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The improvement of emergency department processes involves the need to take into considerationmultiple variables and objectives in a highly dynamic and unpredictable environment, which makes thedecision-making task extremely challenging. The use of different methodologies and tools to support thedecision-making process is therefore a key issue. This article presents a novel approach in healthcarein which Discrete Event Simulation, Simulation-Based Multi-Objective Optimization and Data Miningtechniques are used in combination. This methodology has been applied for a system improvementanalysis in a Swedish emergency department. As a result of the project, the decision makers were providedwith a range of nearly optimal solutions and design rules which reduce considerably the length of stayand waiting times for emergency department patients. These solutions include the optimal number ofresources and the required level of improvement in key processes. The article presents and discussesthe benefits achieved by applying this methodology, which has proven to be remarkably valuable fordecision-making support, with regard to complex healthcare system design and improvement.

Austrian TV debates are held as roundtable talks with little formal rules, in particular the use of documents and objects brought along is not prohibited. This paper deals with the persuasive use and situated history of "Taferln" (small cardboard signs) during the 15 one-on-one encounters produced live by the Austrian public service broadcaster ORF before the general election in 2013. The video data were coded in terms of object use, relevant sections further transcribed and evaluated in conjunction with the journalistic picture direction and camera work. The findings show that politicians employed "Taferln" in 12 broadcasts, usually to be seen in close-up on the TV screen, suggesting that "Taferln" are an established means in Austrian political discourse to argue and persuade. The qualitative analysis describes in detail how "Taferln" provide communicative benefits in the conversational situation: how "Taferln" can be used to refute statements of the counter party, how conversational roles are performatively constituted based on object use, and how affordances of the material objects are strategically exploited for persuasive action. -- NORMAL --

Since it first appeared in Fantastic Four Annual #2 (1964), Doctor Doom's homeland Latveria has gone through many changes, having experienced various invasions, revolutions, obliterations and magical reconstruction. The way it has been portrayed within the Marvel comics universe has also changed, from initially appearing as a medieval land under the yoke of an evil King to its current complex status as an emergent Eastern European superpower. This paper will examine these changes as reflections of Western attitudes to Eastern European nations during the Cold War and beyond through a series of examples including Doom's revolutionary seizure of power, the Fantastic Four's recurring interventions, and Nick Fury's disastrous attempt at regime change in 'Secret War' (2005). Drawing on the work of Jason Dittmer around national superheroes and 'popular geopolitics', the paper will conclude that Doctor Doom's rule over Latveria represents a potent symbol of the nationalist 'other' in American popular culture - and perhaps offers a glimpse of future possibilities in the new world order of Trump and Putin.

During the 2014 presidential election in Indonesia two diametrically opposed candidates appeared to abide by an informal set of rules whereby neither challenged the other's integrity in public. Privately, however, campaign advisors devised ways to attack their opponents, primarily by using media contacts to spread rumors and allegations. As a result, the 2014 presidential race in the world's third largest democracy was the most negative and polarizing since the fall of Suharto's authoritarian regime in 1998. The Obor Rakyat media scandal, a major political event in 2014 that remains understudied, represented a new manifestation of rumor politics and smear campaigning aimed at President Jokowi, widely hailed as a novel reformist politician because of his relatively clean record and lack of direct association with the Indonesian political establishment. In particular, the Obor Rakyat reports made three serious allegations against Jokowi: that he is a bad Muslim, that he is a puppet president, and that he is in the pocket of Chinese financiers known as cukong. (Crit Asian Stud/GIGA)

Abstract: "European integration has profoundly reshaped states in Europe's peripheries. It has deprived them of the traditional means of autonomously managing development, imposed institutions defending the integrity of the regional market from domestic actors, and provided them, in exchange, with EU-level development policies. However, whereas in the South the EU has relied primarily on incentives for remaking the economic state, in the East it has engaged in direct institution-building. The different EU strategies pushed the evolution of the economic state in the two peripheries in different directions and the two parts of Europe now face different developmental dilemmas. Despite their differences, neither the Eastern nor the Southern states have the capacity to get in synch the triple challenge of integration: playing by the uniform regional rules, improving their positions in the European markets and extending the range of domestic beneficiaries of integration. While the ensuing economic and political tensions might endanger regional integration, EU-level capacities for addressing the developmental problems of the peripheries are in short supply." (Seite 663)

English School theorists argue that primary institutions uphold order in international society. However, they disagree about what those primary institutions actually are. Moreover, comparatively little research tackles the links between primary institutions and secondary ones, embodied in international organizations. Yet, these different levels of international institutions contribute in specific ways to change and stability in international affairs. I argue for understanding primary institutions as practice-based and continuously discursively constructed. This allows us to explore how international organizations, although created by states, can themselves shape primary institutions. I illustrate my argument with examples from the United Nations (UN) Security Council. There are manifest tensions in the Security Council between, on the one hand, the evolving primary institution of great-power management and, on the other hand, the "frozen" secondary institution of membership rules. This has produced a lock-in of the primary institution. Indeed, we should recognize that such tension between institutions, rather than stability and harmony among them, reflects the normal state of affairs in international society.

The 'crisis' of liberal peace has generated considerable debate in International Relations. However, analysis is inhibited by a shared set of spatial, cultural and temporal assumptions that rest on and reproduce a problematic separation between self-evident 'liberal' and 'non-liberal' worlds, and locates the crisis in presentist terms of the latter's resistance to the former's expansion. By contrast, this article argues that efforts to advance liberal rule have always been interwoven with processes of alternative order-making, and, in this way, are actively integral, not external, to the generation of the subjectivities, contestations, violence and social orders that are then apprehended as self-evident obstacles and threats to liberal peace and as characteristic of its periphery. Making visible these intimate relations of co-constitution elided by representations of liberal peace and its crisis requires a long view and an analytical frame that encompasses both liberalism and its others in the world. The argument is developed using a Foucauldian governmentality framework and illustrated with reference to Sri Lanka.

A neglected function of constitutions is their role in facilitating communication. This is particularly important if one accepts the approach of constitutional pluralism, both at the international level and between plural constitutions at the national level. Communication may be between different types of constitutions or between legal and other forms of social systems such as the economy and politics. Theoretical support for this approach can be found in Habermas's discursive theory of democracy, and also in recent developments in systems theory. The role of constitutional communication is here illustrated through four case studies drawn from economic management. The first two concern failures of communication through the use of balanced budget rules, and in the breakdown of institutional relations in the UK under the pressure of the financial crisis of 2008–2009. The other two identify successes; the German Federal Constitutional Court's support for legislative deliberation in relation to eurozone rescue measures and the development of countervailing institutions linked by soft law in UK monetary and fiscal policy.

This article examines the implementation of Greenland's self-government (commonly referred to as self-rule) through an analysis of the Greenland government in the first four years of the Greenland Self-Government Act (SGA). Greenland and its government are numerically dominated by the Inuit, one of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic. The article begins with an overview of Greenland as a country and its political development, from a Danish colony to the 2009 Greenland SGA. After explaining Greenland's governance structure and the role of Inuit governance in Greenland's parliamentary system, it analyses the implementation process of the self-government agreement. It is argued that the SGA with its main focus on modern nation-building within the framework of Western institutionalism constitutes a unique means of implementing indigenous self-government. It revisits the norm of the right of indigenous peoples to self-determination understood primarily as a collective human right and sets a precedent within the framework of indigenous rights in international law.

This paper investigates the empirical validity of the setup of a large-scale government neighbourhood investment programme in the Netherlands. Selection of neighbourhoods into the programme was determined by a measure of neighbourhood quality. At first sight this is a textbook example for the application of a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of the programme on neighbourhood outcomes. Neighbourhoods close to the threshold should be similar before the programme starts. However, at the discontinuity threshold we observe a surprisingly large gap in the share of non-Western immigrants between neighbourhoods that were selected into the programme and neighbourhoods that were not. In addition, there is non-compliance with the assignment rule based on the quality index. The pattern of non-compliance is consistent with investing in neighbourhoods with a high share of non-Western immigrants. Finally, the way in which neighbourhoods were defined could be a likely explanation for the imbalance in the share of non-Western immigrants at the discontinuity threshold.

This paper investigates the empirical validity of the setup of a large-scale government neighbourhood investment programme in the Netherlands. Selection of neighbourhoods into the programme was determined by a measure of neighbourhood quality. At first sight this is a textbook example for the application of a regression discontinuity design to estimate the causal effect of the programme on neighbourhood outcomes. Neighbourhoods close to the threshold should be similar before the programme starts. However, at the discontinuity threshold we observe a surprisingly large gap in the share of non-Western immigrants between neighbourhoods that were selected into the programme and neighbourhoods that were not. In addition, there is non-compliance with the assignment rule based on the quality index. The pattern of non-compliance is consistent with investing in neighbourhoods with a high share of non-Western immigrants. Finally, the way in which neighbourhoods were defined could be a likely explanation for the imbalance in the share of non-Western immigrants at the discontinuity threshold.

Marriage recording aims to realize marital order in society. It is an effort regulated by legislation, to protect the dignity and sanctity (mitsaq al-ghalidz) of marriage, and more particularly of women in domestic life. Through the marriage certificate proven by the marriage certificate, each of which the husband and wife shall obtain a copy, in the event of a dispute or quarreling between them, or one irresponsible, the other may make any legal remedy in order to retain or obtain the rights of the individual, respectively. Because by the deed, the husband and wife have authentic proof of their legal deeds. Among Islamic societies there are still two views on the existing legal or regulatory norms, especially marriage rules. Thus, when looking at the reality of Muslims in particular, there are still many cases of unregistered marriages. Thus there is a dichotomy between religious law and state law. The type of this research is library research (library research).Keywords: Nikah siri, Problem, Islamic Law

Who controls the information that is part of the EU legislative processes and is the process as a whole under control? This article explores the legal framework and the applicability of that framework to evolving informal practices by the three key institutions (EP, Council, Commission) involved in the EU legislative process. Given the legislative deadlock on an updated transparency regulation, there are challenges relating to the opacity of Council and Member State positions, legal advice and the so-called four-column documents, which are used to map out progress in interinstitutional negotiations. Currently, the institutions themselves keep control and adopt the relevant rules as a matter of internal (or interinstitutional) working arrangements. We argue that when the institutions exercise legislative functions they are in fact exercising highly political functions that define the fundamental policy choices of the Union's action. This requires not only passive transparency in the form of access to documents but also proactive transparency by the institutions themselves.

Credit rating agencies play an important role in the world due to the fact that rating has become a reliable indicator of the evaluation of a debt investment. A reliable agency that is globally recognised ought to be independent, objective, professional, ethical and substantive. Rating itself constitutes an opinion that concerns the possibility of servicing of payment obligations made by a given entity. It is also frequently defined as an independent and objective evaluation of credit risk of a given entity wishing to contract a debt. Rating is a dynamic category concerning the future, therefore each forecast is surrounded by uncertainty. Ratings of individual agencies may differ considerably. The aim of the article is to discuss the role of international rating as a credibility measure of a state, the role of credit rating agencies, of the rules of rating and of the level of rating for the countries of the European Union, especially given the fact that rating for a country is reflected in its credibility and attractiveness.

In this contribution, we first discuss how the analysis of self-reported measures of subjective well-being can contribute to a better understanding of the extent to which public choices serve individuals' preferences. Our research insights will be drawn from the analysis of the well-being consequences of alternative institutional arrangements, the assessment of specific policies, the study of procedural utility, as well as the testing of theoretical predictions derived from models of the political process. Second, we adopt a reverse perspective and discuss how the application of insights from public choice analyses can inform and inspire happiness research on issues related to public policy. In particular, happiness indicators provide new and complementary information about the satisfaction of citizens' preferences, which will strengthen democratic competition. However, the happiness approach also has clear limitations if it is understood as a decision rule for good policy and the interaction between citizens and the government is reduced to monitoring reported happiness.