Suchergebnisse

Bürgerenergiegenossenschaften gestalten die Transformation des deutschen Energiesystems wesentlich mit, indem sie zu einem dezentralen Ausbau erneuerbarer Energien und zur Akzeptanz der Energiewende beitragen. Ziel des Beitrags ist, die Rolle der Bürgerenergiegenossenschaften als Agenten des Wandels in der Energiewende zu beleuchten. Dazu wird ein Zugang über zivilgesellschaftliches Engagement gewählt, da Bürgerenergiegenossenschaften neben ihrer ökonomischen Ausrichtung auch eine soziale, gemeinwohlorientierte Komponente zugeschrieben wird. In dem Beitrag wird aufgezeigt, dass in Bürgerenergiegenossenschaften - trotz wirtschaftlicher Tätigkeit und Gewinnabsichten - zivilgesellschaftliches Potenzial sichtbar wird. Daran anknüpfend wird das Konzept der Agenten des Wandels aus der Transformationsforschung vorgestellt und der Mehrwert des Konzepts zur Verortung von Bürgerenergiegenossenschaften aufgezeigt.

Tarkastelen pro gradussani Venäjällä vuonna 2012 merkittäväksi keskusteluaiheeksi nousseen ulkomaalaisten agenttien käsitettä. Tarkoituksenani on kuvata, ymmärtää ja arvioida kriittisesti ilmiötä, jossa aiemmin epämuodollinen ja erittäin kiistanalaista käsitettä alettiin soveltaa juridisesti venäläisiin kansalaisjärjestöihin. Pyrin kuvaamaan ulkomaalaisten agenttien käsitteen virallisten ja epävirallisten tasojen yhteisoloa, näiden olemusta, ideoita, uskomuksia ja käytännön ilmentymiä. Tarkoituksenani on myös arvioida tämän ilmiön kautta venäläistä politiikkaa sen kansallisen hallintavaltaperinteen ja kansainvälisen hallintavallan näkökulmista. Lähestymistapani tutkimukseen on rakenteellinen ja tutkimusmenetelmäni on foucault'lainen diskurssianalyysi ja tiedon arkeologia. Aineistoni koostuu Venäjän Federaation laista, joka teki kesällä 2012 ulkomaalaisista agenteista juridisen käsitteen, minkä lisäksi käytän primääriaineistonani uutisartikkeleita kolmelta venäläiseltä mediayhtiöltä ensimmäisen vuoden ajalta siitä, kun edellä mainittu laki hyväksyttiin. Lisäksi käytän teorioita hallintapolitiikasta ja Venäjän tutkimuksesta apunani luodakseni näkökulmia tutkimusaiheeseen. Ulkomaalaiset agentit ilmentävät perinteistä venäläistä vertikaalia hallitokulttuuria, joka on konfliktissa globaalien vaikutusten alla olevan kansalaisjärjestötoiminnan kanssa. Ulkomaalaisten agenttien diskursseissa ilmenee perusteellinen ristiriita siitä, ovatko kansalaisjärjestöt näiden ulkomaalaisten tukijoiden poliittisen tahdon ajajia, onko ulkomaalainen agentti-termi oikeutettu ja rikkovatko uudet hallintosäädökset hyvän hallinnon periaatteita, demokratiaa ja ihmisoikeuksia. Ulkomaalaisten agenttien juridinen perusyksikkö Venäjällä, voittoa tavoittelematon järjestö, on käsitteellisesti voimakkaasti valtiopolitiikka sidonnainen. Venäjän epämuodolliset rakenteet suosivat vahvasti toimijoita, joita ei leimata ulkomaalaisiksi agenteiksi. ; In my pro gradu thesis I examine the concept of foreign agents which arose into the focus of Russian public debate in 2012. My goal is to describe, understand and evaluate critically the phenomenon where the formerly informal and controversial concept was taken into juridical implementation on Russian civil movements. I strive to describe the official and non-official co-existence of foreign agent ideas, their essences, beliefs and various appearances. Through foreign agents my goal is also to evaluate Russian politics and society in perspective of the national tradition of governing and global governmentality. I have a structuralist approach and my primary methods are Foucauldian discourse analysis and archeology of knowledge. My research material consists of the federal law making foreign agents juridical concept in 2012 and news articles from three Russian media companies from the time of the first year since introducing the law. Addingly I reflect relevant Foucauldian theories and research on Russia to bring the research better in contact with established framework of social sciences. Foreign agents embody traditional Russian vertical governing which is in conflict with civil movement activities connected with foreign influences. There appears contradiction of whether the foreign agents are advocates of the will of foreign regimes, if the term usage is correct and legitimate, do the Russian government follow principles of good governing, democracy and human rights. The basic units of foreign agents in Russia are non-commercial organizations that unlike the popularly synonymously used non-governmental organizations have strong discoursive connection with governmental politics in Russia. The non-formal structures in Russia tend to favor existence of the non-foreign agent subjects in Russia.

The impact of ignoring collinearity among predictors is well documented in a statistical literature. An attempt has been made in this study to document application of Principal components as remedial solution to this problem. Using a sample of six hundred participants, linear regression model was fitted and collinearity between predictors was detected using Variance Inflation Factor (VIF). After confirming the existence of high relationship between independent variables, the principal components was utilized to find the possible linear combination of variables that can produce large variance without much loss of information. Thus, the set of correlated variables were reduced into new minimum number of variables which are independent on each other but contained linear combination of the related variables. In order to check the presence of relationship between predictors, dependent variables were regressed on these five principal components. The results show that VIF values for each predictor ranged from 1 to 3 which indicates that multicollinearity problem was eliminated. Finally another linear regression model was fitted using Principal components as predictors. The assessment of relationship between predictors indicated that no any symptoms of multicollinearity were observed. The study revealed that principal component analysis is one of the appropriate methods of solving the collinearity among variables. Therefore this technique produces better estimation and prediction than ordinary least squares when predictors are related. The study concludes that principal component analysis is appropriate method of solving this matter.

This article studies civil–military relations in defence procurement. Applying insights from the principal–agent model, we argue that decision-making about defence procurement is inherently vulnerable to agency problems. Given the technical nature of these dossiers, governments and parliaments are often heavily dependent upon military expertise, creating leeway for defence administrations to steer decision-making towards their preferences. By means of a case study of the replacement of the F-16 fighter jets in Belgium, we examine whether and how complex defence procurement dossiers allow for exploitation of expertise through strategic information management from the defence administration to the Minister of Defence. In addition, empirics reveal a to date unexplored phenomenon of agent intrusion. It captures the situation in which an agent takes a prominent formal advisory position within the decision-making apparatus of its political principal, providing additional means to outplay its information advantage over the principal in favour of its own interests.

Besides the simpler ability to interact, open multi-agent systems must include mechanisms for their agents to reach agreements by taking into account their social context. Argumentation provides multi-agent systems with a framework that assures a rational communication, which allows agents to reach agreements when conflicts of opinion arise. In this paper, we present the dialogue protocol that agents of a case-based argumentation framework can use to interact when they engage in argumentation dialogues. The syntax and semantics of the argumentation protocol are formalised and discussed. To illustrate our proposal, we have applied the protocol in the context of a water market. By using our dialogue protocol, agents represent water users that are able to explore different water allocations and justify their views about what is the best water distribution in a certain environment. ; This work is supported by the Spanish government Grants CONSOLIDER INGENIO 2010 CSD2007-00022, MINECO/FEDER TIN2012-36586-C03-01, and MICINN TIN2011-27652-C03-01. ; Heras Barberá, SM.; Botti Navarro, VJ.; Julian Inglada, VJ. (2014). Modelling dialogues in agent societies. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence. 34:208-226. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engappai.2014.06.003 ; S ; 208 ; 226 ; 34

In recent years, the Taiwan government's active promotion of the marketization of education, coupled with a decreasing number of school-age children, has given rise to a highly competitive educational market. As a result, school principals (at all levels) feel compelled to resort to
unethical marketing practices to ensure the survival of their schools. The main purpose in this study was to identify the unethical marketing practices commonly used by school principals in Taiwan, and then determine their prevalence, the degree to which they contravene established ethical
norms, and the circumstances in which school principals are likely to employ them. The results show that whereas bribery is regarded as the most unethical marketing strategy, invasion of privacy was seen as much less serious.