scholarly journals What prevents knowledge inequalities among citizens from increasing? Evidence from direct-democratic campaigns in Switzerland

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laurent Bernhard

This article seeks to enrich the normative debate on the advantages and drawbacks of direct democracy through an empirical analysis of individual learning about the contents of ballot propositions during campaigns. Following the knowledge gap paradigm, this article examines the factors that prevent socio-economic- knowledge inequalities among citizens from increasing. I argue that ballot propositions of low complexity exert a moderating influence, since such environments provide citizens with easy learning situations. The empirical analysis, based on panel survey data on three federal level votes that took place in Switzerland from 2006 to 2008, supports the issue complexity hypothesis.

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-305
Author(s):  
Laurent Bernhard

This article seeks to advance the underdeveloped literature on coalitions in direct democracy by considering intra-camp coalitions (ICC) at the level of political elites. The binary format of ballot measures leads to the formation of two opposing camps (i.e., supporters and opponents). However, political actors who belong to a given camp are not obliged to work with each other in the course of direct-democratic campaigns. I argue that the formation of ICC is ideologically driven, as political actors may be inclined to more closely cooperate with those actors who share their beliefs. Therefore, I expect that the actors of a given camp will create ideologically more homogeneous coalitions. The empirical analysis focuses on the salient issue of asylum by examining the cooperative ties between political organizations that participated in two Swiss referendum campaigns. Drawing on the CONCOR algorithm, I identify the actor compositions of the four camps in question. I show that the organizations that form the two main ICC on either side significantly differ from each other in terms of their positioning on the left-right scale. Hence, actors who campaign on the same side tend to separate into coalitions that are ideologically more homogeneous.


2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-292
Author(s):  
Hye-Kyung Oh ◽  
Mi-Suk Ko

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of multicultural adolescents’ career barriers on depression focused on mediating effect of parent’s rearing attitudes and relationship between multicultural adolescents and teachers.Methods: The empirical analysis data of this study was extracted from the 8th Multicultural Adolescents Panel Survey. The subjects of this study were 1194 multicultural adolescents. The data were analyzed with Pearson’s correlation coefficient and regression analysis.Results: The significant factor related to supervision (B=-0.26, p<0.001) and negligence (B=0.31, p<0.001) of parent’s attitudes and relationship with teachers (B=-0.43, p<0.001) included perceived career barriers. Negligence of parent’s rearing attitude (B=0.21, p<0.001) increased depression while supervision of parent’s rearing attitude (B=-0.14, p<0.001) and relationship with teachers (B=-0.06, p<0.01) decreased depression. Parent’s rearing attitudes and relationship with teachers were mediators between career barriers and depression.Conclusions: Based on the results of this study, it is desirable to reduce the level of depression by lowering the career barriers, parent’s rearing attitude (negligence), and by increasing the parent’s rearing attitude (supervision) and relationship with teachers (adaptation). It is suggested to develop effective educational programs to decrease the depression level of multicultural adolescents.


Author(s):  
Marlene Mauk

This chapter prepares the empirical analysis by approaching the key methodological issues associated with a global comparison of regime support and its individual- and system-level sources in democracies and autocracies. It presents the study’s case selection, regime classification, and research strategy. Drawing on survey data from six cross-national survey projects and macro data from various sources, it introduces the data employed in the empirical analysis. The chapter continues to describe the operationalization of the main variables and explicates how regime support can be measured in a comparable way across regime types as institutional confidence in government, parliament, police, and army. Finally, it discusses the validity of the data in light of the challenges associated with conducting survey research in autocracies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 99-115
Author(s):  
Borislav Marušić ◽  
Sanda Katavić-Čaušić

Abstract The aim of this paper is to research the word class adjective in one sequence of the ESP: Business English, more precisely English business magazines online. It is an empirical study on the corpus taken from a variety of business magazines online. The empirical analysis allows a comprehensive insight into the word class adjective in this variety of Business English and makes its contribution to English syntax, semantics and word formation. The syntactic part analyses the adjective position in the sentence. The semantic part of the study identifies the most common adjectives that appear in English business magazines online. Most of the analysis is devoted to the word formation of the adjectives found in the corpus. The corpus is analysed in such a way that it enables its division into compounds, derivatives and conversions. The results obtained in this way will give a comprehensive picture of the word class adjective in this type of Business English and can act as a starting point for further research of the word class adjective.


2019 ◽  
Vol 118 (3) ◽  
pp. 178-188
Author(s):  
Yeon-Sung Cho ◽  
Kyung-Il Khoe

This study intends to integrate the relationship of market orientation, innovative capacity and firm performance to Information and Communication Technology(ICT) SMEs. The purpose of this study is to identify the role of absorptive capacity and transformative capacity that affect the performance of ICT SMEs. Hypotheses were established between five latent variables. A total of six hypotheses were established including the moderated effects of absorptive capacity and transformative capacity. Of the data collected after the survey, 112 valid surveys were selected as the final sample, except for 17 questionnaires with high non - response and insincere response. The empirical analysis of this study used smartpls3.0, Partial Least Squares (PLS), a variance-based structural equation modeling. The empirical analysis of this study revealed that the impact of market orientation on innovative capacity was significant. Moreover, the innovative capacity had a positive effect on the performance of ICT SMEs. In addition, the absorptive activity had a positive moderated effect between the market orientation and the innovative capacity. On the other hand, the transformative capacity showed a positive moderated effect in relation to innovative capacity and firm performance. Our empirical results have demonstrated the importance of knowledge based capacity in the ICT SMEs.


Author(s):  
Harvinder Singh Mand ◽  
Manjit Singh

This paper intends to measure the impact of capital structure on EPS (earnings per share) in Indian corporate sector. Fifteen control variables along with capital structure have been selected to know their impact on EPS. Panel data regression has been applied to establish the relationship among dependent and independent variables. It is found from the empirical analysis that the relation of capital structure with EPS has been statistically insignificant in Indian corporate sector among all specific industries except telecommunication industry. The results are consistent with Modigliani-Miller approach.


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