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The Tyranny of the Majority: A Case Study of the McCarthy Era
Get PDFAlexis de Tocqueville observed in his travels through the United States in the 1830s that the system of majoritarian representation could become subject to a ‘tyranny of the majority’. This concept exists on the political and the social axis. The tyranny of the majority of the social axis, where majorities impose their viewpoints on minorities and subjugate minorities to their opinion is most extensively analyzed in this chapter. In this, minorities tend to conform to majority opinion out of fear of repercussions. This chapter thus provides a link between the tyranny of the majority and the conformity theory. It researches whether American society has become subject to the tyranny of the majority during the McCarthy era. The main claim derived from this research problem is that American society was indeed subject to the tyranny of the majority during the McCarthy era. Nevertheless, a tension was apparent in society. Although minorities indeed conformed to majority opinion and there was a climate of political intolerance, some minorities were in fact able to turn the conformity theory upside down and influenced the majority in such a way that minority opinion prevailed. This phenomenon was noticeable in the Civil Rights Movement, where African Americans persuaded predominantly white Americans that African Americans should be granted equal rights. In short, American society is highly in flux. Although the tyranny of the majority became a social reality during the McCarthy era, at the same time a minority was able to persuade the majority of its viewpoints
The Challenges of an Ethnic-democracy: Populism, Netanyahu and Israel\u27s Path
Get PDFSoon to become Israel\u27s longest serving Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu\u27s fourth government is regarded as the most right-wing coalition in Israeli history. While populism is on the rise worldwide, Netanyahu has been in power intermittently since the 90\u27s – utilising a particular kind of populism articulated by Dani Filc (2009) - post-populism - to remain in power. Examining Israel\u27s special and delicate political status as an ethnic-democracy, this chapter concludes that the current government is promoting rhetoric and policy which entail the risk of defying the balance between Israel\u27s Jewish-ethnic character, its obligation to Democratic values and the integrity of its ethnic and political minorities. In election campaigns and attempts to secure political capital, as well as in everyday legislation, the current government has directly and indirectly targeted minorities, left-wing opposition and civil rights group. Exclusionary nationalistic rhetoric, a tool vastly used by right wing populists worldwide in the US, France, the UK and others, has become a common commodity in the Israeli right\u27s toolbox. With the balance still preserved, Israel\u27s democracy is facing grave challenges ahead – and as Israel\u27s president Rubi Rivlin said, the Israeli society must ensure it reaches these challenges prepared. 
The role of experience and social learning in the tool use and tool making of the New Caledonian crow (Corvus moneduloides)
Get PDFTool use and manufacture are central points in the development of human culture and certain sophisticated aspects of it are believed to be uniquely human. Studies of New Caledonian crows present findings that question this uniqueness and suggest highly sophisticated tool behavior. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this behavior and to present different theories on how this behavior is obtained. Recurring evidence supports the view that inheritance interacts with experience and social learning over the course of the development of tool use and tool manufacture, but further research is required to identify the extent to which each aspect contributes to it. Nevertheless, the behavior of the New Caledonian crow may offer insight on the development of human culture
Social Capital: Rethinking Change What A Theory of Social Capital Reveals About Democratic Stability
Get PDFDemocracy is often perceived to be in a state of crisis, with theorists ready to measure the perceived decline in democratic health. In this paper I aim to understand the implicit assumptions about democracy within the theory of social capital formulated by Robert Putnam. Normative assumptions expressed by such a theory can say more about democracy than the findings they present based on specific collections of data. A conceptual analysis of social capital is done through a historical overview of the term, by locating it within the philosophical debate between individualism and communitarianism, and by presenting empirical and theoretical counterarguments to its claims. Political participation and civic engagement is shown to not simply be declining, but rather traditional metrics no longer capture the reality of how politics is performed. Equally, certain forms of social capital generating networks are questioned regarding their perceived positive impact on democracy, as understood within a sociological framework. Finally a look at the phenomenon of populism is considered. Populism is reconceptualised as not necessarily signifying the crisis of democracy as a whole, but as an opportunity to reflect on representative politics and the current political paradigm
Determinants of Chinese FDI to Sub-Saharan Africa: a regional analysis and Guinea-Bissau case study
Get PDFThis thesis aims to contribute to the literature concerned with putting the nature of South-South economic ties into perspective. Specifically, it empirically examines which characteristics of Sub-Saharan African nations are related to higher foreign direct investment inflows from China. A comprehensive literature review yields a range of factors that are hypothesized to play a role in this regard. For a case study of Guinea-Bissau results suggest that even though high endowments of natural resources are inherent to the country, Chinese money inflows in the form of foreign direct investments only occur sporadically. In the regional comparison my panel data regression analysis yields that the country factors with significant, positive association to Chinese direct-investment sums are more democratic regimes, bigger markets, a non-French and non-British colonial legacy, as well as a higher agricultural potential. Contrary to what the existing literature suggests, no evidence is found that countries with higher natural-resource endowments actually receive more foreign direct investments from China
Beating the Odds - A State Space Model for predicting match results in the Australian Football League
Get PDFThis thesis investigates whether state space models have the potential to pre- dict the outcome of Australian Rules Football matches and can produce significant positive return over the bookmaker’s odds. The point of departure is a sample of 18 Australian football teams over the period 2012 to 2016. Modeling and predicting a football match is a challenging task, since the model should incorporate two di↵er- ent random processes. Firstly, the evolution of parameters, i.e. the team strengths change over time as it incorporates changes in team composition, coaching, train- ing ground, injuries etc. Secondly, the distribution of ranking data with these time-varying propensities changes stochastically over time. Given that we cannot observe all team-specific and location-specific factors, a dynamic state space model for team strengths is introduced. The team strengths are assumed to follow an order-one autoregressive process and are estimated using a recursive Kalman filter algorithm. Smoothed state estimates are applicable for ranking teams and predict- ing future outcomes of the matches. We show that beating the bookmaker’s odds is a challenging task indicating that the betting markets are ecient. Keywords: Sport Analytics; Kalman Filter Algorithm; State Space models; Predictive inference; Ranking; Australian Rules Football.
Between Privacy Protection and Data Progression - The GDPR in the Context of People Analytics
Get PDFNew analytical capabilities have revolutionized the field of Human Resources (HR). With the incessant creation of data and data sources, a new field of practice has developed: people analytics.However, people analytics raises crucial privacy concerns for employees. The new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is supposed to provide more transparency and stronger protection for individuals. By conducting interviews with experts in people analytics and carrying out a survey with people analytics practitioners, this paper examines how the GDPR can be expected to affect organisations using people analytics and their employees. The results of this research indicate that the GDPR will provide stronger privacy and data protection for employees and still allow organisations to conduct people analytics
Invisible Cohabitants: Investigating the Microbial Presence in the Kitchen Sponges of Maastricht
Get PDFThis study examines the correlation between the presence of bacteria in kitchen sponges of Maastricht students and the number of sponge users. Participants from 34 households were given a new kitchen sponge that they used for seven days. The samples were examined by performing a standard plate count on blood agar plates to approximate the number of colonies present on each sponge. Linear regression was performed using a 5% statistical significance. The number of bacteria per sponge was on average the same, indicating that the number of bacteria associated per person is smaller in larger households. Statistically significant correlations were observed between the amount of bacteria and variables such as dietary preference and gender. Keywords: sponges, house inhabitants, Maastricht, students, bacteria
Populism in Post-Crisis Greece
Get PDFGreece was the European nation worst hit by the European Sovereign Debt Crisis, as well as the nation most resistant to reform after it. One of the key reasons for this was the political chaos and rise of populism that came about as a side-effect of the financial crisis. Thus began a new era in Greek politics known as post-metapolitefsi populism. In order to understand how extreme of a case Greece truly is, the case was compared to the theories of Margaret Canovan and Paul Taggart who are both well-respected authors within the scholarly field on populism. The research aimed to test the transferability of two of their theories to that of post-metapolitefsi populism in Greece. Canovan (1999) argues that populism in democracies arises through a gap between the redemptive and pragmatic side of democracy whilst Taggart (2004) presents five features of an ‘ideal’ type of populism. The research explores how well each key tenet of each theory fits with the rise and functioning of recent populism in Greece. 
Investigating the relation between legal disclosure environments and IT governance transparency
Get PDFThe relevance of information technology has steadily increased over past decades. As a result, corporate disclosure about IT governance aspects is of considerable interest to investors. Despite such disclosure being voluntary and not enforced by law, this research investigates whether there is any relation between varying legal disclosure environments and the level of IT governance disclosure by companies. To investigate this relationship, 48 companies´ 2015 annual reports are analysed in accordance with an IT governance disclosure framework previously constructed by Bollen et al. (2013). Moreover, the World Bank’s Business Extent of Disclosure Index is used as a proxy for legal disclosure environments. The results imply no significant relation between legal disclosure environments and the level of IT governance disclosure which indicates that other factors on the industry and firm-level play a more significant role in determining the level of IT governance disclosure