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This article examines the diplomatic relations between Czechoslovakia and the Zionist movement during the late 1940s in regard to Czechoslovakia's contribution to the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948. The support provided by Czechoslovakia, both diplomatically and militarily, played a pivotal role in the formation of an independent Jewish state. Notably, this assistance continued even after Czechoslovakia underwent a political regime change following the communist coup d'état in February 1948. The article aims to unravel the reasons behind this exceptional cooperation between two seemingly distant actors, both geographically and ideologically. Drawing upon recently disclosed archival collections from the relevant Czech archives and providing the insight to the foreign policy of a Soviet satellite, this research aligns with the historiographic paradigm known as the New Cold War History. By focusing on the contributions of satellite states to Cold War history, it sheds light on Czechoslovakia's significant role in shaping the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East in late 1940s. Even though it might have been a somewhat marginalized story in the later decades of the Cold War due to the affiliation of the two countries with opposite ideological blocs, the history of Czechoslovakia's contribution to the creation of the State of Israel is now recognized as one of the significant narratives in the mutual relations between the two states, demonstrating the importance of past-present linkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Just over a quarter-century ago, the authors published a widely read essay comparing Weimar Germany and Post-Soviet Russia in historical perspective. After Russia's unprovoked assault on Ukraine, comparisons of Vladimir Putin's regime with Nazi Germany are once again tragically relevant. Reexamining our arguments from 1997 shows the continuing relevance of the variables we emphasized in that essay: the burdensome legacies of the past imperial regime, intense international pressure to marketize post-Soviet Russia's statist economy, and Russia's weak party system. Three main issues in our earlier article, in retrospect, required greater development: pinpointing the time span needed to assess regime change, distinguishing mobilizational and patrimonial forms of 'anti-liberal statism,' and exploring more fully the foreign policy options for would-be defenders of the liberal global order facing powerful revanchist challenges. We conclude that this sort of 'replication' of earlier research should be encouraged more often among political scientists adopting the comparative-historical approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explain the political change in Egypt since 2011 by focusing on the role of the army. The historical and pivotal role of the Egyptian army as the founding agency of political order in Egypt has also shaped the process of change in the post-Mubarak era. Although the relationship of the army with the political establishment has taken different forms since the Nasser era, the influence of the army has not undergone any structural change. In this context, the study examines the mass protests that started in January 2011 and demanded regime change as well as the political process in the aftermath of the uprising using the method of process tracing. The army's central role is clearly observable in the whole process, from the start of the protests, the overthrow of Mubarak, the transition period to the Morsi era, and finally the coup d'etat to the reshaping of the political order. The study seeks an answer based on the concept of path dependency to the question of why no regime change has occurred in Egypt despite the overthrow of Mubarak's rule and the occurrence of free elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media play a key role in military coups. Yet, there is little research on information environments and coups. Therefore, this article asks whether the extent of media control affects coup attempts and coup success in dictatorships. It argues that autocracies with extensive media control offer an opaque decision environment for plotters, thus decreasing the likelihood of coup attempts. On the outcome stage, extensive media control is expected to lower the prospects of success as conspirators struggle to control public information. Additionally, coups are disaggregated, arguing that the effect of media control varies between regime change and leader reshuffling coups. The arguments are tested by employing regression analyses. As expected, strong media control renders coup attempts and success less likely. While I do not find robust evidence for a varying effect of media control on different types of coup attempts, its influence on coup success is driven by regime change coups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Arab League's observance to the norm of Westphalian sovereignty has witnessed significant transformation since the 2011 Arab uprisings. Historically, the Arab League had acted as the primary institutional expression and guardian of the Arab sovereign state system as the core constitutive principle of the Arab regional order. However, in an unprecedented setback to the norm of Westphalian sovereignty in the Arab world, the Arab League has moved, in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings, in the direction of endorsing the principles of regime change and intervention in the domestic affairs of Arab countries as acceptable norms in Arab regional politics. This transformation in the politics of the Arab League, the article contends, has been triggered by concurrent changes in the global and regional balances of power, both of which have been instrumental in bringing the politics of the Arab League under the dictate of a strategic alliance of global and regional actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sudan has for decades been one of Africa's most fragmented polities. Yet arguably the single most consequential actor in its recent history is among the least well studied: the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). For most of post-independence statehood, Khartoum has been ruled by generals. This article places SAF in a longitudinal context of the expansion and contraction of state power and the functions of the coercive apparatus in these processes. It situates SAF in institutional logics, driven by historically contingent ideas about the nature of the polity, the role of the army within it and its likely partners and enemies. Doing so historicises the strategic calculus of SAF during the 2018–2019 December Revolution which mobilised millions but ended with a new coup in October 2021. I underscore how institutionalised rivalry between SAF and other security services has moulded patterns of regime change and consolidation: from Ja'afar Nimeiri and Omar Al-Bashir to Abdelfatah Al-Burhan today, anxieties over security competition and state fragility shape SAF's willingness to break with regimes it once dominated and its subsequent subversion of revolutionary change and democratisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of tax evasion and avoidance in the case of non-formal businesses is an urgent need in order to achieve the objectives of sustainable development in Colombia. The objective of this study was to monitor the formalisation processes in the sector of gastronomic establishments within an area of the city of Bogota and to calculate the presumed income and possible evasion of the Excise Tax based on a hidden client observational methodology. From 68 informal businesses identified in two neighbourhoods of the Chapinero District in Bogotá, 15 restaurants were randomly selected, and a 5-day inquest was carried out, recording sales, seating, and the existence or non-existence of an invoice. This procedure was repeated at the same restaurants in 2021 and 2022. The results showed an alleged significant evasion of excise tax, to the extent that during the two years of observation no regime changes were made and the existence of sales invoices, including excise tax, was not detected. The contributions of the systematic observation methodology towards the prevention of evasion and avoidance are discussed, as well as possible actions to improve taxation in the gastronomic sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a very serious impact on societies and caused large-scale economic changes and death toll worldwide. The first cases were detected in China, but soon the virus spread quickly worldwide and the intensity of newly reported infections grew high during this initial period almost everywhere. Later, despite all imposed measures, the intensity shifted abruptly multiple times during the two-year period between 2020 and 2022 causing waves of too high infection rates in almost every part of the world. To target this problem, we assume the data heterogeneity as multiple consecutive regime changes. The research study includes the development of a model based on automatic regime change detection and their combination with the linear birth-death process for long-run data fits. The results are empirically verified on data for 38 countries and US states for the period from February 2020 to April 2022. Finally, the initial phase (conditions) properties of infection development are studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the market structure of the Hungarian insurance market, which operated as a monopoly market until 1986. After the regime change this sector started to develop rapidly. But the Hungarian insurance market has a strong oligopolistic character, and thus raises an interesting question as to how close the market is to a state of perfect competition. Based on the Panzar and Rosse (J Ind Econ 35:443–456, 1987) methodology we estimate the elasticity of total revenues with respect to changes in input prices, so that we can determine the market structure. The estimation of input price elasticity is made with a static and a dynamic panel model. According to research the structure of the Hungarian insurance market significantly differs from the perfect competition case between 2010 and 2019. The market is in long-run equilibrium, and the hypothesis of the monopoly case cannot be rejected. The market structure of a sector is important for modelling phenomena and new regulations effectively, which is relevant for insurance and competition supervision in the protection of customers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many organisms have the ability to learn, but the costs and benefits of learning are difficult to quantify. We construct a minimal mathematical model of learning in which a forager attempts to maximize the amount of resources (food) it collects in a changing environment. Our model has two learning parameters: α, corresponding to the duration of the forager's memory, and ϵ , corresponding to how much the forager explores the environment to learn more about it. We analyse the effect of different regimes of environmental change on the optimal memory and exploration parameters α∗,ϵ∗. By comparing the fitness outcomes from learning foragers to the outcomes from foragers following fixed strategies, we explicitly quantify the fitness benefit (or cost) of learning as a function of environmental change. We find that in many environments, the marginal benefit of learning is surprisingly small. In every environment, it is possible to implement learning in such a way that performance is as bad or worse than following a fixed strategy. In some environments, even the best implementations of our minimal model of learning perform worse than the best fixed strategy. Finally, we find that variance in resource values negatively biases foragers' estimates for those values, potentially explaining experimental results showing that animals prefer less variable resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influence of light exposure duration (model 18 : 6) on hormonal indices of stress-implementing system in laboratory animals blood is studied. Activity of stress systems central link was evaluated based on data on concentration of adrenocorticotrophic hormone, melatonin and β-endorphin in blood serum, observed during enzyme immunoassay. Reaction of peripheric link of the stress-implementing system was evaluated in blood smears based on results of qualitative count of catecholamine granules in erythrocytes. It was established, that variations of hormonal indices of the stress systems for laboratory animals depend on trigger factor activity periods. With increase of the experiment duration to 21st days the most pronounced reduction of melatonin, β-endorphin and increase of adrenocorticotrophic hormone concentration, as well as sharp increase of catecholamines level are observed in the blood serum. These hormonal changes develop as a result of failure of compensation mechanisms of the stress-implementing systems in connection with melatonin rhythms disturbance, that indicates the gradual development of the general adaptation syndrome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Trump presidency generated concern about democratic backsliding and renewed interest in measuring the national democratic performance of the United States. However, the US has a decentralized form of federalism that administers democratic institutions at the state level. Using 51 indicators of electoral democracy from 2000 to 2018, I develop a measure of subnational democratic performance, the State Democracy Index. I then test theories of democratic expansion and backsliding based in party competition, polarization, demographic change, and the group interests of national party coalitions. Difference-in-differences results suggest a minimal role for all factors except Republican control of state government, which dramatically reduces states' democratic performance during this period. This result calls into question theories focused on changes within states. The racial, geographic, and economic incentives of groups in national party coalitions may instead determine the health of democracy in the states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 4 June 1943, a military coup crushed Argentina's democracy, marking the end of the oligarchic era and 'planting the seeds' of Peronism. This case sheds light on how rulers' mistakes can operate as a key independent variable in producing regime changes. We argue that the former conservative president, Ramón S. Castillo, provoked an otherwise avoidable democratic breakdown. Specifically, Castillo's misguided relationships with regime insiders and outsiders unintentionally eroded political stability and triggered the fall of democracy. Until now, agent-based scholarship has fallen short in tracing incumbents' mistakes and linking them to regime-change processes. We test the argument by conducting a within-case analysis of Argentina's democratic fall in the early 1940s, scrutinising the president's errors at five critical events. We conclude that critical-event analysis can help disentangle the role of leaders' mistakes in other episodes of regime change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This conceptual paper scrutinises the 'research impact' of the impact agenda by Western governments, in terms of what it is doing to the research process as a whole. Tourism studies with its specific intricacies and disputed disciplinary status represents the focal point, but the argument extends to the entire research ecosystem as a whole. In specific, the paper addresses changes to the training regime of early career researchers. The created survivor bias of impact claims becomes the basis of scholarly career progression. How the accounting and narrating of research impact claims represents a new workload requirement for scholars. The challenges in identifying and articulating impact claims in the first place, and last but not least, the power dimension and political conflicts that arise in who has the authority to label impact claims as beneficial in the first place. The paper's discussion focuses on the short, medium and long-term consequences of these changes to the scholarly lives. With the conclusion, that whilst the created vulnerabilities to the authority of [tourism] research claims are real, such developments also represents a viable opportunity to reassess, revalue and acknowledge parts of the research process that were normalised and/or trivialised in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Belügyi Szemle / Academic Journal of Internal Affairs is the property of Ministry of Interior of Hungary and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

What caused the recovery from the British Great Depression? A leading explanation – the 'expectations channel' – suggests that a shift in expected inflation lowered real interest rates and stimulated consumption and investment. However, few studies have measured, or tested the economic consequences of, inflation expectations. In this paper, we collect high‐frequency information from primary and secondary sources to measure expected inflation in the United Kingdom between the wars. A high‐frequency vector autoregression suggests that inflation expectations were an important source of the early stages of economic recovery in interwar Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the effect of limited liability on firm investment. We find firms that intend to borrow but have higher risk have a greater probability of changing to limited liability. With propensity score matching, difference‐in‐differences analysis, and switching regressions with an endogenous switching model, we find that, after the liability regime change, firm investment aggressiveness decreases but on a lesser level than the over‐time change for firms using unlimited liability. We also find there is improvement in investment efficiency and return on invested capital. These results suggest that limited liability encourages firm investment and leads to more effective investment policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes Turkey's changing regime of ethnicity between 2004 and 2019. Turkey is a multiethnic republic that used assimilation as the key policy in its early days to create the nation-state. The Kurds, as the most populous ethnic minority, had suffered the most. The ethnic anti-minority regime was reflected in the discourse of state officials. The ethnicity regime changed only after the Justice and Development Party came to power. The state authorities acknowledged Kurds as a distinct ethnic minority, admitted the previous human rights violations, and tried to make up for past mistakes. The article reviews the evolution of the ethnicity regime through analysis of its official discourse from initially being anti-minority and through tumultuous changes to the current inclusive one. It focuses on analyzing President Erdogan's public speeches in Diyarbakir. The main finding of the article is that when the state moved away from anti-minority policies towards the Kurds, President's discourse became more inclusive. Previous studies acknowledged the agency of the state as the determining power behind changing the regime of ethnicity. The second significant contribution of this study is that organized minority groups have an independent agency; their actions significantly contributed to changing the regime of ethnicity.

Chapter 1 examines U.S. policy towards Iraq in the years prior to the 1990-1991 Gulf War, looking specifically at how the United States tilted towards Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War using programs like I Operation Staunch i . However, the narrative would have benefited considerably from a deeper dive into the history of U.S.-Iraqi and U.S.-Iranian relations, where the United States adopted the traditional British imperialist policy of I divide et imperia i (divide and rule), which pit Iran against Iraq. One of the more confounding aspects during the lead-up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was the eagerness of so many Americans - and especially their political representatives - to invade Iraq in 2003. [Extracted from the article]

I have addressed a polydisperse suspension composed of cubic hematite particles in thermodynamic equilibrium. From the viewpoint of developing a surface modification technique using cubic hematite particles, I have investigated the local internal structures of cubic particle aggregates in a quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D) system. The cubic particles have a full three-dimensional (3D) rotational ability in a quasi-2D system. I have conducted quasi-2D Monte Carlo simulations in the situation of no applied magnetic field to investigate the dependence of the local internal structures of particle aggregates on the magnetic particle-particle interaction strength and the standard deviation in the particle size distribution. The results obtained here are summarized as follows. In a polydisperse system with a small standard deviation, cubic particles tend to aggregate to form closely-packed structures with an aligned face-to-face configuration as the magnetic particle-particle interaction strength is increased. In a polydisperse system with a large standard deviation, they tend to aggregate to form loosely-packed structures with unstable face-to-face contact as the magnetic interaction strength is increased. That is, an increase in the value of standard deviation leads to a decrease in the orientation order of the constituent particles in the aggregates. I understood that the orientation order of the cubic particles decreases sharply within a narrow range of the standard deviation in the particle size distribution.

Czechoslovakia, as the successor state of Austria-Hungary, inherited numer- ous problems. One of the most difficult was undoubtedly the question of the coexistence of minorities in a common state; in particular, the German mi- nority had a considerable impact on the cohesion of the state. As a result, the newly established foreign embassies in Prague monitored the relations between Czechs and Germans closely throughout the entire period of the First Republic. The development of Czech-German relations was also monitored by the Spanish embassy, and this topic became one of the most commented on in the reports sent by diplomats to Madrid. The present study therefore provides an insight into the functioning of the Spanish embassy in Prague during this period. It focuses not only on the frequency of such reports, but also analyses what topics diplomats paid attention to. The study also takes into account the effects of both the changes in the political regime in Spain between the found- ing of Czechoslovakia and the outbreak of the Civil War and the high turnover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the reform project of the Uruguayan Commercial Companies Law No. 16.060, which seeks to make substantial changes to the current regime regarding commercial companies. Two important changes are highlighted: the possibility of genetic singularity in the anonymous society and the limited liability company, and the consolidation of autonomy of will as a general principle in the design of contracts or social statutes. The project was presented by senators Lilian Kechichian and Carmen Sanguinetti, and senators Carlos Camy and Raúl Lozano, and was developed by commercial law professors Ricardo Olivera García, Alicia Ferrer Montenegro, and Alejandro Miller Artola. [Extracted from the article]

Regime shifts are likely to have strong impacts on all trophic levels and their interactions. In addition, weather conditions and sea level rise together with tidal currents may change sediment morphology in coastal areas and estuaries. Here, we studied the effects of these drivers of ecosystems on abundance of seven wader species feeding on macrozoobenthos in the German sector of the Wadden Sea. We hypothesized that regime shift caused decreases in wader abundance and that changes in sediment morphology driven by sea level rise and tidal amplitude affected these changes. We analyzed numbers of waders on a short term, 1998–2016, that matched a large-scale geographical study of sediment morphology in the German sector, and at a long term, 1987–2019. Changes in numbers of waders were estimated as slope of coefficients of the trends of wader species numbers in the two periods. The average (se) year of decreases in numbers of waders was initiated for most species and tidal basins in the year 1992 (± 0.4) that followed a regime shift in the Southern North Sea and in the Wadden Sea in 1988–1989. There were no statistical differences between the years when numbers of waders started to decrease between the northern and the southwestern tidal basins of the German sector, indicating that the drives affected both coastal sections simultaneously. Significant relationships were found between slopes of coefficients of wader species and sediment morphology and physical features as sea level rise and tidal amplitude. Relationships were most pronounced for the long term, 1987–2019 compared to the short term, 1998–2016. We conclude that regime shift and changes in sediment morphology driven by sea level rise and sediment change can affect abundance of migratory wader species in large estuaries and shallow coastal waters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-communist countries’ processes on their way to the European Union (EU) have extensively proceeded simultaneously with their transition from communism to democracy. The regime change led to a process of “coming to terms with the past” in the sense that these countries took transitional justice measures for the crimes and practices of the former authoritarian regimes. In this regard, Albania is a case worth considering as a part of the current EU enlargement agenda. As a country that was not involved in the ethnic wars between the former Yugoslavian countries, Albania experienced a different historical pace of a communist past with its peculiarities. This article mainly aims to analyse Albania’s coming to terms with its communist past and thus the transitional justice measures implemented in its EU process. The main argument of the article is twofold: First, EU impact was limited when Albania started its transitional justice period in the 1990s. This was due to the fact that progress in the EU process of Albania in terms of EU candidacy was enhanced in the 2000s and the impact of the strict EU conditionality became evident in these years as well. Secondly, the current international circumstances, in which the rivalry between Russia as well as China, and the West is at its peak in the so-called Western Balkans region, could allow Albania to be more closely aligned with the EU, which in turn may provide the necessary conditions for deeper reforms to come to terms with its past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim. The article discusses the status of the Greek Catholic Church from 1948 to 1950. It also presents how this period was presented through media. Since it is possible to investigate this aspect within the framework of a comparison of several media channels, we have decided to introduce the comparison through the perspective of the daily-newspaper Rudé právo. Methods. The findings of our research study are based on the data collected from archival and documentary sources, as well as professional studies and monographs related to the above-mentioned topic. Results. Based on our research topic, we can understand how the attitude towards the Greek Catholic Church changed after the events of February 1948 and what impact the change of regime had on its functioning. Regarding media, we can observe how the pressure on the Greek Catholic Church changed in relation to the regime change and individual historical events, and how the media expressed its opinion on the Church. Conclusion. Media is not only a source of information for people, but it also creates public opinion, and therefore, it was extremely important to control this state apparatus in the past. We must understand that availability of information in the 1950s and today is significantly different. Catholic periodicals were almost non-existent and thus, people often received misleading or false information. Through our research, which is presented in the tabular presentation of data, we can discover the increasing pressure against the Church, and the response of the public to the Church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The taking over the principles and procedure from the previous legislation (Law of National Education no. 1/2011), the legislator brings in 2023, through the new Law no. 199, changes to the regime of disciplinary liability of teaching staff. The clear distinction between the legal regime and the administrative act of the decision of the University Ethics Commission regulated in Law no. 199/2023 removes the sanction for the violation of ethical norms from the scope of disciplinary liability, as was considered by the majority of national jurisprudence under the old regulation. Our comparative analysis aims to highlight the new regulations, although some inadvertent still persist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sino-Russian strategic partnership, among its many facets, includes broad alignment in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on issues of intervention, and their similar (if not identical) stances on the controversial Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine in regard to Darfur, Libya, or Syria are well known—but the Libyan R2P-inspired enforcement action (intervention absent the consent of the host state) is relatively rare. Less work has been carried out on Russian and Chinese discourse on UN peacekeeping, viz consent-based operations. We fill a gap by examining and comparing their discourse on UN peacekeeping in UN Security Council meetings, demonstrating that their converging views have begun to seep into the previously 'safe space' of peacekeeping. The controversy surrounding the 'protection of civilians' encapsulated in the Libyan resolution 1973, which was used for regime change, caused concern for Russia and China. New directions in UN peacekeeping—in particular, stabilization missions—which emphasize the protection of civilians, are testing UN peacekeeping doctrine. A comparison of Chinese and Russian voting patterns in the UNSC reveals a fairly similar line taken on voting to extend peacekeeping mandates, yet upon examining the discourse in UNSC meetings regarding three UN stabilization missions between 2011 and 2022, as well as more generic meetings on peacekeeping, subtle differences emerge, which reflect differences in Russian and Chinese narrated global identities and status concerns. These differences show that alignment is based more on converging interests than converging values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Anuario de la Sociedad Argentina de Historia de la Educación is the property of Argentinean Society of History of Education and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Historia y Memoria de la Educación is the property of Historia y Memoria de la Educacion and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A growing body of literature on the role of courts in democratic backsliding claims that court-packing weakens liberal democracy. However, this is not necessarily the case. The goals of the actors who produce court-packing help to explain why the co-optation of the judiciary can have a substantial negative effect on liberal democracy in some (although not all) cases. In this respect, we distinguish two types of court-packing. First, policy-driven court-packing occurs when politicians manipulate the composition of courts in order to assure a quick implementation of policies. Although this tends to negatively affect judicial independence, it is not per se a first step towards regime change. Second, regime-driven court-packing happens when politicians alter the composition of the courts with the goal of eroding democracy. In this case, court-packing's negative effect on judicial independence has a systemic negative effect on different dimensions of liberal democracy. Relying on a wide range of primary and secondary sources, we conceptualize these two types of court-packing by comparing two cases: Carlos Menem (1989–99) in Argentina, seeking judicial support to carry out pro-market economic reforms, and Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) and Nicolás Maduro (2013–present) in Venezuela, seeking to control the judiciary in the context of democratic backsliding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sliding bearings are mechanical components used for rotor support of high-load mechanical systems. It is assumed that a change in the lubrication regime at a known operational point is a result of an anomaly in the bearing operation such as an increased load, lack of lubricant, and damage to the bearing surface or wear. Detection of this phenomenon will enable diagnostics of the bearing. In this study, we present a novel technique for estimating the transition point between synchronous and asynchronous interactions of the shaft and bearing which is related to the transition between lubrication regimes of a water-lubricated bearing of a marine vessel by vibration analysis. The new technique is demonstrated on an experimental system that reproduces the operation of a water-lubricated bearing. The results demonstrate the ability of using vibration analysis to identify changes in the operating condition of a water-lubricated bearing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While recent work suggests democracy does cause growth, the channels through which this effect occurs remain unclear. Exploiting quasi-random variation in the timing of district-level political regime changes induced by the collapse of President Suharto's government, we study the microlevel drivers of the democracy-growth relationship. Using Indonesian firm-level data, we find that democratization leads to an increase in firm productivity, a critical determinant of economic growth. Furthermore we find evidence of an improvement in the quality of local business regulations and the business environment for firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study how political hierarchy shapes regional development in China, using variations driven by regime changes during the 1000–2000 C.E. period. We find that changes in the status of the provincial capital led to the rise and decline of different prefectures as measured by population and urbanization. Two other novel findings stand out: (1) the economic advantages of the provincial capitals did not persist if they lost their political status, and (2) political hierarchy shaped economic development not only through public employment but also through the development of important infrastructure, such as transportation networks. Our findings highlight the importance of politics in determining the locations of economic activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A threshold changeable secret sharing (TCSS) scheme is designed for changing the initial threshold pair of the privacy threshold and reconstruction threshold to a given threshold pair after the dealer distributes shares to participants, while a universal threshold changeable secret sharing (uTCSS) scheme is threshold changeable to multiple new threshold pairs. We focus on the threshold changeability in a dealer-free scenario with an outside adversary and the absence of secure channels among participants. There are some known threshold change regimes that are realized by (optimal) TCSS schemes or (optimal) uTCSS schemes. In this work, by combining the frequently used two methods in previous constructions: folding shares of a given secret sharing scheme and packing shares of multiple secret sharing schemes, we construct an optimal TCSS scheme and an optimal uTCSS scheme with a new threshold change regime, respectively. This helps us determine the full threshold change range that can be realized by optimal TCSS schemes and optimal uTCSS schemes, respectively. Moreover, we construct some near optimal TCSS schemes to show that the full threshold change range of TCSS schemes (without requiring optimality) is completely covered by the threshold change regimes of our near optimal TCSS schemes together with the full threshold change range of optimal TCSS schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing the light regime during the growing season by using photoselective nets in devices protecting against hail can have an impact on the yield and its quality. The white and black used nets do not change the spectral composition of the light passing through the grids, but act as shades, reducing the amount of light that passes through the grids. The influence of this effect on the sensory characteristics of Florina apple fruits was studied in an orchard with a support structure located in Northern Bulgaria. The sensory evaluation of the Florina cultivar shows that the fruits under the most commonly used black net in orchards in terms of taste, aroma and consistency do not differ significantly from those grown under yellow and red coverings. Only the influence of different types of nets on the appearance and skin colour of the fruits of the Florina apple variety has been statistically proven. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Belügyi Szemle / Academic Journal of Internal Affairs is the property of Ministry of Interior of Hungary and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, we outline the history and evolution of the Congolese people from their origins to independance with the State preceding the Nation. Concerning democracy accession to legislative power after independance, there is in DRC a curious rotation of political transition beyond various regime changes and arrangements of Power sharing occurred between community groups. However, there were noises, quarrels and or violences between linguistic socioanthropological actors on the legitimacy of power, access to the presidential chair, which gave rise to inter group conflicts till the country is divided into three community groups: the Luba community of Félix Tshisekedi from CACH-USNA at the center of power, the Swahili community of Joseph Kabila from AMP-FCC who genially handed over power but also on its periphery, and the Kongo-Ngala community of Martin Fayulu from LAMUKA to the outskirts. The concept « Majority » has cleverly been exploited by those in power in order to subjugate and or exclude their protagonists. In the context of this article, we finally propose the model of Rotary Democratic called « Inculturated Democracy » by Isidore Ndaywel in « Congolese historiography, an essay of achievement ». An alternative model to « Power sharing method » generally presented as democracy model in which the group element constitutes an important criterium of participation in term of access to political power, mainly the legislative power and its executive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plans to found a Hungarian Reformed university in Transylvania were conceived during the reigns of princes Gábor Bethlen (1622) and Ákos Barcsai (1658, then at the initiative of János Apáczai Csere), but unfortunately external circumstances prevented the establishment of such a university. At the end of the 18th century, the idea was raised again in Pest (József Vay, 1796). However, the circumstances made it only possible to establish a joint Evangelical-Reformed theological faculty (Pál Török, Theological Academy of Pest, 1855). In 1993, under the more favourable conditions of the regime change, the longed-for university could be founded, with the merger of the Theological Academy and the Teachers' College of Nagykőrös and the establishment of a faculty of humanities in Budapest. Our study presents the circumstances, processes, debates, and key personalities behind the founding of the university 30 years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The erosion of strategic geopolitical stability in all parts of the world is definitely having a strong negative impact on the social sustainability of our planet. Lack of clear rules of political and economic behavior and the growth of confrontation in international relations lead to a total disorientation of global modern social system. Dominant in this direction are not only current wars and permanent threats of local and global conflict situations, but also the non-conventional (information) technologies, methods and means of changing the political regimes. Despite the terminological diversity in this field, in the last few years there has been a need to fill the "blank space" in understanding their nature and metrics. The need for a new meaningful definition of the specific political and economic, technological, social and information solutions and implications appeared mostly in social practice. In the present analysis, our attempt is to give a new interpretation to this specific measuring mechanism of the relations between individual states, which has an extraordinary degree of influence on contemporary social, economic and political relations and processes. In our opinion, the appropriate linguistic construction of this “benchmarkˮ is “Saltation diffusion penetrationˮ (SDP). SDP is a “phenomenonˮ that is becoming a dangerous tool for exerting and realizing socio-political and economic tension. Its real manifestations strike the determinants of a social system, its basic (democratic) state principles, and last but not least are a direct threat to its security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cognitive appraisal theory predicts that emotions affect participation decisions around risky collective action. However, little existing research has attempted to parse out the mechanisms by which this process occurs. We build a global game of regime change and discuss the effects that fear may have on participation through pessimism about the state of the world, other players' willingness to participate, and risk aversion. We test the behavioral effects of fear in this game by conducting 32 sessions of an experiment in two labs where participants are randomly assigned to an emotion induction procedure. In some rounds of the game, potential mechanisms are shut down to identify their contribution to the overall effect of fear. Our results show that in this context, fear does not affect willingness to participate. This finding highlights the importance of context, including integral versus incidental emotions and the size of the stakes, in shaping effect of emotions on behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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