It is well-documented the political and structural barriers to female descriptive representation in politics and legislatures (see Lovenduski, 2005). Women remain under-represented at every level of government in the UK (Home Office, 2011). This paper adds to the body of research by exploring the political representation of women at local government level. In particular the locus of Scottish lo...

In this paper we present a lexical approach that will identify opinion of web users popularly expressed using short words or sms words. These words are pretty popular with diverse web users and are used for expressing their opinion on the web. The study of opinion from web arises to know the diverse opinion of web users. The opinion expressed by web users may be on diverse topics such as politi...

The World Health Organization has appointed a new director of its African regional office. Matshidiso Moeti will take over from the current director, Luis Gomes Sambo, on 1 February 2015 when Sambo’s 10 year term of office expires. Moeti has worked inWHO’s African regional office since 1999. She started as regional adviser for women’s and adolescent health, then worked as regional adviser for H...

On New Year’s Day 2000, I learned that some of my colleagues were allegedly in league with the Devil. The previous evening, the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) had firebombed the office of the Director of the Agricultural Biotechnology Support Project (ABSP) at Michigan State University (MSU; East Lansing, MI, USA). This project was the primary route for the US Agency for International Development...

Although the 2011 uprisings in Egypt led to the fall of Hosni Mubarak, they have not yet been able to change the nature of the country’s political system. A year after the country’s first non-military president took office, Egypt’s political situation became more or less similar to the way it had been before 2011. The structure of the relationship between the state and the society in Egypt, hig...

The growth of patent thickets—technology fields that are characterized by a large overlap of rights between different right holders—poses a challenge for innovators. Patent thickets are argued to create strong friction in innovation due to a pronounced potential for holdup. So far, we do not know whether patent thickets coincide in all patent systems or if differences exist that policy makers a...

During their lifetime, political parties face a range of strategic dilemmas. Some involve the dilemma between vote, office and policy success (Strøm 1990; De Winter 1998: 238-40). Some revolve around the exact nature of party goals, policies or coalition strategies. However, in some cases, parties also face some fundamental strategic and organisational choices about whether to become parties at...

Budget forecasts are used by incumbent governments as a political tool to manage the elector particularly during an election cycle (Bruck and Stephan 2006). Incumbents apply budget forecasts strategically. They use short-term forecasts, which are more likely to be unbiased by political factors, annually. They rely on long-term forecasts, which are likely to be biased by political calculations, ...

Tobin (1958) has argued that in the face of potential capital losses on bonds it is reasonable to hold cash as a means to transfer wealth over time. It is shown that this assertion cannot be sustained taking into account the evolution of wealth of cash holders versus non cash holders. Cash holders will be driven out of the market in the long run by traders who only use a (risky) long-lived asse...

Tobin (1958) has argued that in the face of potential capital losses on bonds it is reasonable to hold cash as a means to transfer wealth over time. It is shown that this assertion cannot be sustained taking into account the evolution of wealth of cash holders versus non cash holders. Cash holders will be driven out of the market in the long run by traders who only use a (risky) long-lived asse...