1,720,961 research outputs found
Wandering in Twilight? Democracy Promotion by the EU and the USA and Democratization in Armenia
Get PDFAlthough democracy promotion initiatives have spread around the world and supported transition, many countries have fallen back into autocracy or stalled on their way to democracy. However, the events in the Middle East and Northern Africa have revitalised the issue of democratization. On the other hand, this cry for democracy seems to be homegrown, casting doubts about the efficacy of external democracy promotion. Nevertheless, stalled and setback democracies cannot be blamed solely on the flawed strategies of democracy promoters or autocratic stubbornness of democracy targets. Similarly, labelling democracy promotion as “the grand failure” of the West is an argumentative overstretch, which lacks any practical application.
This dissertation argues that democracy can be achieved from outside, but the obstacles associated with it are more serious than anticipated by promoters. More specifically, the chances of liberal democracy being exported from outside will increase provided the utility of domestic adaptation to democracy is at least moderate, promoters are actively involved in resolution of pressing national issues, and there is no regional actor that blocks democracy and receives support for its policies from the target country.
By structurally and conceptually expanding Schimmelfennig’s international socialization framework, this study develops an analytical framework to decipher mechanisms, strategies, and subsequent outcomes of democracy promotion and democratization. While applied to Armenia, the proposed framework is a useful reference for both academics and practitioners as it provides tools for researching the outcome of democracy and democratization and provides policy recommendations. This dissertation introduces the concept of democracy blocker—a powerful authoritarian regional actor capable and willing to influence domestic policy choices of a democracy promotion target in order to block democratization. This study also makes an empirical contribution by comparing democracy promotion policies in a country that has long been neglected by the academic literature. Using process-tracing, within-case, and before-after analyses, this study compares democracy promotion policies of the EU and the USA within three different target-sectors in Armenia. The analysis of three different target-sectors of democracy promotion—elections, parties, and the media—shows democratic transformation on the macro level of a country and micro level of specific sectors.
This study argues that increased political and economic interdependence and interconnectedness of different realms within a democratizing country has led to merging of international democracy promotion and domestic democratization. In addition, the mere adoption of a law or a code of conduct does not guarantee the establishment of democracy and democratic behaviour by domestic stakeholders. Consequently, a likely upgrade of a formal democratic transformation into a behavioural one, would require democracy promoters to guarantee consistency in their efforts and follow-up on their activities, without assuming that a formally adopted rule or a completed project will necessarily assure rule-based behaviour. Thus, democracy promotion needs to be simultaneously cross-sectoral, offering material incentives for democratic transformation. Democracy promotion has the potential to not only produce numerous academic and policy analyses but also to result in a genuine democratic transformation, if promoters rationally choose their strategies and base them on existing domestic conditions
Democracy Assistance from the Third Wave: Polish Engagement in Belarus and Ukraine. By Paulina Pospieszna. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press, 2014
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The Kremlin doesn’t promote autocracy – it simply trolls whomever it dislikes
Get PDFRussia is often accused of undermining democracy, particularly in former Soviet states. The recent reports of Russian-sponsored hacking in the US have led some to go further and claim it is actively promoting autocracy. But Nelli Babayan argues that Vladimir Putin’s chief aim is to demonstrate Russia’s strength – and probably to undermine US and EU democracies, rather than trying to transform them into authoritarian states
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe 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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