Swiss Democracy Linder, Wolf; Mueller, Sean
2021, 2021-01-20
eBook
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This open access book provides an updated and fully revised 4th edition of this authoritative analysis of Swiss democracy. It particularly explains the institutions of federalism and consensus ...government through political power sharing. In this new edition, the authors also address several important changes and challenges that have affected Swiss democracy, including the country's relationship with the EU, fiscal equalisation, direct democracy and the legitimacy of national referendums, territorial conflict, as well as the polarisation of party politics.
The history of the Swiss National Park, from its creation in the years before the Great War to the present, is told for the first time in this book. Unlike Yellowstone Park, which embodied close ...cooperation between state-supported conservation and public recreation, the Swiss park put in place an extraordinarily strong conservation program derived from a close alliance between the state and scientific research. This deliberate reinterpretation of the American idea of the national park was innovative and radical, but its consequences were not limited to Switzerland. The Swiss park became the prime example of a "scientific national park," thereby influencing the course of national parks worldwide.
A term specifically found in European politics, social concertation refers to cooperation between trade unions, governments and employers in public policy-making.Social Concertation in Times of ...Austerityinvestigates the political underpinnings of social concertation in the context of European integration. Alexandre Afonso focuses on the regulation of labor mobility and unemployment protection in Austria and Switzerland, two of Europe's most prosperous countries, and he looks at nonpartisan policymaking as a strategy for compromise. With this smart, new study, Afonso powerfully enters the debate on the need for a shared social agenda in post-crisis Western Europe.
•High-resolution terrain attributes were used to predict fine-scale topsoil pH variation.•Performances were compared among local, joint and extrapolated models.•Local and joint models well explained ...fine-scale spatial variation of topsoil pH.•Extrapolated models explained between 25 and 46% of the topsoil pH variation.•Soil-forming processes and their spatial scales were similar for all sites analysed.
As topography is a key factor controlling soil genesis and strongly influences physical and chemical soil properties, terrain attributes are routinely used in digital soil mapping to spatially predict soil properties. Forests on flysch sediments along the northern slopes of the Swiss Alps often have a strong microrelief. The dominant soil types are Gleysols in depressions and Cambisols on ridges, with large pH variation within short distances. Based on the theory of soil development we expected that soil-forming processes driven by micro-scale topographic variation shape similar micro-scale spatial patterns of soil properties at different sites within the flysch region. Therefore, the main objective of the study was to investigate model extrapolation within flysch regions, which has turned out to be difficult on many other geological substrates. At three sites, each of about 2 ha, we first built three local models to examine whether a relationship between microtopography and topsoil pH could be inferred from high-resolution terrain attributes and pH measurements. Using data from all three sites we then calibrated a joint model and examined model extrapolation by calibrating models with data from two sites and predicting pH at the third. All models were based on multiple linear regressions that used 0.5 m resolution terrain attributes derived by a multiscale approach as explanatory variables. The cross-validated R2 for the local pH models varied between 0.56 and 0.77, and the corresponding RMSE between 0.57 and 0.64 pH units. The R2 and RMSE for the joint model were 0.60 and 0.76, respectively. The results of the local models suggest that microtopography is a dominant soil-forming factor on flysch sediments that triggers soil genesis on a spatial scale from submetre to metres. Although the extrapolated models showed a reduced prediction ability with R2 values of 0.25, 0.46 and 0.53, the selected terrain attributes were relatively similar among the models, which may indicate the common driving processes. The results for the joint model suggest that using high-resolution terrain attributes yields a fairly accurate spatial prediction of the highly variable topsoil pH in forests on flysch sediments across Switzerland.
You won't find his portrait on our currency anymore and his signature isn't penned on the Constitution, but former statesman Albert Gallatin (1761-1849) contributed immeasurably to the formation of ...America. Gallatin was the first president of the council of New York University and his name lives on at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, so it is with pride that New York University Press and the Swiss Confederation publish this new biography of Gallatin.Gallatin's story is the opposite of the classic American immigrant tale. Born in Geneva, the product of an old and noble family and highly educated in the European tradition, Gallatin made contributions to America throughout his career that far outweighed any benefit he procured for himself. He got his first taste of politics as a Pennsylvania state representative and went on to serve in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Gallatin became the Secretary of Treasury in Jefferson's administration and, despite being of the opposite political party to Alexander Hamilton, Gallatin fully respected his predecessor's fiscal politics. Gallatin undertook a special diplomatic mission for President Madison, which ended the War of 1812 with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent and gave the United States its genuine independence. Gallatin continued in diplomacy as minister to France and to Great Britain, where he skillfully combined his American experience and European background. In the early 1830s, at the age of seventy, he retired from politics and commenced a new career in New York City as a banker, public figure, and intellectual. He helped establish New York University and the American Ethnological Society, became an expert in Native American ethnology and linguistics, and served as president of the New-York Historical Society. Gallatin died at age 88 and is buried in Trinity churchyard at Broadway and Wall Street.In our own day, as we look at reforming our financial system and seek to enhance America's global image, it is well worth resurrecting Albert Gallatin's timeless contributions to the United States, at home and abroad. Nicholas Dungan's compelling biography reinserts this forgotten Founding Father into the historical canon and reveals the transatlantic dimensions of early American history.Co-published with the Swiss Confederation, Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.
Validation of 2D flood models with insurance claims Zischg, Andreas Paul; Mosimann, Markus; Bernet, Daniel Benjamin ...
Journal of hydrology (Amsterdam),
February 2018, 2018-02-00, Letnik:
557
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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•An alternative data set for the validation of 2D flood models is presented.•Validation based on insurance claims is more conservative in specific cases because of stronger weighting to urbanized ...areas.•Validation approach is focused on flood exposure and loss analyses at single building scale.
Flood impact modelling requires reliable models for the simulation of flood processes. In recent years, flood inundation models have been remarkably improved and widely used for flood hazard simulation, flood exposure and loss analyses. In this study, we validate a 2D inundation model for the purpose of flood exposure analysis at the river reach scale. We validate the BASEMENT simulation model with insurance claims using conventional validation metrics. The flood model is established on the basis of available topographic data in a high spatial resolution for four test cases. The validation metrics were calculated with two different datasets; a dataset of event documentations reporting flooded areas and a dataset of insurance claims. The model fit relating to insurance claims is in three out of four test cases slightly lower than the model fit computed on the basis of the observed inundation areas. This comparison between two independent validation data sets suggests that validation metrics using insurance claims can be compared to conventional validation data, such as the flooded area. However, a validation on the basis of insurance claims might be more conservative in cases where model errors are more pronounced in areas with a high density of values at risk.
This study examines the sociocultural context of ten plays, including 15 song texts, performed during the formative years of the Bernese Reformation. It treats not only three pre-reform carnival ...plays by Niklaus Manuel, but also six newly edited works by local court secretary Hans von Rute.
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