Arbitrary States

Download or read book Arbitrary States written by Rebecca Tapscott and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, scholars have noted the rise of a particular type of authoritarianism worldwide, in which rulers manipulate institutions designed to implement the rule of law so that they instead facilitate the exercise of arbitrary power. Even as scholars puzzle over this seemingly new phenomenon, scholarship on African politics offers helpful answers. This book places literature on the post-colonial African state in conversation with literature on modern authoritarianism, using this to frame over ten months of qualitative field research on Uganda's informal security actors - including vigilante groups, local militias, and community police. Based on this research, the book presents an original framework - called 'institutionalized arbitrariness' - to explain how modern authoritarian rulers project arbitrary power even in environments of relatively functional state institutions, checks and balances and the rule of law. In regimes characterized by institutionalized arbitrariness, the state's stochastic assertions and withdrawals of power inject unpredictability into the political relationship between both local authorities and citizens. This arrangement makes it difficult for citizens to predict which authority, if any, will claim jurisdiction in a given scenario, and what rules will apply. This environment of pervasive political unpredictability limits space for collective action and political claim-making, while keeping citizens marginally engaged in the democratic process. The book is grounded in empirical research and literature theorizing the African state, while seeking to inform a broader debate about contemporary forms of authoritarianism, state-building, and state consolidation. Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary developments in African political science, political economy, and International Relations, such as electoral politics, democratization, decentralization, gender and political representation, the political impact of natural resources, the dynamics and consequences of conflict, comparative political thought, and the nature of the continent's engagement with the East and West. Comparative and mixed methods work is particularly encouraged, as is interdisciplinary research and work that considers ethical issues relating to the study of Africa. Case studies are welcomed but should demonstrate the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the study and its wider relevance to contemporary debates. The focus of the series is on sub-Saharan Africa, although proposals that explain how the region engages with North Africa and other parts of the world are of interest. Series Editors: Nic Cheeseman, Professor of Democracy and International Development, University of Birmingham; Peace Medie, Senior Lecturer in Gender and International Politics, University of Bristol; and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, Professor of the International Politics of Africa, University of Oxford. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Download or read book Arbitrary Lines written by M. Nolan Gray and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2022-06-21 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's time for America to move beyond zoning, argues city planner M. Nolan Gray in Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It. With lively explanations, Gray shows why zoning abolition is a necessary--if not sufficient--condition for building more affordable, vibrant, equitable, and sustainable cities. Gray lays the groundwork for this ambitious cause by clearing up common misconceptions about how American cities regulate growth and examining four contemporary critiques of zoning (its role in increasing housing costs, restricting growth in our most productive cities, institutionalizing racial and economic segregation, and mandating sprawl). He sets out some of the efforts currently underway to reform zoning and charts how land-use regulation might work in the post-zoning American city. Arbitrary Lines is an invitation to rethink the rules that will continue to shape American life--where we may live or work, who we may encounter, how we may travel. If the task seems daunting, the good news is that we have nowhere to go but up

Download or read book Polarization Optics in Telecommunications written by Jay N. Damask and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2004-11-19 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The strong investments into optical telecommunications in the late 1990s resulted in a wealth of new research, techniques, component designs, and understanding of polarization effects in fiber. Polarization Optics in Telecommunications brings together recent advances in the field to create a standard, practical reference for component designers and optical fiber communication engineers. Beginning with a sound foundation in electromagnetism, the author offers a dissertation of the spin-vector formalism of polarization and the interaction of light with media. Applications discussed include optical isolators, optical circulators, fiber collimators, and a variety of applied waveplate and prism combinations. Also included in an extended discussion of polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) and polarization-dependent loss (PDL), their representation, behavior, statistical properties, and measurement. This book draws extensively from the technical and patent literature and is an up-to-date reference for researchers and component designers in industry and academia.

Download or read book Arbitrary Death written by Rick Unklesbay and published by Wheatmark, Inc.. This book was released on 2019-05-10 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over a career spanning nearly four decades, Rick Unklesbay has tried over one hundred murder cases before juries that ended with sixteen men and women receiving the death sentence. Arbitrary Death depicts some of the most horrific murders in Tucson, Arizona, the author's prosecution of those cases, and how the death penalty was applied. It provides the framework to answer the questions: Why is America the only Western country to still use the death penalty? Can a human-run system treat those cases fairly and avoid unconstitutional arbitrariness? It is an insider's view from someone who has spent decades prosecuting murder cases and who now argues that the death penalty doesn't work and our system is fundamentally flawed. With a rational, balanced approach, Unklesbay depicts cases that represent how different parts of the criminal justice system are responsible for the arbitrary nature of the death penalty and work against the fair application of the law. The prosecution, trial courts, juries, and appellate courts all play a part in what ultimately is a roll of the dice as to whether a defendant lives or dies. Arbitrary Death is for anyone who wonders why and when its government seeks to legally take the life of one of its citizens. It will have you questioning whether you can support a system that applies death as an arbitrary punishment -- and often decades after the sentence was given.

Download or read book Software Engineering and Formal Methods written by Gilles Barthe and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-10-21 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods, SEFM 2011, held in Montevideo, Uruguay, in November 2011. The 22 revised regular papers presented together with 1 short paper, 2 tool papers, and 4 keynote talks were carefully reviewed and selected from 105 initial abstracts and 85 full submissions. Besides the regular session the conference held a special track devoted to "Modeling for Sustainable Development" with 5 accepted papers - selected from 7 submissions - that are also part of this volume. The aim of SEFM is to advance the state of the art in formal methods, to scale up their application in software industry and to encourage their integration with practical engineering methods.

Download or read book Information Security written by Mike Burmester and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-01-25 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Information Security, ISC 2010, held in Boca Raton, FL, USA, in October 2010. The 25 revised full papers and the 11 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 117 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on attacks and analysis; analysis; authentication, PIR and content identification; privacy; malware, crimeware and code injection; intrusion detection; side channels; cryptography; smartphones; biometrics; cryptography, application; buffer overflow; and cryptography, theory.

Download or read book Computable Universe, A: Understanding And Exploring Nature As Computation written by Hector Zenil and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 855 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume, with a foreword by Sir Roger Penrose, discusses the foundations of computation in relation to nature.It focuses on two main questions:The contributors are world-renowned experts who have helped shape a cutting-edge computational understanding of the universe. They discuss computation in the world from a variety of perspectives, ranging from foundational concepts to pragmatic models to ontological conceptions and philosophical implications.The volume provides a state-of-the-art collection of technical papers and non-technical essays, representing a field that assumes information and computation to be key in understanding and explaining the basic structure underpinning physical reality. It also includes a new edition of Konrad Zuse's “Calculating Space” (the MIT translation), and a panel discussion transcription on the topic, featuring worldwide experts in quantum mechanics, physics, cognition, computation and algorithmic complexity.The volume is dedicated to the memory of Alan M Turing — the inventor of universal computation, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, and is part of the Turing Centenary celebrations.