1,721,089 research outputs found
More than Counterterrorism? Re-examining the Obama administration's military response to al-Qaeda's affiliates
Full text linkThis thesis critically examines the means, animators and continuity of American counterterrorism operations outside of Afghanistan and Iraq during Obama's presidency. It takes the form of a structured-focused comparison of the Obama administration's military response to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Shabaab, and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Most existing studies of Obama's foreign and counterterrorism policies have analysed these campaigns in isolation from one another, or marganlised them. This thesis presents the first holistic study of the Obama administration's military response against all three of al-Qaeda's regional affiliates and speaks to a series of larger trends in the contemporary practices of American military intervention in the global south. It argues that there was far more to the means of U.S. counterterrorism operations outside of Afghanistan and Iraq than a single technological development (drones) and a single practice of statecraft (targeted killings). Security force assistance programmes are shown to have also been at the centre of what is conceptualised as Obama's small-footprint approach to counterterrorism, and the larger retooling of the coercive practices of U.S. military intervention in the global south during the era of perceived imperial decline which followed the Global Financial Crisis and Iraq War. It also argues that there was more animating the military response to al-Qaeda's affiliates than just counterterrorism and national security concerns. Working within the historical materialist tradition, al-Qaeda's affiliates are shown to have challenged two core practices of American imperialism: the reproduction of open-doors and closed frontiers. This thesis contributes to International Relations scholarship more broadly by shedding new light on the relationship between military assistance programmes and the spatial arrangement of American power. An alternative perspective on al-Qaeda's challenge to American primacy 'from below' is also advanced by outlining the movement's approach to economic warfare
The Influence of Small States: Belarus's Foreign Policy and State Identity
Full text linkIn exploring the question of Belarus's influence on Russia and the EU by the non-material means of state identity, the research has developed the Composite State Identity as a theoretical framework to examine the dynamics of influence. It argues that congruence and engagement of state identity, conceptualised as a composite of three temporal components, which are related to the past, the future, and the present, vis-à-vis the Other, help understand the dynamics of influence of Belarus, a smaller state, vis-à-vis its larger neighbours, Russia and the EU. Specifically, the engagement of at least one component of state identity which is externally congruent with the Other positively contributes to the influence, which the Self is able to wield. The thesis seeks to show how Belarus constructed its state identity in the three decades after its independence vis-à-vis two external Others, Russia and the EU, and how the change in state identity constituted Belarus's influence, both successful and not
Anxious Leviathan: The Powerful Vulnerability of Strong States
No full textWhy do strong countries implement narratives of vulnerability in their wartime public communication? This dissertation solves the puzzling practice of powerful actors pursuing identifications we commonly associate with weakness and political failure. It is the first systematic study analyzing vulnerability narratives as a practice of statecraft and warcraft. I compare the politics of vulnerability of Israel and the UK during two conflicts: Israel's 2014 Operation Protective Edge (OPE) and the UK's participation in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I combine the analysis of states' wartime public communication with in-depth interviews with 32 British and 38 Israeli officials.
Using identity as an analytical starting point to theorise about the states' behaviour, I expose the rationale behind actors' vulnerability narratives. I show that both conflicts were a source of ontological insecurity and that actors presented themselves as insecure to avoid negative evaluations of fighting against the underdog. In the case of strong actors, vulnerability narratives have two functions. One, they reduce anxiety about the actor's identity. Warfare against a weaker opponent erodes positive self-perceptions of the powerful state. By self-identifying as vulnerable, the country's action gains a principled meaning which supports its ontological security. Second, vulnerability narratives provide the state with a special agency. By presenting itself as vulnerable, the state securitises a weaker opponent to justify offensive action.
The dissertation contributes to socio-psychological studies of conflict by showing that vulnerability is a conflict-supportive identification not only for the collectives but also for the states. Validating previous experimental research conducted on an individual and group level, it provides empirical data that vulnerability self-identifications may also be a source of legitimacy on the state level. It is an innovative study of how states introduce vulnerability self-identifications to the collective. Israel and the UK have based their communication on a multiplicity of in/outgroup vulnerability narratives. This finding broadens socio-psychological scholarship on vulnerability by showing that states' try to evoke vulnerability self-perceptions not only by referring to the in-group's but also outgroup's standing.
The dissertation contributes to the ontological security studies. It lays out a new research avenue for the study of the resilience of identity. This approach recognizes that states adapt their autobiographies to their evolving behaviour and ideational needs. Furthermore, that the state's identity can be protected from criticisms of its actions. Applying the sociology of trust, I show that vulnerability narratives may be used as a trust-inducing mechanism. This allows us to read anew the political role of vulnerability where - contrary to the traditional approach - vulnerability may be a bulwark of ontological security. While it is broadly recognized that ontological security is a key source of political agency, major studies focus on routines and inhibiting functions the identity has over the behaviour of states. The recognition of the resilience of Israel's and the UK's identity - in a time of controversial armed conflicts with much weaker opponents - allows us to decouple states' routines from states' agency by accounting for the ability to sustain their sense of self and adapt to change. The dissertation sheds new light on what constitutes a crisis of ontological security. While in the literature, states' behaviour was foremost studied from the perspective of external challenges to their identity, in both case studies it was the actions of states themselves that challenged their ontological security. The dissertation investigates the researcher's interpretation of the state's anxiety with the country's officials themselves. So far, no inquiries have employed interviews to study the role ontological security plays in state actions. Little attention has been also paid to the ways of establishing that a country is dealing with anxiety. Generally, such claims are based on discourse and historical analysis. By investigating how country officials pursued the safe identity of the state, this dissertation offers granular evidence of the ways through which actors seek ontological security. Furthermore, while the literature explains why conflicts may be supportive of ontological security, it abstracts from systematically analysing how states may support the safety of their identity while pursuing military confrontation. The study exposes the use of vulnerability narratives as such practice.
Lastly, the dissertation contributes to the scholarship that links ontological security with securitisation by showing that securitisations can be used to protect identity from negative evaluations of state actions
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
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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