Journals are currently 'ranked' by their influential 'impact factor' and their 'total number of cites' -- both published by Thomson, the company producing and selling the (Social) Science Citation Index. This article suggests an alternative view and ranks political science journals according to the number of articles published within a period of time that have 'frequently' been cited. Adapted from the source document.
Der Beitrag geht davon aus, dass Prognosefähigkeit für Theorien des Wandels von besonderer Bedeutung ist. Dabei werden die Probleme der Disziplin mit Prognosen einerseits und ihre mangelnde Bereitschaft, selbst mehrfach falsifizierte Theorien aufzugeben, andererseits thematisiert. Bestätigt wird außerdem die These Imre Lakatos, derzufolge Theorien nicht wegen ihrer Widerlegung, sondern nur aufgrund des Auftauchens einer besseren Theorie aufgegeben werden. Der Autor kritisiert das dominierende Konzept von Wandel in Gestalt verschiedener Versionen der Theorie hegemonialer Stabilität und zeigt auf, wie die ursprüngliche Theorie unter dem Eindruck der beinahe regelmäßigen Widerlegung ihrer Hypothesen zunehmend weniger prognosefähig wurde. Sodann werden die in der Literatur genannten Indikatoren der zuletzt formulierten Theorie, der Regionalisierungsthese, mit der Empirie konfrontiert. Mit Lakatos empfiehlt es sich daher, das Machtparadigma als Theorie des Wandels aufzugeben und nach Alternativen zu schauen. In einem zweiten Teil werden einige Kriterien der Prognosefähigkeit von Theorie diskutiert. Die abschließenden Überlegungen zu Defiziten und Fehlern fordern auf, Theoriebildung als Prozess des "Versuchs und Irrtums" zu verstehen und theoriegeleitete Prognosen mit Hilfe von empirisch zu beobachtenden Entwicklungen zu überprüfen. (ICH)
Scientific progress in social sciences is almost solely reflected in the publications of international journals. The Social Science Citation Index is the source for calculations of scientific publication activities & the number of citations. This article describes the publication efficiency & the reception success of German political science in three different aggregation levels: (1) a comparison between the number of German publications & the number of publications of other non-English-speaking European countries; (2) a comparison between the number of publications of German universities & research institutions in the evaluated journals; & (3) an evaluation of publications of exclusively political science departments & institutes. The results are tabulated and recommendations by the academy council are presented. 4 Tables, 2 Figures, 8 References. E. Sanchez
Analyzes the widely debated impact of democracy on economic growth. It is argued that an increase in political participation causes a shift in the support-seeking strategies of opportunistic governments. Pure autocrats rationally ensure political support by providing rents to a small group of supporters. With growing political participation, however, public goods become a more efficient political instrument. While rents are assumed to be economically neutral, public goods have a positive impact on economic performance. Hence, growing participation in autocracies is related to higher growth rates of per capita income. These hypotheses are supported by statistical data, 1970-1988. 4 Tables, 2 Figures, 1 Appendix, 42 References. Adapted from the source document.
The debate between neorealism & neoinstitutionalism rests -- beyond all differences -- on common assumptions about the nature of the international system & actors behavior. The conception of states as rational & self-interested actors has proved fairly stable vis-a-vis its sociological critique. In this context, the author wants to show that the utilitarian approach can be reformulated more realistically. Rational-choice approaches are able to accommodate their critics without giving up the core concept of a decision-based theory. Following the widely accepted assumption of bounded rationality & the adoption of theorems that are developed within the context of psychological economics, a modified rational-choice concept makes a noneclectical integration of structural & functional approaches possible. Considering the concept of quasi-rationality, the article concludes with a discussion of the role & function of institutions for international cooperation. Adapted from the source document.
In this commentary, we make the case that the analysis of terrorism and counterterrorism must be based on an integrated theory that links both issues together. Terrorist groups' ultimate goals must be distinguished from their strategic goals and the strategic logic by which they employ terror and select targets to further their ultimate goals. The strategic logic of terrorism is thus key to understanding patterns of terrorism and the counter-reaction by governments against it. We make the case for a unified approach and suggest major areas for future research. Adapted from the source document.
Health policies seek to achieve conflicting objectives. We argue that the objective of saving lives is best served by a careful balancing of fairness and efficiency considerations. Open, fair, and equitable access to health care for all citizens will lower overall mortality rates by enabling the very poor and chronically ill to satisfy their demand for necessary health care. But it will also result in higher costs, not least by also increasing demand for irrelevant, unnecessary, and inefficient health care. This undesirable demand and its associated costs can be reduced by increasing out-of-pocket contributions paid for by patients. Such payments are unpopular, though, as they are regarded as regressive and damaging to health of the relatively poor. We argue that properly enacted, no such apparent trade-offs exist. If the freed-up resources are used for more life-saving measures, then higher out-of-pocket contributions will lower overall mortality rates. However, this beneficial effect is conditional on what happens to total health spending. Ironically, out-of-pocket payments are most effective as health policies if they are not or only hardly used as a means of reducing total health expenditures. Our theoretical arguments are confirmed by an econometric analysis of aggregate mortality rates in OECD countries over the period 1984 to 2007. Adapted from the source document.
The authors discuss how scholars can bring theories of spatial policy dependence and empirical model specifications closer in line so that the empirical analysis actually tests the theoretical predictions. Comprehensive theories of spatial policy dependence typically suggest that the jurisdictions receiving spatial stimuli systematically differ in their exposure to such signals as a function of the intensity of their interaction with other jurisdictions. Similarly, theories often predict that governments also differ in their responsiveness to any given spatial stimulus as a function of the institutional, political, economic, or social context in which they operate. In other words, theories typically postulate that spatial dependence is conditional on exposure and responsiveness, neither of which is accounted for in the standard empirical practice of estimating one single common coefficient for a row-standardized spatial lag variable. The authors show how scholars can adequately model both forms of heterogeneity with properly specified interaction effects models.
This paper adopts and develops the "fear of floating" theory to explain the decision to implement a de facto peg, the choice of anchor currency among multiple key currencies, and the role of central bank independence for these choices. We argue that since exchange rate depreciations are passed-through into higher prices of imported goods, avoiding the import of inflation provides an important motive to de facto peg the exchange rate in import-dependent countries. This study shows that the choice of anchor currency is determined by the degree of dependence of the potentially pegging country on imports from the key currency country and on imports from the key currency area, consisting of all countries which have already pegged to this key currency. The fear of floating approach also predicts that countries with more independent central banks are more likely to de facto peg their exchange rate since independent central banks are more averse to inflation than governments and can de facto peg a country's exchange rate independently of the government. Adapted from the source document.
Terrorism is an instrument for groups that cannot achieve their political goals legally. One important strategic function of terrorism is to weaken the government - either directly by attacking representatives or supporters of the government or indirectly by causing a political response that is unpopular among the population. Often, however, political stability of the home government is buttressed by foreign powers. In this case, the terrorists can have a strategic interest in attacking nationals of these foreign countries. This article analyses this logic by looking at international alliances as a proxy for international support. If the friend of my enemy is my enemy, then terror entrepreneurs, which seek to overthrow their home country's government (the enemy), may find it attractive to target nationals of the foreign allies of their country (the friends of the enemy). The theory in this article predicts that attacking nationals of a foreign ally is particularly attractive if this ally is militarily more powerful than the home country. Moreover, the combined effect of alliance and relative power differentials becomes stronger the more democratic the ally and becomes weaker the more democratic the terrorists' home country. Empirical support for the hypotheses in this article is found in an analysis of a directed country dyad sample of international terrorism. Adapted from the source document.
AbstractPolitical units often spatially depend in their policy choices on other units. This also holds in dyadic settings where, as in much of international relations research, analysis focuses on the interaction or relation between a pair or dyad of two political units. Yet, with few exceptions, social scientists have analyzed contagion in monadic datasets only, consisting of individual political units. This article categorizes all possible forms of spatial effect modeling in both undirected and directed dyadic data, where it is possible to distinguish the source and the target of interaction (for example, exporter/importer, aggressor/victim, and so on). This approach enables scholars to formulate and test novel mechanisms of contagion, thus ideally paving the way for studies analyzing spatial dependence between dyads of political units. To illustrate the modeling flexibility gained from an understanding of the full set of specification options for spatial effects in dyadic data, we examine the diffusion of bilateral investment treaties between developed and developing countries, building and extending on Elkins, Guzman, and Simmons's 2006 study. However, we come to different conclusions about the channels through which bilateral investment treaties diffuse. Rather than a capital-importing country being influenced by the total number of BITs signed by other capital importers, as modeled in their original article, we find that a capital-importing country is more likely to sign a BIT with a capital exporter only if other competing capital importers have signed BITs with this very same capital exporter. Similarly, other capital exporters' BITs with a specific capital importer influence an exporter's incentive to agree on a BIT with the very same capital importer.
