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"Fleeting Fictions" argues that novels central to the genre of Hollywood fiction engaged with film's technological ramifications as a method of countering the studio system's promotional image of itself. My use of the word "technology" refers not only to the technical infrastructure of film production but also to the more figurative technologies surrounding Hollywood, specifically the Hays Office responding to celebrity scandal off screen while attempting to regulate content on screen. The first half of this dissertation examines fiction of the 1920s and early 1930s that responded to film's technological restrictions. Chapter 1, for instance, argues that the extra-girl novels of the 1920s viewed cinema's lack of sound as linked to the broader forms of silence restricting women in the industry, while Chapter 2 argues that the hard-boiled detective novels of the late 1920s and early 1930s likened Hollywood Boulevard to an expansive soundstage where stars performed their studio-mandated "morals clause." In their attempts to tap into the commercial potential of these behind-the-scenes narratives, the studios adapted several of the novels into sugarcoated films once they had the technological tools to do so, which in part doomed some novels to obscurity.The second half of this dissertation examines texts that respond to the industry's technological abundance with the rise of three-strip technicolor in the mid-1930s. Bringing the forgotten texts of the first half of the dissertation to bear on more canonical texts, Chapter 3 argues that fiction from 1939 pushed for an understanding of technicolor film as aesthetically rooted in Southern California boosterism and its political agenda to normalize whiteness. Such a literary critique prefigured film noir of the 1940s and 1950s. Chapter 4 argues that Los Angeles noir inherited the tradition of the Hollywood novel by engaging with the technological excess of the studio system. In so doing, however, film noir came to eclipse the function of the Hollywood novel.

Our research consists of studying the behavior of professionals, leaders, advisors, and customers, in the areas of retail banking and insurance that have implications for the risk borne by clients. Legislators and supervisors focused on regulations and standards, in particular in prudential, accounting and technical areas but underestimated the role and impact of the behavior of each actor that may be inappropriate and unfair despite the new regulatory framework. Understanding, recognition and control of the behavior of each actor are necessary for a healthy balance between efficiency of the company and respect of the interests of customers in a sustainable manner.This study was conducted in immersion during three years within the Autorité de Contrôle Prudentiel et de Résolution, allowing to see, analyze and understand in parallel the issues of supervisors and the subjects of their controls. The analysis of various national and international reports, procedures and monitoring reports, questionnaires for professionals and semi-structured interviews with all stakeholders related to our research subject, allowed to have relevant, reliable and practical elements to address our central problem.The financial activities are based on trust and in this context of continuing crisis, the need for monitoring and regulation is increasing. Banking and insurance sectors are complex, technical and hardly intelligible to the general public, the behavior of financial actors must be exemplary in their interactions with customers, especially when they present and explain financial products.Since the beginning of the crisis at the end of 2007, many international scandals have highlighted a large number of human errors related to unethical behavior in the field of consumer protection. Beyond the loopholes regarding financial or operational risks, the business practices of some financial institutions have been challenged leading to penalties by the national supervisor for certain banks and insurance companies.This raises the essential ...

Since 1979, one out of six South American presidents have failed to complete their terms of office. These "failed presidencies" occur when democratically elected presidents are forced to leave office early, but without compromising the democratic order. This dissertation seeks to solve the puzzle of what drives presidents out of office. Previous studies have found that institutional and political factors, economic issues, and social mobilizations are powerful forces affecting presidential failures. In this research, I examine the impact these factors have on the likelihood of presidential failures. Additionally, I argue that previous works have failed to find a significant relation between democracy and presidential failure because they have used an inadequate conceptualization and measurement of democracy. I postulate that using a country's current levels of democracy does not fully capture democracy's effects, and that thinking of democracy as a legacy may better enable us to see its true effects on presidential failures. Drawing upon the literature of regime legacies, I hypothesize that there is a significant negative causal relation between a country's democratic tradition or legacy and the occurrence of presidential failures. I employ a mixed-method research approach to test and examine the effects of these factors on the occurrence of presidential failures. Using survival analysis, I quantitatively analyze 65 all presidencies in South American countries between 1979 and 2012. In addition, I use a case-study approach for the qualitative, in-depth analysis of two failed presidencies: Fernando de la Rúa in Argentina (1999-2001) and Lucio Gutiérrez in Ecuador (2003-2005). The major finding of this dissertation is that political institutions clearly matter for presidential survival. The survival analysis and the two case studies show that partisan support and democratic tradition play a pivotal role when it comes to surviving in office. Surprisingly, economic recessions, political scandals, general strikes, and ...

The article examines US–France relations, in particular within the NATO framework, as well as positions of France in the Alliance, its participation in NATO operations and its desire to play a more active role in this organization. The pilot of American interests in the Asian-Pacific region and events in Ukraine revive aspirations of Europeans for more active building of the "European defense". The France-Britain military collaboration is developing intensively. However, France considers the formation of the "European army" as a question of a very long-term perspective. The article also examines the stance of France on the free trade zone between the EU and the U.S. The Atlantic solidarity is one of the most important directions in the French foreign policy. In power, Francois Hollande continues his predecessor's policy in this sphere. Nowadays, France demonstrates the accordance with the US almost in all international issues from Syria to Ukraine. France has shown its dependence on the US policy in such questions as "Mistrals" delivery to Russia and the attitude to the Ukrainian crisis. The scandal around the American ANB spying after French political and business elite did not destroy this dependence. The participation of France in NATO is the most important format of transatlantic relations. The French expert association and opposition forces constantly criticize the transatlantic direction of Hollande's foreign policy. The greater and greater part of French elite stands for the returning of an independent voice of France in international affairs. The great anxiety in French society is provoked by the U.S. pulling into the crusade against Russia. However, in the present situation, French leaders are not going to spoil relations with their transatlantic partner, because they believe that only together with the U.S. they can counter contemporary challenges of the modern world.

Colombian society and the international community are on the lookout with the results of the dialogue between the national government and the FARC, leading to the end of the armed conflict in our country. This process takes place in the midst of a polarized political and social context of the same duration and viability of an economic situation marked by the slowdown in the national and international productive activity and a severe institutional crisis to the recurrent scandals on public-private corruption. This article advances a reflection on the implementation of the agreements concluded between the parties, especially the so called territorial peace, its conceptualization, identification of the challenges that their developmentinvolves issues such as building a model of coexistence, deploy public policies, the role of social organizations, and changes in the institutional architecture that demand this commitment to the post-conflict. ; La sociedad colombiana y la comunidad internacional se encuentran a la expectativa con los resultados de los diálogos entre el gobierno nacional y las Farc, que conduzcan a la terminación del conflicto armado en nuestro país. Este proceso se desarrolla en medio de un contexto político y social polarizado sobre la duración y viabilidad del mismo, una coyuntura económica marcada porla desaceleración de la actividad productiva nacional e internacional y una severa crisis institucional ante los recurrentes escándalos sobre corrupción pública-privada. Este artículo adelanta una reflexión sobre la puesta en marcha de los acuerdos que se suscriban entre las partes, específicamente la llamada paz territorial, su conceptualización, la identificación de los retos y desafíos que su desarrollo implica en aspectos como el modelo de convivencia a construir, las políticas públicas a desplegar, el rol de las organizaciones sociales, y los cambios en la arquitectura institucional que demanda esa apuesta hacia el postconflicto.

Информационно-психологическое противоборство рассмотрено с позиций устойчивости его манипулятивной функции массовым сознанием и поведением. На основании содержательного анализа нормативно-правового контента выделены векторы воздействия на массовое сознание политических технологий в рамках такого вида информационного противоборства в форматах формирования, развития нравственности, патриотизма, культуры; противодействия распространению и защиты населения от ложного, опасного контента. Обоснованы причины эффективности манипулирования с помощью негативной информации и неэффективности использования технологий противодействия. Охарактеризована востребованность применения политической мифологизации, политического имиджирования, политических скандалов, хоррор-менеджмента как традиционных политических технологий, используемых для достижения результата в создании у населения определенных политических убеждений и ориентаций. Определены элементы деструктивной инновационности в политических технологиях. В итоге указывается на необходимость переориентирования традиционных политических технологий с негативного целеполагания на позитивный, что позволит им развиваться инновационно в информационно-психологическом противоборстве. ; The information and psychological antagonism is considered from positions of stability of its manipulative function by mass consciousness and behavior. On the basis of the substantial analysis of standard and legal content vectors of impact on mass consciousness of political technologies within such type of information antagonism in formats of formation, development of moral, patriotism, culture are allocated; counteractions to distribution and protection of the population against false, dangerous content. The reasons of efficiency of a manipulation by means of negative information and an inefficiency of use of technologies of counteraction are proved. The demand of application of a political mythologization, political image processing, political scandals, horror management as the traditional political technologies used for achievement of result in creation at the population of certain political convictions and orientations is characterized. Elements of destructive innovation in political technologies are defined. As a result it is indicated the need of reorientation of traditional political technologies from a negative goal-setting on positive that will allow them to develop innovatively in an information and psychological antagonism.

Accès restreint aux membres de l'Université de Lorraine jusqu'au 2016-12-31 ; Financial scandals have been increasing since the past forty years and reaction from media and public opinion prove the more and more apparent intolerance towards this peculiar offences. The interest of european authorities in this matters reveal this intolerance too. European regulations and directives in this field are more and more: on the one hand, in order to strengthen the prevention of market abuse by raising publicly accountable on issuers financial instruments ; on the other and, in order to tighten up punishment of market abuse and to consolidate the harmonisation between the Member States of European Union, including France and Italy. As a result, there is an accumulation of norms, rather similar in both national legal order, at least with regards to financial information, but legal framework is not always intelligible. As for punishment, criminal penalties are successfully integrated beside amministrative penalties. The dual market abuse repression has been rejected by european courts, then by Constitutional Counsil, but suppress the one or the other form of punishment doesn't seems to be appropriate. On the contrary, a distribution of competences between criminal courts and administrative authorities seems to be judicious and necessary. The topics of criminal liability of legal persons has been brougth sharply into focus of european market abuse legislation : while italian national legal order has already integrate the requirements of European Union, french system of criminal liability of legal persons appears to be in jeopardy. Finally, the many rules of market abuse prevention and repression deployed by european, french and italian authorities, prompt also to suggest a common model of compensation for market abuse damages, in order to ensure consistency of system of fight against market abuse. This consistency seems to be reflected in the creation of conditions and terms rules for compensation of market abuse victims in ...

"Since its introduction to the Yugoslav space, football has always been connected to the main political conflicts. After 1945, the Yugoslav Communists rebuilt sport in their sense, and football as the most important sport was consequently put into service for their state- and nation-building policy. The central symbol was the national team, whose successes represented those of the Yugoslav Socialist model. Nevertheless, in contrast to football's role during the breakup of Yugoslavia, the socialist period itself has been rarely analyzed. Furthermore, football is often used as a tool for analyzing other social phe-nomena (mostly nationalism) and not treated as a socially embedded, but autonomous cultural element with specific internal logics. This article explicitly aims to show the worth of Yugoslav football history as part of a cultural history of sport. Using the examples of the scandal surrounding "the hymn of Luxembourg" 1983, the legendary victory over Bulgaria in December 1983 and the impressive Yugoslav victory at the U20 World Cup in Chile 1987, the article examines how representations of the national team developed when Yugoslavia more and more slipped into a multiple political, economic, social and "identitarian" crisis after Tito's death 1980 and "national" tensions started to grow within the country. On the one hand, the article deals with the representations that the communists and other actors (mainly the new, "nationalist" generation of fans) produced in the 1980s. On the other hand, it takes a look at the success and failure of such representations in Yugoslav society. It is shown that the national team was an attractive symbol that especially in deep crisis could awake and confirm feelings of identification with socialist Yugoslavia. However, it also becomes clear that the potential of football for political representation is always determined by the historical situation and fundamentally limited by its character as a sport with its own logics." (author's abstract)

In the fast changing business dynamics and ever growing challenges, organizations are seeking for developmental solutions on both technical and human front. As technical solutions can be a quick fix approach, human challenges takes time to be resolved and transform into a culture statement. The crisis of ethics and moral values while practicing the Corporate Governance1 due to the prevailing mindset and the practices has evolved new scams and scandals leading to bankruptcies and recessions. On one hand we talk about Human Rights commission and at the same time layoffs, harassment, back stabbing, whistle blowing and practices like moonlighting are becoming a culture statement. This paper focuses upon creating a proper blend of learning from the East and the ongoing practices from the West to build Spiritual Business Units by applying the Yug Nirman postulates propagated by Yugrishi Pt. Sriram Sharma Acharya. It is an attempt to bridge the gaps in the existing practices and basic principles. Also, it tries to address the need to look back at our native models of development and avoid the alarming situations of the Wall Street or Times Square, which is a consequence of their glamorous looking materialistic yet hollow business models, by revitalizing and rejuvenating the value based Indian approach, which made us prosperous and lead the world economy. As a matter of fact Maddison notes that India was contributing 32.9% of the Global GDP during the beginning of the Common Era, i.e 2009 years back. An economy that remained as the most prosperous one for many centuries with successful businesses must have had very good management systems. We have to remember here that India was not just the major economic power, but also the premier centre for educational, scientific, intellectual and spiritual activities with pioneering contributions in diverse fields.

Following financial scandals at the turn of the century, the audit profession in the European Union, the United States and elsewhere, has undergone profound legislative and regulatory reforms, including the requirement for intense public oversight of the profession. The article provides an overview of the development of external quality assurance systems in the audit profession in the EU and the U.S. with emphasis on the system of public oversight, implemented after the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in the U.S. and the Statutory Audit Directive of 2006 in the EU. The aims of the article are: 1) to explain different backgrounds of external quality assurance systems in the EU and the U.S., 2) to describe implemented practices related to the public oversight system in the two regions and 3) to present the main findings of the existing empirical research focusing on the impact of the newly established systems of public oversight on the quality of audit services. Our literature research reveals that the evidence on the impact of the public oversight on the ultimate audit quality in the EU has not yet been provided because the Member States have only finished the implementation of the Statutory Audit Directive requirements into national legislations by the year 2008. In the U.S., on the other hand, first empirical evidence has been presented, suggesting that the quality of auditing has improved after the passing of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002. So far evidence has been provided to support the proposition that PCAOB opinions are associated with earnings quality of the audit firm's clients, that auditors have become more conservative and that the new inspectors (as opposed to the former system of self-regulation) can hold the auditors to stricter standards by taking concrete actions against felonious auditors and imposing costly penalties.

Основываясь на материалах опроса общественного мнения жителей Алтайского края, печатных и краевых интернет-СМИ, автор доказывает зависимость низкого уровня легитимности региональных органов законодательной власти, слабой информированности граждан об их деятельности от особенностей их репрезентации в информационном пространстве региона. Автор показывает наличие четкой дифференциации депутатов Алтайского краевого Законодательного собрания по информационной активности, преобладание у большинства из них новостей о профессиональной деятельности над сообщениями о депутатской работе. Также отмечается незначительная роль партийных фракций в формировании положительного имиджа региональной легислатуры, слабое использование ими, как и депутатами, гарантированных законом возможностей для информирования избирателей о своей законотворческой деятельности. Отсюда жители края не понимают роли краевой легислатуры и не желают участвовать в ее формировании. Кроме того, формированию негативных установок населения в отношении Заксобрания способствуют широко освещаемые СМИ скандалы с депутатами. ; The article is based on the findings of the public opinion poll carried out in the Altai Region and materials of the Altai Region's mass media and it shows how the peculiarities of regional legislative bodies representation in the information environment result into the low level of their legitimacy and public low awareness of their legislative activity. The author demonstrates that there is a distinct differentiation among the Altai Region Legislative Assembly deputies related to their outreach, most of them demonstrating the predominance of news about their professional activities over that one about their legislative activities. In addition, the author emphasizes an insignificant role of the political factions within the legislative assemblies in creating the positive image of the regional legislature. Both the political factions and deputies insufficiently use the legally guaranteed opportunities to inform their electorate about their law-making activities. That is why the public do not understand the role of the regional legislative bodies and opt out of participation in its formation. Moreover, scandals with deputies widely covered by journalists contribute to creating the Legislative Assembly negative public image.

We develop a data mining and visualisation toolkit to study how the information is shared on online social network services. This software allows to observe relationships between conversational, semantical, temporal and geographical dimensions of online communication acts. Internet memes are short messages that spread quickly through the Web. Following models that remain largely unknown, they articulate personal discussions, societal debates and large communication campaign. We analyse a set of Internet memes by using methods from social network analysis and Chinese natural language processing on a large corpus of 200 million tweets which represents/reflects the overall activity on the Chinese social network Sina Weibo in 2012. An interactive visualisation interface showing networks of words, user exchanges and their projections on geographical maps provides a detailed understanding of actual and textual aspects of each meme spread. An analysis of hashtags in the corpus shows that the main content from Sina Weibo is largely similar to the ones in traditional media (advertisement, entertainment, etc.). Therefore, we decided to not consider hashtags as memes representatives, being mostly byproducts of wellplanned strategic or marketingcampaigns. Our final approach studies a dozen of memes selected for the diversity of their topic: humor, political scandal, breaking news and marketing. ; Nous proposons de concevoir et développer un outil permettant d'analyser la diffusion d'information sur les services de réseaux sociaux en ligne grâce au traitement et à la visualisation de données. Fruit d'une réflexion méthodologique, ce dispositif permet d'observer les relations entre les dimensions conversationnelles, sémantiques, temporelles et géographiques des actes de communication en ligne. Courts messages se propageant rapidement sur la Toile selon des modèles encore mal connus, les mèmes Internet comptent parmi les contenus les plus prisés sur les plate-formes web. Les mèmes Internet circulant sur le service de microblog ...

Concerns of Thai consumers on food safety have been recently increasing, especially in urban areas and for fresh produce because food safety scandals, such as chemical residues on fresh produce (e.g., cabbage) still frequently occur. The Thai government tried to meet consumer needs by imposing in the domestic market a stronger regulation aimed at increasing the baseline level of food safety assurance and by introducing a voluntary standard (based on Good Agricultural Practices or GAPs and known as Q-GAP) and the related food safety label (i.e., Q mark). However, since standards and regulations are weakly implemented in the domestic market compared to exported products, there is still a lack of Thai consumers' confidence in the safety of local food products. In this work the current situation of GAPs adoption in Thai fresh produce production is analysed. Furthermore, it is studied whether Thai consumers place value on food safety labels available on the market, to know whether consumer demand could drive the market of certified safer products. This study contains three essays: 1) a review of the literature, 2) a qualitative study on stakeholders' perception toward GAPs adoption and 3) a quantitative study, aimed at analysing consumers' preferences and willingness-to-pay for food safety labels on fresh produce using a discrete choice experiment. This dissertation contributes to the economics of quality assurance and labelling, specifically addressing GAPs and food safety label in the fresh produce supply chain. Results show that Q-GAP could be effectively used to improve food safety in Thai domestic market, but its credibility should be improved. Stakeholder's awareness toward food safety issues and the delivery of reliable and sound information are crucial. Thai consumers are willing to pay a premium price for food safety labelled produce over unlabelled ones. Implications for both government and business decision-makers are discussed.

Demands on safe, high-quality and healthy food are unprecedentedly increasing in both emerging economies and advanced countries. Food safety incidents and scandals, frequently breaking out around the world, are significantly reducing the confidence of consumers in food safety and quality. It is even more difficult to achieve the full transparency, visibility and traceability of dynamic cross-border and global food supply chains, which is critical to ensure food safety and quality, due to: the personalization and globalization of consumer demands; the diversities of food products, raw materials and ingredients; the loose relationships between food business partners; the technology and resource barriers in aligning business processes, coordinating and sharing information; and the changing government supervision mechanisms and standards. Social networking technologies and social software are promising enablers to facilitate end consumers, food companies and government agencies to participate in open discussion, comments and feedback on the quality and safety of cross-border foods. They are able to connect, interact, communicate and collaborate with each other in loose, open, effective and flexible ways for enhancing the transparency and visibility of cross-border and global food supply chains through collective wisdom and intelligence. In this paper a framework is proposed for developing social networks enabling food traceability systems, which not only leverages enterprise applications, public service platforms for food quality, safety and traceability operated by government or industrial associations, but utilizes such emerging technologies as Internet-of-Things, social analytic and mobile technologies to ease interactive communication and collaboration between various stakeholders of food chains. Guidelines, architectures, use scenarios, and technology alternatives for implementing the traceability systems are also discussed in this work. A prototype, titled OSCM-FD, is being implemented and pilots are being conducted to verify the validity of the proposed framework. ; published_or_final_version

I entered college in September of 1975, a working class kid from Queens whose father, Hyman Isaac, was an unemployed linotype operator (I wonder how many of our younger readers even know what that is; it's a typesetter, a trade that no longer exists), and whose mother, Sylvia Isaac, was an office secretary. I thus enrolled at Queens College, the neighborhood school, part of the City University of New York which, in 1975, offered free tuition to all New York City high school graduates. A month later, on October 30, the New York Daily News carried one of the most famous newspaper headlines of the century: "Ford to the City: Drop Dead." The Ford in question was Gerald Ford, the unelected President of the United States who had acceded to the office from the House of Representatives when first the Vice-President (Spiro Agnew) and then the President (Richard Nixon) resigned amid scandal and disgrace. And his "drop dead" to "the city"—New York City—was a strong declaration that the US government would not bail New York out of the severe fiscal crisis in which it was mired. That same autumn, the State of New York passed the New York State Financial Emergency Act of The City of New York, placing the city in receivership, under the fiscal control of a state-appointed Emergency Financial Control Board: EFCB. That acronym, and a second with which it was conjoined—MAC, or "Big MAC," the Municipal Assistance Corporation, the bond authority led by Felix Rohatyn that became the veritable executive office of the city—is indelibly stamped on the psyches of all who lived in and around New York in those years. For me, a teenage college student, the most palpable effect of all of this was the abolition of tuition-free higher education in New York City in 1976—a sour note during that year's bicentennial celebration of American freedom.