Bøger af Marla van Nieuwland

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: International relations, grade: 1,3, Free University of Berlin (Otto Suhr Institut), course: Africa in International Politics, language: English, abstract: Women currently hold on average less than ¿ of parliamentary seats worldwide. The range of female representation in national parliaments is staggering: countries are still in existence with zero female legislators, for instance Yemen, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, while on the other hand Rwanda with 61.3% of seats being held by women leads the way on female leadership. Scholars have estimated that, at current pace, it would take until the 22nd century for women to achieve political parity. Against this background of sustaining gender inequalities and seeing the extreme differences between countries, much research has been done on the topics of women¿s rights and women¿s leadership, in order to evaluate which approaches are most effective in creating actual gender equality.This paper will analyze one of these approaches towards women¿s leadership, namely the link between modernization theory and women¿s representation proposed by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart. In their theory, Norris and Inglehart observe that women¿s representation in post-industrial societies is much better than in post-communist or developing societies and they trace back this difference to the modernization process and the influence of cultural attitudes towards women¿s empowerment. While Norris and Inglehart articulated their theory back in 2004, much has changed since then. Especially in sub-Saharan Africa women have joined national legislatures in remarkable numbers over the past two decades, raising the question, if the modernization process has actually lowered cultural barriers towards women¿s empowerment, or if other factors were at work.To answer this research question, two African countries with very divergent cultural attitudes towards women¿s rights, namely Tunisia and Botswana, are examined in the context of Norris¿ and Inglehart¿s theory in order to test, whether the hypotheses by Norris and Inglehart still hold up nowadays in the African context. This test will show, 1) if the theory is applicable to African countries at all and 2) if changes over the last two decades can be captured and explained by it.

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - Topic: International relations, grade: 1,3, University of Potsdam, course: Security Council and Crisis Management, language: English, abstract: Does China challenge US dominance in the UNSC by increasing foreign aid for non-permanent members? This research question will be the focus of the paper. With a look at Chinese spending on foreign aid the assumption of buying support does not seem far-fetched. Chinese foreign aid could potentially be even more effective than US aid in strategically buying support in the UNSC, because it comes without any strings attached and gives state leaders more freedom to decide over the allocation of resources.According to the realist school of thought, international politics are power politics and states constantly work to increase their power ¿ be it economic or military power ¿ relative to each other. And although the United States can be seen as a hegemon since the end of the cold war, unipolarity is regarded by realists as the least durable of all power configurations. China is almost caught up to the United States in terms of military spending and economic growth, the population is three times that of the US and China can already be seen as a regional hegemon in Asia.However, even though China has become more aggressive and vocal in global politics since Xi Jinping¿s shift away from the ¿hide and bid policy¿ and scholars have indeed observed subtle strategies of Beijing challenging and resisting the authority of the hegemon, it remains understudied, if China also attempts to challenge US dominance in the UNSC. If the expectation of a balance of power by realists were true though, we might expect China not to let the US dominate ¿ especially in a critical area such as international security politics ¿ the decisions of the UNSC by strategically buying votes or support with foreign aid.

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - Topic: International relations, grade: 1,3, Free University of Berlin (Otto Suhr Institut), language: English, abstract: The phenomenon of a "natural resource curse" has been observed in various settings and is a widely accepted theory. However, a research gap exits when it comes to the effect of natural resources on state failure. Qualitative literature suggests natural resources could have a negative effect on the stability of a state, however, a quantitative data analysis has yet to confirm this expectation.This study therefore examines the relationship between oil and mineral wealth and the fragility of a state and investigates the research question "why do some states fail, while others do not?". After running a binomial logistic regression, the results suggest that oil wealth significantly fosters state fragility, while the effect of mineral wealth, although being generally as anticipated, is too small to be significant. The results can be regarded as a partial confirmation of the resource curse theory, although the lack of significance of the variable ¿mineral wealth¿ spurs further research.

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Politics - Topic: International relations, grade: 1,0, Tel Aviv University, language: English, abstract: This paper aims to address the research question: How satisfied are asylum seekers with healthcare services in Israel? The question is specifically framed in a way that encourages asylum seekers¿ advocacy and participation in the discussion, because previous research has too often only talked about asylum seekers¿ needs and not with the asylum seekers themselves. Two interviews with an Eritrean and a Sudanese asylum seeker have shed a light on the general situation and satisfaction of asylum seekers with healthcare services in Israel. Resulting from the findings of the interviews, the study also proposes governmental action that can and should be done to address and improve the satisfaction of asylum seekers with the healthcare sector in Israel. The remainder of this paper will proceed as follows: in the next chapter, the relevant terms will be defined, followed by a literature review of existing research. Then the research design will be discussed as well as the content of the interviews and the relevant findings. After a short elaboration of the limitations, the study will be concluded. The presence of African asylum seekers is a relatively new phenomenon in Israel. Only since 2005 people have begun to flee to the Jewish country. The majority comes from repressive regimes in Eritrea and Sudan. And it was only until 2012 that they could cross the border from Egypt to Israel, before a wall was erected that immediately stopped the migration flow. It has been almost 15 years since the arrival of the first wave of migrants, but the life of African asylum seekers still continues to be harsh in Israel. To this day, only 14 people have received official refugee status, while there are currently 35,000 asylum seekers either still waiting for their asylum procedure to be finished or they have been denied the refugee status and are only temporarily allowed to stay in the country. The legal status of asylum seekers in Israel comes essentially without any basic liberties and people face the threat of deportation on a daily basis. Asylum seekers lack access to healthcare services and usually do not have an official work permit, which forces migrants to work under illegal and exploitative conditions in order to earn their income. Furthermore, many asylum seekers have experienced torture and exploitation on their way to a safe country.

Bachelorarbeit aus dem Jahr 2018 im Fachbereich Organisation und Verwaltung - Sonstiges, Note: 1,5, Universität Konstanz, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Es ist das Ziel dieser Arbeit, die Fehler und Versäumnisse im Fall Anis Amri umfassend aufzuarbeiten, um neben der Ursachenforschung auch verallgemeinerbare Rückschlüsse für die Terrorabwehr in Deutschland ziehen zu können. Dabei wird die Methode der kausalen Prozessanalyse angewendet. Die konkrete Fragestellung der Arbeit soll lauten: Wie kam das Behördenversagen im Fall Amri zustande, das dazu führte, dass Anis Amri am 19. Dezember 2016 ungehindert einen Terroranschlag in Berlin verüben konnte?Eine Auseinandersetzung mit dieser Fragestellung ist dabei nicht nur deshalb relevant, weil die Bedrohung durch islamistischen Terror in Deutschland weiterhin besteht und die Behörden dringend aus ihren Fehlern lernen müssen, um die Sicherheit der Menschen in diesem Land künftig wirkungsvoller schützen zu können. Die grundlegende Aufarbeitung des Falles ist man auch den Angehörigen der zwölf Opfer schuldig, die zu Recht erwarten, dass geklärt wird, wie es zu dem Anschlag kommen konnte, und dass vermeidbare Fehler der Behörden offengelegt und ausgeräumt werden.

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Communications - Media and Politics, Politic Communications, grade: 1,0, University of Constance, language: English, abstract: In 2013 Daniel Gayo-Avello captured the state of the art regarding election prediction with social media publishing a meta-analysis, the very first one in this field of study. Concluding after an extensive literature review, that the ¿prevailing view [among scientists] is overly optimistic¿, Gayo-Avello declares three major problems, that have to be addressed by future research: 1) The need to produce a true forecast, that is published before the election. 2) The need to take into account the biases on Twitter, especially the unrepresentativeness of the sample. 3) The need to incorporate sentiment rather than just tweet volume.The research question of this paper is very similar to Gayo-Avello's meta-analysis, to give an overview of the current state of the art two years later, assess if the past problems and questions scientists raised have been discussed, and in the last step answer, whether or not Twitter can be used as an efficient alternative to traditional electoral forecasting.Although two years might not be a lot of time considering the time it takes for a study to be conducted and published, the number of scientists contributing to this fairly new field of research is extremely high, therefore making much more understanding in a short time possible.Necessarily I will only highlight a selection of studies, not being able to shed light on all studies. In a nutshell, I will take the 3 demands by Gayo-Avello as a guideline to order recent studies, then give a quick insight into the current discussion in the scientific field, and in the end come to the conclusion, that traditional polling and social media-based approaches do not have to be exclusive, but can and should be combined in future research.