1,721,010 research outputs found
The Politics of Social Policy Reform in the United States: The Clinton and the W. Bush Presidencies Reconsidered
Full text linkThe purpose of this paper is to examine what key reform attempts during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush presidencies reveal about the wider possibilities for social policy change in the United States. Most particularly, why were Presidents Clinton and Bush able to achieve their goals in some policy realms but so badly defeated in others? As argued, institutional variation from one policy area to another helps answer this question. On the one hand, strong institutional obstacles in the fields of Social Security and health insurance largely explain the defeat of the most ambitious social policy proposal put forward by each president. On the other hand, successful reforms occurred in a comparatively favourable institutional context. Yet, the analysis also suggests that paying close attention to the strategic ideas of political actors as they interact with existing institutions and policy legacies is necessary to fully understand the politics of social policy reform.social policy, Medicare, Social Security, welfare, institutions, United States
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
A Liberal in Wolf's Clothing: Nixon's Family Assistance Plan in the Light of 1990s Welfare Reform
No full textWhen President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in August 1996, it brought
to
an end the much vilified sixty-one-year-old Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC) programme. Although few mourned the
passing of AFDCper se many liberals were alarmed by
the nature of the
changes. AFDC had effectively been a cash maintenance programme
for
poor single-parent families with the costs shared between federal and state
governments. The PRWORA repealed AFDC and some smaller
related
programmes, with Washington giving its former share of funding to the
states in the form of a new block grant, Temporary Assistance to Needy
Families (TANF). The existing entitlement nature of AFDC
was ended with
the states given new discretion in determining TANF eligibility.
Overall
considerable responsibility for the implementation of welfare policy was
devolved to the states. The bill, however, did set a maximum time limit
for individual receipt of federal TANF funds. After two years,
welfare
recipients must engage in a recognized work effort to continue to receive
help, with a total five-year limit on TANF money. Opposition to
these
measures was overwhelmed by the demand for significant reform of the
welfare system. Previously this demand had been thwarted through a
combination of Washington gridlock and the limited scale of those
changes which were enacted. In 1996, however, the dam holding back
reform was breached at the high tide of anti-welfare sentiment. The
despair this provoked among liberals should perhaps have caused them to
reflect on their part in blocking previous attempts at an overhaul of AFDC.
In particular, the elder statespersons of liberalism might regret their
role
in helping defeat President Nixon's Family Assistance Plan (FAP).</jats:p
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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