1,720,963 research outputs found
Oltre il trend illiberale: I processi di autocratizzazione nel XXI secolo
Full text linkLiberal democracy is in crisis and an increasing number of countries are at risk of sliding back to authoritarianism, according to several scholars. This paper aims to analyse the possible risks that contemporary democratic regimes face. Most importantly, is the crisis of liberal democracy a temporary malaise, or does it represent the first stage of an outright process of regime change towards autocracy? To address this question, we re-examine the ongoing illiberal trend in light of the processes of autocratization that have occurred in several world regions since the beginning of the 21st century. The research highlights a “goodμ and a “badμ news. On one hand, the backsliding of liberal democracy towards defective forms of democracy does represent a worrisome sign, given that defective democracies are fragile regimes and thus likely candidates to suffer democratic breakdown and to be replaced by some form of autocracy. On the other hand, several cases show that, similarly to democratization, autocratization can fail, or be reversed
Sub-Saharan Africa
No full textThis chapter focuses on autocratization in sub-Saharan Africa ─ the region encompassing the non-Mediterranean states of the African continent─which we further differentiate in West, Central, Eastern, and Southern Africa. We identify term limit manipulation and military takeover as the two main contemporary patterns of autocratization that characterize the region. We examine these modes of autocratization in light of some of the continent's unresolved issues – e.g., state weakness, conflicts, the politicization of ethnic cleavages, and personal rule – and we highlight the role played by external actors as well as the connections between these processes of political change, development, and public opinion
De-democratisation at the times of COVID-19
No full textThe Covid-19 crisis raised concerns of organisations monitoring the quality of democracy (Freedom
House, V-dem Institute, EIU or Idea) that the pandemic could be used in a long term to justify the permanent
strengthening of incumbents’ power leading to the weakening of democracy. The report is aimed at investigating
potential threats to liberal democracy in connection with the adopted mechanisms to combat the coronavirus
pandemic, basing on two cases of EU members – Italy and Poland in the period 2020-summer 2021. The qualitative
research on implemented laws (“Covid-19 legislation”) in both countries and focus interviews with lawyers have
been conducted to assess the impact of the regulations and the governments’ practices on the state of democracy.
The report consists of two main parts – the theoretical framework and empirical study. The former section
presents the notion of democratic backsliding and autocratisation, the issue of connection of democratic
backsliding/autocratisation processes with states of emergency and possible scenarios of impact of Covid-19 on
democracy. The empirical part – on Italy and Poland – includes a review of major features of political systems of
the analysed states and the state of democracy before the Covid-19 pandemic, an outline of the basic data on
Covid-19 and analysis of legal instruments adopted at the time of coronavirus in terms of their impact on democracy,
basing the relevant section on three dimensions in which democratic backsliding and autocratisation can take place:
public contestation, political participation and executive limitation.
As far as the main finding is concerned, the analysed cases of Italy and Poland prove that the Covid-19
pandemic can, but does not always have to, negatively affect the state of democracy. Much depends on the
question whether the democratic backsliding occurred already before the pandemic. If it did, the Covid-19 crisis
can strengthen the previous de-democratisation processes. It is possible even without the formal introduction of a
state of emergency (which often has a potential to generate undemocratic tendencies), as it was indicated in the
case of Poland
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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