Bøger af Kaan Akkanat

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - Political systems in general and in comparison, grade: 1.3, Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH, course: Comparing Political Systems, language: English, abstract: The majority of publications on the so-called resource curse tend to focus on key characteristics identified by Michael Ross such as modernization, rentier state and repression. This paper is an attempt to identify various other causal mechanisms that contribute to the symbiosis between increasing oil revenues and growing authoritarianism in Russia. With a mixture of various qualitative and quantitative data, the discussion focuses on the causal implications of corruption, freedom of media and pluralistic ownership structure while referring to the ways that they are exploited by Putin government. The conclusion idealizes an alternative approach for the study of resource politics through the case of Russia and provides recommendations for further research.

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict, Security, grade: 1.33, Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH, course: Comparing Political Systems, language: English, abstract: This essay will compare and contrast two widely-used measures in democracy research; Freedom House(FH) and National Elections across Democracy and Autarky (NELDA). Firstly, the theoretical frameworks behind both of the measures will be introduced. In order to add a practical base to this comparison and identify the differences in pictures and/or the definitions both measures give, discussion will be centralized with the case of Albania. Following the critical evaluation of merits and demerits of measures, a conclusion will be formulated containing the opinion for a more effective measure.The democracy research incorporates a niche of distinct measures. Although this can be characterized as distinct future of the field, it also triggers differences between the definitions, operationalization and empirical study of democracy in scholar works. These indicators of democracy vary in terms of their natures, methodologies and applications. Some of them follow a taxonomy-oriented path, classifying countries into categories while others derive certain scores from various indices according to the country's performance in certain democracy components such as electoral competition, freedom of media, and maintenance of human rights.

Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Law - Public Law / Constitutional Law / Basic Rights, grade: 1.00, Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH, course: Introduction to Law, language: English, abstract: This section of our analysis will be devoted to the cross comparison of Turkish, German and Chinese constitutions¿ coverage and interpretations of the equality and participation rights. Following the similar methodological line with the ¿Freedom of Speech and Expression¿ and ¿Division of Power¿ sections, this section will first provide an understanding of where and how these selected countries stand on the parameters of equality and participation rights. The focus of our discussion will then shift to our trilateral constitutional comparison and how they differ from each other in terms of wording, sequence and the emphasis. The drawn ¿picture¿ of equality and participation rights will then be framed by taking advantage of well-known court cases from these countries. After the court-case application phase, the section will consequently exhibit the findings related to the trilateral comparison.Equality and participation rights are two particular concepts which are applicable to various dimensions of social sciences. Having law as our natural focus, the discussion about the equality will mainly focus on equality before law. In his ¿Critique of the Gotha Program¿, Karl Marx defines this focus with following words; ¿Equality before the law is a basic right in the constitutions of democratic countries, and its content appears in all conventions on human rights¿(Marx, 1875). In terms of equality, the gender and minority equality/inequality will be the main points of concern. Along with this, the importance of political participation rights will also be stretched throughout the section. As Fabienne Peter suggests, there is a tendency to exclude political participation rights from the minimal lists of human rights as it does not necessarily affect the survival or some basic life functions (Peter, 2013). Peter opposes to this general tendency ¿I shall argue that the right to political participation, understood as distinct from a right to democracy, should have a place even on minimalist lists¿ (Peter, 2013). Parallel to Peter¿s insistence on necessity of being sharp about the rights for political participation, our section will majorly focus on the defined parliament compositions, voting and candidacy rights andelectoral threshold enforcements.