Explaining rebel-state collaboration in insurgency: keep your friends close but your enemies closer

Open Multiagent Systems, in which heterogeneous agents interact with each other and organize themselves into Virtual Organizations, demand infrastructures supporting these features. In these systems, dynamic and complex interactions between agents may arise. Interaction Protocols allow the definition of communication patterns. However in open systems, dynamic and complex interactions may also require these patterns be modified at execution time. We propose a support for modelling complex, concurrent and dynamic interactions between agents in terms of conversations. Conversations between agents follow predefined Interaction Protocols that can be dynamically modified without restarting the system. This support is provided at agent level and is integrated into the Magentix Multiagent Platform.

Many scholars have drawn attention to the growing influence of nationalist ideology within Latvian politics in recent years. The causes behind this nationalist turn remain disputed. This article studies this process through analyzing four integration policy documents, followed by an examination of different plausible hypotheses explaining the nationalist turn. The author compares two popular explanations – identified as the Potemkin pluralism hypothesis and the external threat hypothesis. Lastly, the author proposes a third hypothesis, the ethnic party system hypothesis, in order to further emphasize the role of the Latvian party system in shaping the state’s increasingly nationalist policy output.

Resilience to fire and climate seasonality drive the temporal dynamics of ant-plant interactions in a fire-prone ecosystem

In this chapter, David Waldner explores the development of qualitative methods of within-case analysis. Process tracing is a method that can be employed to make valid claims from data gathered in the field. Using his own research work from the 1990s on state building and late development, Waldner discusses the reasons for developing process tracing methods, some early efforts at their development, some critiques of these early efforts, and more recent refinements. The chapter demonstrates the close interplay between theory, evidence, and methods.

ABSTRACTIn recent years, causal process tracing is becoming increasingly formalised as scholars have begun to follow Bayesian logic and thereby manage to combine the interpretative and contextual nuance of older forms of process tracing with the inferential rigours of Bayesian analysis. This paper illustrates the basic logic of Bayesian process tracing by drawing on the political economy literature that studies the social policy and economic effects of electoral systems. It compares and contrasts how each approach deals with the problem of endogeneity.

ABSTRACTThis essay briefly analyzes the introduction of process tracing to the political science and political economy methodological toolkit. It then proposes a theory-guided variant of process tracing and distinguishes between its application in extensive and intensive type of processes. It argues that the comparative advantage of process tracing vis-à-vis other social sciences research methods lies in its potential to uncover the causal mechanisms that link the constitutive events of intensive type of processes. It shows that theory-guided process tracing of intensive processes can be successfully applied to illustrate, test and produce theory.

This chapter sets out the background of a case study of collaborative knowledge improvement using a representational tool named as GroupScribbles in a Chinese as second-language learning lesson. The case study was carried out in observational approaches in a natural context. To address the research questions, being (1) the interplay between patterns of medium transition and trajectories of group understanding development and (2) the teacher’s role in managing multilayered activities for assisting more productive group understanding development, a microanalysis of evolving interactions was proposed by focusing on three analytic dimensions: (1) patterns of medium transition, (2) cognitive processing, and (3) teachers’ activities (including teachers’ instructional activities and teachers’ and students’ interactions). These three dimensions are closely linked together to help comprehensively investigate complex and dynamic interactions in networked Chinese second-language learning classrooms. The findings to answer the research questions are presented in Chap. 7 and Chap. 8, respectively.

G protein-gated inwardly rectifying potassium (GIRK) channels control neuronal excitability in the brain and are implicated in several different neurological diseases. The anionic phospholipid phosphatidylinositol 4,5 bisphosphate (PIP2) is an essential cofactor for GIRK channel gating, but the precise mechanism by which PIP2 opens GIRK channels remains poorly understood. Previous structural studies have revealed several highly conserved, positively charged residues in the "tether helix" (C-linker) that interact with the negatively charged PIP2 However, these crystal structures of neuronal GIRK channels in complex with PIP2 provide only snapshots of PIP2's interaction with the channel and thus lack details about the gating transitions triggered by PIP2 binding. Here, our functional studies reveal that one of these conserved basic residues in GIRK2, Lys200 (6'K), supports a complex and dynamic interaction with PIP2 When Lys200 is mutated to an uncharged amino acid, it activates the channel by enhancing the interaction with PIP2 Atomistic molecular dynamic simulations of neuronal GIRK2 with the same 6' substitution reveal an open GIRK2 channel with PIP2 molecules adopting novel positions. This dynamic interaction with PIP2 may explain the intrinsic low open probability of GIRK channels and the mechanism underlying activation by G protein Gβγ subunits and ethanol.

Rostek, Joanna. <i>Women’s Economic Thought in the Romantic Age: Towards a Transdisciplinary Herstory of Economic Thought</i>

This article draws attention to language choice and language use of Austrian bi- and multilingual school children. We explore some implications of their linguistic practices with regard to social inclusion in an Austrian educational school setting. Pursuing a Dynamic Systems and Complexity Theory approach, we hypothesise that before language users actually use a language within a certain context, they have to evaluate the respective communicative situation by taking multiple contextual factors into consideration, meaning language users choose to use, or not to use, a language based on the socio-contextual information at hand. We consider these contextual factors to be most relevant as they provide the basis on which speakers can actually make use of a certain language within a given context. By drawing on examples of empirical data obtained through a language background survey, we examine some of the complex and dynamic interactions of contextual parameters influencing language choice and language use in the formal educational setting of classroom instruction. Based on the results of this study, we display a selection of the dynamic and complex interactions of pupils’ language use in one specific context as well as their language preferences and how these relate to social inclusion.

Marine algae provide a suitable habitat for a wide range of mobile and sessile macrofauna. Many of these organisms are permanent members of the epiphyton, whereas others utilize the host in a more transient fashion. Different types of algae support different suites of epiphytes according to the resources which the former provide. These include food and shelter as well as surfaces for attachment. Although some epiphytes are beneficial, others may impose a high selective cost on their host algae. Consequently the dynamic interactions between algae and their epiphytes are often extremely complex and not easy to categorize. In general, algae attempt to maximize associations with beneficial epiphytes and minimize encounters with those which impose excessive cost. Such complex interactions and the often close interdependence of epiphytes and host suggest a considerable degree of coevolution, though at present there is little conclusive evidence for this. This intriguing yet surprisingly neglected field of coastal ecology is clearly one which merits further detailed study.

While the rise of social protection in the global North has been widely researched, we know little about the history of social protection in the global South. This volume investigates the experiences of four middle-income countries - Brazil, India, China and South Africa - from 1920 to 2020, analysing if, when, and how these countries articulated a concern about social issues and social cohesion. As the first in-depth study of the ideational foundations of social protection policies and programmes in these four countries, the contributions demonstrate that the social question was articulated in an increasingly inclusive way. The contributions identify the ideas, beliefs, and visions that underpinned the movement towards inclusion and social peace as well as counteracting doctrines. Drawing on perspectives from the sociology of knowledge, grounded theory, historiography, discourse analysis, and process tracing, the volume will be of interest to scholars across political science, sociology, political economy, history, area studies, and global studies, as well as development experts and policymakers.

A multi-material ALE model for investigating impact dynamics of pile-soil systems

Undesirable online behavior Since the emergence of the Internet in the 1970s, criminology has been focusing on what this digital revolution means for crime and the fight against it. In this regard, much scholarly attention in recent years has focused on cybercrime. This editorial of the special issue on undesirable behavior online can be seen as an invitation for Dutch criminology to relate more broadly to the digitization of our society. As the contributed articles in this special issue make clear, online undesirable behavior has a wide variety of manifestations. What connects these articles are criminologically relevant questions concerning the punishability, but also the harmfulness of the behavior and, in particular, whether the harm relates to the online content or its offline consequences. This also raises the question of whether thinking in such a binary opposition does sufficient justice to the complex interaction and intense interconnectedness between the online and offline domains. Finally, the contributions in this issue also illustrate that digitization has resulted in a variety of digital artifacts that can be studied.

This paper innovatively extends existing practice-theoretical mobility research by examining biographical aspects of people’s everyday mobility that capture and reflect their social relations. Drawing on nine qualitative interviews with couples who live in/near Vienna without a private car, the paper demonstrates the promising potential of retrospective forms of social research for uncovering the dynamics of mobility practices across the life course. It conceptualises individuals as inherently social and mutually interconnected mobility practitioners whose complex and dynamic interactions with others make up more or less mobile households and families. The paper thus treats social relations as a major connector between the constitutive social and material elements of (mobility) practices, making an explicitly relational contribution to current practice-theoretical debates in mobility research.