Avec l’arrivée de Rafael Correa, l’Équateur a tenté de consolider la démocratie par la voie du populisme, en tant que pratique politique. Le but de cette recherche est d’analyser le lien entre le populisme comme une pratique politique et la consolidation démocratique comme une aspiration des jeunes régimes. Le document est divisé en deux parties : la première étudie le populisme et la consolidation démocratique en tant que concepts. L’idée est de déterminer comment le populisme a été instrumentalisé afin de renforcer la démocratie durant les années 90. Dans la deuxième partie, la relation entre le populisme et la consolidation démocratique en Équateur est étudiée. Pour approfondir la notion de populisme en Équateur, nous l’avons analysé comme pratique politique pendant le XXe siècle, notamment dans le discours de José María Velasco Ibarra. Ensuite, les principales réformes entamées par Rafael Correa sont analysées. Cette recherche a pour but l’explication du lien complexe entre le populisme, (conçu comme une déviation de la démocratie pour les uns, et perçu comme un instrument légitime de consolidation démocratique pour les autres), et la consolidation démocratique. Cette relation devient un sujet inéluctable pour l’analyse de l’évolution complexe des démocraties andines. / With the advent of Rafael Correa, Ecuador tried to consolidate democracy by resorting to populism as a political practice. The purpose of this dissertation lies in link between populism as a political practice and democratic consolidation as young democracies´ main aspiration. With this in mind, this investigation is divided into two parts: the first explores populism and democratic consolidation as concepts. The idea being to determine how, during the 90's, populism was used as a tool to strengthen democracy. The latter, studies the relationship between populism and democratic consolidation in Ecuador. Populism has been a recurrent practice throughout the twentieth century (especially with, José María Velasco Ibarra, Ecuador's main figure of populism). Accordingly so, this investigation seeks to understand the complex link between the populism -that some see as a deviation from democracy, and others as a legitimate mechanism of defense and democratic consolidation- and democracy. This relationship is an inexorable subject to understand the complex political evolution of Andean democracies.

Thesis (M.M. (Security))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, Graduate School of Public and Development Management, 2012. / This study sets out to examine the causes for the continued conflicts in the Kivu particularly after the establishment of a transitional government in the DRC in 2004 and the elections in 2006. Three factors appear to account for the continued conflicts. First is the ethnic divide between the local population and the Kinyarwanda speakers that have settled in the region overtime. This conflict is mostly centered on the land issues which were not addressed in the final agreements for the establishment of the transitional government in Kinshasa, at Sun City in 2002. It should not be surprising that this sparked new fighting in 2006 after the elections. Second is the continued existence of a central power vacuum. This is mainly because the national army is neither strong nor disciplined enough to establish its hegemony in the area. Its task was made more difficult by the continued Rwandan interests in the area, which went beyond security concerns. Thus the Nkunda rebellion was only successful because of Rwandan support. Third is the continuation of the war economy centered on the exploitation of natural resources that are abundant in the area. This has helped to fund the war in the Kivus, and as long as there are profits to be made from natural resources exploitation, conflicts and violence in the area will continue. The conclusion from this study is that peace in the Kivus needs the establishment of a central administration with both military power to secure the area, in particular the mining areas and judicial authority to prosecute the warlords and armed groups that continue to benefit from the continuation of conflicts and violence in the area.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering. Johannesburg, 2017 / The research was driven by the need to optimise the Ruashi Mining operation to prevent further high-grading without destroying the value of the mine. Ruashi Mining incurred a five-year stripping backlog caused by the drive to reduce costs. As a result of this, a decline in metal production was imminent in the subsequent years. The study was conducted mainly using SimSched Direct Block Scheduler (SimSched DBS) in comparison with schedules from Datamine Net Present Value Scheduler (NPVS) and MineSched. The scenarios investigated have shown that running a mine based on break-even cut-off grade does not optimise the net present value of an operation as shown through the results of Ruashi Mining. The research also proved that royalty affects the cut-off grade for Ruashi Mining, and cannot be ignored. The proper scheduling of wasting stripping resulting from cut-off grade optimisation has contributed to a timeous exposure of high grade to avert the decline in metal production. All the three scenarios have shown that high grade ore can be availed on time, thus producing a smooth metal output for the life of mine. Cut-off grade optimisation is very crucial for any mining organisation as it is the main driver of value. Ore reserves are important in the determination of a company’s share price. High cut-off grade results in fewer reserves, and vice versa. Since mineral reserves are the source of revenue, therefore, the higher the reserves, the higher the revenue. Low cut-off grade may result in the processing of material that does not give high profit at the beginning of the life of mine. This, therefore, lowers the mining company’s net present value. This makes it imperative to optimise the cut-off grade during the mine life in order to optimise the net present value. During mining operations, there are various stakeholders whose interests must be considered during cut-off grade optimisation because they derive many benefits from the mine. These stakeholders include shareholders, employees, government, the community and non-governmental organisations. Cut-off grade optimisation has shown that there is an opportunity to improve the net present value of Ruashi Mining. SimSched gives a higher net present value (NPV) compared to the current Ruashi life of mine schedule. This indicates that SimSched can be used to improve the NPV for Ruashi by producing an optimised schedule. It is important to note though that there is need for the software to have provisions to take into account the initial stockpile status so that there is a holistic approach to the schedule optimisation. The grade-tonnage curve is steeper closer to zero implying that a small change in cut-off grade has a huge impact on reserves. Based on the results of the study it was clear that optimisation in SimSched DBS results in a steeply declining cut-off grade policy compared to NPVS. In addition, optimisation in SimSched leads to highly accelerated mining rate and massive stockpiling. Royalty is a cost which has to be incorporated in cut-off grade optimisation. The study has shown that the cut-off grade for Ruashi is increased by 19.8%. Ignoring royalty may result in overvaluing of an operation. Environmental considerations favour the optimisation of the use of the mieral resources. Consideration of environmental costs lowered the cut-off grade for Ruashi by 16%. / MT 2017

From October-December 2013, we conducted a study of the newly discovered primate species lesula, Cercopithecus lomamiensis, in the DR Congo. We placed 41 camera traps inside a 4 km2 grid outside the proposed Lomami National Park (LNP). We compared an analysis of 140 lesula events over 1,683 camera trap days from the heavily hunted Okulu area to a pilot study (38 events over 462 camera trap days) at the Losekola study site within the LNP. Our data show an unexpected result: capture probability of lesula (0.08) is the same at both the hunted and non-hunted sites. This is in contrast to the sharp decline in capture probability of all other medium-to-large terrestrial mammals at the Okulu site. These findings suggest lesula’s cryptic behavior is an important adaptation buffering the species from the impacts of hunting. This study also expands knowledge on minimum group size, terrestriality, diet, and times of activity. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2015. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Researchers and policy makers largely focus on gender-based violence (GBV) in eastern Congo’s conflict zones, leaving the remainder of the vast country understudied. Few in-depth studies exist regarding the nature and dynamics of gender-based violence that occurs in non-conflict zones in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or on a regular basis within households of eastern DRC. This study uses the 2014 DRC Demographic Health Survey (DHS) data to explore the key factors that are associated with all forms of violence against women and girls in the DRC and takes a more refined look at the association between conflict and GBV than any other empirical study to date. By using a multilevel modeling approach, the research examines key risk factors at the individual, community and province level that influence a woman’s exposure or not to physical and sexual violence in the DRC. By developing and including variables that quantify social norms and attitudes as well as spatially joining data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Database, the study analyzes the role of individual and contextual factors and the relationship between gender-based violence and conflict. Findings highlight that a woman’s experience of intergenerational violence and patriarchal norms at the individual and community levels are among the strongest predictors of GBV in the DRC, and that intimate partner violence (IPV) is the most prevalent form of GBV, even in areas of conflict. Surprising results show that a woman is less likely to experience GBV in areas of higher armed conflict – even when considering non-husband violence. The results do not show higher levels of IPV in areas that experience higher instances of violent conflict, contradicting studies conducted in other contexts. One of the most striking results of this study is the significant and consistent role that community-level variables play in the models -- demonstrating the valuable contribution of multilevel analysis and use of contextual variables. This study underscores how critical the use of “neighborhood” variables is to understanding GBV risks and validates the use of the ecological theoretical framework, moving beyond only individual risk factors to explain GBV in the DRC context. / 1 / Monica Carlson

Review of forestry policy and deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with a look at REDD, national parks, forest certification systems, non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and a focus on community-based conservation.

Slow agrarian development has often been blamed on the absence of civil society mobilization. This paper quantitatively analyzes the effect of political and fiscal decentralization on agricultural development in 30 democratizing African States. Hence two hypotheses are tested: H1) New democracies that combine elected sub-national governments with fiscal decentralization will be more likely to spend more in agriculture. H2) In such system we should observe better agricultural outputs, other things equal. Results reveal that counter-intuitively simultaneous democratic and fiscal decentralization have a negative impact on public investment in agriculture. On the other hand, as expected fiscal decentralization does not have any significant impact in the absence of democratic decentralization. Most importantly democratic decentralization is found to have a highly positive impact on the provision of agricultural related public goods when fiscal decentralization is low. The test also reveals that fiscal and political decentralization positively influence agricultural production.

This dissertation asks the question: How do democracies improve in quality? Building on previous scholarship, the author offers a theoretical framework that traces democratic quality through equality of outcomes. The quality of democracy may be conceptualized as a virtuous cycle where the procedural aspects of democracy motivate politicians to expand equality. This broadening of substantive opportunities outcomes, in turn, deepens democracy by developing individual-level political participation. The theoretical framework is applied to the context of public services with the expectation that quality democracies with high government capacity more broadly distribute basic public services and that this pattern of provision cultivates political participation. The first empirical analysis tests if the quality of democracy and government capacity are associated with reduced service inequalities for a sample of 75 countries. It is found that while equalities of education and sanitation services are significantly related to democratic quality, healthcare is not, nor is government capacity shown to play a significant role. To further explore this, the Mexican states are analyzed for the years 2000 to 2004; the results show that capacity in terms of tax collection efforts is associated with lower inequalities in education services in states with high electoral competition. The second empirical analysis turns to the local level of government - where services are delivered. Using original data from interviews and government records of four Mexican municipalities, the author examines the aspects of democracy and government capacity that are correlated with lower inequalities of public services. The findings highlight that intense electoral competition and institutionalized channels of citizen input as well as capacity in terms of sound collection of municipal taxes and innovations in municipal funding are characteristics of governments with broader distribution of basic public services. The third empirical analysis tests if public services are related to individual-level political participation. Employing survey data from Latin America and Africa, the author finds that “good” public service evaluations are associated with greater likelihoods of voting in high quality democracies - those with intense electoral competition - but limited government capacity. This offers evidence that in a developing context, public services enable political participation.

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In the trends of democratization, informationalization and globalization, the internet has compressed the circulation speed of strategies and concepts and linked different places of the world on the same network. Thus, in recent years many countries of the world never stop making administrative reforms and stressing the styles and abilities of full-range moral character management of high-rank civil servants so as to promote the administrative quality of the government and the civic aesthetics, strengthen the administrative and information ethics, and establish a good system for excellent democratic administration. In the process of social development and transformation of Taiwan, high-rank civil servants bear the responsibilities of leading the decisions as well as realizing and deepening the democratic administration. After the change of ruling party of Taiwan in 2000, the issues about high-rank civil servants¡¦ identification with the reforms of the party-state system and with Taiwan became the focuses of concern in different circles. In fact high-rank civil servants are not only the policy implementers, but also the policy-makers. The roles they are playing are very significant. In a democratized civic society, the democratic value that democratic administration pursues, the operation principles and the construction mechanism have to be formulated in order to create more solid civic power and human power, enhance the competitiveness of Taiwan, and investigate the internal qualities, techniques, styles and attainments of the moral character management of high-rank civil servants. In the 21st century the abilities that talents should possess include studying ability, personal ability and civic ability. Among these abilities, civic ability is most important. Civic ability includes such personal abilities as responsibility, self-discipline, honesty, etc. as well as the abilities to respect others, to accept and appreciate diversified cultures. Unfortunately, our society only emphasizes studying ability. Therefore, this study focuses the investigation on how to strengthen the employment, selection and moral character management of high-rank civil servants at the stage of government system reconstruction and administrative reforms. The study reviews the related literature of different areas and also the local and foreign research reports collected in the internet, and absorbs the experience of businesses, so as to remind the high-rank civil servants¡¦ mission of stressing moral character management, and arouse their identification with and loyalty to Taiwan. High-rank civil servants should be able to self-consciously make use of executive power to improve the bureaucratic system. Through education, democratic legal system can be propagated, promoting the effectiveness of democratic administration, strengthening the practicing of moral character management, achieving administrative reforms and political neutralization, deepening democratic quality, enlarging the democratic society, and creating advantageous situation for Taiwan.