Protection Of Civil Liberties Research Articles

Influence of Political Stability on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Inflows in Nigeria

Purpose: The aim of the study was to assess the influence of political stability on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in Nigeria. Methodology: This study adopted a desk methodology. A desk study research design is commonly known as secondary data collection. This is basically collecting data from existing resources preferably because of its low cost advantage as compared to a field research. Our current study looked into already published studies and reports as the data was easily accessed through online journals and libraries. Findings: The study indicated that political stability significantly influences foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, as investors seek environments where their investments are secure and can yield predictable returns. Stable political conditions reduce risks related to government policy changes, expropriation, and civil unrest, thereby attracting more FDI. Conversely, political instability, marked by frequent government changes, corruption, and social unrest, deters investors due to increased uncertainty and risk. Studies have shown that countries with stable political climates tend to receive higher FDI inflows as they offer a safer, more predictable investment environment. Additionally, strong institutions and good governance practices further enhance investor confidence, leading to sustained economic growth through increased foreign investment. Implications to Theory, Practice and Policy: Institutional theory, risk theory and eclectic paradigm may be used to anchor future studies on assessing the influence of political stability on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in Nigeria. In practical terms, businesses and investors should focus on strengthening political institutions to create a stable and predictable environment. Policymakers play a crucial role in creating an environment conducive to FDI by prioritizing the implementation of political reforms that enhance stability. Ensuring free and fair elections, protecting civil liberties, and promoting effective governance structures are vital steps in this direction.

In the Shadow of Justice: Human Rights Implications of Criminal Acts

This research article delves into the intricate interplay between criminality and human rights violations within legal frameworks. This research scrutinizes how criminal acts, ranging from petty offenses to egregious crimes, cast a pervasive shadow over the landscape of justice and individual liberties. This article illuminates the multifaceted ways criminal behavior intersects with fundamental human rights principles by examining case studies, legislative measures, and international conventions. It explores the challenges posed by balancing the imperatives of law enforcement with the protection of civil liberties, emphasizing the need for nuanced approaches that safeguard human dignity amidst the pursuit of justice. Additionally, the article investigates the role of legal systems in addressing systemic injustices and promoting accountability for human rights violations perpetrated through criminal means. Through a comprehensive analysis, this study seeks to contribute to scholarly discourse on the complex dynamics between criminality, justice, and human rights, ultimately advocating for policies and practices that uphold the rights and dignity of all individuals within the realm of law.

The Double Democratic Bind: Challenges to Enacting Mandates and Combating Misinformation.

Wealthy countries vary considerably in terms of how well they have been able to inoculate their populations against COVID-19. In particular, democracies have been constrained in their abilities to implement vaccine mandates, given enshrined protections of civil liberties and individual freedom in such regimes. While scholars have begun addressing the democratic constraint on vaccine mandates, less attention has been paid to the additional challenges democracies face in constraining the spread of vaccine misinformation-particularly misinformation that spreads online. This study combines large-N cross-country analysis with a case study of Germany to illustrate the "double bind" that democracies face when it comes to containing both the spread of disease and the spread of misinformation through social media. The cross-national analysis confirms that democracies have been less likely to enact vaccine mandates, and they have also been relatively more hesitant to restrict what people can see and share online. The case study of Germany highlights the normative and the procedural constraints underlying such decisions. These findings show that resources are often not the binding constraint on effective disease control, raising questions regarding the ability of high-income democracies to respond effectively to future public health emergencies.

Protecting civil Liberties in a cognitively enhanced future: the role of classical liberalism.

A prominent concern in the literature on the ethics of human enhancement is that unequal access to future technology will exacerbate existing societal inequalities. The philosopher Daniel Wikler has argued that a futuristic cognitively enhanced majority would be justified in restricting the civil liberties of the unenhanced minority population for their own good in the same way that, mutatis mutandis, the cognitively normal majority are now justified in restricting the civil liberties of those deemed to be cognitively incompetent. Contrary to this argument, the author of this manuscript presents and defends The Liberal Argument to Protect Cognitive 'Normals'. According to this argument, while classical liberalism authorizes the cognitively competent to paternalistically restrict the civil liberties of the cognitively incompetent, classical liberalism does not authorize the cognitively enhanced to paternalistically restrict the civil liberties of the cognitively normal. Two additional arguments are developed in support of The Liberal Argument to Protect Cognitive 'Normals'. The author of this manuscript concludes by suggesting that classical liberalism could be valuable for protecting the civil liberties of disenfranchised groups in a future in which enhancement technology could exacerbate existing societal inequalities.

How Do Economic Conditions Influence Support for Democracy?

Abundant political economy work has found that societies tend to be less supportive of the political system that governs their country when the economy deteriorates. This paper seeks to enrich the existing literature on economic and democratic assessments by including the relatively under-explored group of developing countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, many of which are Muslim countries. Using public opinion data from the World Values Survey of 78 countries from 2005 to 2020, the author applies multi-level regressions to test whether the relationship between democratic support and economic growth varies along three dimensions: country affluence, MENA versus non-MENA regions, and type of political regime. Consistent with past studies, the findings in this paper confirm that higher real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth significantly enhances public support for democracy. However, it also identifies that the more robustly significant predictors of public support for democracy are political variables, particularly evaluation of government performance. The interaction variables analysis reveals that the effects of economic growth on public support for democracy is weaker in the presence of higher country affluence as well as in more liberal democracies, while being located in the MENA region strengthens the relationship between economic growth and public support for democracy. In addition, respondents who consider free and fair elections as well as protection of civil liberties to be essential features of democracy tend to be more supportive of democracy itself. Meanwhile, those who associate democracy with redistributive policies tend to have a more negative assessment of democracy.

Under the Veil of Democracy: What Do People Mean When They Say They Support Democracy?

Scholars have expressed concern over waning support for democracy worldwide. But what do ordinary citizens mean by the term “democracy," and how do their definitions of democracy influence their support for it? Using global cross-national survey data, this study demonstrates that individual variation in the understanding of democracy is substantively linked to democratic support across countries and regime contexts. Individuals who define democracy in terms of elections and the protection of civil liberties and those with greater conceptual complexity express higher support for democracy. This relationship between democratic conceptualization and support holds across diverse political contexts and alternative explanations. These results suggest that it is essential to consider divergent conceptualizations of democracy—and how they may vary systematically—when analyzing popular opinions of democracy.

За ролята на списание „Гражданин“ в отстояването на гражданските свободи през първото десетилетие на XX век

The article examines the role of the Grazhdanin (Citizen) magazine in the protection of civil liberties in the first decade of the 20th century. It has been singled out as the first independent scientific and educational conceptual project, ambitious to form the modern citizen. The magazine is dedicated to the mission of educating and enlightening civil society through a printed edition in the field of the fundamental knowledge for any democracy – constitutional rights, freedoms, and obligations. For this purpose, articles published in the democratic press and in the specialized press with legal themes from the first decade of the century have been studied, which outline the context in which the programmatic texts by Stefan Kirov, published in Grazhdanin, are examined. In this article, for the first time, pages from Stefan Kirov’s unpublished memoirs related to the publication of Grazhdanin are published.

DEVELOPING AN EQUILIBRIUM OF PROTECTION OF THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY AND NATIONAL SECURITY IN TERRORISM ERADICATION IN INDONESIA

Tension between privacy and security is nothing new, however due to the development of information and communication technology use as well as more intensive efforts of terrorism eradication have affected to the increasing level of the conflict. The need for national security is often similar to the situation of state of emergency, which enables the state to conduct several limitations to the implementation of right to privacy. Many states use the said justification and further position the element of national security to be in the superior position compared to the protection of civil liberties, including right to privacy. As a result, the act of limitation to the implementation of right to privacy in the context of terrorism eradication is deemed as ordinary and justified by law. In addition to that, to legitimize such policy, the state often sustains the state of emergency situation with no clear time limit. Departing from such situation, there needs to build an equilibrium between security and protection of the right to privacy by adapting to the continually changing reality. Today's technology development enables the state to track the movement of each person and create detailed and comprehensive profile of its citizen's life, so that the limitation of privacy also changes. However, even with the reason of terrorism eradication, the actions executed by the state must refer to several specific principles to ensure the protection of rights and fundamental freedoms.

Perceiving Freedom: Civil Liberties and COVID-19 Vaccinations.

Why have some countries been more successful in their COVID-19 vaccine rollouts than others? Despite efforts by governments to vaccinate their adult populations against COVID-19, vaccination rates remain irregularly low in some countries. We suggest that a crucial piece of this puzzle lies in resistance against government directives from the public due to civil liberty protections. Countries with greater protections for civil liberties can be expected to have lower vaccinations administered than countries with fewer protections, as the public enjoys a sense of freedom regarding their private lives. In such countries, de jure constraints on government policies are complemented by the fear of public backlash, even in crises; consequently, beyond structural limitations, governments with high levels of civil liberty protections face an additional hurdle in managing the COVID-19 crisis. Evidence for this hypothesis is presented for 153 countries by combining civil liberty scores with newly available data on COVID-19 vaccinations.

Democracy and the Adoption of Electoral Gender Quotas Worldwide.

This article theorizes and uses global and longitudinal data on gender quota laws to investigate how levels and dimensions of democracy affect the adoption of different quotatypes. Our results demonstrate that countries at middle levels of the democracy scale are more likely to adopt quotas. Within this diverse group of countries, those that have relatively low levels of electoral contestation (i.e., limited political rights) are most likely to adopt reserved seats. On the other hand, the likelihood of adopting candidate quotas is highest in countries where the protection of civil liberties (i.e., individual freedoms of association, etc.) is moderately high. Our findings suggest that different levels and dimensions of democracy provide political actors with incentives and constraints that create distinct trajectories for quota adoption.

Policing Jim Crow America: Enforcers’ Agency and Structural Transformations

This is a critical historiographical essay animated by the research question of how the decisions of police and sheriffs illuminated and drove the transformation of white supremacy through different forms from emancipation to the end of Jim Crow segregation. It situates this focus amidst current methodological trends that stress structural oppression and argues that law-enforcers’ agency could illuminate discussions among historians and other scholars about the relationship between formal and informal law alongside the rise of the modern criminological state. The historical importance of enforcers is accentuated in the story told in each section—the shifting demographics of enforcement during Reconstruction; the inequalities of policing alongside lynching in the last decades of the nineteenth century; the complex interplay between policing and segregation statutes, colorblind criminal law, and mob violence in the Jim Crow South; the concurrent modernization of racialized policing nationwide; and the displacement of informal mob law and formal racial caste by a national regime of extralegal police violence, unequal patterns of incarceration and execution, and federal protections of civil liberties and civil rights.

NetzDG and the German Precedent for Authoritarian Creep and Authoritarian Learning

In our digital age, how do governments both combat hate speech and terrorism, while continuing to protect civil liberties? And who makes the rules – platforms themselves? National governments? International institutions? When it comes to establishing policies to protect people on and off-line, many open questions remain. Governments have largely outsourced content moderation, platform policing, and digital policy to the private sector, often leaving the bulk of the work to the platforms themselves. Against this backdrop, governments have traditionally used two main tools to shape policy: threats of regulation and voluntary compliance programs. However, increasingly frustrated with the ineffectiveness of voluntary commitments, governments are taking a larger role in both defining hate and violent speech online, and clarifying the role that platforms must play. In 2017, after a series of right-wing extremist attacks linked to online hate speech, Germany passed the “Network Enforcement Act” (NetzDG), with the aim of improving the enforcement of law in social networks. NetzDG requires social media platforms with more than two million users to establish user-friendly complaint-reporting mechanisms, remove manifestly unlawful conduct within 24 hours, and deliver transparency reports twice a year. Importantly, NetzDG forces platforms to proactively report hate speech to law enforcement without a court order under penalty of fine. It is the first example of a European state using an aggressive approach to social media regulation, by making content moderation laws compulsory, rather than voluntary. This paper examines NetzDG's global proliferation. It argues that NetzDG’s reproduction in various hybrid and authoritarian regimes is doubly problematic––it is both an indication of authoritarian creep into democratic regimes and an instance of authoritarian learning from democratic regimes. Part One describes NetzDG’s history and specificities. Part Two provides background on the challenges of content moderation. It discusses the big questions that inform the debate about NetzDG specifically and digital regulation more broadly. Part Three explores the global repercussions. First, it describes NetzDG as an example of democratic backsliding in Germany. It then uses the case studies of Russia, Singapore, and Turkey to demonstrate how authoritarian and hybrid regimes justify illiberal actions by invoking the practices of liberal democracies. Throughout, this paper underscores the dangers of a one-size-fits-all digital governance regime, urging states to consider the global and long-term effects of their policies

The Formation of the Anglo-American Law and the Power of Judges

Dichotomous explanations of “Civil Law = Statutory Law” and “Common Law = Case Law” are widely used. Still, it is difficult for lawyers and citizens in Civil Law countries to understand case law accurately. How can a case, a resolution for a particular party to a dispute, be a law generally applied to everyone? Although there exists some legal part in the court decision, how can such judgment be called a “law”? When the court interprets statutory law, is it correct to call the court ruling “the law itself,” not the “authoritative interpretation” of the law? While there is a historical background behind the formation of case law, how do judges maintain the tradition of making laws? Is it right to describe the distinctive characteristic of Anglo-American law as “judge-made law” in the present day when the legislative body enacts numerous statutory laws? The article examines judges’ high authority and mighty power in the Common Law tradition to answer these questions. In the birth and development of Anglo-American law, judges exercised strong powers that were difficult to justify with legal theories. The author’s view is that one cannot accurately understand the Common Law system and case law without understanding this unique history and cultural traditions. From this perspective, the article first looks at how Common Law judges historically have acquired and maintained more substantial power than continental law judges. British and American judges can issue a writ of mandamus to direct officials in the executive branch to specific tasks, often order litigants to prohibit certain acts, and severely punish civil contempt with broad discretion. Lawyers in the Anglo-American legal tradition continue to believe that the law does not exist in abstract legislation but concrete court rulings. Therefore, even in modern times, when the legislature actively enacts statutes, Anglo-American lawyers never abandon the belief in “judge-made law.” Whether to recognize case law as a primary source of law, allowing judges to have mighty power, and maintaining the principle of separation of power thoroughly is not a matter of right or wrong, or better or worse. All legal systems should aim to protect the liberties and rights of the sovereign people and promote their happiness, so they should be evaluated as helpful in achieving this goal. It seems that many British and American lawyers and citizens believe that granting strong power to judges helps protect civil liberties and rights better.

Enabling User-centered Privacy Controls for Mobile Applications

Mobile apps have transformed many aspects of clinical practice and are becoming a commonplace in healthcare settings. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has provided the opportunity for such apps to play an important role in reducing the spread of the virus. Several types of COVID-19 apps have enabled healthcare professionals and governments to communicate with the public regarding the pandemic spread, coronavirus awareness, and self-quarantine measures. While these apps provide immense benefits for the containment of the spread, privacy and security of these digital tracing apps are at the center of public debate. To address this gap, we conducted an online survey of a midwestern region in the United State to assess people’s attitudes toward such apps and to examine their privacy and security concerns and preferences. Survey results from 1,550 participants indicate that privacy/security protections and trust play a vital role in people’s adoption of such apps. Furthermore, results reflect users’ preferences wanting to have control over their personal information and transparency on how their data is handled. In addition, personal data protection priorities selected by the participants were surprising and yet revealing of the disconnect between technologists and users. In this article, we present our detailed survey results as well as design guidelines for app developers to develop innovative human-centered technologies that are not only functional but also respectful of social norms and protections of civil liberties. Our study examines users’ preferences for COVID-19 apps and integrates important factors of trust, willingness, and preferences in the context of app development. Through our research findings, we suggest mechanisms for designing inclusive apps’ privacy and security measures that can be put into practice for healthcare-related apps, so that timely adoption is made possible.

Biopolitics during the COVID-19 pandemic: dilemmas of public safety and freedom

The article considers the problem of maintaining a balance between the need for public safety and protection of civil liberties in a coronavirus pandemic. The theoretical works of Michel Foucault on biopower and biopolitics, the feasibility of using a biological model of government to organize modern government measures to combat the spread of the pandemic are analyzed. The global scale of the spread of the coronavirus brings biopower to a fundamentally higher level of subordination. Modern biopolitics should be understood as political rationality, which assumes the management of life and population as a subject. Modern biopolitics should be seen as a strategic coordination of national governments and the global community, to determine the potential ability of government agencies to regulate and regulate biological hazards, including the spread of infectious diseases. Effective international cooperation in overcoming the pandemic is hampered by "vaccine nationalism", the use of vaccine production as a tool of geopolitical competition. Biopower determines the individual well-being and self-awareness of people, significantly affects social ties, promising adequate protection against pathogenic influences, epidemiological threats to health. The introduction of strict restrictions on movement, quarantine measures is proclaimed by the authorities as the need to break the chain of epidemiological infection. The unconditional importance of biosafety as a component of public security determines the consent of citizens to the restriction of their freedoms, to which they did not previously agree. From this point of view, there is a fundamental possibility of implementing a democratic biopolitics in a pandemic. n Ukraine, the attitude of public opinion to the restrictive measures of the government is determined by the effectiveness of compensatory proposals for small businesses, primarily the ability to save jobs and minimize fiscal pressure. The danger of the COVID-19 pandemic for modern Ukrainian society lies not only in the large-scale epidemiological crisis, but also in the danger of provoking foreign government decisions. In this socio-political context, the weight of arguments in favor of the spread of preventive measures without suspension of economic activity, namely the conduct of a permanent information campaign among the population on the rules of conduct in a pandemic.

My Country: What's To Love? How To Show It?

My Country:What's To Love? How To Show It? Drew Maciag (bio) John Bodnar, Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. 305 pp. Illustrations, acknowledgements, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95. Ben Railton, Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. xx + 194 pp. Acknowledgements, a note on sources, index. $36.00. John Bodnar, Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2021. 305 pp. Illustrations, acknowledgements, notes, bibliography, index. $34.95. Ben Railton, Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. xx + 194 pp. Acknowledgements, a note on sources, index. $36.00. 2021 turned out to be a dangerously opportune year for new books on American patriotism. The year began with President Donald Trump praising insurgents who invaded the U.S. Capitol as "great patriots." Some weeks later, after the (by then former) president was impeached by Congress for a second time, an opinion poll found that three-quarters of Republicans still agreed that Trump was a "true patriot."1 So, if ever there was a time for coming to terms with our symbolic national language, surely it had arrived. Of course, many of our standard political buzzwords refer to lofty concepts that are subject to diverse interpretations. Linguistic icons like "freedom," "equality," and "progress" appeal to Americans precisely because they evoke optimistic, open-ended ideals. "Patriotism," on the other hand, is not so much an ideal as it is an investment in identity. Unlike ideals, patriotism can never be universal. Patriotism is always grounded in a particular place and can only be loyal to some specific sense of belonging. Although "patriotism" is generally defined as "love of one's country," the idea of patriotism cannot meaningfully exist in the abstract. In contrast to (say) "liberty" or "justice," patriotism has no recognizable moral complexion until it acquires a real-world host. Patriots can be equally devoted to a nation that embraces multiracial democracy, or to an autocratic nation that perpetrates a genocidal Holocaust. Hence, when we witness the expression of patriotic feeling or the assertion of patriotic will, we can be sure that beneath the trappings lies a distinctive set of social and political beliefs. Patriotism is often most vibrant—or most virulent—when it serves as a tool for constructing, reinforcing, or proclaiming some canonic core of national values and traits. Controversies over patriotism are seldom about the wisdom [End Page 590] of behaving patriotically. Instead, battles are fought over what kind of nation myriad "patriots" want to call home. John Bodnar's Divided by Terror: American Patriotism after 9/11 demonstrates the instrumentalist use of patriotism by dividing contemporary actors into two camps that adhere to competing visions of what acting patriotically means. Bodnar calls the opposing factions "war-based patriots" and "empathic patriots," and his classifications align with our already-ingrained understanding of the ideological polarization that has plagued society in recent decades. War-based patriotism tends to be conservative, absolutist, exclusive, and harsh, while empathic patriotism is liberal, tolerant, inclusive, and humanitarian. Warbased patriotism relies on pleasant myths, while empathic patriotism deals in difficult realities. War-based patriots believe that the United States is morally righteous and beyond reproach; empathic, critical patriots aim at correcting national flaws. War-based patriots seek to enforce obedience to authority and to defend the status quo; empathic patriots seek to protect civil liberties and the right to dissent, and to alleviate human suffering. As important, war-based patriotism tends toward a white, Christian identity, and empathic patriotism tends toward a pluralistic, multicultural outlook. Bodnar offers a pre-9/11 introduction that roots modern American patriotism in the memorialization of soldiers killed during the Civil War. That version of war-based patriotism—steeped in the glorification of dying for one's country—was enhanced during the hyper-patriotism of World War I, and it became more systemic and persistent during World War II and the Cold War. Although earlier versions of empathic patriotism often challenged war-based patriotism, it was not until the unpopular Vietnam War that the more critical...

Democracy, Autocracy, and Everything in Between: How Domestic Institutions Affect Environmental Protection

AbstractAs major global challenges intensify in the twenty-first century, which domestic institutions will best enable countries to take decisive and positive action? This article explores this question in the realm of environmental policy. Scholars and practitioners have long argued that ‘democracy’ yields the best environmental outcomes, but others now maintain that ‘eco-authoritarianism’ may be the best way forward. The author unpacks the theoretical mechanisms behind these debates, and adds important nuance in making three arguments. First, the link between elections and eco-policy depends on what citizens want. Secondly, the relationship between civil liberties protections and environmentalism depends on which actors within society hold power. Finally, political constraints make environmental policy change – be it environmentally friendly or damaging – more difficult. The study empirically tests these arguments and finds strong support for the expectations regarding elections and civil liberties. There is only limited evidence that constraints stymie eco-policy change.

Criminal Futures: Predictive Policing and Everyday Police Work

This book explores how predictive policing transforms police work. Police departments around the world have started to use data-driven applications to produce crime forecasts and intervene into the future through targeted prevention measures. Based on three years of field research in Germany and Switzerland, this book provides a theoretically sophisticated and empirically detailed account of how the police produce and act upon criminal futures as part of their everyday work practices. The authors argue that predictive policing must not be analyzed as an isolated technological artifact, but as part of a larger sociotechnical system that is embedded in organizational structures and occupational cultures. The book highlights how, for crime prediction software to come to matter and play a role in more efficient and targeted police work, several translation processes are needed to align human and nonhuman actors across different divisions of police work. Police work is a key function for the production and maintenance of public order, but it can also discriminate, exclude, and violate civil liberties and human rights. When criminal futures come into being in the form of algorithmically produced risk estimates, this can have wide-ranging consequences. Building on empirical findings, the book presents a number of practical recommendations for the prudent use of algorithmic analysis tools in police work that will speak to the protection of civil liberties and human rights as much as they will speak to the professional needs of police organizations. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, and cultural studies as well as to police practitioners and civil liberties advocates, in addition to all those who are interested in how to implement reasonable forms of data-driven policing.

The Future of European Values

The EU’s values of transnational peace, cooperation, secularism, rationality, and protection of civil liberties and human rights are amongst the most valuable legacies of the Enlightenment. The European project has weathered several crises in the first third of the 21st century, including a change of political direction in the United Kingdom. Brexit is viewed as a consequence of the UK’s flawed electoral system, exposed as susceptible to hijacking by militant and disruptive minorities. The future of European values must be protected from politically unreliable systems such as the UK’s FPTP.

The Political Costs of Abusing Human Rights: International Cooperation in Extraordinary Rendition

From 2001 to 2005, over a quarter of all countries in the world cooperated in a secret rendition network that enabled the transfer of CIA terrorist suspects to secret detention sites. While governments in some states have not been punished for participating, others have incurred political costs, including electoral defeats. What explains variation in the political costs of participation in the post-9/11 extraordinary rendition program? I argue that left of center governments, particularly those in democracies, suffered greater political costs from being caught because of the perception that they are better at protecting civil liberties in the name of national security. I test the effect of party orientation on electoral defeat at the election following the revelation of participation in extraordinary rendition using a matched sample where the party in office at the time of participation remained the same. The analysis provides empirical support for my theoretical argument.