This thesis explores critically two central notions in the work of Ernesto Laclau: populism and hegemony. From analytical and strategic points of view, some incongruities stand out. For example, the conceptual proximity between the two often hinders their respective explanatory and political purchase. Moreover, Laclau's arguments in support of left-wing populism appear not to examine in sufficient depth some important issues, such as the non-necessary but also potentially problematic relationship between populism and democracy and the question of the leader. In this thesis I examine Laclau's work and interpretations of his work before offering a fresh interpretation that will both retain and enhance the distinctiveness and relevance of populism and hegemony for contemporary debates in socialist thought, and emancipatory theory more generally. My argument is grounded on both empirical and theoretical sources, relying on a combination of concept- and case-based interpretive methods. The empirical aspect of the thesis, which consists of an in-depth study of the trajectory of the Italian Communist Party and the Ecuadorian Citizens' Revolution, is used to problematise the conceptualisation of populism and hegemony. From a theoretical point of view, I first conduct a geneaological analysis of the emergence of the two notions in Laclau. I argue that this prompts a kind of ‘return to Antonio Gramsci’, involving the mobilisation of some insights that were overlooked or progressively neglected in the reading that Laclau made of the Italian thinker. The strategic upshot of this is that, while it is paramount to think in both populist and hegemonic terms, the former does not necessarily imply or reduce to the latter, and vice versa. Finally, I put forward the case for an agonistic, radical-democratic and ethical left-wing populism, drawing from the contributions of Chantal Mouffe, Jacques Derrida, William Connolly and Jacques Lacan.

Worldwide, renewable energy systems are booming with reliable distributed generation (DG) technologies to help fuel increasing global energy consumption and mitigate the corresponding environmental problems. High cost and low efficiency are major problems for such systems using traditional buck inverters with line-frequency transformers. This thesis has proposed a novel single-phase single-stage buck-boost inverter suitable for cost-effective small DG systems. The inverter was analyzed from the angle of energy exchange and transfer with two current control schemes, DCM and CCM. Sinusoidal PWM (SPWM) control method, based on DCM, was discussed in details with steady state analyses, computer simulations, and laboratory tests. A concise model with underlying equations was derived to represent the physical behavior of proposed inverter. Closed-loop SPWM control was simulated and verified to have fast dynamic response and good tracking performance with robustness and insensitivity to dc input fluctuations, ac grid variations, and component parametric uncertainties. Other control strategies were also investigated from the critical DCM, CCM, or energy approach to either increase the fundamental output or further improve the performance. Comparisons demonstrated that SPWM was preferred control method with low output THD, reduced switching losses, and simple implementation. Therefore, it is concluded the proposed inverter provides a low-cost and high-efficient solution for small DG systems with low component count, minimal dc and ac filtering requirements, and improved performance.

This study is a social history of communists in wartime Rome. It examines a decisive change in Italian communist politics, as the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) rose from a hounded fraternity of prisoners and exiles to a party of government. Joining with other Resistance forces in the Comitato di Liberazione Nazionale (CLN), this ‘new party’ recast itself as a mass, patriotic force, committed to building a new democracy. This study explains how such a party came into being. It argues that a PCI machine could establish itself only by subduing other strands of communist thought and organistion that had emerged independently of exiled Party leaders. This was particularly true in Rome, where dissident communists created the largest single Resistance formation, the Movimento Comunista d’Italia (MCd’I). This movement was the product of the underground that survived across the Mussolini period, expressing a ‘subversive’ politics that took on a popular following through the disintegration of the Fascist regime. Standing outside the CLN alliance and the postwar democratic governments, it reflected the maximalism and eclecticism of a communist milieu that had persisted on the margins of Fascist society. In the Occupation period this dissident movement galvanised a social revolt in the borgate slums, which would also trouble the new authorities even after the Allies’ arrival. Studying the political writing of these dissidents, their autodidact Marxism and the social conditions in which it emerged, this study reconstructs a far-reaching battle to redefine communist politics. Highlighting the erasure of the dissidents’ history in mainstream narration of the Resistance, it argues that the repressed radicalism of this period represented a lasting danger to the postwar PCI and the new Republic.

This thesis examines warfare, social power, and the state in central Italy for the period between 900 and 343 BC.1 The goal of this research is to better understand how warfare fit into the dialogue of social power in Etruria and Rome. This is achieved through the fulfilment of a number of aims. The first is to understand the patterns of warfare present in central Italy, as these can help us better understand the social aspects of conflict in the region. The project assumes that the practice of warfare is important for understanding its role in this dialogue, and thus an analysis of arms, armour, and tactics is also necessary. The second aim is to understand how warfare and politics affected one another. The condottieri paradigm is challenged and the strength of central Italian states asserted. The third aim is to explain the interaction between warfare and economic power, and the interaction between these two aspects of social power. The fourth aim is similar, and analyzes the connections that are visible between warfare and religion. Through these aims, this project creates a clearer picture of warfare in Etruria and Rome from the Iron Age to the Archaic Period. It argues that the exchange and dialogue of social power was not alienated from the state, and that independent warfare would have been of less value than it was probably worth. To this end, the Servian Constitution is re-examined and the idea of an early Roman hoplite phalanx, and single class army, is rejected. The original contribution of this work is in reasserting the position of the state in Tyrrhenian warfare and rejecting the idea that private interest was more powerful.

We propose a framework to examine convergence in the jurisdictional patterns of the American FTC and the European Commission. Based on a sample of 595 merger cases scrutinized by either of these agencies in the 1995 - 2007 period, we estimate logit models of the probability of intervening in a merger for both jurisdictions and use them to predict the decisions of the respectively other agency. The results point to an increasing harmonization of merger regimes and corroborate the theoretical appraisal, that the 2004 reform of EU merger law constituted a step towards the US system. (author's abstract)

Les travaux de cette thèse ont été consacrés à l'extension du domaine d'application de la FDTD à Grille Double (DG-FDTD) via son hybridation avec l'Optique Physique Itérative. Ces recherches ont été motivées par le besoin d'évaluer précisément et efficacement le diagramme d'antenne environnées installées sur des plates-Formes de grandes dimensions (satellite, véhicule, lanceur spatial). Lors du tour d'horizon consacré aux méthodes numériques pouvant intervenir dans la résolution de ce type de problème, la DG-FDTD a révélé des caractéristiques intéressantes en permettant des analyses large bande rapides et précises d’antennes avec un environnement proche complexe. Cependant, sa formulation rigoureuse entraîne des besoins importants en ressources informatiques pour analyser des problèmes de grandes dimensions électriques. Les travaux présentés dans ce manuscrit précisent les limites de son domaine d'application. Ils mettent finalement en avant son incapacité à résoudre seule des problèmes d'antenne sur plateforme. En réponse à cette limitation, un nouveau schéma hybride associant la DG-FDTD avec une méthode asymptotique est proposé. La méthode DG-FDTD/IPO ainsi créée décompose la simulation du problème complet en deux simulations successives. L'antenne et son environnement proche sont tout d'abord simulés rigoureusement avec la DG-FDTD puis la plateforme est analysée efficacement avec l'IPO. Les deux simulations sont interfacées en utilisant le principe d’équivalence. Après avoir validé cette nouvelle méthode sur un scénario canonique, elle est appliquée au calcul de rayonnement électromagnétique en champ lointain dans deux scénarios d’antenne environnée sur porteur (antenne sur véhicule notamment). Deux améliorations de la DG-FDTD/IPO sont finalement proposées dans ce manuscrit. La première est consacrée à la prise en compte grossière des couplages retours entre l'environnement proche de l'antenne et la plate-Forme. Cette amélioration repose sur la redescription grossière de l’environnement proche de l’antenne dans la simulation IPO. La seconde amélioration concerne la modélisation des courants sur les parties ombrées de la plate-Forme dans la simulation IPO. Cette amélioration est motivée par le besoin d'analyser précisément des scénarios de type antenne sur lanceur spatial. En effet, l'IPO ne calcule pas les courants sur les zones ombrées, or dans ce type de problème elles représentent la majeure partie de la plate-Forme. Une nouvelle méthode basée sur l'IPO, et appelée Traitement Séquentielle des Domaines (TSD), est donc proposée pour répondre au besoin exprimé plus haut. Après avoir validé cette nouvelle méthode sur un cas simple impliquant un cylindre, elle est appliquée avec succès à l'analyse d'une plate-Forme de type lanceur spatial. / This thesis aims at extending the Dual-Grid FDTD (DG-FDTD) application domain via its hybridization with the Iterative Physical Optics (IPO) method. This research was motivated by the need to evaluate accurately and efficiently the antenna pattern of surrounded antennas installed on large platforms (satellite, vehicle, space launcher). Overview on numerical method involved in this class of problem revealed DG-FDTD has interesting features. This method allows precise and efficient wide-Band simulations of surrounded antennas. However, this method remains costly for electrically large problems, especially because of its rigorous formulation. This thesis assessed the limitations of DG-FDTD and then put forward its inability to resolve antenna on platform problems. To answer this issue, a hybrid scheme combining DG-FDTD with IPO is proposed in this thesis. DG-FDTD/IPO divides the initial simulation into two successive simulations. The antenna and its vicinity are firstly analyzed with DG-FDTD, and then IPO is used to analyze the platform. The two simulations are interfaced using the equivalence principle. This new method is first validated using a canonical scenario. Then, it is applied to the computation of electromagnetic radiation pattern in two antenna on platform problems (antenna on vehicle especially). The method is then exploited to effectively analyze the radiation pattern of a surrounded antenna mounted on a platform. Two improvements are finely proposed in this thesis for DGFDTD/ IPO. The first one aims at taking into account for the backward coupling between the antenna region and the metallic platform. This improvement implies a coarse description of the antenna region in the IPO simulation. The second improvement concerns the modeling of the currents in the shadow areas of the platform. This improvement answers to the need to analyze precisely antenna-On-Launcher problems. Indeed IPO do not compute currents in shadow areas. Well, for this kind of problem, shadow areas represent almost all the platform. A new method based on IPO and called Domains Sequential Processing is proposed. This method is first validated using a canonical scenario involving a cylinder. Then it is successfully applied to the analysis of a spatial launcher.

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In this thesis we derive time dependent equations that govern the physics of a thermal fluid flowing through a one dimensional pipe. We begin with the conservation laws described by the 3D compressible Navier Stokes equations. This model includes all residual terms resulting from the 1D flow approximations. The final model assumes that all the residual terms are negligible which is a standard assumption in industry. Steady state equations are obtained by assuming the temporal derivatives are zero. We develop a semi-discrete model by applying a linear discontinuous Galerkin method in the spatial dimension. The resulting finite dimensional model is a differential algebraic equation (DAE) which is solved using standard integrators. We investigate two methods for solving the corresponding steady state equations. The first method requires making an initial guess and employs a Newton based solver. The second method is based on a pseudo-transient continuation method. In this method one initializes the dynamic model and integrates forward for a fixed time period to obtain a profile that initializes a Newton solver. We observe that non-uniform meshing can significantly reduce model size while retaining accuracy. For comparison, we employ the same initialization for the pseudo-transient algorithm and the Newton solver. We demonstrate that for the systems considered here, the pseudo-transient initialization algorithm produces initializations that reduce iteration counts and function evaluations when compared to the Newton solver. Several numerical experiments were conducted to illustrate the ideas. Finally, we close with suggestions for future research. / Master of Science / In this thesis we derive time dependent equations that govern the physics of a fluid flowing through a one dimensional pipe. This model includes all error terms that result from 1D modeling approximations. The final model assumes that all of these error terms are negligible which is a standard assumption in industry. Steady state equations result when all time dependence is removed from the 1D equations. We approximate the true solution by a discontinuous piece-wise linear function. Standard techniques are used to solve for this approximate solution. We investigate two methods for solving the steady state equations. In the first method, one makes an educated guess about the solution profile and uses Newton’s method to solve for the true solution. The second method, pseudo-transient initialization, attempts to improve this initial guess through dynamic simulation. In this method, an initial guess is treated as the initial conditions for dynamic simulation. The dynamic simulation is then run for a fixed amount of time. The solution at the end of the simulation is the improved initial guess for Newton’s method and is used to solve for the steady state profile. To test the pseudo-transient initialization, we determine the number of function evaluations required to obtain the steady state solution for an initial guess with and without performing pseudo-transient initialization on it. We demonstrate that for the systems considered here, the pseudo-transient initialization algorithm reduced overall computational costs. Also, we observe that non-uniform meshing can significantly reduce model size while retaining accuracy. Several numerical experiments were conducted to illustrate these ideas. Finally, we close with suggestions for future research.