The thesis deals with the problematics of institutional influence of an international organization (NATO), which is placed in the context of transformational processes of defence institutions of Armenia and Georgia reviewed as case-countries. The notion of defence institutions refers largely to ministries of defence and the national armed forces as key units of analysis that are exposed to multiple mechanisms and mods of external institutional influence, that of the Alliance. The objective of the study is to shed light on the dynamics of institutional cooperation between NATO and the case – countries and to highlight the underlying causes responsible for varying results of national compliance in a defined set of functional areas of defence common for Armenia and Georgia. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / Thèse en cotutelle avec l’Universität Bielefeld / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Depuis la chute du Mur de Berlin en 1989, l'Union Européenne s'affirme sur le devant de la scène mondiale en s'appuyant sur sa formidable économie. Pourtant, sa politique étrangère commune n'est pas à la mesure de sa taille économique. Sa sécurité est assurée par l'OTAN et des efforts contradictoires se manifestent pour une politique étrangère commune. La construction européenne ne sera complète qu'avec une armée européenne sous une unique bannière. Les crises successives au voisinage de l'Europe rassemblent les europoliticiens qui décident de créer des forces armées trans-européennes avec un mandat clair et avec l'aval de l'OTAN pour éviter le dispersement inutile des ressources capacitaires euro-atlantiques afin de participer aux missions de l'ONU dans la sécurité mondiale. Les efforts du maintien capacitaire de l'Union Européenne entrainent le développement de l'économie industrielle militaire et civile grâce aux innovations duales, sur laquelle s'appuie la politique coercitive de l'Union Européenne. / Since the fall of the Berlin's Wall in 1989, the European Union asserts its leading role in the world through its tremendous economy. But its common foreign policy does not have the size of its economy. lts security is ensured by NATO and the contradictory objectives are embodied in the common foreign policy. The European construction will be complete only when it will have its integrated army under a single banner. The successive crises gather the European lawmakers who decide to create trans-European armed forces with a clear mandate and with the consent of NATO to avoid the dispersal of euro-Atlantic strategic resources in order to participate in the missions of UN in the world's security. The efforts to build up the EU's strength promote the large military and civil economic increases of industrial dual innovations. And the European coercive policy bases on these behalf.

Global environmental change fundamentally affects plants and their interactions with other species, and this has profound impacts on communities and ultimately ecosystems. In order to understand the mechanisms involved, we need to elaborate on the combined effects of different global change drivers on multiple levels of plant organization, including the biochemical level (production of defence compounds), the whole organism, the population, and the plant-herbivore interaction level. This thesis investigates (1) the combined effects of factors related to climate change and habitat fragmentation on Brassica nigra and (2) the effects of Zn soil pollution on the heavy metal hyperaccumulator Noccaea caerulescens at these different levels. Common garden and greenhouse experiments with B. nigra applied drought stress and elevated CO₂ to examine climate change impacts, while crossing treatments (inbreeding and between-population outbreeding) were used to investigate habitat fragmentation effects. Heterosis was lost under drought stress, and there were several interactive effects of the experimental treatments that varied within and among populations. In a greenhouse experiment with N. caerulescens, plants were grown on soil with different amounts of zinc. Plants had greater herbivore resistance when grown on Zn-amended soil, and invested more in herbivore tolerance when grown on soil without added Zn. In general, the results indicate that factors related to global environmental change have complex and interactive effects on different levels of plant organization. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for ecology, evolution and conservation.

Magister Artium (Sport, Recreation and Exercise Science) - MA(SRES) / The job demands of naval members are such that they experience high levels of stress. Stress is often introduced during military training so that real-world stress is more familiar and easy to mitigate. This is often referred to as “train how you fight”. In order to train a stressful task, a stressful environment is often created in the military. The aim of the study was to develop a standardised appraisal tool for the Therapeutic Recreation Stress Management Intervention Model measuring stress, stress coping and leisure behaviour of military staff in the South African context. This study utilised a qualitative research design and followed a multi stage procedure in developing the appraisal tool while making use of the model of instrument development to achieve the aim. The model identified four stages of instrument development: Phase 1, preliminary phase; Phase 2, questionnaire development, Phase 3 pilot testing, Phase 4 Evaluation phase. For the purpose and scope of this study, the researcher focused on phases 1 and 2. Phase 1, the Preliminary phase focused on the translation of the study needs into variables, current literature, interviews and focus group discussions. Three focus groups comprised of eight participants per group and were purposefully selected from military naval staff. In addition, semi-structured interview guides were used for interviews conducted with key informants. Five senior officers and two psychologists from the Institute of Maritime Medicine (IMM) were interviewed. Data was analysed deductively due to the existence of pre-determined themes. In Phase 2, based on the data collected in phase 1, the researcher developed the appraisal tool. The appraisal tool was constructed within the scope of the theoretical framework focusing on the perceptions of naval staff on stress; previous and current leisure experiences; knowledge, skills, resources, behaviour; leisure-coping beliefs; and stress- coping strategies. The literature in the present study revealed that there were six pre-determined themes. The themes included: Theme 1 – Stressors in the military, Theme 2 –support in the military, Theme 3- operational deployment of military members, Theme 4- Impact of stress on military families have been identified as theme four, Theme 5- leadership and Theme 6- sport and recreation in the military. Salient topics included the following: Stress assessment salient topics are personal stress, occupational stress, wellness and operational deployment. Leisure behaviour salient topics include social activities, passive activities, physical activities and outdoor activities. The findings in the study revealed that stress had an adverse effect on military readiness and the wellbeing of staff. This study reiterated the need for greater attention in the rendering of support services needed to military members and their families, preparing families for separation and improved communication between deployed soldiers and the home front. Job-induced separations affect not only the soldier and the spouse, but also their children. The role of the supervisor played a large part in how satisfied and committed the members were regarding their job. Sport and Recreation programs are vital to alleviate the symptoms of stress. The appraisal tool developed needs to be piloted and evaluated in order to recommend it for use in SANDF information systems.

The South African National Defence Force (SANDF) currently requires a system of systems simulation capability for supporting the different phases of a Ground Based Air Defence System (GBADS) acquisition program. A non-distributed, fast-as-possible simulator and its architectural predecessors developed by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was able to provide the required capability during the concept and definition phases of the acquisition life cycle. The non-distributed simulator implements a 100Hz logical time Discrete Time System Specification (DTSS) in support of the existing models. However, real-time simulation execution has become a prioritised requirement to support the development phase of the acquisition life cycle. This dissertation is about the ongoing migration of the non-distributed simulator to a practical simulation architecture that supports the real-time requirement. The simulator simulates a synthetic environment inhabited by interacting GBAD systems and hostile airborne targets. The non-distributed simulator was parallelised across multiple Commod- ity Off the Shelf (COTS) PC nodes connected by a commercial Gigabit Eth- ernet infrastructure. Since model reuse was important for cost effectiveness, it was decided to reuse all the existing models, by retaining their 100Hz logical time DTSSs. The large scale and event-based High Level Architecture (HLA), an IEEE standard for large-scale distributed simulation interoperability, had been identified as the most suitable distribution and parallelisation technology. However, two categories of risks in directly migrating to the HLA were iden- tified. The choice was made, with motivations, to mitigate the identified risks by developing a specialised custom distributed architecture. In this dissertation, the custom discrete time, distributed, peer-to-peer, message-passing architecture that has been built by the author in support of the parallelised simulator requirements, is described and analysed. It reports on empirical studies in regard to performance and flexibility. The architecture is shown to be a suitable and cost effective distributed simulator architecture for supporting a speed-up of three to four times through parallelisation of the 100 Hz logical time DTSS. This distributed architecture is currently in use and working as expected, but results in a parallelisation speed-up ceiling irrespective of the number of distributed processors. In addition, a hybrid discrete-time/discrete-event modelling approach and simulator is proposed that lowers the distributed communication and time synchronisation overhead—to improve on the scalability of the discrete time simulator—while still economically reusing the existing models. The pro- posed hybrid architecture was implemented and its real-time performance analysed. The hybrid architecture is found to support a parallelisation speed- up that is not bounded, but linearly related to the number of distributed pro- cessors up to at least the 11 processing nodes available for experimentation. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Computer Science / unrestricted

L’année 1401 marque un tournant dans la carrière littéraire de Christine de Pizan. Son engagement dans la querelle sur Le Roman de la Rose n’est pas anodin. En affrontant les représentants du premier humanisme français, l’écrivaine réfute le discours misogyne véhiculé par Jean de Meun. Opposant Dante à Jean de Meun, elle critique un usage de la glose qui ne relève pas d’une intention d’auteur clairement définie et se livre à une réflexion sur la question de l’interprétation des textes littéraires. Sa défense morale des femmes, dans Le débat sur le Roman de la Rose et Le livre de la Cité des dames révèle un engagement profond dans la politique de son époque. En prenant position en faveur de la régente Isabeau de Bavière, Christine développe un discours sur les vertus, destiné aux lecteurs désireux d’illustrer les qualités qui aident à bien gouverner. L’Epistre Othea et Le livre de l’advision Cristine illustrent l’importance de la glose, à même de guider le lecteur dans la construction du sens. S’inscrivant dans le sillage de Nicole Oresme et de Thomas d’Aquin, Christine propose une réflexion claire sur les vertus intellectuelles et morales qui permet de comprendre et de retrouver le sens de la justice à une époque où les nombreuses crises de folie de Charles VI mettent l’équilibre du royaume en péril. Le livre du chemin de long estude, Le livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, Le livre de l’advision Cristine , Le livre du corps de policie, Le livre de la Mutacion de Fortune développent une poétique de la justice qui devient une solution possible à l’instabilité politique. / The year 1401 marked a turning point in the literary career of Christine de Pizan. Her interventions in the debate about the Roman de la Rose were not harmless. In confronting the representatives of the first wave of French humanism, Christine sought to refute the misogynist discourse proposed by Jean de Meun. In contrasting Jean de Meun with Dante, she criticizes Jean de Meun’s recurrent and unfulfilled promise of a gloss which mystifies authorial intention, and in so doing initiates a new reflection on how literary texts should be interpreted. Her moral defense of women during the debate on the Roman de la Rose and The Book of the City of Ladies also reveals a profound involvement in the politics of her age. As part of her taking a clear position in favour of the regency of Isabeau de Bavière during her husband’s periods of mental illness, Christine developed a particular discourse on the virtues aimed at illustrating for interested readers those qualities necessary for good government. L’Epistre Othea and Le livre de l’advision Christine illustrate the importance of a genuine gloss, particularly in guiding readers toward elucidating the sense of a text. Her reflections here follow in the wake of the works of Thomas Aquinas and Nicole Oresme and propose an unambiguous meditation on the intellectual and moral virtues which is designed to aid readers to discover and to understand better the meaning of justice in an age during which the period’s of Charles VI’s mental illusion endangered the stability of the kingdom. Le livre du chemin de long estude, Le livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, Le livre de l’advision Cristine , Le livre du corps de policie, Le livre de la Mutacion de Fortune all elaborate a poetics of justice which Christine proposes as a possible solution to the political instability of her time.

iv ABSTRACT Over the last four decades, the People's Republic of China has modernized its armed forces and acquired the world's largest and most diverse missile arsenal. In light of Beijing's vague yet increasingly assertive stance in the region, China's A2/AD capabilities have sparked a discussion about their offensive potential and threat to the region's stability. This thesis has conducted a qualitative strategic impact of Chinese anti-access and area-denial capabilities on the offence-defence balance in East Asia. Applying Biddle's revised offence-defence theory, this thesis investigated and compared the Sino-American and Sino-Japanese balances. The analyses found that Chinese A2/AD capabilities do not have a uniform impact on the offence-defence balance in the region. Despite its offensive potential, Chinese A2/AD does not provide an effective, sustainable counter to Japan's deep, reserve-oriented force employment strategy. Even though China fields the world's largest fleet, it does not field enough principal surface ships to exploit a temporary offensive advantage. As such, any Chinese attempt to claim the Senkakus would result in a Chinese naval overstretch and create a mutually contested no man's land in the East China Sea. As for the Sino- American balance, Chinese A2/AD creates an...

The Master's Thesis deals with the issue of the choice of a defence counsel and attorney for a legal entity in criminal proceedings in the context of the right to a fair trial and the right to defence of a legal entity. Defence of a legal entity in criminal proceedings is exercised by persons authorised to act on its behalf. If those persons find themselves in the incompatible procedural position of an accused, a witness or a victim in the same case, they are excluded by law from all acts on behalf of the legal entity in criminal proceedings on the grounds of a presumption of conflict of interests. The title of the Master's Thesis is based on the conclusions of the case law of the Constitutional Court which case law, in order to preserve the right of defence of a legal entity, also grants a person in an incompatible procedural position of an accused or a witness the right to choose a defence counsel or an attorney for the legal entity, subject to other conditions described in this Master's Thesis. I get focused in the introductory part on the description of the rudiments of criminal liability of legal entities, I mention the legal regulation which is used in the Master's Thesis and I summarize what is its content. Subsequently, I deal with the definition of individual persons authorised to act on...

This qualitative study, located within a postmodern and social constructionist framework, explores how the social identities of retired white Afrikaner ex-military South African Defence Force (SADF) servicemen are constructed in South Africa. It considers how retired white Afrikaner ex-military South African Defence Force (SADF) servicemen have chosen to define and experience their social identities in view of the transformed political, socio-cultural and economic landscape and dominant discourses to which they have had to adjust. The literature review describes the multiple, dynamic and socially constructed nature of identities, traces the reciprocal relationship between the individual and society, relates identity formation to the various social category memberships subscribed to by research participants, and elucidates the role of language in the construction of social identities. In this study, ‘discursive threads’ of race (whiteness), culture (Afrikaans traditions, language, practices), gender (masculinity), role status (retiree, ex-soldier) were all woven together by the multiplicity of meanings contained in drawn-upon discourses, which constructed the social identities of research participants. Social identity can be viewed as a compromise between assimilation with and differentiation from others, where the need for similarity is satisfied within ingroups, while the need for distinctiveness is met through inter-group comparison. Discourse analysis was used to analyse the texts produced during semi-structured interviews with five research participants. Additionally, the discursive psychological concepts of action orientation (and positioning were used to explore how temporal, multiple and fluid social identities of participants were constructed by their use of language and invocation of supporting, opposing and overlapping discourses. From the discourse analysis, five discourses were identified as being realised in the texts, namely: a discourse of discipline; a discourse of ‘same-ness’; a discourse of ‘different-ness’; a discourse of ‘loss’: “Old Soldiers never die; they just fade away”; and a discourse of ‘camaraderie’: “Esprit de Corps”. The participants’ accounts have highlighted the complexity, fluidity and multiplicity of identities and the impact of dominant discourses on the reciprocal relationships between individuals, groups and society. This study contributes significantly to the existing knowledge regarding white retired ex-servicemen of the SADF in South Africa by offering insights into how this ingroup defines, re-defines, negotiates and maintains its social identities in accordance with and in reaction to dominant discourses of the past and present. / Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / Psychology / unrestricted

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