No description available.

No description available.

The aim of this essay is to investigate ways in which the narrative in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent reflects the political views within and around the novel. The narrative focus of the essay is plot-structure and focalisation, and the political focus circles around anarchy and anarchism. The essay discusses how the anarchist’s belief in individual freedom and Conrad’s scepticism towards politics is reflected in the novel’s narration. I also discuss how the narrator uses irony to reflect Conrad’s scepticism.

This thesis focuses on change and persistence of the structure of the international system. It attempts to address the question why hierarchic structures prevailed during the Ancient and Classical eras (3000 B. C. ? 1500 A. D. ). The thesis compares and contrasts the Roman Empire (the Pax Romana period 1st century B. C. -3rd century A. D. ) and the Chinese Empire (the T?ang Dynasty 618-907 A. D. ) as hierarchic structures and the multi-state system of ancient Greece (8th-4th century B. C. ) and the multi-state system of ancient China (The Spring and Autumn and the Warring States Period 722-221 B. C. ) as anarchic structures. The thesis suggests that the moral purpose of the state, the competitive security environment, the desire for benefits and geopolitical and strategic advantages played the major role in the immediate transformation from anarchy to hierarchy. The thesis asserts that the generation of common goods, the decline in transaction costs and the success in securing the commitment of the members and the legitimacy of the system enabled and encouraged the persistence of hierarchic structures. It also re-emphasizes that whereas the persistence of hierarchic systems depends on the existence of several factors, only one factor can promote the persistence of anarchic structures e. g. the moral purpose of the state.

A central paradox in neorealism is that the absence of world government is assumed to imply a dangerous security dilemma, and yet few realists have argued in favor of world government while great powers have historically resisted delegation of military force to supranational institutions. If international anarchy causes costly security competition and war, powerful states should have a strong incentive to unify and neorealist explanations for why states resist peaceful unification are either underdeveloped or implicit. This paper develops a rational choice realist model which suggests that anarchy is not a structural constraint which forces states to compete intensely for power, but a rational choice that state leaders make to avoid the costs of world government. The model assumes that state leaders face a delegation constraint which implies a tradeoff between eliminating the military burden necessary to deter attacks in anarchy, and abstain from world government to avoid forced redistribution of material resources pushed by poorer states or risk that the world government might turn tyrannical and coerce the subjects it has been mandated to protect. The paper uses deductive method to deduce actor preferences and illustrate the plausibility of the central predictions of the model. The model predicts that income equality, democratization, nationalism and military defensive advantage makes anarchy stable, a condition under which states have little reason to unify. On the other hand, high income inequality, lack of democratic accountability, territorial revisionism, and military offensive advantage make anarchy costly, but unification more difficult to achieve given the underlying conflicting preferences. Hence, states rather take the risk of fighting in hopes of eliminating future military competition than to agree on a world government where redistribution and cultural conflicts are likely to make wealthy great powers with modest population sizes worse off than they would be in anarchy. The paper concludes that anarchy is not a tragedy that makes world government impossible, but world government is a potential tragedy that makes anarchy rational.

L'ambition qui préside à l'élaboration de ce travail est double : d'abord confronter une lecture précise de Kropotkine (1842-1921) à ce qu'en dit le post-anarchisme, lequel se fait fort de renouveler la compréhension de l'anarchisme à l'aide des outils légués par les auteurs post-modernes français ; ensuite reprendre le dossier de l'antinaturalisme dans la critique sociale. Nous soutenons dans cette thèse que loin de manifester une impasse pour tout discours qui voudrait dessiner les voies d'un changement radical de société, la notion de «  nature humaine  » telle que l'emploie Kropotkine offre de nombreux outils pour œuvrer dans cette direction. À la fois géographe et évolutionniste, Kropotkine ouvre la nature humaine en direction de la nature globale, et plus précisément du legs coopératif de l'évolution des espèces, à l'inverse de toute crispation essentialiste. C'est sur ce legs sans cesse retravaillé en fonction des contextes dans lesquels l'humain est conduit à vivre qu'il convient de s'appuyer pour contrer les effets de réductionnismes ruineux tels que le darwinisme social ou la sociobiologie. Conformément à la dimension fondationnaliste de la pensée de Kropotkine, la thèse s'organise de manière systématique autour de la notion de «  nature humaine  ». Après avoir posé les bases scientifiques de l'anarchie (I) nous travaillons les thèmes darwiniens de l'œuvre kropotkinienne (II). Le socle théorique est alors consistant afin d'établir des conséquences pratiques, du côté de la politique, de l'économie et de l'urbanisme (III). À l'intérieur du contexte ainsi défini, c'est aux réalisations supérieures de la morale et de l'art que nous finissons par nous intéresser (IV). / This work deals with two main issues  : first, it focuses on the way post-anarchism, which claims renewing the understanding of anarchism through the use of french post-modernists' concepts, depicts P. Kropotkin's thought  ; second, it addresses the anti-naturalistic trend within the frame of social criticism. We argue that far from standing as a hindrance to supporting radical social change, Kropotkin's view of human nature yields many tools in order to fuel such a change. Both a geographer and an evolutionist, Kropotkin includes human nature within the overall frame of nature itself, specifically within the evolution of species' cooperative legacy. This legacy has been continuously shaped within the different living contexts built by human being throughout his history. So there's nothing static about human nature, and the ever-evolving cooperative legacy provides tools to criticize reductionist ways of thinking such as social darwinism or sociobiology. According to Kropotkin's foundationalist bias, the thesis is systematically organized around the notion of «  human nature  ». First, we lay the scientific basis of anarchy (Part I), then we focus on darwinian themes (Part II). Once firmly grounded, Kropotkin's thought unfolds more accurately its practical consequences, addressing politics, economy and city planning (Part III). These three domains give shape to the contexts within which ethics and art should bring out the best in human nature (Part IV).

A presente dissertação de mestrado busca contribuir para o debate em desenvolvimento sobre a emergência de países do Sul Global, a partir do estudo das relações de poder hierarquizadas em que estes esses países estão inseridos. Nesse sentido, questiona-se como estruturas de assimetria material atuam sobre o comportamento de distintos atores do sistema internacional. As oportunidades e constrangimentos de tais estruturas materiais se manifestam especificamente para distintos atores? Como essa variação se articula com as possibilidades de emergência de países do Sul Global? A partir da resposta a essas perguntas, busca-se propor um caminho para identificar episódios históricos de constituição, por parte de países do Sul Global, de capacidade transformativa de sua posição nas relações internacionais em que se inserem. Para tanto, mobiliza-se um diálogo entre a literatura sobre diferenciação estrutural e sobre a hierarquia nas relações internacionais, como modo de articular analiticamente o processo de socialização entre estruturas políticas e econômicas. Desse diálogo estrutural, pretende-se compreender os mecanismos de exclusão que perpetuam assimetrias materiais no sistema internacional e os meios instrumentalizáveis para sua ruptura. / This master's thesis aims to contribute to the debate on the rise of countries from the Global South, proposing the study of hierarchical power relations that they entail. In this sense, it questions how structures of material asymmetries act conditioning the behavior of actors throughout the international system. Are the opportunities and constraints deriving such structures specifically varying for different actors? How is this variation related to the possibilities of rise in the Global South? From the answers to these questions, it is hoped to propose an alternative to identify historical episodes of constitution, by countries the Global South, of transformative capacity of their position in the international relations that they operate. Therefore, the work mobilizes a dialogue between the literature on structural differentiation and hierarchy in international relations, as a way of analytically articulate the process of socialization of political and economic structures. This structural dialogue focuses on identifying mechanisms of exclusion that perpetuate materials asymmetries in the international system and the means to their rupture.

This diploma thesis deals with the sustainability and stability of anarchy in the long run. Theories of Robert Nozick, Tyler Cowen and Randall G. Holcombe, which point to inevitable emergence of the state from the state of nature, are evaluated and compared with empirical observations of stateless societies. Proposals for the potential avoidance of state emergence despite the possible tendency of anarchy toward monopolization in the form of vertically integrated proprietary communities, remedial state and ideology are also introduced and analyzed. As result, the diploma thesis challenges the theories describing the inevitable emergence of the state and the first two proposals, which were designed to solve this problem. The role of ideology is highlighted in the conclusion as a crucial factor in achieving and maintaining anarchy in the long run.

<p>Abstract</p><p>Purpose/Aim: To study how Piratbyrån argues for a free distribution of information and culture products and to find a possible ideological explanation for their argumentation.</p><p>Method/Material: I have used a rhetorical analysis to study and describe Piratbyrån´s website, a website that promotes free distribution of information and culture products. I have done so to find out how Piratbyrån argues for a free distribution and to find out what ideological foundation their argumentation is based on.</p><p>Main results: The main results of the study show that Piratbyrån uses a variety of rhetorical techniques depending on the subject and purpose of the analyzed text. Their main arguments both promote their own thesis and argue against the copyright industry. The main part of the argumentation is based on logical and factual arguments, but parts of it also rely on an emotional appeal to the reader’s heart in order to persuade. The analysis also showed great similarities between Piratbyrån´s argumentation and the ideology that Siva Vaidhyanathan describes as information anarchy. An ideology that promotes free distribution of information and culture products, that relies on decentralized systems and nonhierarchical structures and is a result of the technological development such as digitalization and peer-to-peer networks.</p><p>Keywords: Rhetoric, technology, file sharing, digitalization, network, ideology, anarchy, oligarchy, copyright, website</p>

We study the problem of minimizing the maximum latency of flows in networks with congestion. We show that this problem is NP-hard, even when all arc latency functions are linear and there is a single source and sink. Still, one can prove that an optimal flow and an equilibrium flow share a desirable property in this situation: all flow-carrying paths have the same length; i.e., these solutions are "fair," which is in general not true for the optimal flow in networks with nonlinear latency functions. In addition, the maximum latency of the Nash equilibrium, which can be computed efficiently, is within a constant factor of that of an optimal solution. That is, the so-called price of anarchy is bounded. In contrast, we present a family of instances that shows that the price of anarchy is unbounded for instances with multiple sources and a single sink, even in networks with linear latencies. Finally, we show that an s-t-flow that is optimal with respect to the average latency objective is near optimal for the maximum latency objective, and it is close to being fair. Conversely, the average latency of a flow minimizing the maximum latency is also within a constant factor of that of a flow minimizing the average latenc