Globalization and social movements: De-coupling internationalization and institutionalization?

Research Committee 48 Opening session “New Trends and Theoretical Approach in the Field of Social Mobilizations and Social Change”. While social movement and global civil society analysts have strongly associated social movements internationalization with their institutionalization (e.g. Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Tilly 2004), a new path towards an internationalization with less institutionalization and centred on more grassroots actors has emerged in the first decade of the 21st century. Drawing on a study of the World Social Forums, the US Social Forum and the rise of some international networks of grassroots actors, this paper will show that, while a pattern of institutionalisation exists within these forums and networks, it has been countered by the political culture of WSF activists; a culture that favours horizontality, internal democracy and the active participation of grassroots actors. The US Social Forum offers another interesting case study, as it has clearly rejected the participation of the most institutional part of US civil society. After describing some of its feature, the paper will focus on contextual elements that have fostered this form of internalization, its potential and some of its limits

Cyclic behavior of sandy shoals on the ebb-tidal deltas of the Wadden Sea

Ebb-tidal deltas are bulges of sand that are located seaward of tidal inlets. Many of these deltas feature shoals that cyclically form and migrate towards the coast. The average period between successive shoals that attach to the coast varies among different inlets. In this study, a quantitative assessment of the cyclic behavior of shoals on the ebb-tidal deltas of the Wadden Sea is presented. Analysis of bathymetric data and Landsat satellite images revealed that at the majority of inlets along the Wadden Sea migrating shoals occur. The average period between succeeding shoals correlates to the tidal prism and has values ranging between 4 and 130 years. A larger tidal prism favors larger periods between successive shoal attachments. However, such a relationship was not found for wide inlets with multiple channels. There is a positive relationship between the frequency with which the shoals attach to the coast and their migration velocity, and a negative relationship between the migration velocity of the shoal and the tidal prism. Finally, the data were too sparse to assess whether the longshore sediment transport has a significant effect on the period between successive shoals that attach to the coasts downdrift of the observed tidal inlets

A next step in disruption management: combining operations research and complexity science

Railway systems occasionally get into a state of being out-of-control, meaning that barely any train is running, even though the required resources (infrastructure, rolling stock and crew) are available. Because of the large number of affected resources and the absence of detailed, timely and accurate information, currently existing disruption management techniques cannot be applied in out-of-control situations. Most of the contemporary approaches assume that there is only one single disruption with a known duration, that all information about the resources is available, and that all stakeholders in the operations act as expected. Another limitation is the lack of knowledge about why and how disruptions accumulate and whether this process can be predicted. To tackle these problems, we develop a multidisciplinary framework combining techniques from complexity science and operations research, aiming at reducing the impact of these situations and-if possible-avoiding them. The key elements of this framework are (i) the generation of early warning signals for out-of-control situations, (ii) isolating a specific region such that delay stops propagating, and (iii) the application of decentralized decision making, more suited for information-sparse out-of-control situations