1,720,983 research outputs found
Replication Data for: Why Underachievers Dominate Secret Police Organizations: Evidence from Autocratic Argentina
No full textAutocrats depend on a capable secret police. Anecdotal evidence, however, often characterizes agents as surprisingly mediocre in skill and intellect. To explain this puzzle, this paper focuses on the career incentives underachieving individuals face in the regular security apparatus. Low-performing officials in hierarchical organizations have little chance of being promoted or filling lucrative positions. To salvage their careers, these officials are willing to undertake burdensome secret police work. Using data on all 4,287 officers who served in autocratic Argentina (1975-83), we study biographic differences between secret police agents and the entire recruitment pool. We find that low-achieving officers were stuck within the regime hierarchy, threatened with discharge, and thus more likely to join the secret police for future benefits. The study demonstrates how state bureaucracies breed mundane career concerns that produce willing enforcers and cement violent regimes. This has implications for the understanding of autocratic consolidation and democratic breakdown
Replication Data for: Why Underachievers Dominate Secret Police Organizations: Evidence from Autocratic Argentina
No full textAutocrats depend on a capable secret police. Anecdotal evidence, however, often characterizes agents as surprisingly mediocre in skill and intellect. To explain this puzzle, this paper focuses on the career incentives underachieving individuals face in the regular security apparatus. Low-performing officials in hierarchical organizations have little chance of being promoted or filling lucrative positions. To salvage their careers, these officials are willing to undertake burdensome secret police work. Using data on all 4,287 officers who served in autocratic Argentina (1975-83), we study biographic differences between secret police agents and the entire recruitment pool. We find that low-achieving officers were stuck within the regime hierarchy, threatened with discharge, and thus more likely to join the secret police for future benefits. The study demonstrates how state bureaucracies breed mundane career concerns that produce willing enforcers and cement violent regimes. This has implications for the understanding of autocratic consolidation and democratic breakdown
Replication Data for "Grist to the Mill of Subversion: Strikes and Coups in Counterinsurgencies"
No full textWhy are acts of organized resistance associated with coups? Inspired by the Arab Spring, a large literature suggests that militaries confronted with civil resistance tend to side with protesters and oust their government. In the historically most coup-prone environment of insurgencies, however, alliances between the military and protesters are implausible because soldiers suspect insurgents behind social dissent. Disentangling different types of resistance, this article analyzes whether and how strikes, demonstrations, riots, and guerrilla attacks affect the military's disposition and ability to stage a coup during counterinsurgencies. We argue that only strikes trigger coup attempts. Soldiers interpret strikes as manifestations of a strengthening subversive enemy that threatens their victory over insurgents, while economic elites support a coup in the hope that the military will terminate costly walkouts. This interest alignment fosters military takeovers. We provide case-study evidence from Cold War Argentina and Venezuela to show our suggested mechanism at work. Demonstrating the scope of our argument, we quantitatively analyze coup attempts in counterinsurgency worldwide (1950-2005). Results show that strikes increase wartime coup risk, whereas demonstrations, riots, and guerrilla attacks do not. The findings highlight the backfiring potential of nonviolent resistance with important implications for post-coup political orders and democratization prospects
Does sportswashing work? First insights from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar
No full textCan autocrats use major sports tournaments to shift public opinion abroad? This short article conducts the first systematic test of whether authoritarian host regimes win the desired image boost through sports mega-events. We analyze original data from a two-wave public opinion survey in Germany fielded before and right after the start of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. We find that among German respondents, the tournament start i) did not improve Qatar's image, but ii) increased sympathies for the Arab world, and iii) fueled criticism of the media, the quality of democracy, and the inclusion of minorities within Germany. Our findings reveal that international sports events may benefit an autocrat's entire region, while heightening polarization in foreign democracies. Together, this offers first insights into the various effects of sportswashing and autocratic image campaigns
Replication Data for: International Sports Events and Repression in Autocracies: Evidence from the 1978 FIFA World Cup
No full textHow do international sports events shape repression in authoritarian host countries? International tournaments promise unique gains in political prestige through global media attention. However, autocrats must fear that foreign journalists will unmask their wrongdoings. We argue that autocracies solve this dilemma by strategically adjusting repression according to the spatial-temporal presence of international media. Using original, highly disaggregated data on the 1978 World Cup, we demonstrate that the Argentine host government largely refrained from repression during the tournament, but preemptively cleansed the streets beforehand. These adjustments specifically occurred around hotels reserved for foreign journalists. Additional tests demonstrate that: 1) before the tournament, repression turned increasingly covert, 2) during the tournament, targeting patterns mirrored the working shifts of foreign journalists, 3) after the tournament, regime violence again spiked in locations where international media had been present. Together, the paper highlights the human costs of mega-events, contradicting the common whitewashing rhetoric of functionaries
Who Gets Targeted with Soft Power?:Evidence from Henry Kissinger’s International Seminar
No full textMany states, nongovernmental organizations, and philanthropists use soft power to achieve their political goals. However, we know little about which countries these actors target. The author argues that given the large number of potential targets and the high costs of conducting influence campaigns abroad, soft power entrepreneurs strategically direct their efforts toward those countries in which their campaigns have the best chance of making a difference. The author expects that campaigns predominantly target liberal democracies, since the free exchange of ideas and opinions is likely to generate the intended admiration and attraction. To test this argument, the author draws on hand-coded attendance data from one of the most prestigious exchange programs during the Cold War: Henry Kissinger’s International Seminar (1952–1968). Results from numerous tests reveal that liberal democratic countries were more heavily targeted by Kissinger’s program than were nonliberal countries. Together, the article shows how (non)state actors strategically influence foreign intellectuals to forge international alliances
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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