Minimization of the `∞ (or maximum) norm subject to a constraint that imposes consistency to an underdetermined system of linear equations finds use in a large number of practical applications, including vector quantization, peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) (or “crest factor”) reduction in communication systems, approximate nearest neighbor search, and peak force minimization in robotics and ...

We show that democratic change may be triggered by transitory economic shocks. Our approach uses within-country variation in rainfall as a source of transitory shocks to sub-Saharan African economies. We find that negative rainfall shocks are followed by significant improvement in democratic institutions. This result is consistent with the economic approach to political transitions, where trans...

globalization and democracy have become the most debated issues throughout the world, which, no doubt also influence iran. this paper highlights these phenomena with respect to iran but takes up the issue through various description and features presented by the con-temporary socio- political thinkers and economists. considering globalization, although the subject matter is very recent but iran...

Despite widespread disagreement about democratic deficits in the European Union (EU), most critics begin by conceiving democracy as a problem for the EU. Seeing the EU as undemocratic or insufficiently democratic, they devise institutional innovations to democratize it. These innovations seem to require breaking the traditional link between democracy and the nation-state, which in this context ...

n fall 1997, the democratic movement in Russia will celebrate its tenth anniversary. In November 1987, a group of young intelligentsia from Moscow (creators of the then unknown historical-educational organization Memorial) marched to Arbat to collect signatures. Those signatures were not calling for the dissolution of the Soviet system, but for the creation of a memorial to the victims of Stali...

I define the concept of preventive war, distinguish it from preemption and other sources of better-now-than-later logic, and examine numerous conceptual issues that confound theoretical and empirical analyses of prevention. I then consider the argument that democracies rarely if ever adopt preventive war strategies because such strategies are contrary to the preferences of democratic publics an...

The paper is concerned with democratisation in the Third World since the 1980s, a period when dozens of Third World countries underwent at least some measure of democratic change. The paper, both general and comparative, rather than specific and focused on one or several countries, aims to try to help locate discussions in the workshopÕs analytical framework: to assess the extent of democratic ...

This article draws on new data and analyses to investigate whether the contractualist peace supersedes the democratic peace. A series of studies have shown that contractualist economy accounts for the democratic peace, but defenders of the democratic peace claim that these studies contain measurement errors, that democracy correlates with peace at least in interaction with contractualist econom...