25 research outputs found
Text illuminations: from the method to the artefact
No full textPolitical scientists Denisa Kostovicova, Ivor Sokolic, Tom Paskhalis and artist Nela Milic discuss the process of interdisciplinary collaboration, which turned a political science method into an art installation, and enabled a broader public engagement with a quantitative study of the quest for justice and reconciliation after conflict
Essays in political text: new actors, new data, new challenges
No full textThe essays in this thesis explore diverse manifestations and different aspects of political text. The two main contributions on the methodological side are bringing forward novel data on political actors who were overlooked by the existing literature and application of new approaches in text analysis to address substantive questions about them. On the theoretical side this thesis contributes to the literatures on lobbying, government transparency, post-conflict studies and gender in politics. In the first paper on interest groups in the UK I argue that contrary to much of the theoretical and empirical literature mechanisms of attaining access to government in pluralist systems critically depend on the presence of limits on campaign spending. When such limits exist, political candidates invest few resources in fund-raising and, thus, most organizations make only very few if any political donations. I collect and analyse transparency data on government department meetings and show that economic importance is one of the mechanisms that can explain variation in the level of access attained by different groups. Furthermore, I show that Brexit had a diminishing effect on this relationship between economic importance and the level of access. I also study the reported purpose of meetings and, using dynamic topic models, show the temporary shifts in policy agenda during this period. The second paper argues that civil society in post-conflict settings is capable of high-quality deliberation and, while differing in their focus, both male and female can deliver arguments pertaining to the interests of broader societal groups. Using the transcripts of civil society public consultation meetings across former Yugoslavia I show that the lack of gender-sensitive transitional justice instruments could stem not from the lack of women’s 3 physical or verbal participation, but from the dynamic of speech enclaves and topical focus on different aspects of transitional justice process between genders. And, finally, the third paper maps the challenges that lie ahead with the proliferation of research that relies on multiple datasets. In a simulation study I show that, when the linking information is limited to text, the noise can potential occur at different levels and is often hard to anticipate in practice. Thus, the choice of record linkage requires balancing between these different scenarios. Taken together, the papers in this thesis advance the field of “text as data” and contribute to our understanding of multiple political phenomena
tpaskhalis/ncomms_russia_us_2016: Submission
No full textReplication materials for "Exposure to Russian foreign influence campaign on Twitter in the 2016 US Election and its relationship to attitudes and voting behavior
Parliament Strikes Back: Agenda-setting and Power Voids in Early Representative Assemblies
No full textReplication Data for: Gender, Justice and Deliberation: Why Women Don't Influence Peacemaking
No full textScholars have pinpointed that women's underrepresentation in peacemaking results in gendered outcomes that do not address women's needs and interests. Despite recent increased representation at the negotiating table, women still have a limited influence on peacemaking outcomes. We propose that differences in female and male speeches reflected in the gendered patterns in discourse during peacemaking explain how women's influence is curtailed. We examine women's speaking behavior in transitional justice debates in the post-conflict Balkans. Applying multimethod quantitative text analysis to over half a million words in multiple languages, we analyze structural and thematic speech patterns. We find that men's domination of turn-taking and the absence of topics reflecting women's needs and interests lead to a gendered outcome. The sequences of men talking after men are longer than those of women talking after women, which restricts women's deliberative space and opportunities to develop and sustain arguments that reflect their concerns. We find no evidence that women's limited influence is driven by lower deliberative quality of their speeches. This study of gendered dynamics at the microlevel of discourse identifies a novel dimension of male domination during peacemaking
Gender, justice and deliberation: why women don’t influence peace-making
No full textScholars have pinpointed that women’s underrepresentation in peace-making results in gendered outcomes that do not address women’s needs and interests. Despite recent increased representation at the negotiating table, women still have a limited influence on peace-making outcomes. We propose that differences in female and male speeches reflected in the gendered patterns in discourse during peacemaking explain how women’s influence is curtailed. We examine women’s speaking behavior in transitional justice debates in the post-conflict Balkans. Applying multimethod quantitative text analysis to over half a million words in multiple languages, we analyze structural and thematic speech patterns. We find that men’s domination of turn-taking and the absence of topics reflecting women’s needs and interests lead to a gendered outcome; the sequences of men talking after men are longer than those of women talking after women, which restricts women’s deliberative space and opportunities to develop and sustain arguments that reflect their concerns. We find no evidence that women’s limited influence is driven by lower deliberative quality of their speeches. This study of gendered dynamics at the micro-level of discourse identifies a novel dimension of male domination during peace-making
Parliament Strikes Back: Agenda-setting and Power Voids in Early Representative Assemblies
No full textPrevious research has sought to explain the emergence and predominance of early representative assemblies over monarchs. Yet, how parliamentarians behaved during the struggles for power remains largely unknown. We contend that parliamentary elites used periods of uncertainty to set the political agenda and show their strive for sovereignty. We test this claim on seventeenth century England using activities reported in the Journals of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. In addition, we implement a novel strategy of measuring institutional power based on entropy of topic shares in daily records of parliamentary activity. Our results show that elites strategically used power voids to expand their attention to a wider set of topics, increase their pressure on the monarch and present themselves as rulers which were ready to govern. Our findings have important implications for our understanding of early and contemporary representative assemblies
Parliament Strikes Back: Agenda-setting and Power Voids in Early Representative Assemblies
No full textReplication Data for: Gender, Justice and Deliberation: Why Women Don't Influence Peacemaking
No full textScholars have pinpointed that women's underrepresentation in peacemaking results in gendered outcomes that do not address women's needs and interests. Despite recent increased representation at the negotiating table, women still have a limited influence on peacemaking outcomes. We propose that differences in female and male speeches reflected in the gendered patterns in discourse during peacemaking explain how women's influence is curtailed. We examine women's speaking behavior in transitional justice debates in the post-conflict Balkans. Applying multimethod quantitative text analysis to over half a million words in multiple languages, we analyze structural and thematic speech patterns. We find that men's domination of turn-taking and the absence of topics reflecting women's needs and interests lead to a gendered outcome. The sequences of men talking after men are longer than those of women talking after women, which restricts women's deliberative space and opportunities to develop and sustain arguments that reflect their concerns. We find no evidence that women's limited influence is driven by lower deliberative quality of their speeches. This study of gendered dynamics at the microlevel of discourse identifies a novel dimension of male domination during peacemaking
Parliament Strikes Back: Agenda-setting and Power Voids in Early Representative Assemblies
No full text
