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Virtually all social scientists claim to know about the strength of political beliefs & preferences is based on category scaling. When category & magnitude scales of opinion strength are compared -- either in measuring the perceived strength of physical stimuli or in the evaluation of social-psychological stimuli -- magnitude scaling is almost invariably found to be superior in terms of providing quantitative information about the intensity of people's impressions, preferences, & judgments. An attempt is made to describe magnitude scaling in sufficient detail to provide political scientists with the conceptual basis for appraising the relative costs & benefits of magnitude scaling & to detail the procedural wherewithal so they can employ magnitude scaling in their research. 4 Tables, 4 Figures, 1 Appendix, 49 References. HA.

Despite repeated attacks on various figures of authority and political leaders such as Saddam Hussein, the scholarly debates in the law of armed conflict have not given much attention to an analysis of if, and if so, when, state and political leadership may be subject to lawful attack, or the question of when physical objects associated with exercising of the official functions contributing to the prosecution of military operations can satisfy the criteria of the definition of military objectives. Whilst examining various positions of leadership, such as Prime Ministers and political party figures, it is argued that there is a relationship between the character and the scope of the activity of such individuals, which may impact a legal assessment of the objects used or intended to be used in the furtherance of such functions. The existence of such relationships is best demonstrated by the example of individuals vested with the Commander-in-Chief functions. This Article demonstrates, contrary to previous assertions in the literature, that their status will be based either on their membership in armed forces or on their conduct constituting direct participation in hostilities. The result of such assessment could result in opposing outcomes of legal evaluation of the infrastructure associated with activity of such individuals, with possibly far-reaching consequences of incorrect application of the principle of distinction in armed conflict.

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Introduction: The Canon of Political Thought -- 1 Plato's Republic: The Debate over Justice Begins -- 2 The Students Revolt against Utopia -- 3 Out of the Cave and into the Light-and Back Again? -- 4 Beyond Plato's Tragic Republic -- 5 Aristotle's Ethics: The Habits of Virtue -- 6 Aristotle's Politics: Severed Hands and Political Animals -- 7 Augustine and the Problem of Evil -- 8 Machiavelli's Dirty Hands -- 9 Hobbes and the Kingdom of Means -- 10 Locke, Liberalism, and the Possessive Life -- 11 Rousseau and the Rustic -- 12 Rousseau and the Political -- 13 Kant's Crooked Timber -- 14 John Stuart Mill and the Demands of Individuality -- 15 Hegel, Marx, and the Owl of Minerva -- 16 The Revival of Political Theory -- Conclusion: The Passion for Politics -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index

In recent years, the study of American political history has experienced a remarkable renaissance. After decades during which the subject fell out of fashion and disappeared from public view, it has returned to prominence as the study of American history has shifted its focus back to politics broadly defined. In this book, one of the leaders of the resurgence in American political history, Julian Zelizer, assesses its revival and demonstrates how this work not only illuminates the past but also helps us better understand American politics today.

We investigate the dynamics of political systems in a framework where transitions are driven by reforms and revolts, and where political systems are a priori unconstrained, ranging continuously from single-man dictatorships to full-scale democracies. The dynamics are governed by the likelihood of transitions and their outcome, which are both determined endogenously. We find that reforms and revolts result in extreme political systems - reforms by enfranchising the majority of the population leading to democracies, and revolts by installing autocracies. Reinforcing this polarization, extreme political systems are persistent across time: Democracies are intrinsically stable, leading to long episodes without political change. Autocracies, in contrast, are subject to frequent regime changes. Nevertheless they are persistent, since ensuing revolts lead to autocracies comparable to their predecessors. Taken together, our results suggest that the long-run distribution of political systems is bimodal with mass concentrated on the extremes. The dynamics are consistent with cross-country data.

Efforts to reform the U.S. campaign finance system typically focus on the corrupting influence of large contributions. Yet, as Raymond J. La Raja and Brian F. Schaffner argue, reforms aimed at cutting the flow of money into politics have unintentionally favored candidates with extreme ideological agendas and, consequently, fostered political polarization. Drawing on data from 50 states and the U.S. Congress over 20 years, La Raja and Schaffner reveal that current rules allow wealthy ideological groups and donors to dominate the financing of political campaigns. In order to attract funding, candidates take uncompromising positions on key issues and, if elected, take their partisan views into the legislature. As a remedy, the authors propose that additional campaign money be channeled through party organizations—rather than directly to candidates—because these organizations tend to be less ideological than the activists who now provide the lion's share of money to political candidates. Shifting campaign finance to parties would ease polarization by reducing the influence of "purist" donors with their rigid policy stances. La Raja and Schaffner conclude the book with policy recommendations for campaign finance in the United States. They are among the few non-libertarians who argue that less regulation, particularly for political parties, may in fact improve the democratic process.

This number of the IJLTFES - International Journal of Latest Trends in Finance and Economic Sciences is dedicated specifically to Political Economy of Land Reform. The discussion involving these subjects comprises several authors who have contributed to this number of the Journal with their work and to whom the Editors would like to thank for their participation. After this recognition, it is suitable to thank also to all the reviewers for their contributions for the improvement of the Journal's issue. ; info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

There is still no broad consensus on the extent to which racial prejudice influences white Americans' political attitudes, in part because of an ongoing dispute over the nature and measurement of racial prejudice. We review measures of new, subtle forms of racism toward African-Americans and consider criticism that such views do not clearly constitute racial prejudice despite their political impact. We then evaluate a number of ways in which explicit prejudice can be assessed in surveys, highlighting the continued existence and successful measurement of overt prejudice. We also consider ways to measure prejudice other than direct survey questions. Social psychologists have gravitated to the measurement of implicit racial attitudes, an approach that we review critically as potentially interesting but with unknown payoff for political researchers. Finally, we discuss the value of experiments as a way to gain direct evidence of politically potent racial discrimination and assess the prejudicial nature of explicit racial attitudes.

There is still no broad consensus on the extent to which racial prejudice influences white Americans' political attitudes, in part because of an ongoing dispute over the nature & measurement of racial prejudice. We review measures of new, subtle forms of racism toward African-Americans & consider criticism that such views do not clearly constitute racial prejudice despite their political impact. We then evaluate a number of ways in which explicit prejudice can be assessed in surveys, highlighting the continued existence & successful measurement of overt prejudice. We also consider ways to measure prejudice other than direct survey questions. Social psychologists have gravitated to the measurement of implicit racial attitudes, an approach that we review critically as potentially interesting but with unknown payoff for political researchers. Finally, we discuss the value of experiments as a way to gain direct evidence of politically potent racial discrimination & assess the prejudicial nature of explicit racial attitudes. Adapted from the source document.

International audience ; The paper introduces an annotation scheme for a political debate dataset which is mainly in the form of video, and audio annotations. The annotation contains various infor- mation ranging from general linguistic to domain specific information. Some are annotated with automatic tools, and some are manually annotated. One of the goals is to use the information to predict the categories of the answers by the speaker to the disruptions. A typology of such answers is proposed and an automatic categorization system based on a multimodal parametrization is successfully performed.

International audience ; The paper introduces an annotation scheme for a political debate dataset which is mainly in the form of video, and audio annotations. The annotation contains various infor- mation ranging from general linguistic to domain specific information. Some are annotated with automatic tools, and some are manually annotated. One of the goals is to use the information to predict the categories of the answers by the speaker to the disruptions. A typology of such answers is proposed and an automatic categorization system based on a multimodal parametrization is successfully performed.