1,721,275 research outputs found
Conclusions : Causality Between Plurality and Unity
Full text linkThe previous chapters convey the image of causal analysis in public policy and beyond as a fragmented field where research communities seldom learn from each other's findings. This chapter resumes the ontological, epistemological, and methodological evidence that causal analysis is characterized by a plurality of objects and ``incommensurable'' interpretations. It also argues that the same evidence pinpoints how this plurality is complementary at every level, and causal structures raise as the elements that link ontology and methodology and can organize heterogeneous findings to improve learning across accounts
Economic or cultural backlash? Rethinking outsiders’ voting behavior
Full text linkPolitical economists show that outsiders (unemployed and temporary workers) support redistributive policies more than insiders (standard dependent workers) and infer outsiders' voting behavior from their desired degree of State intervention in the economy. However, it has been suggested that international interdependence is reshaping the political space along two dimensions: the traditional economic left-right scale, and an emerging cultural integration-demarcation dimension. How do outsiders behave in this two-dimensional political landscape? This research note answers this question by combining individual data from the latest five waves of the European Social Survey (2008–2016) with party positions provided by the Comparative Manifesto Project on 27 European countries. Integrating research based on party families with parties’ policy positions, results show that the economic State-market dimension is still more linked to outsiders’ voting behavior than the cultural integration-demarcation dimension
The "Social Side" of public policy: monitoring online public opinion and its mobilization during the policy cycle
No full textThis article addresses the potential role played by social media analysis in promoting interaction between politicians, bureaucrats, and citizens. We show that in a "Big Data" world, the comments posted online by social media users can profitably be used to extract meaningful information, which can support the action of policymakers along the policy cycle. We analyze Twitter data through the technique of Supervised Aggregated Sentiment Analysis. We develop two case studies related to the "jobs act" labor market reform and the "#labuonascuola" school reform, both formulated and implemented by the Italian Renzi cabinet in 2014-15. Our results demonstrate that social media data can help policymakers to rate the available policy alternatives according to citizens' preferences during the formulation phase of a public policy; can help them to monitor citizens' opinions during the implementation phase; and capture stakeholders' mobilization and de-mobilization processes. We argue that, although social media analysis cannot replace other research methods, it provides a fast and cheap stream of information that can supplement traditional analyses, enhancing responsiveness and institutional learning
Il cinema politico italiano tra marketing e web.
No full textIl saggio affronta il tema del cinema politico dalla prospettiva della promozione e del marketing del prodotto culturale
Public policy and social media : how sentiment analysis can support policy-makers across the policy cycle
No full textThis article demonstrates that, in a «Big Data» world, comments of social media users can be used to support the action of policy-makers across all the steps of the policy cycle. It applies a modern technique of Supervised Aggregated Sentiment Analysis to three public policies introduced in Italy from 2012 to 2014: the abolishment of the public funding of political parties, the «jobs act» labour market reform and the «80 euros tax bonus». Results show that social media analysis can help policy-makers to accomplish the following tasks: 1) developing synthetic indicators that serve as «fire alarms» on relevant topics; 2) rating the available policy alternatives according to citizens' preferences; 3) monitoring citizens' behaviours and opinions during the implementation of a public policy
BREAKING DOWN THE CHAIN OF RESPONSIVENESS: ASSESSING TO WHAT EXTENT INDIVIDUAL REDISTRIBUTIVE PREFERENCES TRANSLATE INTO SOCIAL POLICY OUTCOMES. A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS.
Full text linkThis dissertation investigates how well political parties, especially those holding executive positions, achieve policy congruence by translating voters’ redistributive preferences into consistent social policy outcomes. It addresses this topic by conducting large-N studies with the aid of quantitative techniques. It is made up of six chapters.
Chapter I provides the theoretical background. In detail, it defines the meaning of the elusive concept of political representation; it discusses the expressive and the instrumental functions that political parties are expected to perform in contemporary representative democracies and recalls party government theories formulated from the 1970s. This literature review allows reorganizing the core stipulations for party government to emerge in a unified theoretical framework.
Chapter II begins the journey along the ideal chain of responsiveness from voters' redistributive preferences to actual social policy outcomes. In detail, it focuses on the first link of this ideal chain by verifying whether and to what extent the economic conditions people experience in their everyday life, which are largely given by the position they occupy in the labor market, determine their redistributive preferences and political behaviors. Combining individual level data from the European Social Surveys for 23 OECD countries with party level information from the Comparative Manifesto Project Database, this chapter demonstrates that individuals tend to feel closer to political parties which express in their electoral manifestos social policy supplies consistent with their redistributive preferences. These results are obtained trough discrete choice models, instrumental variables and matching statistical techniques.
Chapter III deals with the second link of the chain of responsiveness, addressing a perennial question for students of parliamentary democracy, namely how do coalition governments build their policy proposals. In detail, chapter III explores the degree of correspondence between declared cabinet position and the weighted position of cabinet parties as expressed in their electoral manifestos on two separate issues: the traditionally employed left-right scale and a more policy based welfare scale. Results obtained through a time-series cross-section methodology suggest that “the owners of the agenda setting power” over the two scales are different. In particular, on the traditional left-right scale, declared cabinet position is strongly driven by the weighted position of cabinet parties and by that of the formateur party. Conversely, on the welfare scale, declared cabinet position is also affected by the position of the party holding the median legislator in Parliament and by those of the parties expressing the labor and social affairs ministers. In addition, declared cabinet position on the welfare dimension shows a marked tendency to drift rightward with adverse economic conditions.
Chapter IV investigates the last link of the chain of responsiveness between governing parties' long lasting ideological preferences and actual social policy outcomes. In particular, it employs panel data on 19 OECD countries from 1985 to 2011 and tests alternative hypotheses on cabinets' ability to shape social policy outcomes through an Error Correction Model. Results demonstrate that the ideological position of the executive on the left-right scale is unable to affect social policy outcomes in the short run, when economic control variables prevail. However, governing parties acquire relevance on the long run. Specifically, when the government coalition moves to the right, there is a negative impact on social expenditure as a whole, on public spending in active (ALMP) and passive (PLMP) labor market policies and on the net unemployment replacement rate.
Chapter V zooms in on the last link of the chain of responsiveness. In detail, it develops a single country study on the Italian case over le last 70 years to address two shortcomings affecting comparative works on this issue. The first limitation comes at the empirical level and concerns the ways in which governments’ partisanship uses to be operationalized. The second limitation, instead, is rooted at the theoretical level and refers to the over-simplified idea of political parties as unitary actors. In particular, chapter V takes advantage of two datasets: the first one provides data on the positions of Italian Prime Ministers and parties; the second one reports the policy positions expressed by factions inside Italian parties. Results demonstrates that declared cabinets’ positions on welfare state expansion as expressed in Prime Ministers’ investiture and confidence speeches are strong determinants of social expenditure. However, results prove also that the “agenda setting power” enjoyed by the cabinet is strongly weaken by party politics dynamics (the majority the governing coalition enjoys in the lower chamber and the ideological distance between the actual and the previous government) and, more interestingly, by intra-party dynamics. In particular, the ability to shape social expenditure according to the content of the coalition agreement proves to be strongly undermined by the degree of internal polarization inside the major party of the governing coalition.
Finally, the last chapter reviews and discusses the main findings of the thesis. It underlines how the doomsday scenario according to which democracy at the national level has been hollowed out has yet to come. Of course, exogenous socio-economic processes and the complexities of politics weaken parties’ responsiveness toward their voters. However, this thesis reveals that parties still play a role, at least in the social policy domain. Moreover, this chapter has a last look on the overall chain of responsiveness, from voters’ redistributive preferences directly to governmental social policy outcomes, to understand whether citizens’ preferences manage to overcome all the obstacles identified in the previous chapters so that they can be translated into consistent spending choices. In particular, controlling for a complete set of potential external confounders and, more interestingly, for the position of the median legislator in Parliament and for that of the ruling coalition, this last chapter demonstrates that median voter’s preferences in the year t-1 are related to the change in social expenditure in the subsequent year. Finally, to contrast popular frustration with political parties, this chapter proposes a learning model of party government, which sees both voters and parties as able to alter, respectively, their policy preferences and their electoral promises according to the contingent constraints imposed by external reality
Modi della circolazione neomediale del "cinema politico" italiano.
No full textIl saggio descrive i modi con cui circolano e vengono distribuiti e fruiti i film politici sul web
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
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