1,721,015 research outputs found
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
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Collaboration and Lawmaking in the Contemporary United States Senate
Full text linkFor the past few decades the spatial model of legislative behavior has been the main conceptual frame for understanding legislative outcomes. That model emphasizes legislators as free-floating and independent ideal points in policy space. What is missing from spatial theory is the essential social nature of legislative life. As Richard Fenno, Nelson Polsby, John Kingdon, Charles Jones and other congressional scholars of their generation taught us, the interactions that occur between and among lawmakers are important and have an independent effect on outcomes. This study explores the interactions and collaborations senators have with one another and the role they play in contemporary Senate lawmaking. Through qualitative interviews and statistical analysis, I show how social dynamics at play in the Senate can inform our view of who wins and who loses in the legislative process
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
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Taming the Senate: Party Power and the Rise of Omnibus Appropriations Bills in the U.S. Congress
Full text linkTheories of party power in Congress differ on the circumstances under which majority parties have the ability to shift policy outcomes away from the preferences of pivotal voters and toward the majority's preferred position. The theory of Pivotal Politics states that it is unlikely parties have such power. The theory of Conditional Party Government states that parties can influence policy outcomes when they are ideologically unified, while the Cartel theory suggests that parties can influence outcomes all of the time by controlling the agenda. In this dissertation, I propose and test three hypotheses addressing the extent of party power using an original dataset of the legislative history of federal appropriations bills and case studies of two time periods in Congress. Appropriations bills are an effective way to study trends in Congress because they must be passed every year. In the last three decades, Congress has shifted from its traditional method of passing the 13 bills that fund the federal government individually to packaging them together in massive “omnibus” bills. I show that the decision of party leaders to create omnibus bills is a form of agenda control that allows party leaders to meet a variety of goals ranging from protecting the majority party's reputation to adopting partisan policy. Omnibus bills help party leaders meet their goals because they are multidimensional, “must pass” bills that members are reluctant to oppose. They are particularly useful in the Senate, where they provide an effective counter to the ever present threat of a filibuster. I make three major arguments. First, I contend that the ability of a majority party to control the agenda with omnibus spending bills is independent of its degree of ideological diversity. In the last 30 years, omnibus bills have been used both when the majority party is ideologically diverse and when it is unified. Second, I contend that the likelihood a majority party will seek to control the agenda with omnibus bills depends on the ideological distance from the majority’s median voter to other pivotal voters on the floor. These distances have varied over time with the ideological diversity and margin of control of the majority party. Large ideological gaps between pivotal voters are an indication that the floor is a challenging arena for the majority party and create an incentive to control the agenda. Third, I contend that the policy consequences of omnibus bills vary with the majority party's ideological diversity. Diverse parties are likely to use omnibus bills to “keep the trains running” by passing the budget, while unified parties are likely to use omnibus bills to pursue partisan policy goals. My findings expand our understanding of the motivations of members of Congress. Theories of Congress rooted in the reelection motive state that individual behavior, and by extension, the behavior of parties, is motivated primarily by the desire to improve prospects for reelection. Evidence from the history of appropriations bills over the last 30 years suggests that ideologically unified parties will use omnibus bills to pursue policy goals even if those goals create some additional risk of not being reelected
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Public Opinion and Political Representation
Full text linkThis dissertation considers the relationship between the opinions voters have on issues and the positions politicians take on them. The first chapter makes a methodological intervention into existing literature, showing that to understand these relationships we must examine one issue at a time, not boil down the preferences of voters and politicians to summaries of their ideologies. It then considers some implications of this distinction. The second chapter elaborates one of these implications, the implications of polarization for representation. This chapter argues for a different set of implications than is typically drawn. The final chapter then adopts this approach to bring a new perspective to a neglected question: how do politicians see their constituents? By investigating this question in individual issues, the final chapter illustrates the utility of the approach and raises new questions for scholars to consider
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Multiple Orders in Multiple Venues: The Reform of Married Women's Property Rights, 1839-1920
Full text linkBeginning in 1839 and continuing through the early twentieth century, the American states passed increasingly liberal laws expanding married women's property rights. These Married Women's Property Laws extended to married women a range of new economic rights, including rights to own property, take out mortgages, sign and enforce contracts, and appear in court under their own name. In almost every state, these significant legal changes took place before women had the right to vote, and they were largely driven by male constitutional convention delegates, legislators, and judges. These male actors, working in a range of political venues, pushed for reforms for reasons rooted in the political orders of liberalism and gender hierarchy. This episode of rights expansion helps us understand both the possible pathways for rights reform when the group in question does not have the vote, and the ways in which an indirect reform process can lead to incomplete liberalization of rights. I analyze the passage of MWPAs from a variety of perspectives, incorporating analyses of political change in multiple venues (state legislatures, state courts, and state constitutional conventions), four case studies from different regions, and quantitative analyses using data on all 48 states. I then examine the longer-term impact of these laws in a discussion of protective labor legislation during the Progressive Era
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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Racial Realignment and the Roots of Contemporary Polarization
Full text linkThis dissertation argues contemporary party sorting --- the phenomenon by which liberals and conservatives sorted between parties on effectively ever major policy issue in the latter part of the 20th century --- is shaped by the 1960s racial realignment. I contend the parties more easily divided on issues like abortion and gun control in the 1980s-1990s, because the parties in the electorate had already divided on civil rights in the 1960s. Left-right attitudes on civil rights have long overlapped left-right divides on essentially every other major policy issue among ordinary voters. These trends date to the earliest public opinion polls and persist even among those who know little about politics. When the parties divided on race in the 1960s, pre-existing ties between civil rights and other policy views encouraged the parties to take positions on newly salient issues, such as abortion or gun control, which reinforced this racial divide. This worked through two complimentary mechanisms. First, once the parties begin to divide on race, conservative voters on abortion or guns begin entering the Republican coalition. This creates an incentive for Republican candidates to stake conservative positions to win the party's nomination. Second, by taking conservative positions on race correlated policies such as abortion or guns, Republican candidates reinforced their appeal to conservative Democrats in the general election. Chapter 3 uses historical public opinion dating to the 1930s to present an exhaustive analysis of issue linkages between race and policy views. I find that (1) voters that express more conservative racial views have long expressed more conservative attitudes on essentially every other major policy issue; (2) voters expressed this package of issue attitudes before the parties established positions on many now salient policies including abortion, gun control, environmentalism, women's rights and gay rights; (3) voters who do not know where the parties stand on issues still package these attitudes together. Chapter 4 explores the role of interest groups, politicians and media figures in constructing the contemporary alignment of party and ideology. Using the development of abortion's partisan divide as a case study, I argue that because racial conservatives entered the Republican coalition before abortion became politically activated, issue overlap among ordinary voters incentivized Republicans to oppose abortion rights once the issue gained salience. Likewise, because pro-abortion voters generally supported civil rights, once the GOP adopted a Southern strategy, this predisposed pro-choice groups to align with the Democratic party. A core argument is that pre-existing public opinion enabled activist leaders to embed the anti-abortion movement in a web of conservative causes that had become newly prominent in the Republican party. This is despite many leaders of the pro-life movement's desire to align with other liberal causes inside the Democratic party. Chapter 5 analyzes this trend in state and sub-state level races in Southern general election contests which feature candidates that had sorted on civil rights with election contests where candidates overlap on civil rights. I find consistent evidence that attitudes towards race and civil rights propelled conservative Democrats from the Democratic party once candidates in sub-national elections had divided by racial views. In doing so, these racially conservative voters brought conservative views on other policy issues with them, too. Chapter 6 then explores how voters who are liberal on race, but conservative on other policy dimensions, reconcile these differences. I find that these cross-pressured voters consistently update their non-racial policy views to match their pre-existing issue attitudes, but this does not happen in reverse. Finally, chapter 7 discusses the implications of this dissertation for contemporary politics in the United States and abroad
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The Tea Party Movement: A New Force in Republican Politics?
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