While efforts to predict natural phenomena have become an important aspect of the Earth sciences, the value of such efforts, as judged especially by their capacity to improve decision making and achieve policy goals, has been questioned by a number of constructive critics. The relationship between prediction and policy making is not straightforward for many reasons. In practice, consolidative a...

This article analyses the recent resurgence of political analysis within international development. It argues that although new conceptual approaches have brought valuable insights concerning the links between popular agency, institutional politics and development possibilities, several problems remain. These include a tendency either to overlook or to under-theorise some important linkages bet...

This article argues that political stakeholders in national and international political arenas, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and firms in particular, are increasingly investing in 'Public-Attention-Seeking' activities in order to maintain access to scarce public resources in politics. The principal goal of 'Public-Attention-Seeking' is to win the public's favor and trust. As a cons...

Understanding political phenomena requires measuring the political preferences of society. We introduce a model based on mixtures of spatial voting models that infers the underlying distribution of political preferences of voters with only voting records of the population and political positions of candidates in an election. Beyond offering a costeffective alternative to surveys, this method pr...

The study of human growth and development throughout the life cycle, developmental psychology examines behavior from a biopsychosocial perspective. The psychology of development describes agerelated changes in behavior, personality, and physiological maturation. Growth and development are assumed to be embedded within the social environment, and normative biological processes progress through a...

Competition takes place in many different spheres of life. This paper compares observations from economics, evolutionary biology, memetics and other fields of study in order to find similarities and differences between competition phenomena and their effects in different fields. A tentative framework is constructed for describing different competition phenomena and their effects. A systematic s...

the study of comparative politics ,in the field of political science, has a great significance. this article not only introduces schools of thought which have been phenomena in the history of comparative politics but also surveys the history behind this growth. the present article shall . deal with and subsequently explain the success of this field and its current status. the new conceptualizat...

We consider ourselves to be rational beings. We feel that our choices, decisions, and actions are selected from a flexible array of possibilities, based upon reasons. When we vote for a political candidate, it is because they share our views on certain critical issues. When we hire an individual for a job, it is because they are the best qualified. However, if this is true, why does an analysis...