1,720,957 research outputs found
Executive Power and Accountability in Italy and the Government’s Response to Covid-19
Full text linkIn this article, we add to the existing literature on the political consequences of Covid-19 by studying executive power in Italy during the 2020 – 22 emergency. Given the direct, inverse link between executive centrality and accountability intended as the formal and informal institutions that limit unilateral action, we examine the behavior and practices of Italian executives in the context of the government-parliament relationship, the dynamics between the central state and the regional authorities (horizontal accountability), and the media (diagonal accountability). We focus on the choices made by the government during the Covid crisis. We present descriptive evidence indicating that executive centrality and standards of accountability fluctuated with an intensity proportional to the threat levels of the various stages of the pandemic
Governments and parliaments in a state of emergency: What can we learn from the COVID-19 pandemic?
No full textWhat happens in a state of emergency that is prolonged and unrelated to security with respect to the powers afforded to or used by the executive, checks and balances, and cooperation between the government, parliament, and sub-national authorities? This article investigates the variation in ‘executive aggrandisement’ (a temporary reduction in influence and oversight capacity of formal institutions vis-à-vis the executive) during the COVID-19 pandemic in six parliamentary democracies. We theorise that this variation can be in part explained based on path dependence. We explore how pre-pandemic levels of executive dominance and policy centralisation affect executive aggrandisement during the 2020–2022 emergency across our sample of countries. We show that Canada and Germany experienced little to no aggrandisement. In France, Israel, Italy, and the United Kingdom, government rule increased throughout the crisis at the expense of parliament and sub-national authorities. In line with our expectations, we find that most facets of the process of executive aggrandisement in a state of emergency can be interpreted in view of prior institutional arrangements. The outlier elements can be explained by considering circumstantial factors. Our evidence contributes to the literature on the political consequences of COVID-19 by filling some gaps regarding the roots of executive aggrandisement
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
Government-initiated Votes of Confidence in Parliamentary Democracies
No full textWhen do incumbents call a vote of confidence? Despite it being one of the most consequential tools afforded to parliamentary administrations, the scholarly literature lacks empirical evidence vis-à-vis the conditions that incentivize cabinets to tie their survival to the endorsement of a particular statement or passage of a bill. In this article, I draw upon an original dataset covering more than 400 government-initiated votes of confidence across 14 countries (1945-2021) to map out applications of these votes and investigate the circumstances that prompt executives in parliamentary systems to choose the vote of confidence procedure over other mechanisms at their disposal. I argue that the variation in the political environment and constitutional arrangements systematically affects the frequency of confidence motions. Using mixed-effect logistic regression, I show that leaders' decision as to if or when to rely on this instrument is shaped by various contingent, structural, and institutional determinants. This study contributes to the research on executive power under parliamentarism by providing the first cross-national, quantitative analysis of votes of confidence called by the government. In doing so, it refines our theoretical understanding of restrictive parliamentary procedures such as the vote of confidence: they can facilitate the achievement of the best possible electoral and policy outcomes given the preference of a majority. Finally, this study demonstrates that, while restrictive in its effect, the use of these procedures is constrained by factors transcending the preferences of the majority
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