Blockchain Papers

Seung Kwon

No abstract is available for this record.

Ronald Labonté

This article addresses several issues pertinent to health systems governance for health equity. It argues the importance of health systems using measures of positive health (well-being), discriminating in favour of historically less advantaged groups and weighing the costs of health care against investments in the social determinants of health. It cautions that the concept of governance could weaken the role of government, with disequalizing effects, while emphasizing the importance of two elements of good governance (transparency and participation) in health systems decision-making. It distinguishes between participation as volunteer labour and participation as exercising political rights, and questions the assumption that decentralization in health systems is necessarily empowering. It then identifies five health system roles to address issues of equity (educator/watchdog, resource broker, community developer, partnership developer and advocate/catalyst) and the implications of these roles for practice. Drawing on preliminary findings of a global research project on comprehensive primary health care, it discusses political aspects of progressive health system reform and the implications of equity-focused health system governance on health workers' roles, noting the importance of health workers claiming their identity as citizens. The article concludes with a commentary on the inherently political nature of health reforms based on equity; the necessary confrontation with power relations politics involves; and the health systems governance challenge of managing competing health discourses of efficiency and results-based financing, on the one hand, and equity and citizen empowerment, on the other.

Peere Gomis-porquerass, Benoit Juulien, Chengsi Wang, Pedro Gomis-porqueras · 6 authors

In this paper we study the optimal monetary and fiscal policies of a general equilibrium model of unemployment and money with search frictions both in labor and goods markets\nas in Berentsen, Menzio and Wright (2010). We abstract from revenue-raising motives to focus on the welfare-enhancing properties of optimal policies. We show that some of the\ninefficiencies in the Berentsen, Menzio and Wright (2010) framework can be restored with appropriate fiscal policies. In particular, when lump sum monetary transfers are possible,\na production subsidy financed by money printing can increase output in the decentralized market and a vacancy subsidy financed by a dividend tax even when the Hosios’ rule does\nnot hold.

Herbert Kitschelt, Daniel M. Kselman

No abstract is available for this record.

Phillip J. Bryson

The Czech public sector pursuit of decentralization to achieve local self-government ( samospráva ) or local autonomy has probably been the greatest challenge of the country’s post-communist development. The EU considered the achievement sufficient to justify membership under criteria demanding democracy and market economics of member countries. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Brian Briscombe, Siddharth Sharma, Matthew J Saunders

Decentralization has been a stated policy objective for Kenya since 1994; however the allocation of health sector financial resources remains highly centralized and opaque relying primarily on previous years budget allocations rather than on health needs indicators. Equitable or fair resource allocation can only be accomplished by considering variation in needs across geographic and economic groups. The Health Policy Initiatives research revealed that the allocation of health sector funds in Kenya has not accounted for differences in health achievement access and provision costs across the regions provinces and districts. This report examines equitable financing and resource allocation at decentralized levels for family planning (FP) and reproductive health (RH) programs in Kenya. The USAID |Health Policy Initiative Task Order 1 investigated the institutional legal and political environment affecting budgetary decisionmaking in the public health sector. The research team focused on how budgetary planning and resource allocation functions under decentralization and how decentralization affects equity in resource allocation for FP and RH.

Kayo YASUDA

This article analyzes the process through which WHO was established on the basis of the experience of the League of Nations Health Organization (LNHO). The article particularly focuses on the LNHO technocrats. Through their prewar experiences, technocrats realized that international health governance could promote international cooperation, while it could be utilized by various national representatives as one of their diplomatic strategies. Technocrats tried to alleviate this vulnerability by balancing big powers with smaller powers, national representatives with specialists, and centralization with decentralization. Their efforts and the development of international security in which economic and social cooperation were evaluated as a means towards international security resulted in the international health governance's autonomous establishment under the UN system, which can be termed as the origin of “human security.” The development of social cooperation in the postwar period can be considered to be an extension of their efforts in the League of Nations.

Abderrazak Dhaoui

No abstract is available for this record.

Jung Hwan Lee

Well known for its centralized local economic system under the national equity principle, Japan has experimented with transforming this regional redistribution system into a new local economic system of governance for more autonomous local economic growth over the past decade. This new local economic governance has been characterized by the increasing involvement of social actors, such as large private corporations and local communities, in policy processes.This dissertation reveals that new local economic growth strategies for the new local economic governance have operated under very different models in different regions of Japan, although all new local programs have been introduced under the banner of public-private partnership. New partnership programs in the local economic policy arena in the 2000s have moved toward the market model, in which local authorities pursue growth by attracting international business resources, in the major metropolitan areas around Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, whereas they have moved toward the community model, in which local authorities purge growth by mobilizing local organizational resources, in the rest of Japan. The market model is embedded in market reform for deregulation that makes large private corporations' freer activities easy, whereas the community model is an attempt to strengthen the structure of endogenous networks among local authorities and local economic and social elites.This dissertation highlights two variables to explain regional variations of local economic growth strategies: dual local economic structures and diverging politico-economic coalitions. First, under the rule of Koizumi Junichiro, a coalition of promoting market reform among neoliberal politicians and large private corporations has won politically over a coalition for maintaining national equity among politicians embedded in traditional conservative center-local linkages, local business groups, and local leadership of underdeveloped areas, in national politics. The regional redistribution mechanism stopped functioning in this political choice. Instead, market reform and local community participation have been introduced as alternatives to regional redistribution mechanisms. Second, the major metropolitan areas and other underdeveloped areas, which came to stand on equal conditions for autonomous local economic growth strategies under decentralization reforms, are characterized by different situations in attracting private investment. The competitive regions of the major metropolitan areas have taken the market model as their main local economic growth strategy because they are competitive to attract private investment. In contrast, the protected regions outside the major metropolitan areas have taken the community model as their key local economic growth strategy because they have less competitive local economic structure of fading industries and scare population for attracting private investment.Over the past decade, reforms for public-private partnership in the local economic policy arena resulted in the disturbance of the Japanese way of balancing market powers and local interests in the postwar period. In the postwar period, the centralized regional redistribution mechanism, led by national politicians and central bureaucracies, functioned as a tool for social integration with consideration for national equity. However, experiments with the new form of local economic governance were not successful in balancing market reform with local community mobilization. The mobilization of local community resources could not match the political role of the regional redistribution mechanism outside the major metropolitan areas. In addition, market reform, which has been more effective in the advanced major metropolitan areas, has produced increasing regional economic disparity. Japan has faced a complicated stand-off between large private corporations detached from specific localities and local communities locked in place, which were connected by national political coordination mechanisms in the postwar period. Although each of two diverging local economic growth strategies has been effective in different regions, there was no national political mechanism for mediating local variations of these localized programs in the 2000s.

Molla Jafari, Mohammad Amir

To introduce the concept of the autonomous system, this chapter starts by reviewing the central system concept and structure. Then the central system constrains are explained and it is shown how the distributed system is developed to cope with the limitations of the central system. The distributed control system emergence following distributed system concepts is studied. Another term which is used for the distributed control system is decentralized. In one section the usage of this term is explained. The autonomous system concept based on these bases with consideration of its meaning in other realms is discussed. The autonomous structure has already attracted the attention of philosophers in political science in the field of the federal system. In order to obtain a clearer understanding of this term, it is tried to show the difference between autonomous and other common terms. In this survey the self-decision making is offered as a core element of the autonomous concept. Following this concept and considering the point that the autonomous system inherits the distributed system characters, the autonomous wireless sensor actuator network is introduced. In the last section it is explained how the autonomous structure in logistic systems can conduct the competition of the entities from the resources to the goals. In this way the necessity of developing the autonomous objects such as intelligent containers manifested itself. Development and evaluation of an autonomous wireless sensor actuator network in logistic systems 6 1.1) Central system According to Encyclopedia Britannica, a system a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole erally three characteristics are counted for a system: structure, behavior and interconnection. Structure is about the composition of items which are called entities hereafter. Behavior refers to the character which the system portrays by itself when it is looked at from outside of the system. Interconnectivity describes the connectivity between the entities inside the system and it is known as a system network. A central system contains an entity which decides about the behavior of the system or plays a switching role in connection between the entities. In terms of networking there is an entity in the central system whose role is to make connection between entities, e.g. the center receives a message and sends it to the destination. In the central decision-making system, the supreme entity (center) makes decisions for the other entities and for the whole system and has authority over other entities. In political science such a system is also called an authority system [01King]. Decision-making is taken as a factor because it covers many aspects such as control, organization of the entities, task distribution and resource allocations. Referring to the system characteristic, the system network is independent from decision-making structures because in some systems the entities can make decisions for themselves but the data exchange between them is done via a center. Therefore the central system is referred to it is more precise to say from which aspect. A primary model of the central system is shown in Fig. 1.1. Elazar in [15Elaz] names this model Center-Periphery model and Tanenbaum in [12Tanb] names this model Star. The Center-Periphery model is preferred to Star because it represents the center peripherals roles which connect to the subordinates. In this figure the center entity is called supreme entity or easily center and the connected entities are subordinated to this center. The arrows show the connection path of the center and entities. The figure shows that the entities are not dependent on or connected to each other directly. In other words, the unification of the system is totally achieved by the center. If the center fails, the system will break apart. Now suppose that more entities are supposed to attach to the center, since the peripheral number of the center is limited, at one point the center will go out of its peripherals. After this point in order to add more entities to the center one solution is to add more resources and peripherals to the center. This solution is costly because not only does the old center becomes useless but also based on what Tanenbaum in

Mohiuddin Ahmed, Md. Raisuddin Khan, Md. Masum Billah

A collaborative team of two resource constrained semi-autonomous hexapod robots have been developed that perform navigation tasks while satisfying communication constraints. Our approach is based on the use of a control structure where each hexapod performs elementary tasks, a behavior-based controller generates motion directives to achieve the collaborative tasks, and controller generates the actuator commands to follow the motion directives. The control technique has been developed for a mission where a target location spread across a static environment has to be visited once by the two hexapods while maintaining a relative given distance with wireless communication. Wireless communication under mobile ad-hoc networks are communication networks that do not rely on fixed, preinstalled communication devices like base stations or predefined communication cells. This wireless networks consist of mobile nodes which are characterized by their decentralized organization and the potentially high dynamics of the network structure, therefore ad-hoc network communication system has been the focus in this multi-robot communication. The ad-hoc network has to provide position data to support localization of the mobile robots, which might be of great importance to guide the robots to specific targets and locations. Communications standards considered for the ad-hoc network are Wireless LAN, Bluetooth and ZigBee. In this project Bluetooth and ZigBee are integrated on robots for real experiments.

Ekaterina Zhuravskaya

Reforms during the 1990s in Russia entailed not only economic liberalization and democratization but also transition from a highly centralized unitary state to a highly decentralized federal state. Since the advent of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, former president Boris Yeltsin’s experiments with decentralization have been recognized as unsuccessful and as leading to the very collapse of Russia. A consensus has emerged—among scholars, politicians, and the society at large—that the attempt to build a successful federal system in the 1990s badly failed. The new Russian leadership has been consistently taking measures since 2000 to recentralize both public finance and politics. This chapter addresses the following questions: Why did Yeltsin’s decentralization fail? What mistakes (if any) were made in the 1990s? How effective is Putin’s reversal of Yeltsin’s decentralization? Where is the notorious “vertical of power” taking Russia? These questions have no easy answers, but the experience of other federal states and an examination of Russia’s own political economy of intergovernmental relations suggest that the approach being implemented now is no less dangerous than the spontaneous decentralization of the 1990s. Indeed, because of the size of the country and the heterogeneity of its regions, federalism in Russia is inevitable. For the effective functioning of the principles of federalism, Russia needs the “vertical of power,” which political economists refer to as political centralization. The “verticals,” however, can be different. Other countries’ experience with federalism, particularly Mexico and China, shows that the measures that Putin and company are undertaking are unlikely to succeed.

Mehdi Vasef

Abstract- This paper introduces a new intractable security problem whose intractability is due to the NP completeness of multivariate quadratic problem. This novel problem uses quaternion algebra in conjunction with MQ. Starting with the simultaneous multivariate equations, we transform these equations into simultaneous quaternion based multivariate quadratic equations. A new scheme for computational zero knowledge proof based on this problem is proposed. It is proved that according to black box definition of zero knowledge proof (ZKP) system, the proposed scheme is ZKP. Our proof has two lemmas. The proof is done through two lemmas. In the first lemma it is shown that expected polynomial time machine *VM halts in a polynomial time. In the second lemma, it is showed that the probability ensembles

Mohammad Sadeq Dousti

Abstract. The concept of zero-knowledge proofs has been around for about 25 years. It has been redefined over and over to suit the special security requirements of protocols and systems. Common among all definitions is the requirement of the existence of some efficient “device ” simulating the view of the verifier (or the transcript of the protocol), such that the simulation is indistinguishable from the reality. The definitions differ in many respects, including the type and power of the devices, the order of quantifiers, the type of indistinguishability, and so on. In this paper, we will scrutinize the definition of “black-box computational ” zero-knowledge, in which there exists one simulator for all verifiers, the simulator has black-box access to the verifier, and the quality of simulation is such that the real and simulated views cannot be distinguished by polynomial tests (computational indistinguisha-bility). Working in a theoretical model (the Random-Oracle Model), we show that the indistinguishability requirement is stated in a conceptually inappropriate way: Present definitions allow the knowledge of the verifier and distin-guisher to be independent, while the two entities are essentially coupled. Therefore, our main take on the problem will be conceptual and semantic, rather than literal. We formalize the concept by introducing a “knowledge ex-tractor ” into the model, which tries to extract the extra knowledge hard-coded into the distinguisher (if any), and then helps the simulator to construct the view of the verifier. The new paradigm is termed Simulation-Extraction

Gregory E. Kaebnick

Synthetic Biology, Analytic Ethics Gregory E. Kaebnick (bio) The news in May that researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute had created a synthetic life form brought a fresh round of delight, concern, and puzzlement about the march of biotechnology. And all of these reactions were appropriate. It was surprisingly hard to understand just what JCVI had done. First off, the technical achievement was less than some thought. JCVI had not actually created a synthetic life form; it had borrowed a naturally occurring cell and inserted into it a synthetic version of a naturally occurring genome. The work was also not obviously a big step forward in the creation of useful synthetic microbes, since that work does not depend on the kinds of organisms used in this research and may not require the synthesis of entire genomes anyway. The work was still a terrific feat, but probably not a game-changer. Craig Venter described it best when he told Congress, in a hearing following the announcement, that it was a “proof of concept” that genomes could be assembled in the lab and inserted into cells. Philosophically, too, the news was less than billed. Some claimed that science had finally shown, once and for all, that life is just a well-organized puddle of chemicals. Living things have no greater being. But if a Greater Being gives microbes their own little greater being, then it would presumably be well within the Being’s powers to endow a synthetic organism with whatever vital essence living organisms typically have. In general, just as a person created through cloning would be as likely as anybody else to have a soul, a microbe created through genome synthesis could have whatever life force characterizes other microbes. It was also more than a little difficult to say what was at stake morally in the announcement. The initial question in many minds was whether synthesizing a life form was a kind of moral Rubicon in the human relationship to nature—a morally troubling new level of human mastery over nature. Remembering that the achievement was just a synthetic genome, not a life form, may allay that worry. Recognizing that the research does not prove living things have no vital essence might also help. It could also help to recognize that synthetic biology—the field to which the JCVI research contributed—is so far only about microbes, and could be only about microbes with contained, industrial applications. Engineering algae to produce gasoline, partially replacing the petroleum industry, might not constitute a grave threat to the human relationship to nature. Indeed, the classic concerns about the human relationship to nature are about environmental destruction—the demolition of species and wildernesses, for example—and fuelemitting algae might end up helping with that. This is not to belittle concerns about the human relationship to nature. Indeed, those concerns could still generate forceful objections to some applications. But a rich understanding of those concerns need not translate into generic opposition to every use of every biotechnology. (So I argued at the hearing.) Right now, the most significant moral problems associated with synthetic biology have to do with its potential outcomes. But there really are problems here, mainly because it’s hard to say just what the outcomes will be. Synthetic biologists envision all sorts of applications, but whether the long-term outcomes will be beneficial is less clear. The organisms require investments of land, water, and nutrients that would have their own costs, and industrial accidents and deliberate misuse also pose undeniable risks. Further, these risks are hard to assess. Many of them are low probability but high impact, which tends to be baffling. We both blow such risks out of proportion, as air travelers sometimes do, and weigh them too lightly, as oil company engineers recently have. Nor is it clear how much we can learn about the risks from our experience with older biotechnologies. Because synthetic biology is on a continuum with older work, it can be seen both as resembling and as departing from it, and testimony at the congressional hearing cast it both ways—emphasizing the novelty when discussing benefits and the familiarity when discussing risks. I think a...

Immanuel Wallerstein

It is in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth that the organizational structures of the sciences of man which we use today became fixed. In 1800 the categories (or ‘disciplines’) which today are standard – history, economics, sociology, anthropology, political science – did not for the most part exist as concepts, and certainly were not the basis of sharply differentiated groups of teachers and researchers. The somewhat tortuous process by which certain combinations of concerns and concepts took particular forms resulted in major ‘methodological’ debates, which we sometimes still hear about under the rubric, ‘philosophy of history’. Among the debates, one of the most influential was that between so-called nomothetic and idiographic knowledge, between the possibility and impossibility of generalizations about human behaviour, between the universalizers and the particularizers. The universalizers spoke of themselves as ‘scientists’. They tended to argue that human behaviour was a natural phenomenon like any other, and could therefore be studied on the same basis as any other natural phenomenan, using the same rules of logic (‘the scientific method’) and capable eventually of yielding precise results comparable to those achieved in the natural sciences. The particularists, in contrast, often termed themselves ‘humanists’. They tended to argue that human life, being thinking life, could not be viewed in the same way as other natural phenomenon, for one of two reasons. Either it was because, said some, humans have souls and are therefore resistant to arbitrary uniformities, or it was because, said others, the human researcher inevitably distorted the human subject of analysis in the very process of observing him and therefore the generalizations would never be valid. Like all such grand debates there is just so much that can be said on the subject, and it has largely been said. This does not mean that the debate is over or forgotten but simply that the divisions have been institutionalized and thereby contained. Grosso modo, the universalizers were assigned the departments of economics, sociology, and political science, and the particularizers the departments of history and anthropology. Obviously, given the high capriciousness of the organizational dividing lines, there were dissidents in each ‘disciplinary’ structure (such as political ‘theorists’ in political science, and linguists in anthropology). But no matter! Spheres of influence had been demarcated, and the status quo enshrined. This crude picture has to be qualified by taking into account regional variation. My description works best for the Anglo-American core of the world-system. The Germans chafed at British definitions of social knowledge and gave birth to an uncertain cross-breed, Staatswissenschaft. Some French chafed at the failure of other Frenchmen to chafe, which led to the birth of the Annales school. And the Western European working classes chafed at the system in general, and nourished outside the academy a critical perspective, Marxism, which challenged the universality of the ‘universals’. Underlying the dominant institutionalization of the great methodological split, universalizer versus particularizer, there turned out to be, as there usually is, a hidden but very important consensus, the concept of the individual society as the basic unit of analysis. Everyone seemed to agree that the world was composed of multiple ‘societies’. They disagreed about whether it was the case that all societies pursued similar paths down the road of history (albeit at differing rates) or that each society went its own historic way. They disagreed whether society in question took the form of a ‘state’ or a ‘nation’ or a ‘people’, but in any case it was some politico-cultural unit. The period after World War II saw in this field, as in so many others, the culmination of these intellectual tendencies in the elaboration of a perspective we may call ‘developmentalism’, which for most of its devotees went hand in hand with ‘behaviorism’. This perspective assumed that all states were engaged in ‘developing’ (which for many meant ‘becoming nations’), that their progress along this path could be measured quantitatively and synchronically, and that on the basis of knowledge derived from such measurements, governments could in fact hasten the process, which was a highly commendable thing to do. Since these states were proceeding down parallel paths, all states were intrinsically capable of achieving the desired results. The only serious intellectual question was why many resisted doing so. This viewpoint swept the scholarly world – not only of the hegemonic power, the United States, and its allies, old Europe, but also of its chief antagonist, the U.S.S.R. The theories of what governmental actions would promote development, and what social forces impeded it varied widely, but the plausibility of ‘development’ as a matrix of analysis reigned supreme until the mid-1960s, when it foundered on one economic reality and two political developments. The economic reality was that, despite all the theories, and all the presumed effort (aid, technical assistance, human investment), the so-called ‘gap’ between the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’ countries was growing bigger, not smaller. The two political developments were in fact ultimately a reflection of this economic reality. One was the emergence of national liberation movements throughout the world which engaged in armed struggle with more or less success – Vietnam, Algeria, Cuba. Their struggle had a resonance within the United States and Western Europe – among students, professors, and the ‘Third World within’– which in fact shook the up-to-then facile dominance of the developmentalists in the academy. But this same political upheaval affected the Communist countries as well, where a long series of interrelated crises – the XXth Party Congress of the C.P.S.U., the ‘upheavals’ in Eastern Europe, the split between the Chinese and the Russians, the cultural revolution, the rise of ‘Euro-communism’– similarly has undermined the internal credibility of the Stalinist version of developmentalism, the crude sequence through which each state was destined to ‘pass’. When a theory no longer seems to serve an adequate social function, scholars usually begin to question its intellectual credentials. As ‘developmentalism’ seemed less and less to explain the social reality through which we are living, various authors criticized one or another of its premises, groping towards an alternative framework of explanation, which I shall call a ‘world-system perspective’. The key difference between a developmentalist and a world-system perspective is in the point of departure, the unit of analysis. A developmentalist perspective assumes that the unit within which social action principally occurs is a politico-cultural unit – the state, or nation, or people – and seeks to explain differences between these units, including why their economies are different. A world-system perspective assumes, by contrast, that social action takes place in an entity within which there is an ongoing division of labour, and seeks to discover empirically whether such an entity is or is not unified politically or culturally, asking theoretically what are the consequences of the existence or non-existence of such unity. By throwing overboard the presupposition that there is a ‘society’ we are forced to look at the alternative possibilities of organizing the material world. We in fact rapidly discover that there are a limited number of possibilities, which we may call varying ‘modes of production’, meaning by that something very close to what the phrase seems on the surface to convey: the way in which decisions are made about dividing up productive tasks, about quantities of goods to be produced and labour-time to be invested, about quantities of goods to be consumed or accumulated, about the distribution of the goods produced. One mode, historically the earliest, we may call the reciprocal-lineage mode. It is based on limited and elementary specialization of tasks in which the products are reciprocally exchanged among producers. In this mode the chief productive resource is human labour and therefore the chief guarantee of sub-group survival the control of reproduction (via the control of women and their offspring). Production over a certain level is politically unsettling by enabling younger persons to escape the control of elders and therefore inequalities though real are limited. Empirically, it is the case (and I think it could be established that theoretically it must be the case) that such systems are small in physical scope, and that the economic boundaries are largely identical with political and cultural boundaries. Mini-systems seem a reasonable name. I believe it is the case that such mini-systems are not only small in physical scope but short-lived historically (meaning a life of say six generations or so). This short life can be accounted for in various ways: the dangers for such a technologically primitive group of physical extinction (through warfare or natural calamity); the possibility of conquest; fission of the group as the result of slow growth in accumulated stock; reorganization of the division of labour resulting from physical flight and consequent ecological adjustment. If this is an accurate description, the world has known countless such groups over historical time and has virtually no historical records of how they functioned. Some ethnologists claim to have recorded such groups, but for the most part I am sceptical that the units studied were truly autonomous systems, since one of the preconditions of most such study has in fact been imperial control of the area studied by a larger political entity which in turn existed within a far wider division of labour. Our empirical knowledge is largely limited to larger divisions of labour which I shall term world-systems, using the word ‘world’ to signify larger space and longer time than mini-systems, and operationally to mean an arena, or division of labour, within which more than one ‘cultural’ grouping exists, but which may or may not be politically unified. There have in fact, up to now, been two basic forms of world-systems. Since in one form the prototype is the unified political system, we shall call this type the ‘world-empire’, by contrast with the other type which is precisely defined by the continuing absence of such political unity, the ‘world-economy’. The ‘world-empire’ has many variations in terms of the political superstructure and the cultural consequences. A large part of Weber's Economy and Society is a morphology of these variations. But the mode of production is common to these variant forms. It is a mode of production which creates enough of an agricultural surplus (based therefore on a more advanced technology than the reciprocal-lineage mode) sufficient to maintain both the artisans who produce non-agricultural goods and, in the widest sense, an ‘administrative’ stratum. Whereas the agricultural and artisanal producers in some sense ‘exchange’ goods, either reciprocally or in local markets, goods are transferred from producers to ‘administrators’ by a forced appropriation, ‘tribute’, which is centralized by someone or some institution – how remote this institution is from the producer is one of the major variables of the differing forms – and thereupon ‘redistributed’ to the ‘administrative bureaucracy’. The principal difference in this mode of production from the reciprocal-lineage mode was the fact that a class which did not produce ‘goods’ was supported (and indeed supported well). But there was a major similarity common to both pre-modern forms. In neither mode of production was maximal production desirable or desired. The reason is clear. Since the channel upward of the surplus appropriation in the redistributive-tributary form was the same ‘bureaucracy’ to whom the top of the structure ‘redistributed’ this surplus, too large a surplus created a strong temptation for ‘pre-emption’ of this surplus on the way upward. This of course constantly happened. But it meant that the ruling groups were always caught in the contradiction of wanting more, but not ‘too much’. The consequences were manifold. Technological advance was not desirable per se. It no doubt occurred, but it was probably less the desire to expand production than the need, when it occurred, to stem a decline in real production that served as its spur. Secondly, the contradictory needs of the ruling groups (more, but not too much) were communicated to the direct producers in terms of socially-fixed as opposed to socially-open quotas of appropriation. That is not to say that these quotas never changed. They changed constantly, but discontinuously, and the myth of the was a of the social In this mode of inequalities were in to the reciprocal-lineage mode, but there were some The ruling groups have the of life and by the over the direct but they were to since the of the ruling groups was on a level of appropriation from a despite the of the local ruling groups but their it is the case (and I think it could be established that theoretically it must be the case) that such systems were larger in physical than the reciprocal-lineage forms (and very as for the at its the economic division of labour, multiple – parallel groups of agricultural groups, ‘administrative’ But the of this mode of production was the political of the whether this or high have existed since the and up to very The number was but not The life of such systems varied to their their their ecological and so But the of such systems was a one – of and to the point where the of the surplus the surplus that in be at which point decline and The of and the and of when outside the ‘world-empire’, reciprocal-lineage mini-systems, but which when within one more out of which was and was thereby these two of production on the for of is a term which is often to mean the of by the ruling and ‘administrative’ in such And since there was a certain of the forms of a particular each time a was created in the same we can also use the concept to those cultural forms that are common to in the same is the of a long series of such Since the needs of were by in the of was and we have from which to the of such systems, which we may historical time (or in terms of The is a of social system from a ‘world-empire’ and a from a – both in structure and as a mode of As a a is defined as a division of labour within which are multiple – it is a world-system like the – but which has no political a political structure to the surplus, the surplus can only be the states within the to the the mode of production is A mode is one in which production is for that is, it is by its on a a in which each to (and therefore that which is, in the long most produced and but in which each to (and therefore is that the of are not to the individual as and as political to The basic contradiction that as a social system results from the of for the and its for the – of labour, of the of the of of the The of and that results is the of a This about its its its social Whereas the quantities of production in a redistributive-tributary mode were more or less precisely the is of a mode. There is no social to only the of the of and of individual producer not a but as much as and that can him to produce more, and more – science and technology – is But it must be or no is And is the less that is consumed the more be But as this way – the of there a point where production not but there are too – not the political of the but the economic of the There are to be inequalities of distribution and probably inequalities than in social science has always the The reason has to with the to be a result of and the by which the is In a system, the of the is the to the political but life for the producer is the basic of political But in a mode, with economic the life of the producer can be more as of surplus than as producer of the can best serve to by both and were very were probably less than a century and had to an They the political structures to of from the system and the that from time to time often they did it was a state to the boundaries of the division of labour, the being into a and the of a mode rapidly to a redistributive-tributary mode of is about the world is the emergence of a that it did more than it has to the (and thereby all mini-systems and and about a and ecological in the use of natural There are intellectual that may be about this world-system. The is the of its how is it that the European such The question is how such a system, The is what are the basic of a system, and therefore what account for its decline as a social of these is a long and one and be with any of I have longer to these I of these in the most of The is to be in the process of of a particular that of Europe, which seems to have its in its great of In the of of the two the real of the ruling seemed to a real One reason was the real of the the result of A was the that of of the level of and the warfare of the ruling of their the of economic The was there been a on the capable of the core of the system old of or had Europe been more there have been a more political reorganization of But there there was a of of on the part of the ruling It an alternative mode of that of the to whether it serve to the real of the ruling This economic the rise of the state – in the of a The of was not in the of a the over the it be as the of into an of the ruling it as any look from say 1800 at can The of was no The was in the of the producers. 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It is only by that it is we must study that we can begin to the of history, both those that are and those that are within the process of the social structures the world has over historical It is only that we can begin to be about a natural phenomenon, the human and in for the that in fact all of to and within

Ryan Henry, Kevin Henry, Ian Goldberg

No abstract is available for this record.

Wang Zhan-jun

This paper presents a new zero-knowledge protocol for SDH pair,which based on TOO/BB-E encryption from DBDH as-sumption.This protocal's security is stronger than reference[1].

Andre Baechtiger, Seraina Pedrini

The inclusion of structural minorities and disadvantaged groups looms large in the study of democracy. There is ample recognition that “simple political egalitarianism on which the institutions and mechanisms of modern representative democracy were established has given way to increasing demands for group recognition as well as for forms of equality related directly to people's needs, characteristics, identities and conditions.” (Castiglione and Warren 2005: 2) There is also ample recognition that the standard liberal and majoritarian model of democracy is frequently unable to safeguard the most vital interests of structural minorities and disadvantaged groups. Several representation models and institutional devices have been proposed in order to advance the interests of minorities and disadvantaged groups. In the past decade, however, the study of inclusion and representation has increasingly taken a deliberative turn (Williams 1998; Urbinati 2000; Mansbridge 2003; 2009; Dryzek and Niemeyer 2008). Rather than focusing on formal and institutional means of inclusion (such as proportional representation, minority veto, or re-districting), deliberative approaches take an informal and dynamic view on inclusion and representation. In their mainstream and Habermasian-inspired version, deliberative approaches entail the idea of equal participation and symmetric dialogue, reasoned argument, common good orientation, serious and respectful listening (and responding) to other participants' claims, as well as mutual agreement based on the “forceless force of the better argument”. With their focus on equality, symmetry, serious listening, and respect, deliberative approaches spark hope to be susceptible to the interests of structural minorities and disadvantaged groups. Yet, despite tremendous interest in deliberative approaches in recent years, the exact specification and empirical translation of deliberative ideals in the context of minority and group inclusion has lagged behind. This may not be so surprising, given the fact that deliberative approaches are far from being fool-proof devices for the inclusion of disadvantaged groups. The major problem is that mainstream and Habermasian-inspired forms of deliberation might actually hamper inclusionary goals. On the one hand, feminists and difference democrats have argued that many disadvantaged people do not engage in rationalistic forms of deliberation, which may suit only a privileged few. On the other hand, why should disadvantaged groups respectfully listen to privileged groups or even transcend their interests in the light of the “better” argument, especially if they have experienced inequality or if their vital interests are at stake? As Williams (1998) has noted, requiring selflessness and self-transformation of the disadvantaged is deeply unfair. These are two valid objections, not easily addressed by the mainstream deliberative approach. Therefore, we propose a deliberative approach with “friendly amendments”. Our approach focuses on two central principles of deliberation, equality of participation and reciprocity, but it does so with a twist for reciprocity. First, equality of deliberation requires that all affected are included and “that no one person or advantaged group completely dominate the reason giving process, even if the deliberators are not strictly equal in power and prestige.” (Thompson 2008: 507). Second, reciprocity means that discourse participants should listen and respond to each other and do so in a respectful way (Chambers 1999). However, the trick here is to put the “burden” of reciprocity primarily on majorities and privileged groups: it is mainly their obligation to seriously listen and respond to the demands and arguments of minorities and disadvantaged groups and show a willingness to respect and accommodate these interests. Conversely, structural minorities and disadvantaged groups are not fully held accountable to these standards. They may be deliberative, but they may also adopt a more adversarial stance towards majorities and privileged groups. This relaxation is conditional though: the less inequality structural minorities and disadvantaged groups have experienced and the less their vital interests are at stake, the more we expect them to converge to the standards of majorities and privileged groups (and the more privileged groups are dispensed from taking a deliberative attitude vis-a-vis the disadvantaged). Finally, contrary to standard models of political inclusion and representation, our deliberative approach focuses only on the horizontal relationship among different (group) representatives and the ways they interact – rather than on the vertical relationship between representatives and constituents. We think that the former aspect of representation is critical though: it is the moment when inclusion and representation are in action and when constituent interests are turned into binding decisions. So far, there has been little empirical and systematic examination of deliberative forms of inclusion in the context of structural minorities and disadvantaged groups. In this study, we investigate equality of participation and reciprocity in the context of linguistic minorities in Switzerland (French, Italian and Romansch-speakers). To be sure, linguistic groups in Switzerland do not directly qualify as “disadvantaged” groups (such as Blacks in the United States), since they have not experienced deep inequality or oppression in the past. However, when their vital interests are at stake, they do not have formal means of veto power to prevent unwanted legislation but are generally dependent on the decisions of the German-speaking majority to realize their interests (both in representative and direct democracy). Moreover, there have been recurrent complaints of linguistic minorities of being marginalized and ignored by German speakers. As such, an empirical investigation of deliberative inclusion of linguistic minorities in Switzerland is far from being misdirected. At the same time, the institutional architecture of the Swiss political system is also conducive to deliberative forms of policy-making: it involves a consensus system with non-parliamentary features, enabling political actors to engage in consequential deliberation (see Steiner et al. 2004). Moreover, the party system is not organized along linguistic cleavages reducing partisan incentives to politicize linguistic conflicts. This combines with a specific motivation on part of the German-speaking majority to be receptive to the demands of linguistic minorities (Bachtiger and Steiner 2004). Thus, favorable institutional conditions and appropriate actor motivations should provide fertile ground to see our conception of deliberative inclusion “in action”. Put differently, the Swiss case enables us to explore how well the ideals of equality of participation and reciprocity are realized in practice when conditions are fairly ideal. In concrete, we focus on two Swiss parliamentary decision cases that deal with linguistic issues and directly concern linguistic minorities‟ vital interests (language article and language bill); in addition, we focus on a contrast decision case, the labor law revision which does not touch upon vital interests of the linguistic minorities. For the three cases, we explore patterns of participation and reciprocity in the committees of the first and second chambers of parliament. With regard to equality of participation, we analyze how often linguistic minorities speak up compared to the German-speaking majority. With regard to reciprocity, we analyze how often linguistic minorities are referred to, how often linguistic minorities refer to other actors, and whether this is done in a respectful and disrespectful way. Furthermore, we also perform an in-depth analysis of reciprocity and explore how often arguments of linguistic minorities are referred to by the German-speaking minority and whether this is done in a respectful (or, disrespectful) way. Our empirical analysis of deliberative inclusion draws from Steven Levitt‟s (2004) analysis of discrimination in the United States. We calculate frequencies for participation and reciprocity rates as a function of the speakers status – linguistic minority or linguistic majority -, controlling for other characteristics of the speaker (such as gender, role, or partisan affiliation) as well as characteristics of the context (different issues or first vs. second chamber). The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section II presents our model of deliberative inclusion. Section III provides background on deliberative inclusion in the context of linguistic groups in Switzerland, discusses the methodological approach, and presents the empirical results. Section IV concludes.

Esa Viljamaa, Pekka Kilpeläinen, Esa-Matti Sarjanoja, Tomi Moakkonen · 6 authors

This research was concentrating on an exploitation of 3D design data to ground strengthening, especially focusing on the pile driving process. An XML model (schema) was defined for digital piling plan and as-build-data from the piling. The schema was targeted to cover the complete piling information flow from the piling plan from the 3D CAD software to the actual pile realisation data e.g. location and bearing capacity data, produced by the piling machine. In addition to the information management, a guiding system for the piling machine driver was developed. The guiding system included sensors and RTK-GPS positioning system for measuring the location of tool of the piling machine in relation to the planned locations of the piles. The system gives visual instructions for the driver for positioning of the piles according to the plan. A wireless database connection is used for synchronisation of the planned and realised piles information. The progress of the piling work can be easily supervised using an internet browser. The first proof-of-concept system was developed and tested during the year 2009. The main advantages of the system are reduced staking out work, faster pile positioning, automated piling data logging and data transfer between office and worksite and more up-to-date information about the progress of the piling work.

Xiaoyuan Yang

IKE protocol,with its complexity,is vulnerable to multiple attacks.This paper first analyzes its flaws,and then based on the idea of zero knowledge proof,proposes a new protocol,which can resist MITM attack efficiently as well as reduce system consumption.This protocol fits the users who need more strong security protect for their data.

Suwen Zheng

In this paper,two zero-knowledge proof schemes based on the elliptic curve groups are given.Both of the schemes make party A claim to party B that it owns some kind of information,and make party B believe that it indeed owns the information through interactive proof,at the same time,the information is not leaked out.

Feng Hao, Peter Y. A. Ryan

No abstract is available for this record.

Desislava Stoilova

This study is intended to examine the influence of the current worldwide financial and economic crisis on financial decentralization process in Bulgaria and identify the answers of the central and lo-cal governments to the critical situation in the context of specific conditions of the national economy and the stage of financial decentralization reform. Analysis is focused on dynamics of the main mac-roeconomic indicators, based on fact figures for the period 1990–2009 and forecast for the period 2010-2011, and its impact on the public finance. The most important actions, taken by the national government to consolidate the crisis are described and evaluated on the base of their effects on the lo-cal finance. A comparison is made between the loss of Bulgarian economy in the beginning of transition (1991-1993), during the financial crisis in 1996-1997, caused by credit crunch and series of bank bankruptcies, and the current financial and economic crisis. Finally, some conclusions and pol-icy recommendations are outlined, intended to improve crisis management in Bulgaria both on the national and local level.