Autonomous Entities Research Articles

DELEGADOS SECTORIALES DEL SERVICIO CIVIL

Law No. 19.889 reincorporates into the Uruguayan legal system the figure of the sectoral delegate of the Civil Service, in order to strengthen the application and evaluation of the staff management policy of the Central Administration agencies, Autonomous Entities and Decentralized Services, with the aim of professionalizing and standardizing public service in Uruguay, through advice and the development of activities and training to disseminate good administrative practices. The sectoral delegate is a technical extension of the National Civil Service Office and plays a necessary articulating role in compliance with the constitutional mandate to strive for an efficient public administration, without violating the constitutional autonomy attributed to different State bodies.

Agents’ ontologies negotiation in cohesive hybrid intelligent multi-agent systems

The paper proposes the model for negotiating intelligent agents’ ontologies in cohesive hybrid intelligent multi-agent systems. Intelligent agent in this study will be called relatively autonomous software entity with developed domain models and goal-setting mechanisms. When such agents have to work together within single hybrid intelligent multi-agent systems to solve some problem, the working process “go wild”, if there are significant differences between the agents’ “points of view” on the domain, goals and rules of joint work. In this regard, in order to reduce labor costs for integrating intelligent agents into a single system, the concept of cohesive hybrid intelligent multi-agent systems was proposed that implement mechanisms for negotiating goals, domain models and building a protocol for solving the problems posed. The presence of these mechanisms is especially important when building intelligent systems from intelligent agents created by various independent development teams.

The form of state in the historical and legal research of the Soviet period

The subject of the article is the application of the concept of the form of state in the Soviet historical and legal science.The purpose of the research is to confirm or disprove the hypothesis that the understanding of the form of the state in the Soviet history of law was not discrete, it changed under the influence of political transformations and had a significant impact on the modern theory of the state.The methodology. The method of periodization was used to highlight the Soviet period of historical and legal science, the chronological method was used to determine the upper and lower boundaries of the Soviet period. The narrative method made it possible to describe the historiographic process. The historical-comparative method was required to compare individual concepts.Results, scope of application. The concept of the form of the state that was used in the historical and legal science of the Soviet period has been determined. The form of the state in Soviet science included two elements initially: the form of government and the form of statehood. The third element has been added since the 1960s – the political regime. The institutionalization of the history of state and law as a science took place by the end of the 1940s. While historians of the old school were working, the main topics included the early stages of the development of the state. Then after the change of generations the priority place was taken by the problems of the Soviet state. By the end of the Soviet period a more harmonious allocation of topics had developed. In Soviet historical and legal science the form of the state of the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods was considered separately. The form of government of the Russian state in the pre-revolutionary period was defined as a monarchy. Several types of monarchy were distinguished: early feudal, estate-representative, absolute. The republican form of government was recognized for the Soviet state. Its class and social essence changed with the development of socialism. Organizational forms changed accordingly. When studying the polity, the main attention was paid to the federation. Its complex origin was noted, because the Russian Federation (RSFSR) was part of the federation of the USSR. The Soviet federations were built according to the nationalterritorial principle. The issue of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation remained debatable. Most researchers considered the RSFSR a state with autonomous entities. The development of the territory of the state as a whole has hardly been studied. Major administrative-territorial reforms carried out in the 1920s-1930s were considered in isolation from national-territorial construction. Generalized works on the territorial development of the state appeared only at the end of the Soviet period. Issues of the political regime of the feudal and bourgeois state were addressed in the study of direct democracy in the ancient Russian state, estate representative bodies, state power during the period of absolutism. Political liberalization was noted during the bourgeois reforms of the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries. The democratic nature of the Soviet political regime was not questioned, therefore, the problems indicating trouble, crisis phenomena in the Soviet state were not identified.Conclusions. The understanding of elements of form of the state in the Soviet history of law was expanding. It changed in accordance with the changes in the Soviet governance. The main approaches to understanding the form of the state are accepted by contemporary Russian science.

Consolidation of the State-Owned Enterprises in China: A Missed Opportunity for the EU Merger Control?

Mergers of China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) aimed at increasing their competitiveness and their presence on global markets raised a number of challenging questions concerning their appraisal under merger control regimes worldwide. The review of the Commission’s merger control practice reveals numerous instances where it presumed the existence of a ‘single economic unit’ comprising several Chinese SOEs when assessing competitive effects of Chinese SOEs’ acquisitions in Europe. The assertion of merger control jurisdiction over a Chinese SOE-to-SOE merger would require the Commission to treat these SOEs as autonomous economic entities, which will have an impact on future assessments of Chinese SOEs’ acquisitions of European companies.

Relational Social Theories and Legal Pluralism

Recent sociological, anthropological, and psychological research points at a shared problem: Are humans separate and autonomous entities, or must they be seen through the lens of extended, permeable, fractured notions of personhood? This paper discusses some crucial implications for the study of law and legal pluralism. Legal orders may differ in the degrees to which personhood is taken as embedded. At the same time, notions of personhood may also be more or less bounded, with particular fields within legal orders also espousing different degrees of personal autonomy. That depends on how political preferences shape specific issues at the time legislation is enacted. All this has implications for conceptualizing and studying legal pluralism. Examples from Indonesia, Thailand, and the Netherlands bring to light some thorny issues that arise when personhood is viewed through the lens of more or less autonomy and social embeddedness. The examples suggest that a relational approach that accounts for varying degrees to which persons are perceived as extended beings deepens the analysis of plural legal orders.

Distinct pathological mechanisms distinguish acute coronary syndrome caused by plaque erosion from plaque rupture.

The current systematic review aims to provide novel insights into the distinct pathological features of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) with intact fibrous cap, also known as 'plaque erosion'. A more detailed understanding of its underlying pathomechanisms provides the basis for future personalized therapeutic approaches to ACS. In the past years, a mounting proportion of evidence point towards the concept of plaque erosion being responsible for more than one-third of all cases of ACS and representing an autonomous ACS-causing entity driven by biomechanical forces, immunological alternations and systemic elevation of inflammatory mediators. First pilot studies proved a therapeutic paradigm shift from primary PCI at the ACS-causing culprit lesion to systemic therapies in patients with ACS caused by plaque erosion. This review provides the current status of the broad basic and clinical studies focused to the topic of plaque erosion: a new ACS-causing pathophysiology with different pathological aspects providing appropriate implications for personalized therapies in ACS.

Towards the realization of dynamically adaptable manufacturing automation systems.

The transition from traditional to truly smart dynamically adaptable manufacturing demands the adoption of a high degree of autonomy within automation systems, with resultant changes in the role of the human, in both the manufacturing and logistics functions within the factory. In the context of smart manufacturing, this paper describes research towards the realization of adaptable autonomous automation systems from both the control and information perspectives. Key facets of the approach taken at WMG are described in relation to human–machine interaction, autonomous approaches to assembly and intra-logistics, integration and dynamic system-wide optimization. The progression from simple distributed behavioural components towards autonomous functional entities is described. Effective systems integration and the importance of interoperability in the realization of more distributed and autonomous automation systems are discussed, so that operational information can propagate seamlessly, eliminating the traditional boundary between operational technology and information technology systems, and as an enabler for global knowledge collection, analysis and optimization.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Towards symbiotic autonomous systems'.

INSTITUTIONAL BUILDING AND ARCHITECTONICS OF POLITICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE INSTITUTIONS

In the process of modernization, based on the development of the potential of public administration and the growth of social capital, an open type of interaction between the state and society is formed, where institutions act as the necessary conductors of direct and reverse signals within the framework of a flexible political and administrative system. It is pointed out that institution building in order to minimize the risks of falling into institutional traps should take into account the peculiarity of the institutional architecture, which is determined by the hierarchy of formal rules, and provide for the complication of the procedure for changing institutions as their rank grows. Taking into account the hierarchy of rules makes it possible to track the change in the role of formal / informal institutions, when a decrease in the level of the rules of the institutional architecture increases the importance of informal institutions in the management process. It is argued that informal norms play a large role in the functioning of the political market. The state as a subject of management is interested in the formalization of emerging informal practices. The stability and predictability of managerial influences grow when formal institutions absorb informal ones. Two ways of changing the architecture of institutions as a result of such a takeover are considered. The first, administrative-legal way: the gradual consolidation of informal practices as generally recognized in formal institutions, that is, the legalization of informal restrictions.The second way consists naturally in the conditions of a low level of the political and administrative potential of the state: informal practices are embedded in the mechanism of action of formal institutions and destroy them from the inside, creating the effect of subversive institutions, which creates favorable conditions for institutional traps on the way to the formation of political and administrative institutions of modernization. In addition, a situation is possible when formal and informal rules and norms interact as independent (autonomous) entities, and then, as a result, a certain type of institutional environment is formed, which differs in the way of interaction between formal and informal institutions.

A machine learning-based malicious bot detection framework for trend-centric twitter stream

There is an increase in evidence about the generation of social media content by autonomous entities called bots. These automated entities may be computerized algorithms or a human-assisted account to boost a trend or control political campaigns. People do not create bots due to malicious intent always. Several bots are benign and often play helpful roles. Detection of these bots have many implications. Most techniques available to date perform bot detection at the account level. This paper aims to uncover social bots that are active in trending events on Twitter. We have designed an automated malicious bot detection framework to serve this purpose. Our main contributions include converting unlabelled Twitter extracted trend-centric dataset to labelled dataset using semi-supervised machine learning techniques. Selection of attributes useful for bot classification using Entropy and Information Gain. Formulation of rule hierarchy after feature selection and threshold estimation of respective features. We have finalized the suspected bots after applying the rule hierarchically on the initial dataset. In addition to this, validation of the alleged bots given by the proposed framework is performed by plotting timeline tweets of suspected users, acts as an enhancement. This model is useful for bot detection in trend-centric Twitter stream. The research carried out will serve as an advancement to the successful detection of bots in trend-centric datasets.

Scalable multi-agent local energy trading — Meeting regulatory compliance and validation in the Cardiff grid

With the recent approval of energy directives (e.g. the EU Clean Energy Package) that state the rights and obligations of Local Energy Communities (LECs), time had come for smart grid technologies to show that they can comply with the complexity of the new regulatory environment when optimising LEC energy exchanges. This paper meets this challenge by modelling LECs operation by means of a novel energy coordination network that satisfies all stated requirements, such as the right of each community member of selecting their own supplier and the subsequent need of independent metring. The optimisation of the community is decentralised among a set of autonomous computational entities (a.k.a. agents), achieving scalability, and orchestrated via an agent interaction protocol based on the well-known Alternative Direction Method of Multipliers (ADMM) that keeps the preferences and cost structures of prosumers private. The approach is validated via extensive simulations using a dataset based on real data related to an existing energy grid in Cardiff (UK). Empirical results show that by optimising the use of prosumers’ flexible resources to maximise the share of PV self-generated energy at community level our approach achieves higher community self-consumption ratios (up to 59% increment) and significantly reduces prosumer energy bills (589£/month additional reduction expected on summer months) w.r.t. optimising houses individually.

Fuzzy Trust Modelling for Pervasive Computing Applications

Pervasive computing applications involve the interaction between autonomous entities for performing complex tasks and producing knowledge. Autonomous entities can interact to exchange data and knowledge to fulfil applications requirements. Intelligent Agents (IAs) ‘activated’ in various devices offer a lot of advantages when representing such entities due to their autonomous nature that enables them to perform the desired tasks in a distributed way. However, in such open and dynamic environments, IAs should be based on an efficient mechanism for trusting unknown entities when exchanging data. The trust level of an entity should be automatically calculated based on an efficient methodology. Each entity is uncertain for the characteristics and the intentions of the others. Fuzzy Logic (FL) seems to be the appropriate tool for handling such kind of uncertainty. In this paper, we present a model for trust calculation under the principles of FL. Our scheme takes into consideration the social dimension of trust as well as personal experiences of entities before they decide interactions with an IA. The proposed model is a two-level system involving three FL sub-systems to calculate (a) the social trust (based on experiences retrieved by the community), (b) the individual trust (based on personal experiences) and (c) the final trust. We present our results by evaluating the proposed system compared to other models and reveal its significance.

A persuasive multi-agent simulator to improve electrical energy consumption

ABSTRACT Gathering information on electric energy consumption is important for companies and institutions aiding in making plans. Multi-agent systems can aid such companies in understanding the different behaviours presented within the context of a society constituted by autonomous entities. We propose a multi-agent simulator capable of emulating different profiles of consumers and equipment. Our approach differs from others in three fundamental aspects: i). it models parameters that are difficult to predict, which are calibrated using values provided by available records; ii). it can be applied to different simulation environments involving various degrees of scalability and heterogeneity of profiles both of individual behaviour and household appliances; iii). it simulates the complexity of the system, providing estimates through the simulation of the interaction between users and electrical appliances. The results obtained by the model were similar to the numbers provided by the literature, which suggests the validity of the proposed approach.

Developing a Multi-Agent System to Support Multi-Variant Production Ramp-Up Management

Abstract In the Industry 4.0 era, with increased demands for customization, numerous companies struggle to accommodate changes in their businesses and to keep up with the pace of digital transformation. It follows that introducing new products or services based on an existing configuration or a new design is becoming more frequent. Managing the production ramp-up phase carefully is therefore emerging as one of the most critical steps in the product lifecycle. Although several general strategies and high-level frameworks are available in recent ramp-up management literature, data-backed tools and frameworks that deal with this question are scarce. This article aims to bridge this gap by developing a multi-agent system (MAS) supporting ramp-up management strategies assessment in multi-variant production contexts. An MAS relies on the concept of an agent, which is an autonomous entity operating in a society of agents in order to contribute to a general goal. This article studies the method used to develop an MAS and illustrates its applicability through a case study in the furniture sector. The article highlights the reusability and flexibility of the development method and the relevance of the MAS to decision-makers during ramp-up planning.

Global far right and imaginative interconnectivities

While reading the papers in this collection on the far right, I have found myself in wondering how to locate the newly rising far right in the non-Western world and their global connectivities to each other and to the Western far right. The emotive and imaginative connectivities matter as they often feed each other. As such, Islamophobia in the European far right is used to strengthen the anti-Western sentiments in Islamist populisms in the Middle East, and vice versa. Turkey’s Erdoğan’s revivalist imperial dreams are not disconnected from the rest of the world either. Therefore, the rise of the far right could better be understood as a global phenomenon. The newly emerging literature on the far right, so far, seems to have failed to capture these interconnected imaginative forces in the formation of Islamist politics for three reasons: (i) the global interconnectivity in populist political aspirations is missed due to Western-oriented tendencies in calibrating the scholarly foci; (ii) the region does not fit into the foci employed by area studies; and (iii) rationality-oriented Eurocentric theories are limited in their ability to grasp and analyse the imaginative forces that are at stake. In a new project that takes place in 12 countries and in which I take lead, the members of the research team aim to develop theories that will allow for nuanced accounts of the way imaginative and affective elements impact people’s attitudes and opinions. For instance, although the last Islamic Empire ceased to exist almost 100 years ago, the dream of reviving Islamic Empires still haunts and even fuels political aspirations. It is therefore crucial to examine the rising far right in Europe vis-à-vis the currency of current imperial Islamist revivalist aspirations. It is equally crucial to see the interconnectivities within those revivalist movements. We therefore study the homes of three of the greatest Islamic Empires (Islamdom: Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal/Timurid). This geography, recently coined as the Balkan-to-Bengal complex (BtB) (Ahmed 2015), a historically, politically and socially interconnected zone, has been the heartland of Islamist resurgences. In the West of the BtB, Erdogan’s charisma and a series of philanthropic and media projects have gained him support within and beyond Turkey, particularly among Sunni Muslims (Akdoğan 2017; Carkoglu 2014; Martin 2015). The common theme in those investments is the revivalist dreams, presenting the Ottoman legacy as a protector against non-Muslims, from the (Albanian and Bosnian) Muslim minorities in the Balkans to Sunni Arabs in the Middle East and North Africa (Cagaptay 2009; Cetin 2014; Küçük and Türkmen 2018; Rüma 2010; Tabak 2016; Walton 2010; Yavuz 1998). In the East, the charismatic leaders of Islamists and Sufi groups (i.e. Pashtun Tahafuz movement, Jama’at-e-Islami in Pakistan and Hefazat-e-Islam in Bangladesh) (Ahmad 2009; Iqtidar 2011; Riaz 2012) enchant a large and ethnically diverse following beyond national borders, by intimately connecting them to each other through emotive elements against the colonial powers, and with dreams of just Islamic polities and futures. The historical interconnectedness imposed by the imperial Islamic past across the BtB informs and shapes the ways these political actors tap into the imaginative capacities of their audience, their audiences’ various social references, religious cosmologies, nationalist discourses, resentments, and other imaginative realms. Islamist actors appropriate those existing affective and emotive registers to further their often highly ambitious politics: including the dream of resurrecting the Islamic Empires, or of connecting them under a unified leadership for the Muslims in their region. Equally, they are able to use the elements of imperial nostalgia, post-imperial malaise and political rage not as autonomous entities, but highly calibrated to the far-right discourses taking place in the West. This publication is part of the ERC StG 2019 TAKHAYYUL Project (853230).

Linking radiomic PET features with metabolic tissue parameters using a hybrid mathematical model of tumor growth

114 Objectives: The genetic diversity in tumor cells and the varying microenvironments lead to phenotypic heterogeneity within and between tumors (Marusyk et al., 2010), which can be assessed using PET imaging. More heterogeneous tumors may be more resilient to treatment and result in complications that are harder to treat (Hirata et al., 2017). Thus, understanding how tissue and tumor microparameters are linked to observable PET imaging features is of great interest, motivating the development of novel radiomics-based biomarkers. The objective of this work is to develop a multiscale mathematical model of tumor growth in vascularized tissue that can generate synthetic PET images of glucose metabolism. Using the model, we aim to establish a link between radiomic features and tissue microparameters. Methods: We simulate tumor growth using a hybrid mathematical model, which combines 1) grids of agents, namely autonomous decision-making entities representing blood vessels and different cell types (normal cells, tumor cells, hypoxic cells, necrotic cells), and 2) partial differential equation grids to simulate the tumor microenvironment (Robertson-Tessi, 2015). Blood is the source of oxygen and glucose (drugs or radionuclides can also be incorporated), which diffuse through tissue and are consumed by cells. In each simulation step, the state of each agent and the next action is determined based on the local microenvironment. The model uses realistic biological parameters, such as oxygen diffusion coefficient in tissue (1.62x10-5 cm2/s), consumption rates (2.5x10-18 to 2.0x10-15 mol/min/cell), and average cell size (20um). The oxygen consumption rate follows the Michaelis-Menten kinetics and is simplified to a constant for each cell type (Grimes et al, 2014). The simulated grid size was 1000x1000 cells (2x2 cm). The time-sequences of agent maps were converted to pseudo-standardized uptake value (pSUV) maps, assuming the relative glucose consumption rates 1, 8, 12, and 0 for normal, cancer, cancer hypoxic, and necrotic cells, respectively. pSUV maps were downsampled to a resolution of 3 mm (mid-point between pre-clinical and clinical PET resolution). The assumed PET tracer is a glucose analog, applicable to 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG). Results: To demonstrate the utility of our method, we used different combinations of microparameters to simulate 3 distinct tumor types (Fig. 1). Altered parameters included blood vessel density (types A,C: 20/mm2, B: 100/mm2), spatial arrangement (types A,C: random placement, B: uniform-density placement), and vascular network alteration by tumor cells such as vessel removal probability (types A,B: 1, C: 0.05). The resulting tumors of different types had very distinct phenotypes, which were visually distinguishable in the corresponding pSUV PET images (Fig. 2). The model produced diverse and realistic tumor growth rates, ranging from ~80 to ~310 days to reach a 1-cm tumor diameter (Fig. 3). Likewise, 4 radiomic features computed from the synthetic PET images of tumors (pSUV mean uptake, shape compactness, Haralick texture contrast and homogeneity), were significantly different between the tumor types. Specifically, the values for 1-cm tumors were: mean pSUV - 4.58 ± 0.03 (type A), 7.63 ± 0.72 (type B), 4.71 ± 0.04 (type C); Compactness - 0.91 ± 0.01 (A), 0.95 ± 0.01 (B), 0.94 ± 0.005 (C); Contrast - 1.67 ± 0.08 (A), 1.58 ± 0.04 (B), 1.36 ± 0.1 (C); Homogeneity - 0.71 ± 0.01 (A), 0.80 ± 0.006 (B), 0.79 ± 0.01 (C). From a combination of all 4 features, each tumor phenotype and set of tissue parameters can be uniquely identified. Conclusions: Realistic tumor growth can be achieved through modeling tissue and tumor microparameters. By changing the parameter values, distinctly different tumor phenotypes were obtained measurable through PET image radiomics. Hence, the model can help establish a link between tissue metabolic parameters and PET radiomics, and identify optimal radiomic features for tumor assessment.

Knowing through feeling: the aesthetic structure of a novel and the iconic experience of reading

Following the strong program in cultural sociology, I propose a “literary turn” to recognize literary texts “as relatively autonomous cultural entities” with their own agency. This article is part of a larger project connecting cultural sociology with the sociology of literature and literary theory to develop a strong program in the sociology of literature. Instead of approaching literary fiction as an object of analysis, sociology and literature can contribute to social knowledge in a symmetrical way, where fiction is not devalued vis-a-vis social scientific inquiry. Just the opposite: recognizing the specificities of literary communication, we can access textures of social life that are only hardly graspable by sociology. A crucial step is to examine how social knowledge comes into existence when reading a fictional text. Embracing the structural aesthetics of Roman Jakobson and Jan Mukařovský, I modify the concept of iconicity to capture the iconic experience of reading through which literature mediates social experience that is iconic of broader social phenomena. I demonstrate my approach by analyzing the Czech novel Bliss was it in Bohemia by Michal Viewegh (Bliss was it in Bohemia, Jantar Publishing, London, 1992). Building on social aesthetics, I discuss implications of my model for sociological theory, textual representation, and sociological explanation in general.

Beijing's Crackdown on Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Hong Kong

executive summary: This essay examines how Beijing's escalating crackdown on Hong Kong has systematically imposed authoritarian policies that undermine international human rights and the rule of law, abandoning China's commitments both to the Hong Kong people and to the international community. main argument Confidence in the "one country, two systems" model China promised Hong Kong has slowly drained away in the years since the 1997 handover. In 2019, as "one country" seemed set to gobble up "two systems" under the weight of a proposed law to allow the extradition of accused from Hong Kong to the mainland, the people of Hong Kong staged one of the world's largest ever protests to demand the autonomy, rule of law, and basic freedoms they were promised in the city's Basic Law. In the face of government indifference and aggressive police tactics, these protests morphed into a confrontation that carried on for months throughout the second half of 2019. In 2020, Beijing responded with a total crackdown, imposing a national security law that undermined the core liberal institutions that have long sustained Hong Kong. To ensure absolute control, Beijing this year amended the Basic Law to impose new rules under which electoral committees can bar from the political process anyone deemed disloyal to the Chinese Communist Party regime. The new rules create an electoral model that profoundly violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requirements applicable to Hong Kong. policy implications • International partners and organizations can play a more constructive role by focusing on meeting grassroot concerns. In this regard, recognition and support for autonomous territorial entities, such as Hong Kong, could be conditioned on adherence to relevant international and constitutional commitments to secure democratic representation, human rights, and the rule of law at the local level. • To encourage central government engagement on critical issues relating to human rights and the rule of law, diplomatic efforts ought to be multilateral, targeted, and involve clear messaging on the importance of the rule of law and international standards of human rights. • If Chinese and Hong Kong officials remain indifferent to both local and international concerns, immediate policies will need to focus on the exit and immigration concerns Hong Kong residents will face as they seek to escape the repressive conditions being imposed.

GLOBAL EXPORT CONTROLS OF CYBER SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY AND THE DISRUPTED TRIANGULAR DIALOGUE

AbstractThe proliferation and abuse of cyber surveillance technology is a global policy problem. The Wassenaar Arrangement is a central platform of international cooperation for regulating dual-use goods and technologies and the so-called ‘cyber’ amendments to Wassenaar have created a multilateral control mechanism for the export of cyber surveillance technology. Following criticism of the repressive use of ICT-powered surveillance tools supplied by private companies in the early 2010s, Wassenaar States revised the Arrangement to regulate certain types of surveillance. This article begins by examining key features of the cyber amendments. Based on the analysis of recent export control law reforms in the three leading State actors in the production, sales and governance of cyber surveillance technology—namely the United States, China, and the European Union—the article identifies the diminishing importance of the Wassenaar Arrangement. It also shows how approaches in the three jurisdictions diverge not only from the terms of equivalent Wassenaar controls, but also from one another. They all aim to become a stronger and more autonomous entity in the regulation of cyber surveillance technology. In the face of escalating confrontation between the G2 concerning emerging technologies, it will be interesting to see how the EU's turn to a more human rights-centred approach to governing the export of cyber surveillance technology will be received by the US and Chinese governments in the long run and how it will interact with export control reforms designed with competing geopolitical, commercial and security agendas.

Flexibility and Informalisation of Labour: Intangible Assets, Family and the Informal Economy in India

In this article, I demonstrate, through the use of the life course perspective, how informal work in the form of verbal wage contracts might lead to dignity and autonomy amongst the rural poor. The article draws attention to a broader comparative context of how indigenous autonomies are produced. In that they have the relative freedom to engage in a range of informal work as discussed, the Gonds’ autonomy in a neoliberal sense consists of self-governance, which draws attention to the indigenous community’s conception of the self as an economic and autonomous entity that is sustained by a range of social networks.

Boards of directors and performance in autonomous public sector entities

ABSTRACT The adoption of business-like boards of directors in the public sector has to be evaluated in terms of financial and non-financial outcomes. This paper investigates, using a structural equation model, the relationship of certain board characteristics with the performance of English NHS foundation trusts. Larger and more independent boards do not harm performance. Having a woman chairing the board is related to better service quality. Boards seem to be more concerned about service quality issues than about financial problems.