. Their dislike, and even fear, of such classroom visits may emanate from several apprehensions including (a) lack of trust in administrators' motives, (b) uncertainty regarding administrators' real evaluations of their teaching performances, or (c) fear that personal performance weaknesses

I would like to thank some people who were involved in the creation of this thesis: • Berry Schoenmakers of TU Eindhoven for introducing me to the topic of cryptographic voting protocols. • Evangelos Karatsiolis for his work in guiding me through the process of writing this thesis and his constant motivation. • Roberto Samarone Araujo for hours of discussing various protocols with Evengelos and me. • Warren D. Smith for providing with a preliminary version of his upcoming book »How Mathematics can Improve Democracy«. • Ute Günther and Christian Burgmann for their proof-reading. Nonetheless, any remaing errors shall be blamed on me. • Andrea Peter for her love and for cheering me up when I was down. • Last but not least my parents, Jacqueline Herrnkind and Hans Peter Klink – without their love and continuous support, this thesis would never have been written.

depends on their personal characteristics and on their experience of conflict. We address these questions using a second-best approach. We emphasize that a first-best approach exists, using a method of randomized intervention, in which (for example) the order in which individuals undergo DDR processes

pages 156–175, 2013. [2] Johannes Buchmann, Denise Demirel, and Jeroen van de Graaf. Towards a publicly-verifiable mix-net providing everlasting privacy. In Financial Cryptog-raphy, pages 197–204, 2013. [3] Denise Demirel, Jeroen van de Graaf, and Roberto Araùjo. Improving helios

reactions within the population and become the focus of sucicra] action. They may be linked to individual needs and fears. For example, in highly viclcm ethnic conflicts. die fear of annihilation of one's group is often (and for good reason) tied to a fear of personal anni hilation. The conception

The principle aim of this dissertation is to investigate the philosophical application of quantum information theory to interpretational issues regarding the theory of quantum mechanics. Recently, quantum information theory has emerged as a potential source for such an interpretation. The main question with which this dissertation will be concerned is whether or not an information-theoretic interpretation can serve as a conceptually acceptable interpretation of quantum mechanics. It will be argued that some of the more obvious approaches – that quantum information theory shows us that ultimately the world is made of information, and quantum Bayesianism – fail as philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics. However, the information-theoretic approach of Clifton, Bub, and Halvorson introduces Einstein’s distinction between principle theories and constructive theories, arguing that quantum mechanics is best understood as an information-theoretic principle theory. While I argue that this particular approach fails, it does offer a viable new philosophical role for information theory. Specifically, an investigation of interpretationally successful principle theories such as Newtonian mechanics, special relativity, and general