322,829 research outputs found
Italian Parties and Party System(s)
No full textThe Italian party system has traditionally been considered as an outlier in the specialized literature. In fact, one can speak of different party systems depending on the observation point in time. However, a number of recurring features can be pinpointed when focusing on the so-called Second Republic: the instability of the format and mechanics of the political competition; the over-production of political reforms concerning the electoral rules and the public funding regimes; and the weakness and fluidity of party organizations. The aim of this chapter is to identify the main trajectories followed by the evolution of Italian politics from 1994 to 2018: in particular, we focus on the volatile ‘rules of the game’ as well as on the organizational features and the interaction between the main actors of the party system. As the data show, both institutional and agent-related inadequacies have undermined the legitimization and reliability of Italian democracy, paving the way to technocratic solutions and to the rise of anti-establishment parties
Disasters and corruption, corruption as disaster
No full textThis chapter analyzes the role played by corruption in post-disaster contexts. Data show growth in both natural and man-made disasters and in humanitarian response provided by bilateral and multilateral donors. These events have become more frequent and also cause more deaths. Moreover, the data demonstrate a strong relation between the impact of these disasters on the standards of living and the prior level of corruption of the country. The severity of disasters is a consequence of corruption, but the opportunities for corruption are also increased in post-disaster situations. Several factors contribute to frustrating the transparency and accountability of decision-making processes during humanitarian crises. We include all these factors in a “formula of corruption”. Despite the growing importance of this issue, the international community has responded to these crucial problems only tentatively. We review those international treaties that have addressed the issue of corruption at the international level. These treaties are preliminary instruments to fight corruption, even if they are not specifically designed to fight this plague in post-disaster contexts. This lack of institutional response has caused civil society and NGOs to take independent measures. For this reason, several NGOs have recommended the implementation of further action in order to map and prevent corruption
Which Face Comes First? The Ascendancy of the Party in Public Office
No full textPolitical party organizations play large roles in democracies, yet their organizations differ widely, and their statutes change much more frequently than constitutions or electoral laws. How do these differences, and these frequent changes, affect the operation of democracy?
This book seeks to answer these questions by presenting a comprehensive overview of the state of party organization in nineteen contemporary democracies. Using a unique new data collection, the book's chapters test propositions about the reasons for variation and similarities across party organizations. They find more evidence of within-country similarity than of cross-national patterns based on party ideology. After exploring parties' organizational differences, the remaining chapters investigate the impact of these differences. The volume considers a wide range of theories about how party organization may affect political life, including the impact of party rules on the selection of female candidates, the links between party decision processes and the stability of party programmes, the connection between party finance sources and public trust in political parties, and whether the strength of parties' extra-parliamentary organization affects the behaviour of their elected legislators. Collectively these chapters help to advance comparative studies of elections and representation by inserting party institutions and party agency more firmly into the centre of such studies
Diffusive author(s), cohesive author: Analysis of S/N (1994)
No full textThis study indicates the ways in which various aspects of the author(s) are brought forth in Dumb type’s performance art, the S/N production. Previous research has suggested a non-hierarchical organization of Dumb type and the absence of a “privileged author” in Dumb type’s collaborative work, S/N. However, the results that I have investigated from member’s interviews on the creative process of S/N along with my analysis of the recorded images of S/N, indicate a different aspect of the author(s). First, S/N was created through, so to speak, the collective ideas of the members of Dumb type. Further, S/N has at least nine quotations from previous performances, installations, and printed writings, besides the work-in-progress technique. Explicating one of the “author functions” as given by Michel Foucault, each text has plural subjects of the author. However, it has been revealed from members’ interviews that Teiji Furuhashi had a decision-making role in selecting the members’ ideas within the performance. Since then, S/N has had plural subjects of creation; however, Furuhashi is one of the subjects of creation along with the “privileged author.” S/N has plural authors (diffusive authors) yet at the same time, it has a “privileged author,” Teiji Furuhashi (cohesive author)
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe 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
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