90 research outputs found
Review of \u3cem\u3eCalifornia: America\u27s High Stakes Experiment.\u3c/em\u3e Peter Schrag. Reviewed by Bart Grossman.
No full textBook review of John Gerring. Case Study Research: Principles and Practices. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 24.99 papercover
How Offshore Groundwater Shapes the Seafloor
No full textThe MARCAN project, launched last January, is working to fill a gap in our knowledge of how freshwater flowing underground shapes and alters the continental margins
How Good Is Good Enough? A Multidimensional, Best-Possible Standard for Research Design
No full text Recent years have seen a shift in methodological emphasis from the observable properties of a sample to its unobservable properties, that is, judgments about the process by which the data were generated. Considerations of research design have moved front and center. This article attempts to bridge discussions of experimental and quasi-experimental data and of quantitative and qualitative approaches, so as to provide a unified framework for understanding research design in causal analysis. Specifically, the author argues that all research designs aim to satisfy certain fundamental criteria, applicable across methods and across fields. These criteria are understood as desirable, ceteris paribus, and as matters of degree. The implications of this framework for methodological standards in the social sciences are taken up in the final section of the article. There, the author argues for a best-possible standard of proof that judges overall methodological adequacy in light of other possible research designs that might be applied to a particular research question. </jats:p
Chapter 11 Heat Pumps
No full textThe funder would like the two following paragraphs to be included in the open access chapter:
"This open access chapter was developed with support from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office to include advanced heat pump technologies that are critical to providing heating in buildings powered by renewable energy.
This chapter was prepared in part as work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, nor any of their contractors, subcontractors or their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or any third party’s use or the results of such use of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof or its contractors or subcontractors. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof, its contractors or subcontractors.""
The author also wondered if the disclaimer published at the front of their book (below) should also be included, since this is apart from the book:
""The author and publisher of this book have put forth their best effort to ensure that the content contained herein is accurate and up-to-date. The purpose of this content is to assist the reader to understand the scope of work and the issues that need to be addressed when designing a building with a renewable energy system. Professional aid should be obtained when designing the specifics of any renewable energy system. The author and publisher shall not be held liable for incidental or consequential damages connected to, or arising from, the use of this book’s content.
Arbitrary limits to scholarly speech: Why (short) word limits should be abolished
No full textMost journals in political science and sociology set stringent word or page limits, a fact of which every author is keenly aware. By all reports, researchers expend a good deal of effort trying to work within these limits. This might involve revising successive drafts until the final version slips just under the ceiling, moving sections of a paper into online appendices, splitting up a subject into “minimal publishing units,” shopping around for a publication venue with less stringent limits, or trying to negotiate special terms with an editor
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Origins and consequences of corruption scandals : evidence from Mexico
No full textThis dissertation looks at the political origins and consequences of corruption scandals. On the origins side, the dissertation argues that first turnovers after long periods of dominant-party rule open opportunities for corruption scandals to take place. In turn, scandals contribute to an increase in perceptions of corruption, which explains at least part of the increase in these perceptions during early democratization periods. On the consequences side, the work examines the impacts of corruption scandals on interpersonal trust and electoral outcomes. The dissertation uses quantitative methods and relies on subnational time-series cross-sectional data from Mexico, specifically the 32 Mexican states from the first presidential turnover in 2000 until 2018. The dissertation consists of three papers. The first paper explores the impact of early democratization on corruption scandals and of corruption scandals on perceptions of corruption. The work finds that first turnovers, typical of early democratization stages, increase the number of corruption scandals, which in turn increase perceptions of corruption. Therefore, while the literature has generally assumed that perceptions of corruption increase in periods of early democratization due to an increase in actual acts of corruption, this work transcends assumptions and presents evidence that one mechanism –though not necessarily the only mechanism– connecting early democratization to perceptions of corruption is the incidence of corruption scandals. The second paper examines the consequences of corruption scandals on interpersonal trust. This work finds that corruption scandals create an effect that harms interpersonal trust. More specifically, corruption scandals bring about a decrease in trust in coworkers/classmates and friends. In contrast, trust in neighbors and family/relatives is not harmed by corruption scandals. Interestingly, under certain circumstances trust in family/relatives is even strengthened by scandals, possibly due to a substitution effect after the loss of trust in other relationships. The last paper focuses on electoral accountability after corruption scandals. The literature’s consensus is that scandals damage the incumbent party’s electoral performance, but only mildly. However, the literature has not asked about the damage that corruption scandals might do to the established parties’ electoral performance. This paper argues that corruption scandals, besides harming the incumbent party’s electoral performance, damage the established parties. Additionally, contrary to the literature’s argument that corruption scandals depress turnout, the paper finds that, under certain conditions, corruption scandals might motivate turnout.Governmen
Case Study
No full textArtykuł stanowi opracowanie hasła case study (studium przypadku) ze zwróceniem uwagi na historię terminu i jego transdyscyplinarne zastosowanie: wychodząc od medycyny i socjologii, przez prawo, psychiatrię, psychologię i seksuologię, kończąc na literaturoznawstwie. Autorka stara się zarysować rozróżnienie między studium przypadku jako formą gatunkową (Brigit Lang, Joy Damousi, Alison Lewis, Yiannis Gabriel) a studium przypadku jako strategią badawczą (Bent Flyvbjerg, Gerring John, Ryszard Nycz) – stosowaną od niedawna także w literaturoznawstwie. Wyznaczaniu zakresu oraz cech case study towarzyszy analiza opisu jako kluczowego narzędzia wspierającego przebieg „opowieści o przypadku”.The article discusses case study with a focus on the history of the term and its transdisciplinary application, from medicine and sociology, through law, psychiatry, psychology, sexology, and literary studies. The author discusses the differences between case study as a genre (Brigit Lang, Joy Damousi, Alison Lewis, Yiannis Gabriel) and case study as a research strategy (Bent Flyvbjerg, Gerring John, Ryszard Nycz), which has been recently also employed in literary studies. Determining the scope and features of case study is accompanied by an analysis of description as a key tool in formulating “the story of the case.
New constraints on the sedimentation and uplift history of the Andaman-Nicobar accretionary prism, South Andaman Island
No full textThe Andaman Islands are part of the Andaman-Nicobar Ridge, an accretionary complex that forms part of the outer-arc ridge of the Sunda subduction zone. The Tertiary rocks exposed on the Andaman Islands preserve a record of the tectonic evolution of the surrounding region, including the evolution and closure of the Tethys Ocean. Some of the Paleogene sediments on Andaman may represent an offscraped part of the early Bengal Fan. Through field and petrographic observations, and use of a number of isotopic tracers, new age and provenance constraints are placed on the key Paleogene formations exposed on South Andaman. A paucity of biostratigraphic data poorly define sediment depositional ages. Constraints on timing of deposition obtained by dating detrital minerals for the Mithakhari Group indicate sedimentation after 60 Ma, possibly younger than 40 Ma. A better constraint is obtained for the Andaman Flysch Formation, which was deposited between 30 and 20 Ma, based on Ar-Ar ages of the youngest detrital muscovites at ca. 30 Ma and thermal history modeling of apatite fission-track and U-Th/He data. The latter record sediment burial and inversion (uplift) at ca. 20 Ma. In terms of sediment sources the Mithakhari Group shows a predominantly arc-derived composition, with a very subordinate contribution from the continental margin to the east of the arc. The Oligocene Andaman Flysch at Corbyn's Cove is dominated by recycled orogenic sources, but it also contains a subordinate arc-derived contribution. It is likely that the sources of the Andaman Flysch included rocks from Myanmar affected by India-Asia collision. Any contribution of material from the nascent Himalayas must have been minor. Nd isotope data discount any major input from cratonic Greater India sources
Negotiated settlements and peace referendums
No full textInstitutional innovations in conflict management have received considerable academic attention in the past decades. Yet few studies have considered the design of referendums in peace processes and the role of popular mandates in catalysing negotiated settlements. Drawing evidence from divided societies, particularly the contrasting cases of South Africa and Cyprus, the article points to the importance of ratification sequence and early mandate referendums. Specifically, it demonstrates how mandate referendums focusing initially on domestic constituencies enable leaders to pre‐empt ethnic outbidding challenges while concluding a peace agreement. An early ratification process could safeguard the peace process from unavoidable reversals in public opinion, increase flexibility as to the timing of critical decisions and maximise the credibility of leaders aiming for a negotiated settlement. The study of mandate referendums has important implications for broader research on international mediations since it suggests mechanisms by which political actors could ensure the ratification of significant treaties in global or regional politics
Mechanism-Based Thinking on Policy Diffusion. A Review of Current Approaches in Political Science
No full textDespite theoretical and methodological progress in what is now coined as the third generation of diffusion studies, explicitly dealing with the causal mechanisms underlying diffusion processes and comparatively analyzing them is only of recent date. As a matter of fact, diffusion research has ended up in a diverse and often unconnected array of theoretical assumptions relying both on rational as well as constructivist reasoning – a circumstance calling for more theoretical coherence and consistency. Against this backdrop, this paper reviews and streamlines diffusion literature in political science. Diffusion mechanisms largely cluster around two causal arguments determining the desires and preferences of actors for choosing alternative policies. First, existing diffusion mechanisms accounts can be grouped according to the rationality for policy adoption, this means that government behavior is based on the instrumental considerations of actors or on constructivist arguments like norms and rule-driven actors. Second, diffusion mechanisms can either directly impact on the beliefs of actors or they might influence the structural conditions for decision-making. Following this logic, four basic diffusion mechanisms can be identified in mechanism-based thinking on policy diffusion: emulation, socialization, learning, and externalities.policy diffusion
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