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Topic Review
Positive Effect of Teenager Participation in Local Governance
Teenager participation in local governance is a critical aspect of ensuring that the voices and perspectives of young people are integrated into decision-making processes at the community level. The engagement of teenagers in local governance not only contributes to the development of more inclusive and representative policies but also fosters a sense of civic responsibility and empowerment among young people. 
  • 855
  • 07 Nov 2023
Topic Review
European Public Procurement and Sustainability
European public procurement is designed at the European Union (EU) level and implemented in different national, regional and local contexts in Europe. Hence, public procurement has formally a similar design across the EU. The EU has a population of about 500 million people and one of the largest per capita ecological footprints in the world. Consequently, as public procurement stands for a sizable proportion of the consumption in the EU, its relevance for sustainable development, and the goal of sustainability, is significant.
  • 851
  • 30 Jun 2021
Biography
Ted Honderich
Ted Honderich (born 30 January 1933) is a Canadian-born British professor of philosophy, who was Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London.[1] Honderich was born Edgar Dawn Ross Honderich on 30 January 1933 in Baden, Ontario, Canada . An undergraduate at the University of Toronto, qualifying as B.A. (Hons) in Philosophy and English Literature, he
  • 821
  • 21 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Methodology: Video Data Analysis
Video Data Analysis (VDA) is a curated multi-disciplinary collection of tools, techniques, and quality criteria intended for analyzing the content of visuals to study driving dynamics of social behavior and events in real-life settings. It often uses visual data in combination with other data types. VDA is employed across the social sciences in disciplines such as sociology, psychology, criminology, business research, and education research.
  • 807
  • 15 Mar 2023
Topic Review
The Public Acceptance of Sustainability Policymaking
Public participation is crucial for the successful implementation of a sustainable policy because it requires citizen consent. When considering citizen participation, the local context must be considered, particularly for making the policy feasible, efficient, and tangible by involving various people. The acceptability of a policy is significant for making sustainability goals feasible, which would lead to cooperation from the broader public.
  • 804
  • 19 Apr 2022
Biography
Brigitte Young
Brigitte Young (born 26 May 1946 in Groß Sankt Florian, Austria), is Professor Emeritus of International political economy at the Institute of Political Science, University of Münster, Germany .[1] Her research areas include economic globalization, global governance, feminist economics, international trade, global financial market governance and monetary policy. She has worked on EU-US financi
  • 789
  • 17 Nov 2022
Biography
Hans H. Indorf
Hans H. Indorf (died March 10, 1989 in Fairfax, Virginia) was an academic professor and international advisor in political science. "I regard Dr. Indorf as one of the most brilliant and best informed men on foreign affairs of any expert I have ever come in contact with," said Senator Robert Burren Morgan.[1] Hans Indorf, a naturalized American citizen, was born in Germany but escaped to Ameri
  • 765
  • 18 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Vested Interest (Communication Theory)
Vested interest (Crano, 1983; Crano & Prislin, 1995; Sivacek & Crano, 1982) is a communication theory that seeks to explain how certain hedonically relevant (Miller & Averbeck, 2013) attitudinal dimensions can influence and consistently predict behavior based on the degree of subjective investment an individual has in a particular attitude object. As defined by William Crano, vested interest refers to the degree to which an attitude object is deemed hedonically relevant by the attitude holder. According to Crano, "an attitude object that has important perceived personal consequences for the individual will be perceived as highly vested. Highly vested attitudes will be functionally related to behavior" (Crano, 1983). Simply put, when people have more at stake with the result of an object (like a law or policy) that will greatly affect them, they will behave in a way that will directly support or defy the object for the sake of their own self-interest. For example, a 30-year-old learns that the legal driving age in his state is being raised from 16 to 17. While he may not agree with this proposed change, he is not affected as much as a 15-year-old would be and is unlikely to protest the change. A 15-year-old, however, has much to lose (waiting another year to get a driver license) and is more likely to vehemently oppose the new proposed law. To gather support for his position, a course of action the 15-year-old might take would be to tell other soon-to-be drivers about the new law, so that they collectively have a vested interest in perhaps changing the law. This example illustrates the point that highly vested attitudes concerning issues depend on the individual's point of view. Another example of vested interest can be found in a study conducted by Berndsen, Spears and van der Pligt, which involves students from a University in Amsterdam where the teaching faculty proposed the use of English to teach the curriculum instead of Dutch. Vested interest, in this case, suggests that students would be opposed to the use of English rather than Dutch simply based on the potential impact lectures conducted in English might have on their grades.
  • 744
  • 17 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Natural and Legal Rights
Natural and legal rights are two types of rights. Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, and so are universal and inalienable (they cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws). Legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system (they can be modified, repealed, and restrained by human laws). The concept of natural law is related to the concept of natural rights. Natural law first appeared in ancient Greek philosophy, and was referred to by Roman philosopher Cicero. It was subsequently alluded to in the Bible, and then developed in the Middle Ages by Catholic philosophers such as Albert the Great and his pupil Thomas Aquinas. During the Age of Enlightenment, the concept of natural laws was used to challenge the divine right of kings, and became an alternative justification for the establishment of a social contract, positive law, and government – and thus legal rights – in the form of classical republicanism. Conversely, the concept of natural rights is used by others to challenge the legitimacy of all such establishments. The idea of human rights is also closely related to that of natural rights: some acknowledge no difference between the two, regarding them as synonymous, while others choose to keep the terms separate to eliminate association with some features traditionally associated with natural rights. Natural rights, in particular, are considered beyond the authority of any government or international body to dismiss. The 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is an important legal instrument enshrining one conception of natural rights into international soft law. Natural rights were traditionally viewed as exclusively negative rights, whereas human rights also comprise positive rights. Even on a natural rights conception of human rights, the two terms may not be synonymous. The proposition that animals have natural rights is one that gained the interest of philosophers and legal scholars in the 20th century and into the 21st.
  • 735
  • 08 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Society of the Friends of Truth
The Society of the Friends of Truth (Amis de la Verité), also known as the Social Club (French: Cercle social), was a French revolutionary organization founded in 1790. It was "a mixture of revolutionary political club, the Masonic Lodge, and a literary salon". It also published an influential revolutionary newspaper, the Mouth of Iron.
  • 705
  • 14 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Application of Deep Learning on Political Context
People’s preferences form the public’s collective sentiment and various political elements including elections, representation, and policymaking. Public opinion is a group expression or consensus of people who share the same or similar interests (MacDougall, 1952). Naturally, distinguishing interest groups in the realm of politics is challenging. People can have more than one preference and be part of multiple interest groups simultaneously. Until today, polling has been the dominant method to assess public opinion. Specifically, presidential approval is a good example of a polling estimate to measure public opinion in politics.
  • 697
  • 22 Apr 2022
Topic Review
Wise Use Movement
The wise use movement in the United States is a loose-knit coalition of groups promoting the expansion of private property rights and reduction of government regulation of publicly held property. This includes advocacy of expanded use by commercial and public interests, seeking increased access to public lands, and often opposition to government intervention. Wise use proponents describe human use of the environment as "stewardship of the land, the water and the air" for the benefit of human beings. The wise use movement arose from opposition to the mainstream environmental movement, claiming it to be radical.
  • 686
  • 21 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Investments in Pinus elliottii Engelm. Plantations
Investment projects in Pinus elliotti plantations that contemplate the land purchase analyzed through the real options analysis present higher financial returns than those that consider land lease, inverting the result provided by the traditional analysis. 
  • 622
  • 11 Feb 2022
Topic Review
Comparison of U.S. State and Territory Governments
In the United States , the government of each of the 50 states is structured in accordance with its individual constitution. In turn, each state constitution must be grounded in republican principles. Article IV, Section 4, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution tasks the federal government with assuring that each state's government is so organized. All state governments are modeled after the federal government and consist of three branches (although the three-branch structure is not Constitutionally required): executive, legislative, and judicial. All state governments are also organized as presidential systems where the governor is both head of government and head of state (even though this too is not required). The government of each of the five permanently inhabited U.S. territories is modeled and organized in a like fashion. Each state is itself a sovereign entity, and as such, reserves the right to organize in any way (within the above stated parameter) deemed appropriate by its people. As a result, while the governments of the various states share many similar features, they often vary greatly with regard to form and substance. No two state governments are identical. The following tables compare and contrast some of the features of U.S. state governments.
  • 605
  • 14 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Green Social Capital in the Middle East
The turn of the twentieth century marked the beginning of MENA’s reliance on oil as an export source. Since 1918, oil has become the most prominent and influential natural resource that drives the whole economy of the Middle East. Alan Richards and John Waterbury highlight that the Middle East throughout history has been centre stage in global politics and has been endlessly fought over due to its strategic importance and significant geopolitical resources. The economic reliance that MENA has upon oil is unprecedented as oil accounts for the vast majority of total exports in half of the oil-exporting economies, which are vulnerable to changes in global demand that can affect exports and imports, as well as cause the price of oil to rise or decline radically. The Middle East has experienced various economic structures from socialist-based financial planning to attempting to open markets to the Washington consensus. However, neither path has been successful in diversifying and modernising the economies for most citizens. At present, the reliance on oil is still present and the economies of the Middle East could be threatened with long-term stagnation or financial recession due to heavy reliance on the resource.
  • 559
  • 02 Apr 2022
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
An Exploration of U.S. Nutritional Diet Policies: A Narrative Review for Transformation Toward Sustainable Food Systems
Background: Current food systems contribute significantly to poor public health and environmental degradation. With increasing rates of chronic disease and undernutrition globally and in the United States of America (U.S.), transforming food systems toward sustainability is a critical public health priority. Objectives: This narrative review aimed to summarize U.S. policies from the past decade relevant to sustainable food systems, focusing on four domains—availability, accessibility, affordability, and desirability—proposed by the 22nd Annual Harvard Nutrition Obesity Symposium. Methods: Systematic searches were conducted using MEDLINE (PubMed), Scopus, U.S. Congress websites, and Google searches. Studies and policies published between 2013 and 2023 that addressed at least one of the four domains were included. Policies were reviewed according to their alignment with the policy lifecycle framework, encompassing formulation through implementation. Results: A review of the final 632 articles explained that, despite growing interest in sustainable food systems, there is a lack of comprehensive U.S. policies that address the four domains in an integrated manner. Most initiatives were limited in scope, often school-based, and not explicitly sustainability-focused. Food availability and accessibility policies exist but remain fragmented, while affordability and desirability domains are severely underrepresented. Few laws or bills have been enacted or evaluated for population-level or environmental outcomes. Conclusions: Transforming U.S. food systems requires more robust evidence-based policy development and evaluation. There is an urgent need for integrated multisectoral policy frameworks to ensure health, equity, and sustainability across all food system domains.
  • 223
  • 30 Oct 2025
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Federalism: A Comprehensive Review of Its Evolution, Typologies, and Contemporary Issues
This study is intended to conduct a comprehensive review of federalism. This study starts from the institutional aspect and analyzes how federalism, as a compound structure, divides power between the central and local governments. Then, this study mentions that federalism also has its normative connotations, which are traceable to the theological concept of a covenant. We also elaborate on how the success of the United States’ federalism strengthened its institutional aspect while overshadowing the older covenant tradition. Next, this study presents a typological framework of federalism, introducing concepts such as coming-together federalism and holding-together federalism; dual federalism and cooperative federalism; decentralization and non-centralization; and asymmetrical federalism, non-territorial autonomy, and consociationalism, presidential and parliamentary federalism, as well as democratic federalism and authoritarian federalism/facade federalism. Next, this study compares monist federalism with multinational federalism. Then, this study examines the specific applications of federalism in fiscal, environmental, health-care, and social-welfare policies. By reviewing the history, theoretical origins, institutional development, and contemporary manifestations of federalism, this study provides a roadmap for scholars in the field of federal studies. Finally, this study also puts forward several testable hypotheses, aiming to provide operational research agendas for future studies.
  • 123
  • 09 Oct 2025
Topic Review Peer Reviewed
Technocracy
Technocracy refers to any political–social–economic system that is governed and managed using purportedly objective scientific and technical principles, and in which ultimate power and authority rests with technical and scientific experts. The concept had its initial origins in the early decades of the Industrial Revolution (with antecedents stretching back to the rationalism of ancient Greece and, later, the Enlightenment in the West). Henri Saint-Simon in early 19th century France was the earliest exponent of a technocratic system which involved overall political and economic government by industrialists. Technocracy was formally coined as a term in the early 20th century in the United States in the context of a specific intellectual movement under the same name which laid out a more detailed system of economic and social management by industrialists and scientists that supposedly would guarantee maximum efficiency in production, consumption and distribution without the self-defeating tendencies of political systems of the time, either democratic or authoritarian. Technocracy is currently used to refer to any policy or governmental arrangement that purportedly emphasizes technical criteria above non-technical values in policy, planning and public decision-making, and which gives significant authority to experts. Singapore is often referred to as a leading example of such an approach. Various controversies have arisen around technocracy, especially its potential incompatibility with democracy and social values that are not easily translated into technical terms. There is also debate about how feasible a genuine technocracy actually is in practice.
  • 14
  • 18 Nov 2025
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