where vectors of deterritorialization have become a defining feature of resistance tactics of the WikiLeaks network.

This paper focuses on the localisation and adaptation of one particular aspect of the computer game: the soundtrack. Sometimes bespoke, sometimes selected from commercial releases, it provides a background, supporting role in creating atmosphere and supporting the emotive state of the game space. But how often is the target market considered when selecting appropriate musical content? Is it possible to use this almost subliminal channel into the game player's consciousness to increase his awareness of what is happening around him, and give him a feel for his character's emotional and physical wellbeing? This paper presents a novel approach for transforming the soundtrack - via a system the author originally created for the purposes of capturing and recreating emotive content in music.

This paper reorients the analysis of land grabs in Tanzania towards the role of class dynamics. It draws on primary research on resistance against the privatisation of a state rice farm in Mbeya Region. This is a land grab ahead of its time, as it occurred before the wave of global land enclosures spurred by the 2007/8 crisis. The paper argues that the recent wave of dispossession builds on pre-existing processes of rural social differentiation and class formation, which are played out through the politics of land and its class dynamics. It claims that if engaged scholarship is to support the progressive potential of resistance against land grabs in Africa, the class dynamics of land grabs must be acknowledged.

Abstract We analyze the cultural repertoires mobilized by elites to describe "Brazilian people." We rely on survey and in-depth interview data to capture how political, bureaucratic and business elites in Brazil frame poverty and inequality. Our data suggest that elites acknowledge poverty as a structural problem for the State to solve, but remain skeptical on the odds of actual solutions, indicating fatalistic perceptions that categorize the Brazilian poor as unorganized, passive, ignorant, and irrational. Moreover, in their definition of the poor, elites draw a symbolic boundary, separating an active sector (which includes the elites) and a passive one (the "people"). The paper also addresses the effects of such symbolic boundaries on the overall picture of Brazilian inequality.

This study focuses on the cultural characteristics of Ahiska Turks in Wheaton, Illinois in the United States. By trying to understand the culture of the participants, I sought to shed light on how the Ahiska Turks managed to cope with the hardship they experienced and yet preserved their ethnic identities. In this multicase study, I interviewed six male Ahiska Turks. As a result of my analyses, eight themes emerged: family, religion (i.e., Islam), language (i.e., Turkish), communal life, endogamy, authoritarianism, oppression against the preservation of culture and identity, and education for upward mobility. The Ahiska Turks' agrarian way of life, the preservation of their language, and their preference of integration to the larger society for acculturation make them who they are today.

Research has shown that the inability of some mothers to resolve their emotions when confronted with the birth of a child with a disability of cerebral palsy or epilepsy can put the child at greater risk for disruptions of attachment. This qualitative study examined mothers' emotional state of resolution or non-resolution of their children's disability of Down syndrome or autism, and mothers' perceptions of the use of a cognitive intervention. Grounded theory was used to analyze the interviews and the cognitive intervention. The results showed that in addition to the two major categories of resolution and non-resolution, a third major category called "resolving" emerged from the data. New subcategories were discovered, and parts of the cognitive intervention were helpful.

In this study, we told the story of a Kenyan couple, B. and F., who has left Kenya and moved to Southern California. We followed a narrative inquiry framework, using Clandinin and Connelly's (2000) guidelines. We delineated core components of narrative inquiry research, as well as related the journey of B. and F., who have created dual lives in both Kenya and the United States. As part of the interpretive analysis process, we integrated the first author's experiences, both in interviewing the couple and in volunteering in Kenya in previous years. The final product is an intersection of Kenyan and American life that weaves back - and - forth between B. and F.'s and the first author's chronicle, and between the past and the present.

This paper forms part of a series of analytical pieces on various key tax issues, prepared by Policy Department A at the request of the Special TAXE Committee of the European Parliament. It deals with the question what advance tax rulings, advance pricing agreements and other tax arrangements currently are like and how they are meant to develop. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the reasons of their existence and to know the legal and policy limits that should be taken into account on OECD, EU and national levels. The paper gives an overview of the features of tax rulings in general and of the tax rulings practices in the 28 Member States in concrete terms.

Under the term "hybrid warfare" the different methods with which Russia destabilizes Ukraine are discussed, be it propaganda or the infiltration of society. However, the problems that NATO and EU states face in dealing with hybrid threats go far beyond the Ukraine conflict - they point to systematic vulnerabilities of Western societies. This greater spectrum of risks disappears from view, because the current debate is focused on the conflict with Russia and its military dimension. The next conflict may already not follow the Ukrainian pattern. Therefore, EU and NATO must place systematic vulnerabilities at the center of a hybrid security policy, which should build upon a reorganized relationship of resilience, deterrence, and defense. (SWP Comments)

The recent financial and real economic crises have made it clear that macroeconomists need to better account for the influence of financial markets. This paper explores the consequences of treating the interaction between different financial markets ; monetary policy ; and the real economy seriously by developing a fully dynamic theoretical model in continuous time. Starting from a standard New Keynesian framework ; we reformulate and extend the model by means of stochastic differential equations so as to analyse spillover effects and steady-state properties. We solve the nonlinear model using stochastic differential equations rather than third-order perturbation. Applying Bayesian estimation methods ; we estimate the model for the US economy and analyse the financial markets influence on business cycles and monetary policy.

An analytical account of the politicized meaning of law and order is presented in this article using two theoretical frameworks to account for the politicization of law and order from the 1960s and 1970s onward. Debates that emerged from the 1990s that seek to explain the success of the politicization of the 'get tougher' movement are also discussed. In addition to its politicized meaning, law and order has an older and broader historical meaning, which is focused on the front-end of the criminal justice system. Findings from empirical analyses of crime control variables are presented that show too little attention has been paid to the historical meaning of law and order that is a more representative measure of state activities in crime control.