Structures of Power and Constraint

Structures of Power and Constraint PDF Author: Craig Calhoun
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521365988
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book discusses the question: are social structures products of human action, expressions of individual or group power?

Structures of Power and Constraint

Structures of Power and Constraint PDF Author: Craig Calhoun
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521365988
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book discusses the question: are social structures products of human action, expressions of individual or group power?

Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11

Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency After 9/11 PDF Author: Jack Goldsmith
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393083519
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The surprising truth behind Barack Obama's decision to continue many of his predecessor's counterterrorism policies. Conventional wisdom holds that 9/11 sounded the death knell for presidential accountability. In fact, the opposite is true. The novel powers that our post-9/11 commanders in chief assumed—endless detentions, military commissions, state secrets, broad surveillance, and more—are the culmination of a two-century expansion of presidential authority. But these new powers have been met with thousands of barely visible legal and political constraints—enforced by congressional committees, government lawyers, courts, and the media—that have transformed our unprecedentedly powerful presidency into one that is also unprecedentedly accountable. These constraints are the key to understanding why Obama continued the Bush counterterrorism program, and in this light, the events of the last decade should be seen as a victory, not a failure, of American constitutional government. We have actually preserved the framers’ original idea of a balanced constitution, despite the vast increase in presidential power made necessary by this age of permanent emergency.

Control of Complex Systems

Control of Complex Systems PDF Author: Aleksandar Zecevic
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1441912169
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
"Control of Complex Systems: Structural Constraints and Uncertainty" focuses on control design under information structure constraints, with a particular emphasis on large-scale systems. The complexity of such systems poses serious computational challenges and severely restricts the types of feedback laws that can be used in practice. This book systematically addresses the main issues, and provides a number of applications that illustrate potential design methods, most which use Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs), which have become a popular design tool over the past two decades. Authors Aleksandar I. Zecevic and Dragoslav D. Siljak use their years of experience in the control field to also: Address the issues of large-scale systems as they relate to robust control and linear matrix inequalities Discuss a new approach to applying standard LMI techniques to large-scale systems, combining graphic-theoretic decomposition techniques with appropriate low-rank numerical approximations and dramatically reducing the computational effort Providing numerous examples and a wide variety of applications, ranging from electric power systems and nonlinear circuits to mechanical problems and dynamic Boolean networks "Control of Complex Systems: Structural Constraints and Uncertainty" will appeal to practicing engineers, researchers and students working in control design and other related areas.

Unanswered Threats

Unanswered Threats PDF Author: Randall L. Schweller
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400837855
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Why have states throughout history regularly underestimated dangers to their survival? Why have some states been able to mobilize their material resources effectively to balance against threats, while others have not been able to do so? The phenomenon of "underbalancing" is a common but woefully underexamined behavior in international politics. Underbalancing occurs when states fail to recognize dangerous threats, choose not to react to them, or respond in paltry and imprudent ways. It is a response that directly contradicts the core prediction of structural realism's balance-of-power theory--that states motivated to survive as autonomous entities are coherent actors that, when confronted by dangerous threats, act to restore the disrupted balance by creating alliances or increasing their military capabilities, or, in some cases, a combination of both. Consistent with the new wave of neoclassical realist research, Unanswered Threats offers a theory of underbalancing based on four domestic-level variables--elite consensus, elite cohesion, social cohesion, and regime/government vulnerability--that channel, mediate, and redirect policy responses to external pressures and incentives. The theory yields five causal schemes for underbalancing behavior, which are tested against the cases of interwar Britain and France, France from 1877 to 1913, and the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) that pitted tiny Paraguay against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Randall Schweller concludes that those most likely to underbalance are incoherent, fragmented states whose elites are constrained by political considerations.

Power/Knowledge

Power/Knowledge PDF Author: Michel Foucault
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 039473954X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 286

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Book Description
Michel Foucault has become famous for a series of books that have permanently altered our understanding of many institutions of Western society. He analyzed mental institutions in the remarkable Madness and Civilization; hospitals in The Birth of the Clinic; prisons in Discipline and Punish; and schools and families in The History of Sexuality. But the general reader as well as the specialist is apt to miss the consistent purposes that lay behind these difficult individual studies, thus losing sight of the broad social vision and political aims that unified them. Now, in this superb set of essays and interviews, Foucault has provided a much-needed guide to Foucault. These pieces, ranging over the entire spectrum of his concerns, enabled Foucault, in his most intimate and accessible voice, to interpret the conclusions of his research in each area and to demonstrate the contribution of each to the magnificent -- and terrifying -- portrait of society that he was patiently compiling. For, as Foucault shows, what he was always describing was the nature of power in society; not the conventional treatment of power that concentrates on powerful individuals and repressive institutions, but the much more pervasive and insidious mechanisms by which power "reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives" Foucault's investigations of prisons, schools, barracks, hospitals, factories, cities, lodgings, families, and other organized forms of social life are each a segment of one of the most astonishing intellectual enterprises of all time -- and, as this book proves, one which possesses profound implications for understanding the social control of our bodies and our minds.

Anthony Giddens

Anthony Giddens PDF Author: Christopher G. A. Bryant
Publisher: Taylor & Francis US
ISBN: 9780415116916
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Anthony Giddens has made original contributions to the fields of social theory, political sociology, the sociology of stratifications & suicide. This set includes carefully selected secondary articles which bring out the scope of his work.

Why America Loses Wars

Why America Loses Wars PDF Author: Donald Stoker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009220888
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
How can you achieve victory in war if you don't have a clear idea of your political aims and a vision of what victory means? In this provocative challenge to US political aims and strategy, Donald Stoker argues that America endures endless wars because its leaders no longer know how to think about war, particularly wars fought for limited aims, taking the nation to war without understanding what they want or valuing victory and thus the ending of the war. He reveals how flawed ideas on so-called 'limited war' and war in general evolved against the backdrop of American conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. These ideas, he shows, undermined America's ability to understand, wage, and win its wars, and to secure peace. Now fully updated to incorporate the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, Why America Loses Wars dismantles seventy years of misguided thinking and lays the foundations for a new approach to the wars of tomorrow.

Constraint Programming

Constraint Programming PDF Author: Brian Mayoh
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642859836
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Constraint programming is like an octopus spreading its tentacles into databases, operations research, artificial intelligence, and many other areas. The concept of constraint programming was introduced in artificial intelligence and graphics in the 1960s and 1970s. Now the related techniques are used and studied in many fields of computing. Different aspects of constraint processing are investigated in theoretical computer science, logic programming, knowledge representation, operations research, and related application domains. Constraint programming has been included in the lists of related topics of many conferences. Nevertheless, only in 1993 were the first forums held, devoted as a whole to this field of knowledge. These were the First Workshop on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (PPCP'93) which was held in Newport, Rhode Island, USA, April 28-30, the International Workshop on Constraint Processing (at CSAM'93) held in St. Petersburg, Russia, July 20-21, and the NATO Advanced Study Institute (NATO AS!) on Constraint Programming held in Parnu, Estonia, August 13-24. NATO A Sis are aimed to be schools bringing together leading researchers and practitioners from industry and academia in some area of knowledge to provide a concise picture of the work done and results obtained by different groups. This is intended for dissemination of advanced knowledge not yet taught regularly in of new topics university. However, ASis must also encourage the introduction into university curricula as well as foster international scientific contacts.

Power

Power PDF Author: John Scott
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745687741
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
This far-reaching study gives a concise and coherent overview ofthe debates surrounding the analysis of social power. The conceptof power is outlined, and its main dimensions are explored throughconsideration of various facets – command, pressure,constraint, discipline, protest, and interpersonal power. The bookexamines both the theoretical debates that have arisen and thekinds of empirical materials relevant to them. Topics covered include the nature of the contemporary state,global economic power, world systems, business governance,professional power, social movements, and family dynamics. Power will be an indispensable introduction for studentsand researchers in sociology, politics, and the social sciencesgenerally.

The Judicial Process

The Judicial Process PDF Author: E. W. Thomas
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139446983
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
In the absence of a sound conception of the judicial role, judges at present can be said to be 'muddling along'. They disown the declaratory theory of law but continue to behave and think as if it had not been discredited. Much judicial reasoning still exhibits an unquestioning acceptance of positivism and a 'rulish' predisposition. Formalistic thinking continues to exert a perverse influence on the legal process. This 2005 book dismantles these outdated theories and seeks to bridge the gap between legal theory and judicial practice. The author propounds a coherent and comprehensive judicial methodology for modern times. Founded on the truism that the law exists to serve society, and adopting the twin criteria of justice and contemporaneity with the times, a judicial methodology is developed which is realistic and pragmatic and which embraces a revised conception of practical reasoning, including in that conception a critical role for legal principles.