1,720,981 research outputs found
Rulers’ Age and the Stability of Governments: A Survival Analysis
Full text linkIn this study, we investigate the impact of the age of prime ministers and ministers on the stability of governments across 21 democracies. We examine this issue by using Cox survival analysis, leveraging an original dataset and adopting a comparative perspective. The findings of the study document that younger prime ministers face a lower risk of government discretionary termination compared to their older counterparts. This effect does not appear to be statistically significant for cabinet ministers. By shedding light on this uncharted relationship, we contribute to the flourishing literature on youth representation in politics and the established research agenda on the factors affecting the survival in office of democratic governments. We conclude the study by discussing the implications of the findings for democracy and suggesting avenues for future research
"Staying Alive" : the patterns and dynamics of government stability in 21 democracies (1945-2021)
Full text linkTheoretical Background and Hypotheses. Research Design and Methodology. Temporal Trajectories, National Variations, and Types of Government (In)stability. Explanatory Factors of Government Stability: Temporal Trajectories and National Variations. Empirical Analysis: Explaining Government Stability
Coalition politics under exceptional exogenous constraints: the Meloni government during the EU-financed economic recovery plan
Full text linkRuling in turbulent times: government crises in Italy and Israel during the COVID-19 pandemic
Full text linkCOVID-19 constitutes an unprecedented exogenous shock for democratic political systems across the globe. During this turbulent period, Italy and Israel have also experienced a government crisis. Building upon the “coalition life cycle” and the “critical events” approaches to government stability, this article explores the trajectories of the government crises in Italy and Israel in times of COVID-19. The article examines the impact of the cabinets' structural attributes and the pandemic in relation to the governments' early termination. In both countries, the oversized coalition configuration of the cabinets led to conflicts between the governing parties, which became untenable during the pandemic crisis, thus precipitating the governments' collapse
Term limits in parliament and electoral disconnection: the case of the Five Star Movement
No full textThis article examines the relationship between term limits in parliament and “electoral disconnection,” the notion that legislators constrained in their ability to run for office face diminished incentives to perform strategic activities to boost their chances of securing candidacy and re-election. We leverage the case of the Italian Five Star Movement’s party-imposed limit of two terms for affiliates seeking to gain or retain a parliamentary seat. We exploit an original dataset of parliamentary activities covering both chambers of the Italian Parliament between 2013 and 2022. We estimate a series of mixed-effect regression models to assess the performance of MPs who were elected in 2013 and re-elected in 2018. In line with our expectations, the evidence suggests that term-limited representatives serving their second mandate tend to become less productive when it comes to “electorally lucrative” activities and more prone to rebelling than their non-term-limited colleagues. These findings contribute to our understanding of the incentives that drive parliamentary behavior
Going technocratic? Diluting governing responsibility in electorally turbulent times
Full text linkTechnocracy has recently triggered growing scholarly interest, especially as an alternative form of ruling to both party government and populism. In the context of weakened parties-citizens links and increasing external constraints faced by Western European ruling parties, technocratic appointments might help deal with the responsibility-responsiveness dilemma highlighted by Peter Mair. However, research on the explanatory factors of technocratic appointments is still underdeveloped. This article argues that the recourse to technocracy is fuelled by electoral volatility. In contexts of high electoral turbulence - and even more when parties frequently enter or exit the party system - ruling parties turn to technocratic appointments to dilute responsibility. This expectation is tested through an original longitudinal multilevel dataset including 655 cabinets and 373 elections in 20 Western European countries from 1945 to 2021. The findings of this article contribute to the current debate on technocracy and shed new light on the general understanding behind political representation
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
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