The rise and fall of party leaders: exploring leadership selection, re-selection, and de-selection using qualitative comparative analysis

The main purpose of this paper is to detect the reasons for party leaders' persistence or departure from the office, starting from the moment they are selected or re-selected. More specifically, we try to assess which (if any) characteristics of the leadership race (LR) called to appoint (or re-appoint) the party leader, in combination with other conditions, could favour leadership re-selection in office at the end of the term, rather than a more or less forced early departure. To this end, we have investigated all the LRs promoted by both bigger and smaller parties in four Western European countries over the last three decades. Bridging the literature on leadership selection and leadership survival, we built a theoretical framework that allowed us to turn to an original methodological approach in the field – qualitative comparative analysis – to unravel asymmetrical, equi-final, and conjunctural causation by looking at the combinations of conditions leading to the outcome, namely re-selection or departure from the office. Specifically, we identified five main conditions which are likely to affect the outcome, both alone and in combination with each other: whether there is an outgoing leader running for re-election (incumbency); a broad inclusiveness of the LR called to appoint the party leader; large victory (namely low competitiveness for contested LR or high approval rates for coronation of a single candidate); participation in government during the leadership tenure; and party electoral support (‘big’ mainstream vs. ‘small’ niche/challenger parties).

FACES OF V.M. SHUKSHIN: MARTIN IDEN, HAMLET, STEPAN RAZIN

В статье предлагается концепция жизни и творческого роста В.М. Шукшина сквозь призму тезаурусного и кластерного подходов. Объяснительными «персональными моделями» для интерпретации биографического текста писателя являются кластеры Мартина Идена, Гамлета и Степана Разина. Ранее биографы и литературоведы указывали на важность этих персон для Шукшина, но разрозненно. Впервые предпринята попытка свести указанные персональные модели воедино, в целостный сюжет становления писателя в пространстве культуры. На разных этапах эволюции автора доминирует одна из указанных моделей, последовательно сменяя друг друга, но не вытесняя, а «внахлест». Ранний этап творчества, ориентированный на стратегию Мартина Идена, является попыткой «вписаться» в наличный культурный мейнстрим. Выражено это в следовании поэтике соцреализма. Второй этап подспудно начинается с реабилитации отца Шукшина в 1956 года, когда актуализируется «гамлетовский комплекс», проявляющийся в чувстве вины перед отцом, через стратегию утаивания подлинного «я», мотивы чудаковатости. Третий этап связан с личностью реального исторического лица, Степана Разина, и выражается в открытом протесте против власти. Все важные для В.М. Шукшина поведенческие модели объединены мотивом одинокого противостояния враждебному социуму и имеют трагический финал, что обусловило ранний уход писателя и порождение мифов о насильственном характере его смерти. В.М. Шукшин одновременно был фигурой неординарной и типичной, что позволило его биографии стать «персональной моделью» для последующих авторов, выходцев из сельской глубинки. The article proposes the concept of life and creative growth of V.M. Shukshin through the prism of the thesaurus and cluster approach. The explanatory "personal models" for interpreting the biographical text of the writer are clusters of Martin Eden, Hamlet and Stepan Razin. Earlier, biographers and literary critics pointed out the importance of these people for Shukshin, but it was scattered. For the first time, an attempt was made to bring these personal models together into an integral plot of the formation of the writer in the space of culture. At different stages of the writer’s evolution, one of these models dominates, successively replacing each other, but not crowding out, but “overlapping”. The early stage of creativity, focused on Martin Eden’s strategy, is an attempt to “fit in” the current cultural mainstream. This is expressed in following the poetics of socialist realism. The second stage implicitly begins with the rehabilitation of Shukshin’s father in 1956, when the “Hamletian complex” is actualized. It is manifested in a sense of guilt towards his father, the strategy of concealing the true “I”, eccentricities. The third stage is connected with the personality of a real historical person, Stepan Razin, and is expressed in an open protest against the authorities. All important for V.M. Shukshin's behavioral models are united by the motive of a lonely confrontation with a hostile society and have a tragic ending, which led to the early departure of the writer and the generation of myths about the violent nature of his death. V.M. Shukshin was an extraordinary and typical figure at the same time. That allowed his biography to become a “personal model” for subsequent authors who came from the rural outback.

Word Use as an Unobtrusive Predictor of Early Departure From Organizations

Past studies have emphasized members’ personality as an important predictor of departure from organizations, but the measurement of this factor has mostly relied on self-judged personality. As alternatives to self-judged personality, our study examines how two unobtrusive measures—others-judged personality and computerized text analytic results through Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2015 (Pennebaker et al., 2015)—are related to members’ departure from organizations ( N = 49). Drawing from internal personnel evaluations (i.e., others-judged personality), text (i.e., self-introduction documents that applicants submitted when applying to the organization), and behavioral data (i.e., actual stay in the organization), this study indicates that unobtrusive measures significantly predict members’ length of stay and that simultaneous use of both measures better predicts members’ length of stay in the organization than either one separately. However, text analytic results through Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2015 predict members’ departure more robustly. This study expands the theoretical meaning of personality and provides practical ways to predict people’s organizational behaviors.

Factors influencing the intention of students at a selected TVET college in the Western Cape to complete their National Certificate (Vocational) Business Studies programme

Student dropout, also called ‘early departure’, is a significant problem in South Africa’s post-school education and training (PSET) landscape, specifically in the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) sector. The challenge of student retention and programme completion (the antithesis of dropping out) is equally significant and important to TVET institutions, the state department responsible (Department of Higher Education and Training) and the South African economy. Early departure negatively influences the success rates of educational institutions. It also influences the chances of personal employment and financial well-being of individual students, causing financial ripple effects on society and government. Students’ decisions to remain or leave college or a programme are influenced by a variety of individual and social factors, both internal and external, including people close to the students and the policies, systems and structures within which students interact. These factors also encompass the quality and friendliness of teachers, social interaction with teachers and peers, and the role played by friends in academic achievement. This article reports on a study of student perspectives on the internal and external factors that influence their retention in, and completion of, a TVET college Business Studies National Certificate (Vocational) (NC(V)) programme in the Western Cape, South Africa. An improved understanding of student experiences, intentions, and decision-making processes leading to persistence provides a foundation for improving student retention and programme completion in a TVET environment.

Emergence and dispersal of snakes after syntopic hibernation

A communal hibernaculum situated in Southwestern Bulgaria and its adjacent area (4 km in diameter) was studied. Seven snake species used this hibernating den, Malpoloninsignitus, Dolichophiscaspius, Platycepsnajadum, Elaphequatuorlineata, Telescopusfallax, Viperaammodytes and Xerotyphlopsvermicularis. The emergence of the snakes was related to the rise of daily temperatures. Malpoloninsignitus emerged from hibernation earlier in the spring than the other species, and most individuals were the first to leave the hibernaculum. There was a temporal segregation among the basking area in early spring, between the latter species and D.caspius, which were the two most abundant species. These two species also used the same area of the hibernaculum, in contrast to P.najadum and E.quatuorlineata, which used a different area. After spring dispersal, M.insignitus and D.caspius used the same microhabitats during the rest of the active period. The earlier emergence of M.insignitus (and earlier departure from the site) probably reduces the competition for basking sites. The early departure of the species may give advantage in the competition for optimal microhabitats with D.caspius.

Estimating the Crowd Size of a Rally by Crowdsourcing-Geocomputation

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Dynamic population estimation – counting people in a special event (e.g. rally, sport events, evacuation) has been challenging because a large crowd is difficult to acquire an accurate count manually as people can join and leave the crowd at any time and place. In the context of a rally where people are moving on the streets over an extended period, it is often difficult to answer some questions with regards to confine the phenomenon, including but not limited to: When and where does the rally start/end precisely? Who are the attendees (e.g. activists, spectators, organizers, police, opposing crowd(s), etc.)? How does the confining environment affect stochastic human behaviours, interactions and movements over time and space? What is the count (e.g. peak attendance, total count)?</p><p>Nevertheless, estimating the attendance of these dynamic events could be emotionally and politically charged. Due to these practical uncertainties of dynamic population estimation, the attendance of annual July 1st Rally in Hong Kong reported by the police and organizers could be very different as it often became a bluffing game to promote hidden political agenda. For example, the police estimated a peak attendance of 9,800 in the 2017 July 1st Rally, whereas the organizers reported five times the attendance at about 50,000. Independent researchers from the University of Hong Kong estimated the total attendance of 14,170 (Yip, 2017) and 29,000 (HKUPOP, 2017) respectively. With limited field observations, it is hard to examine the accuracy and confident level of these reported counts.</p><p>This research aims to estimate the total attendance of 2017 July 1st Rally in Hong Kong and examine the counts reported by various stakeholders. Based on many stories reported by the public and social media, the timeline of the rally event was reconstructed to trace the observed rally time of the head and tail crowds participated in the rally event. Important geospatial features, including the street network, approved protest areas and entry/exit gateways along the main rally route, were reconstructed in the Geographic Information System (GIS). This study adopted a crowdsourcing-geocomputation approach to simulate how a dynamic crowd would have navigated in such as rally event (Chow, 2019). Using a mobile application that tracks individual trajectory, volunteers were recruited to contribute valuable in-situ data of dynamic human movements and behaviours attending the rally event. These data were used to formulate and calibrate the parameters of a computational cartographic model where each rally attendees were represented as a moving agent (x, y, t) confined in a micro spatial environment where the protesters marched from Victoria Park to the Government Headquarter in Hong Kong. Hence, individual GPS (Global Positioning System) trajectory during the rally was collected and converted into GIS data format for further analysis. More details about the data collection and processing can be found on the project website (https://chowte.wixsite.com/dynamicpop). By leveraging a large number of observations volunteered by crowdsourcing, this study attempted to answer the research question: <i>What might be the simulated crowd size that reasonable range of model parameters can be converged?</i></p><p> Using this crowdsoucing-geocomputation model, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to simulate varying model parameters, including maximum walking speed, maximum crowd density, early departure and late entry rates. Based on the reported count reported by the police, organizers and independent researchers, various crowd sizes were simulated to be compared against the observed rally time of 209 minutes (i.e. about 3.5 hours) from start to finish. Using the crowdsourced data for calibration, most rally models simulated an arrival time of head crowd between 106&amp;ndash;108 minutes, which was very close to the observed rally time of head crowd of 107 minutes. In this study, crowd sizes were considered to be acceptable based on a 95% confidence interval of arrival time of tail crowd (i.e. 174&amp;ndash;192 minutes) and total rally time (i.e. 199&amp;ndash;219 minutes). For example, a crowd size of 9,800 people was simulated matching the total rally time to examine the credibility of calibrated model parameters (Figure 1).</p><p> Within the tested range of calibrated model parameters, the results indicated that it was possible to tweak the model parameters of varying crowd size to match the observed rally time (Table 1). Despite the simulated rally time of some accepted models were within ±5% of the observed rally time, the parameters used to simulate such a model were not necessary reasonable in reality. The simulated count of 9,800, for example, would require a cap of maximum walking speed of 0.5&amp;thinsp;m/s, which seemed to be unreasonably slow under normal circumstance and incompatible with crowdsourced data (Figure 1). Given the observed rally time, it was found that the crowd sizes of 14,000&amp;ndash;29,000 could be simulated with reasonable model parameters, whereas the crowd sizes of 9,800 and 50,000 would yield unreasonable model parameters. Taking the median within the range of 14,000&amp;ndash;29,000, this study also found that a crowd size of 21,000 could yield eight matching simulations with varying reasonable model parameters that may be better simulate the actual rally attendance.</p><p>This paper provided empirical evidences to examined the credibility of various crowd sizes of the 2017 July 1st Rally in Hong Kong reported by the stakeholders. The research also presents a transparent, repeatable and verifiable approach to explore, quantify and simulate human movements in a rally event, such as the early departure and late arrival, to better understand dynamic crowd behaviours and interactions.</p>