Unconditional Support Research Articles

‘The right flower to stick to’: the Unionist Party's questionable choice in 1959

In 1959 the Ulster Unionist Party (U.U.P.) abandoned the idea that relations between the government in Belfast and the two main parties in Westminster should be maintained with a semblance of impartiality. Hitherto, although the Unionist M.P.s at Westminster had taken the Conservative whip, overt criticism of Labour had remained comparatively muted, if only to ensure that those with socialist sympathies would remain under the Unionist umbrella rather than defect to the Northern Ireland Labour Party (N.I.L.P.). In the run-up to the 1959 Westminster general election, however, the U.U.P. not only made offers of unconditional support to the Conservatives, but accompanied them with disparagement of Labour policies and objectives. The logic of that choice was not only contrary to the experience of inter-governmental relations with London since 1945, it also carried a high risk at a time when key areas of the Northern Ireland economy were becoming dependent on support from the British government, and a Conservative victory in the election was by no means certain. It therefore raised the inter-related questions of whether relations with the Labour party had been so toxic, and whether the attitude of the Conservatives, who had been in government in Westminster for most of the decade, had been so benevolent as to justify abandoning the approach which formerly had prevailed. Support for the Conservatives was the U.U.P. default setting, but unless carefully managed, that support carried with it the danger of alienating the Labour party which, given the rotation of power at Westminster, was bound someday to form the government with which Northern Ireland ministers would have to work.

Short Sellers, Institutional Investors, and Corporate Cash Holdings

This paper studies the impact of stock short sales on corporate cash holdings. Short sales facilitate the incorporation of negative information into stock prices. Corporate stakeholders, such as capital providers, customers, suppliers, managers and other employees, can infer the negative information from stock prices for their decision making. The actions of short sellers increase the cost of external nancing, decrease operational cash ows, and function as a catalyst of rms’ nancial distress. Corporate cash holdings can serve as the ideal ammunition for the battle with short sellers and as unconditional liquidity support during negative events. Consistent with the precautionary motive of cash holding, this paper nds that short-selling pressure

Between Rhetoric and Action: The Politics, Processes and Practice of the ICC's Work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Between Rhetoric and Action: The Politics, Processes and Practice of the ICC's Work in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Engagement matters: South Africa, the United Nations and a rights-based foreign policy

This article critically examines the role of South Africa with special reference to the values embodied in the human rights principles of the UN system and argues for a re-emphasis of a rights-based foreign policy guided by a non-alignment loyal only to the normative frameworks established by the UN for global governance. It is argued that South Africa's foreign policy should be measured mainly in terms of its willingness to engage with the global governance system as represented by the UN, and its support of the normative frameworks codified by the UN as relevant reference points for any country's policy. It is suggested that South Africa, despite its claims of being in unconditional support of such rights-based agenda, might be able to do better if less guided by strategic parameters.

Participant Satisfaction with Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP)

Outpatient programs are often promoted as vehicles for mental health recovery. Yet, few programs include patients’ perspectives about their satisfaction with these programs. This descriptive, cross-sectional survey investigated patients’ satisfaction with Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP). Participants completed the Mental Health Statistics Improvement Program instrument (n = 26) and qualitative interviews (n = 18). Data were analyzed using multivariate statistics (α = .05) and content analysis. Three composite variables explained 48% of the variance (p = .00) in patient satisfaction. Four themes emerged: Retrospective Desire for Early WRAP Introduction, Pay It Forward, Unconditional Relational Support, and It Takes Time. Future research is warranted to promote WRAP's use in broader settings.

Philanthropy and Corporate Reputation: An Empirical Investigation

This study investigates how two different forms of conditional corporate charitable support (purchase-based and profit-based) and two different forms of unconditional support (substantial and undisclosed amount) impact a firm’s reputation. Consumer participants were selected randomly by a professional marketing research firm that administered a telephone survey. The results indicate that consumers have favorable attitudes toward all types of corporate giving; however, more consumers have favorable attitudes toward firms that have non-purchase-based giving programs versus other forms of corporate charitable support. The study also found that more consumers have favorable attitudes toward companies that give based on profits as compared with companies that give based on purchases. In addition, if consumers believe that the firm’s primary motivation for the purchase-based giving was to benefit the charity, consumers are significantly more likely to evaluate the firm favorably.

Different Specialties Need to Be Considered

In their conclusion, the authors write that a punctual start to morning surgery is not achieved in more than 50% of cases (on average). These worrying figures necessitate asking critical questions about the respective surgical management. In our experience, the different specialties needs to be considered in defining targets. The preparation for esophageal resection should not be equated with tonsillectomy. This needs to be considered in defining objectives, in order to be able to define realistic goals as the result. Setting out and implementing realistic target times that may be different for each medical specialty is the task of operating room management. The operating room is at the heart of any hospital that provides surgery. Operating room management has a key position in this setup. It is required to establish a good organizational structure with binding rules for the entire operating room setup. This should not only set out clearly the cooperation between different professional groups but also the role of the operating room manager, especially in situations of conflict. The skillful implementation of unpopular decisions by the operating room manager is essential. To this end, the operating room management requires unconditional support from the hospital management, because, ultimately, sanctions in case of non-compliance with generally agreed objectives will need to be imposed. Ultimately it is important to consider each hospital individually. Some things that are beneficial and correct in one setting will not necessarily work in other settings. Individual processes, the characteristics of the individual medical specialties, and the overall size of an operating room are crucial factors in this.

Law, Property and Ambiguity: The Uses and Abuses of Legal Ambiguity in RemakingIstanbul's Informal Settlements

AbstractWhat is the role of legal ambiguity in the creation and institutionalization of private property regimes? In what ways does the (ab)use of legal ambiguities affect market‐making processes? I address these questions through a detailed analysis of two large‐scale urban renewal projects in Istanbul that impose a formal private property regime on informal settlements. My research reveals that without the strategic utilization of legal ambiguities and administrative arbitrariness by public and private actors, private property cannot be easily created and hence capitalist markets cannot function efficiently. My findings challenge the assumptions of several social science traditions such as neoclassical and neoinstitutionalist economics, as well as most works within the law and economics tradition regarding the relationship between law, property and economic development. These approaches to economic development are underpinned by the legal certainty that private property entails as the most important element for an efficient economic order. However, in their unconditional support for private ownership, they fail to realize the degree of legal ambiguity and administrative arbitrariness needed to create the private property regime in the first place. As such their arguments remain theoretically and empirically incomplete. A more complete analysis of the relationship between law and economic dynamics must focus on how private property is constructed, and the extent to which legal ambiguities and loopholes are utilized in this process.

Islam and the Arab awakening

One of the most important developments in the modern history of the Middle East, the so-called Arab Spring began in Tunisia in December 2010, bringing down dictators, sparking a civil war in Libya, and igniting a bloody uprising in Syria. Its long-term repercussions in Egypt and elsewhere remain unclear. Now one of the world's leading Islamic thinkers examines and explains it, in this searching, provocative, and necessary book. Time Magazine named Tariq Ramadan one of the most important innovators of the twenty-first century. A Muslim intellectual and prolific author, he has won global renown for his reflections on Islam and the contemporary challenges in both the Muslim majority societies and the West. In Islam and the Arab Awakening, he explores the uprisings, offering rare insight into their origin, significance, and possible futures. As early as 2003, he writes, there had been talk of democratization in the Middle East and North Africa. The U.S. government and private organizations set up networks and provided training for young leaders, especially in the use of the Internet and social media, and the West abandoned its unconditional support of authoritarian governments. But the West did not create the uprisings. Indeed, one lesson Ramadan presents is that these mass movements and their consequences cannot be totally controlled. Something irreversible has taken place: dictators have been overthrown without weapons. But, he writes, democratic processes are only beginning to emerge, and unanswered questions remain. What role will religion play? How should Islamic principles and goals be rethought? Can a sterile, polarizing debate between Islamism and secularism be avoided? Avoiding both naive confidence and conspiratorial paranoia, Ramadan voices a tentative optimism. If a true civil society can be established, he argues, this moment's fragile hope will live.

Configuring the caller in ambiguous encounters: Volunteer handling of calls to Samaritans emotional support services

This paper discusses volunteer strategies for handling and assessing calls to Samaritans emotional support services for the suicidal and despairing. It presents findings from the qualitative components of a two-year mixed methods study based on an online caller survey, branch observations and interviews with volunteers and callers throughout the U.K. A thematic analysis of the qualitative data analysis was undertaken using the principle of constant comparison. Many calls fell beyond the primary remit of a crisis service, and called for rapid attribution and assessment. Uncertainty about identifying 'good' calls and recognizing those which were not caused difficulty, frustration and negative attribution towards some callers. This paper presents our analysis of volunteers' accounts of how they configure the caller in intrinsically uncertain and ambiguous encounters, and how such strategies relate to the formal principles of unconditional support and non-judgemental active listening espoused by the organization.

Mapping species distributions: living with uncertainty

news and update ISSN 1948‐6596 commentary Mapping species distributions: living with uncertainty decreases with time because of range changes associated with factors such as climate and land‐ use change, habitat degradation, biological inva‐ sions, etc. Moreover, changes in taxonomic status resulting from reclassifications (Hey et al. 2003) may mean that even if the assemblage remains unchanged, the quality of the information de‐ grades. Thus, the utility and accuracy of informa‐ tion about species occurrences to describe current distributions depends upon when the database is consulted. This process of information decay also applies to data based on expert assessments, such as range maps, which are ultimately based on knowledge coming from surveys and observa‐ tions. Finally, the decay in community similarity with increasing geographic distances is a well known pattern in biogeography (Nekola & White 1999). The main drivers of this pattern are envi‐ ronmental gradients (e.g. climate, soil chemistry, etc.), spatial configuration of habitats and popula‐ tion aggregation (Morlon et al. 2008). Species dis‐ tribution maps are typically based on the spatial extrapolation of survey data through expert as‐ sessment or species distribution modeling (Rocchini et al. 2011). It follows that their accu‐ racy for unsurveyed regions will decrease with distance from the original samples, and (in the absence of comprehensive coverage of the study area) our knowledge about the actual distribution of the species may be poor. The proposed Map of Life project aspires to create a type of omniscient GIS for all the Earth’s living species – such as the one imagined by Colwell & Coddington (1994). This is a wonderful target, with the potential to dramatically improve the spatial and temporal resolution of biodiversity data. Nevertheless, the biodiversity data that un‐ derpin any such enterprise have intrinsic and un‐ avoidable limitations that result in loss of knowl‐ edge over both time and space. This is well known A recent paper by Jetz et al. (2012) presents the ‘Map of Life’, a web‐based tool that aims to pro‐ vide a representation of the distribution of every species on Earth 1 . This database, if it is fully real‐ ized, would provide an invaluable resource for the advancement of biogeographical research, in addi‐ tion to its potential utility for conservation plan‐ ning. As most biogeographers, we would give al‐ most unconditional support to any initiatives that may improve the quantity, quality and availability of species distribution data – such as the Map of Life, GBIF 2 , Encyclopedia of Life 3 , etc. (see review in Riddle et al. 2010). We are certain that they will provide a deeper and wider knowledge about life on Earth through the uprising field of biodiversity informatics (see Soberon & Peterson 2004). Even so, it is important to bear in mind that there are intrinsic limitations to the quality, longevity and coverage of biodiversity data. There are at least three factors that com‐ promise the quality of our knowledge of species distributions at any given spatial scale: survey completeness, and the decay of information with time and space. First, as any field ecologist knows, many taxa are difficult to detect because of their phenotype (cryptic coloration and behavior, high mobility, phenology, etc.) and the characteristics of the habitat. Thus, most biological surveys on which species distribution maps are based are un‐ avoidably incomplete, even when a range of sam‐ pling methodologies is utilized (Colwell & Cod‐ dington 1994). In other words, it is normally im‐ possible to record the entire assemblage for a de‐ fined area at a given moment of time. Moreover, the completeness of a sample will typically de‐ crease with increasing extent of the survey area (see Chiarucci et al. 2011). Second, knowledge about species distribu‐ tions and the composition of local assemblages is in a constant state of information decay. The reli‐ ability of the information provided by any survey 1 http://www.mappinglife.org/ 2 http://www.gbif.org/ 3 http://eol.org/ frontiers of biogeography 5.1, 2013 — © 2013 the authors; journal compilation © 2013 The International Biogeography Society

Creativity in an Online Community as a Response to the Chaos of a Breast Cancer Diagnosis

Creativity in an Online Community as a Response to the Chaos of a Breast Cancer Diagnosis

The Relationship Between the West and the Middle East: Recipe for a Better Future

It is claimed that the relationship between the Middle East and the West (the USA included) has been marked by intervention, stereotyping, and misunderstanding, and that it has been, unfortunately, changing for the worse because of the double standards employed by the West and the unconditional support for Israel. Despite this situation, a better relationship can exist if Westerners go beyond stereotypes, adopt a balanced policy in the Middle East, and treat Arabs and Muslims as peers. The discussion demonstrates that the West-Middle East relationship has been lacking balance, and, thus, it has been bringing about tension and violence, impeding understanding, furthering separation, fuelling mistrust, and thwarting any attempt at achieving rapport. It also shows that the way to ease tension is by Westerners' tolerating diversity, renouncing superiority, reconsidering their double standards, and recognizing Arabs and Muslims as central parts of the social fabric. It has been shown that the Western policy in the Middle East has been biased, and that Westerners' recognizing Middle Easterners as they are,adopting a balanced policy, and tolerating diversity constitute a recipe for a better future relationship.

A force for and because of multilateralism: when is the EU a multilateralist actor in world society?

The European Union (EU) presents a Janus-faced profile concerning multilateralism. While in some areas it embraces multilateral institutions to a greater degree than other major players, in others it displays a less than unconditional support. Both patterns have been accounted for, but no account has explained why the EU shifts from one to the other. This article advances a reason for this bifurcated international identity. The EU is embedded in a world society that is culturally and normatively dense with regard to the standard of what qualifies as an actor. In the areas in which its actorness is further away from such a standard, the EU is impelled to take remedial action and embrace other components of the model of international actorness, like multilateral institutions and multilaterally developed norms. In order to test this hypothesis, the article examines the role of the EU vis-à-vis negotiations on anti-personnel landmines and hormone-treated beef.

Impact factors of public attitudes towards nuclear power development: a questionnaire survey in China

Fukushima nuclear accident gave an alarm to the security of nuclear plant. From the viewpoints of climate change, energy security and environmental values, this study investigates public attitudes towards nuclear power in China. The key point of this investigation is attitude analysis, which indicates that the attitudes towards nuclear power are complex and uncertain. Introducing “unconditional support” to measure public attitudes towards nuclear power, we found that environmental values and concern about energy security have positive correlations with unconditional support for nuclear power, unlike the negative correlation between concern about climate change and unconditional support for nuclear power. With the concept of “conditional support”, it is significantly higher than unconditional support and concern about climate change turns out to be a positive predictor of conditional support. It suggests that when regarding nuclear power as a response to climate change or energy security, the public will support nuclear power development conditionally.

La Chronica XXIV generalium tra storia e agiografia

The article proposes a synthetic framework, as complete as possible, for the Chronica XXIV generalium ordinis Minorum. This well known text has been widely used in Franciscan historiography, but has retained even more attention as an original work in which a mixture of compilation and chronicle are inscribed in a structure intent on organizing an extraordinary collection of hagiographic texts, exempla, historical and annalistic material. Drawing on a larger study of this text published in 2003, the article presents the results of new inquiries on important thematic aspects of the Chronica. The chronicle reflects a difficult situation within the Order at the end of the fourteenth century, when the previous dynamism and unconditional papal support waned and a serious conflict with the head of the Church culminated in the 1420s; at the same time irrepressible internal tensions led to rupture and division.

On the Existence of Polynomials with Chaotic Behaviour

We establish a general result on the existence of hypercyclic (resp., transitive, weakly mixing, mixing, frequently hypercyclic) polynomials on locally convex spaces. As a consequence we prove that every (real or complex) infinite-dimensional separable Frèchet space admits mixing (hence hypercyclic) polynomials of arbitrary positive degree. Moreover, every complex infinite-dimensional separable Banach space with an unconditional Schauder decomposition and every complex Frèchet space with an unconditional basis support chaotic and frequently hypercyclic polynomials of arbitrary positive degree. We also study distributional chaos for polynomials and show that every infinite-dimensional separable Banach space supports polynomials of arbitrary positive degree that have a dense distributionally scrambled linear manifold.

Unconditional Support for Gaddafi? The Economic Relationship of the Federal Republic of Germany to Libya at the End of the Social-Liberal Coalition (1980–1982)

Unconditional Support for Gaddafi? The Economic Relationship of the Federal Republic of Germany to Libya at the End of the Social-Liberal Coalition (1980–1982)

Disability Art, Visibility and the Right to the City: The Trazos Singulares (2011) Exhibit at Madrid’s Nuevos Ministerios Metro Station

Disability Art, Visibility and the Right to the City:The Trazos Singulares (2011) Exhibit at Madrid’s Nuevos Ministerios Metro Station Benjamin Fraser (bio) “Inclusion and equity are mighty tasks that require artful social imagination and the commitment of material resources.” (Roman, “Disability Arts and Culture as Public Pedagogy” 61) During May 2011 (ending May 15th) an intriguing exhibition titled Trazos Singulares was on display at Madrid’s north-central metro station of Nuevos Ministerios. The exhibition comprised some sixty works by thirty artists with developmental disabilities, and significantly, the work of artistic production was itself performed on site between the 5th and the 8th of April.1 This simple decision has an understated significance. Many times, of course, the public appearance of the artistic work is separated in space and time from the moment of its production such that the artistic product takes on an existence separated from the producer. Those who appreciate art tend to become accustomed to this sort of disembodiment. Nonetheless, if we are to take to heart the somewhat predictably rhetorical spirit of the speech with which José Ignacio Echeverría inaugurated the exhibition at the Nuevos Ministerios station—(“El arte no entiende diferencias ni conoce barreras sino que promueve la integración y la autonomía de las personas”)—the artistic producers of the Trazos Singulares exhibition are not merely being integrated symbolically through the integration of their artwork into Madrid’s transportation network, they are also [End Page 245] being integrated physically, even if ephemerally (“Inauguración”). It is certainly clear that there exists a certain kind of sporadic and somewhat showy form of outreach by companies using disabled populations for causes that have just as much to do with their own public-relations plans as they do with the notion of accommodating marginalized communities. Such outreach cannot abrogate the need for sustainable and lasting financial and institutional support from governments as well as the necessity of resituating the disabled/able-bodied dichotomy. Yet there is something unconventional and intriguing about this particular event. Although it may admittedly be a far cry from sustainable and unconditional support for disabled populations, the decision to have the artists paint in the Madrid metro station itself nonetheless reflects, I believe, a somewhat more sophisticated understanding of the historical legacy of the paradoxical visibility/invisibility of disability than would be reflected in the decision to showcase their works alone. Disability-philosopher Licia Carlson compellingly writes in her work The Faces of Intellectual Disability of the way in which “intellectual disability [ … ] has been made both socially visible and invisible” (46). Historically speaking, the institutionalized classification/codification of people with intellectual disabilities made them highly visible from a clinical (and social) standpoint just as their incarceration in “institutions far from public view” was intended to render them seemingly invisible to the public at large (Carlson, Faces 46; see also Davis, Enforcing Normalcy 73, 94-95, 173; Siebers, Disability Theory 99-109). Trazos Singulares thus ultimately succeeds in that it renders the contributing artists as (momentarily) socially visible, in the process drawing attention to the embodied nature of all artistic production. This article uses the social context of the exhibition and the subject matter of the artists’ paintings (scenes of various landmarks and public spaces in Madrid including various buildings and metro stations) as a way of asking more provocative questions about the right to the city experienced by disabled populations (Lefebvre, The Right). Analysis draws from both disability studies scholars and Henri Lefebvre’s urban theory while highlighting the insufficient public recognition of developmental disabilities in particular (as in the recent 2010 documentary Capacitados), as well as outreach efforts and televised spots supported by other agencies such as Down España, and even articles of the recent UN Convention on the rights of people with disabilities. Disability Art / Intellectual and Developmental Disability (IDD) in Spain Generally speaking, disability studies has long signaled the importance of embodiment. To the extent that “The political unconscious upholds a delicious ideal of social perfection by insisting that any public body be flawless,” this unconscious also “displaces manifestations of disability from collective consciousness […] through concealment, cosmetic action, motivated forgetting, and rituals of sympathy and...

Discurso del poder y voluntad de verdad en los artículos políticos anticarlistas de Mariano José de Larra

This article analyzes the politicization of Mariano Jose de Larra’s journalistic discourse after the end of the absolutist regime of the Fernando VII and the establishment of constitutional liberalism in Spain in 1833. His support for the new political regime, along with his visible opposition to the Carlist insurrection, can relate Larra to the large group of writers who publicly took part in favor of liberalism during those years. However, the existence of two different groups of anti-Carlist articles will prove how, unlike many other intellectuals of that time, his writings evolved from a clear institutionalization of literary discourse to a much more rebellious stance. What was at first unconditional support to the propaganda sponsored by different liberal governments became a constant criticism towards what Larra considered a tremendous government nonsense. This evolution shows an interesting dialectic between the politicization of the intellectual and the will to truth, a concept defined in M. Foucault’s The Order of Discourse, the analysis of which outlines the intricate aspects of the writer’s personality.