Bibliography: leaves 488-505. / Microfiche. / xx, 505 leaves, bound 28 cm

This research paper investigates the causality issue between economic growth rate (GDP) and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) investment in Sweden by applying modern time series techniques. It mainly covers time series analyses of 30 years of Sweden data (1980-2009). During that period, development in Information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure of Sweden was an evolutionary process based on innovation and technological knowledge. Telecommunication revolution which occurred and developed on the basic idea that economic change can be explained as co-evolution of technologies, institutions and development blocks (such as investment). The other way of describing it as an analysis of a long wave based on telecommunication technological revolution and key factor involved the share of investment in it. Standard tests of Unit roots, Cointegration and Granger Causality tests are presented. The main reason of such study is the assessment of ICT investment influence directly on economic growth. The results provide an interesting aspect that ICT investment share can possibly be a contributing factor to telecommunications infrastructure development but it cannot be as a whole sufficient enough for stimulating economic growth (GDP).It is found that one way causality running from ICT investment to economic growth (GDP) but only at one year lagged values not at other higher lagged values. The lack of long run relationship may be due to the inadequacy in reflecting the full effect of ICT investment in other complementary segments. The other complementary factors of ICT 's infrastructure are quite essential as well in describing economic growth and development level.

What defines demagogues and what sort of threat do they pose to democracy? Contemporary politics has recently witnessed a rise in demagogic leaders around the globe. Following this trend, many notable scholars have sought to better define the ancient term and to provide politics with advice on how to handle them. However, demagogy is hard to define, and research is divided over what truly makes for a demagogue. Scholars tend to either focus on the intention, the tools, or the effects of leaders to categorize demagogy. While they might disagree over which aspect of demagogy is most salient, they are more unanimous in their claims regarding the threat that demagogy poses to democracy. Before we outright condemn demagogy, I argue that we should better understand the phenomenon and its relationship to democracy. This dissertation turns to Machiavelli and Aristotle in order to better grasp and better define the phenomenon of demagogy. I first build a concept of demagogy through Aristotle's Politics and then use that concept to detect a similar phenomenon within the work of Machiavelli. In many ways Aristotle and Machiavelli affirm the claims of contemporary scholars, especially regarding the threat that demagogy poses to democracy. According to both thinkers, demagogy involves the use of factions, class enmities, and the corruption of law. Possibly more troubling, both show how the methods of demagogy remain an ever-present possibility to democratic rule. Nevertheless, Aristotle and Machiavelli disagree with contemporary scholarship on how to address the problem of demagogy. Rather than seek out ways to constrain the demagogue, the two philosophers dedicate themselves to providing an education to demagogues. Even more surprisingly, this dissertation argues that both have covertly tried to persuade others to adopt the methods of demagogy for the sake of better preserving democracy and perhaps even to improve upon it.

There is a clear relationship between motherhood and space in the sense that motherhood is constituted spatially, taking specific and shifting forms in different spaces and because gendered geographies are made, remade or contested in terms of how women practise motherhood and other social identities in particular spaces. The meanings of motherhood are subject to constant renegotiation when gender identity is lived and constructed in times of hardship, political change or upheaval. Over the last few decades, Nicaragua has experienced dictatorship, insurrection, revolution, Contra war, more than a decade of neoliberal structural adjustment policies and a number of disasters including Hurricane Mitch which hit Nicaragua in October 1998. The social and cultural context in which women mother is a complex one. Family life is unstable and fluid and Nicaragua has large numbers of single mothers. However, a number of institutional actors have attempted to undermine this complexity by trying to fix the meanings of motherhood, family, femininity, masculinity and sexuality in simplified and reified ways. These attempts contribute to the pervasiveness of dominant discourses of motherhood. In many ways, everyday practices of motherhood are at odds with dominant discourses and the goal of this thesis is to broaden understandings of the way motherhood intersects with other cultural processes in particular spaces and of how women negotiate competing facets of multiple identities. Based on qualitative research conducted in Matagalpa with a group of single mothers, this thesis explores a number of arenas in which women negotiate motherhood, including family breakdown, revolution and counterrevolution, structural adjustment and disaster, and demonstrates how everyday practices challenge dominant understandings. Given that individuals participate in a number of discursive practices simultaneously, the intersection of dominant discourses and everyday practices work to create specific geographies of mothering. This means for example that women might adopt more masculine subject positions in relation to work and family while engaging in maternal politics in the political sphere or that male violence towards women can be condemned and single motherhood adopted as a positive form of identity assertion while uneasiness is expressed about the absence of fathers in children’s lives. By contextualising the conditions in which women mother and focusing on how individual women feel about and reflect upon their lives, this study illustrates the multiple dimensions of motherhood which exist within Nicaraguan culture and the contradictions faced by women who mother in sites of intense cultural struggle. This study has important implications for the epistemological transformation that is taking place within feminist geography in particular and within human geography more broadly. Motherhood has the discursive power to shape and define gender identities, but it can also be used to unsettle or destabilise gender and sexuality in material and discursive space.

Zugl.: Bonn, Univ., Diss., 2004

Zugl.: Würzburg, Univ., Diss., 2007

Univ., Diss./97--Tübingen, 1996. / Literaturverz. S. [331] - 341 und Index.

Univ., Diss.--Lüneburg, 1999. / Literaturverz. S 723 - 742.

Univ., Diss. u.d.T.: Collins, Amanda: Cola di Rienzo (1312 - 1354), the revolution in historical perspective--Oxford, 1996.

Univ., Diss.--München, 1997.