Variable-Length Class Sequences Based on a Hierarchical Approach: MCnv

International audienceIn this paper, we describe a new language model based on dependent word sequences organized in multi-level hierarchy. We call this model MCnv, where n is the maximum number of words in a sequence and $\nu$ is the maximum number of levels. The originality of this model is its capability to take into account dependent variable-length sequences for very large vocabulary. In order to discover the variable-length sequences and to build the hierarchy, we use a set of 233 syntactic classes extracted from the eight French elementary grammatical classes. The MCnv model learns hierarchical word patterns and uses them to reevaluate and filter the n-best utterance hypotheses outputed by our speech recognizer MAUD. The model have been trained on a corpus (LeM) of 43 million of words extracted from ``Le Monde'' a French newspapers and uses a vocabulary of 20000 words. Tests have been conducted on 300 sentences. Results achieved 17% decrease in perplexity compared to an interpolated class trigram model. Rescoring the original n-best hypotheses results also in an improvement of 5% in accuracy

Populist leadership in the context of globalisation: a comparative study of President Chávez of Venezuela and ex-President Fujimori of Peru

This thesis is an examination of the similarities and differences between ex-President Alberto Fujimori of Peru and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela using the literature on populism to provide a comparative framework. It compares both presidents, in a qualitative manner, by examining the socio-political context in both countries, the causes for the emergence of both regimes, their ideological and programmatic characteristics, and the consequences they have or might have for their respective countries. The thesis is divided up into six chapters, with an Introduction and Conclusion. In the first chapter, the thesis examines the literature on populism in order to construct an analytic framework. The thesis then goes on, in the following chapter, to analyse the historical context from which both presidents emerged. In Chapter 3, the economic and social performance of each presidency is investigated and examined, assessing the extent to which each provides the popular classes of their respective countries with a means to participate in these areas of national life. The fourth chapter presents the strategies used by both presidents to gain and maintain power in their respective countries. The relative authoritarianism and democratic characteristics of each president in analysed and assessed in the following chapter, measuring also the extent to which the people of each country participate politically in their country's affairs. In the final chapter the impact and consequences of each president on the respective case countries is examined

Authoritarian Inheritance and Conservative Party-Building in Latin America

Beginning in the late 1970s, with the onset of the third wave of democratization, a host of new conservative parties emerged in Latin America. The trajectories of these parties varied tremendously. While some went on to enjoy long-term electoral success, others failed to take root. The most successful new conservative parties all shared a surprising characteristic: they had deep roots in former dictatorships. They were "authoritarian successor parties," or parties founded by high-level incumbents of authoritarian regimes that continue to operate after a transition to democracy. What explains variation in conservative party-building outcomes in Latin America since the onset of the third wave, and why were the most successful new conservative parties also authoritarian successor parties? This study answers these questions by developing a theory of "authoritarian inheritance." It argues that, paradoxically, close links to former dictatorships may, under some circumstances, be the key to party-building success. This is because authoritarian successor parties sometimes inherit resources from the old regime that are useful under democracy. The study examines five potential resources: party brand, territorial organization, clientelistic networks, business connections and a source of cohesion rooted in a history of joint struggle. New conservative parties that lack such inheritance face a more daunting task. Such parties may have better democratic credentials, but they are likely to have worse democratic prospects. This argument is developed through an analysis of four parties: Chile's Independent Democratic Union (UDI), Argentina's Union of the Democratic Center (UCEDE), El Salvador's Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and Guatemala's Party of National Advancement (PAN). Drawing on interview and archival data gathered during 15 months of fieldwork in five countries, this study contributes to three literatures. First, as the first book-length comparison of conservative parties in Latin America, it contributes to the literature on Latin American politics. Second, by developing a new theory of how successful new parties may emerge--the theory of authoritarian inheritance--it contributes to the literature on party-building. Third, by developing the concept of authoritarian successor parties, it sheds light on a common but underappreciated vestige of authoritarian rule and, in this way, contributes to the literature on regimes.Governmen

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, PARTIES, AND THE LEFT IN LATIN AMERICA: THE BOLIVIAN MAS (MOVEMENT TOWARD SOCIALISM) IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

There have been several important cases of movement-based parties that rose rapidly in popularity and were able to attain national power in new democracies. Existing theories predict these parties will become increasingly top-down organizations designed to preserve and enhance the power of party elites, a trend that is usually aggravated when parties govern nationally. The Bolivian MAS deviates from this conventional wisdom, as it has followed a remarkably different organizational trajectory that has facilitated grassroots impact and constrained elite control. Through a within-case comparative examination of the MAS, this study identifies necessary conditions and explains mechanisms facilitating this outcome in the crucial areas of candidate selection and national policy-making. The study finds that a set of historical legacies traceable to a party's origins and structural elements associated with the density of civil society heavily affect power distributions within governing movement-based parties. Both elements can facilitate the emergence of opposition among allied groups that can check power from within and keep open channels for agenda setting from below. The realization of this potential, as this study argues, depends heavily on the organizational strength, unity, and mobilization capacity of allied groups in civil society. The analysis reveals that movement-based parties are remarkably flexible organizations whose boundaries with allied groups in civil society tend to be fluid and empirically blurred. The empirical basis for this argument derives, first, from a wealth of qualitative data collected in Bolivia, where I conducted twelve months of fieldwork in different regions of the country. During that time, I conducted over 170 in-depth interviews with party elites at the national, state, and municipal levels, as well as with a wide variety of civil society actors, including union leaders, activists, opposition politicians, and others. Second, cross-national comparisons with the experiences of the Brazilian Workers' Party (PT) and the Uruguayan Broad Front (FA) improve the overall evidentiary base of this study. They also help to further support the theoretical claims about the importance of historical and structural factors for shaping the degree of power concentration in movement-based parties.Doctor of Philosoph

A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN POLYCLASS AND MULTICLASS LANGUAGE MODELS

International audienceIn this work, we introduce the concept of Multiclass for language modeling and we compare it to the Polyclass model. The originality of the Multiclass is its capability to parse a string of classes/tags into variable length independent sequences. A few experimental tests were carried out on a class corpus extracted from the French « Le Monde » word corpus labeled automatically. This corpus contains a set of 43 million of words. In our experiments, Multiclass outperform first-order Polyclass but are slightly outperformed by second-order Polyclass