Credible change exploring the bases of state reform in new democracies

The essay starts from the assumption that institutions can be conceived of as patterns of expectation and thus that changing institutions requires changing expectations. According to its central hypothesis, the key to such expectational changes reads credibility: People correct their predictions about the ways others behave only when they have good reasons to do so. It suggests that three conditions must be fulfilled to render institutional reforms credible and thus effective: First, institutional reformers have to devise sound incentives compatible with the assumption that actors are self-concerned utility maximizers. Second, institutional reformers need sound moral credentials. They have to build solid images of moral integrity. Third, new institutions have to be built upon sound material bases. They demand skills, money, and technology. Yet, as the paper lines out in its conclusion, the ultimate proof of any institutional cake is eating it. Inconsistent performance devalues ex post any investment of trust eventually granted ex ante

Audiovisual Correlates of Interrogativity: A Comparative Analysis of Catalan and Dutch

Abstract Languages employ different strategies to mark an utterance as a polar (yes-no) question, including syntax, intonation and gestures. This study analyzes the production and perception of information-seeking questions and broad focus statements in Dutch and Catalan. These languages use intonation for marking questionhood, but Dutch also exploits syntactic variation for this purpose. A production task revealed the expected languagespecific auditory differences, but also showed that gaze and eyebrow-raising are used in this distinction. A follow-up perception experiment revealed that perceivers relied greatly on auditory information in determining whether an utterance is a question or a statement, but accuracy was further enhanced when visual information was added. Finally, the study demonstrates that the concentration of several response-mobilizing cues in a sentence is positively correlated with the perceivers' ratings of these utterances as interrogatives

Seeing absence

Experiences of absence are recognitions that something is missing from the perceived location or a scene. These perceptions vary in duration and intensity, and occur in the mundane cases, such as seeing no mail in the mailbox, and in the more emotionally-laden cases, such as feeling absence of a loved one. Because of how common these experiences are in daily life, perception of absence should be treated as a core element of basic cognition that has high relevance for the daily functioning of human beings. There is a question, however, whether these experiences are, in fact, perceptions. Do we really perceive absences, or do we only think or believe that something is absent? My dissertation defends the claim that we can perceive absences. I present a model of perception of absence based on the perceptual process of template-projection and matching and the paradigm of violation of expectation, and then use this model to explicate key phenomenological characteristics of experiences of absence. An important consequence of my thesis concerns the function of perception. If detection of absence is critical to our survival, then perception is not essentially only object-presenting. The job of the senses is not just to provide a record of what is where, David Marr's postulate about the function of vision, but to report, promptly and efficiently, about what is not where.Doctor of Philosoph

Methods in prosody

This book presents a collection of pioneering papers reflecting current methods in prosody research with a focus on Romance languages. The rapid expansion of the field of prosody research in the last decades has given rise to a proliferation of methods that has left little room for the critical assessment of these methods. The aim of this volume is to bridge this gap by embracing original contributions, in which experts in the field assess, reflect, and discuss different methods of data gathering and analysis. The book might thus be of interest to scholars and established researchers as well as to students and young academics who wish to explore the topic of prosody, an expanding and promising area of study

Recruitment, Job Choice, and Post-Hire Consequences: A Call For New Research Directions

[Excerpt] Technology in employee selection is more highly developed than in recruiting or placement; therefore, the major emphasis is on selection Recruiting or placement are not less important processes; to the contrary, they probably are more vital and more profitable to the organization. An organization\u27s success in recruiting defines the applicant population with which it will work; selection is more pleasant, if not easier, when any restriction of range or skewness of distribution is attributable to an overabundance of well-qualified applicants... Unfortunately,the contributions and confusions of the literature, the central social pressures, and the facts of contemporary practice conspire to place the emphasis on selection (pp. 777- 779

A Romance language perspective

This book presents a collection of pioneering papers reflecting current methods in prosody research with a focus on Romance languages. The rapid expansion of the field of prosody research in the last decades has given rise to a proliferation of methods that has left little room for the critical assessment of these methods. The aim of this volume is to bridge this gap by embracing original contributions, in which experts in the field assess, reflect, and discuss different methods of data gathering and analysis. The book might thus be of interest to scholars and established researchers as well as to students and young academics who wish to explore the topic of prosody, an expanding and promising area of study

Why Hollywood lost the Uruguay Round: The political economy of mass communication revisited.

In this dissertation I examine the reasons why the U.S. film industry lost the GATT-Uruguay Round negotiations on audiovisual services and intellectual property rights (IPRs) related to copyright. I revisit the political economy approach to communication and implement Mosco's (1996) suggestions on the approach's renewal. Mosco notes that political economists of communication thematically view the state as supporting transnational business (1996, p. 94). However, Jarvie's (1992) analysis of the relationship between the U.S. government and film industry between 1920 and 1950 suggests that this 'support' theme does not adequately capture the often antagonistic and unproductive relationship between the two parties. I extend Jarvie's (1992) work by developing themes from his scholarship and applying them to a case study on the Uruguay Round. I review the literature on the media-cultural imperialism thesis and focus on Herbert Schiller's (1969 [1992], 1976, 1989) scholarship. Schiller's thesis implies that outcomes in international relations are dictated by domestic determinants such as the influence of corporate lobbyists. However, I argue that the reasons why Hollywood lost lie not in domestic determinants alone, but in a broader perspective (derived from the discipline of international relations) that focuses on the interaction between domestic trade politics and international relations (Putnam, 1988 [1993]). Putnam characterises international negotiations as an interactive process involving the bargaining between negotiators and the separate discussions each delegation has with constituents in its domestic market on the ratification of the agreement. I assess themes from Jarvie's work and propositions from Schiller's thesis using Putnam's (1988 [1993]) two-level analysis and empirical evidence from primary documents and thirty-five interviews conducted over a three-year period (1994 to 1997) with U.S. and European negotiators and film executives. I argue that U.S. domestic trade politics hampered efforts by U.S. negotiators to reach a bilateral accord on audiovisual services and IPRs related to copyright because of linkages forged by EU Member States between progress in those talks and progress in talks on agriculture, maritime transport services, geographic indications related to wines and anti-dumping. A second obstacle to a bilateral accord was an influential hawkish minority of the Hollywood lobby, who set an aggressive agenda for U.S. negotiators and set off a chain reaction in the final moments of the Round that led to Hollywood's defeat. Finally, I present an alternative scenario to the argument (cf. Waregne, 1994; Dehousse and Havelange, 1994; Joachimowicz and Berenboom, 1994) that the French government dictated the outcome of the audiovisual services and IPRs negotiations. My scenario emphasises the preeminent status of the General Affairs Council, the role of EU Member States other than France, and Commission efforts to forge a bilateral deal. In the end, the hawks dictated the outcome of the audiovisual services talks, while a majority of EU Member States dictated the outcome of the talks on IPRs related to copyright

Disruption in the Arts

The volume examines aesthetic disruptions within the various arts in contemporary culture. It assumes that the political potential of art is not solely derived from presenting its audiences with openly political content. Rather, it creates a space of perception and interaction using formal means, thus problematizing the self-evidence of hegemonic structures of communication

The Archetypal Market Hypothesis; A Complex Psychology Perspective on the Market’s Mind

The thesis introduces the Archetypal Market Hypothesis (AMH). Based on complex psychology and supported by insights from other (mind) sciences it describes the unconscious nature of investing and how it shapes price patterns. Specifically, it emphasises the central role of numerical archetypes in price discovery. Its ontological premise is the market’s mind, a complex adaptive system in the form of collective consciousness which originates from the collective unconscious. This premise suggests that investing involves more than cognition and reaches beyond rationality and logic. Among others, the thesis clarifies the affective impact of price discovery: it is not only what we can do with prices, but also what they can do with us. Numbers receive their affective powers from the numerical archetypes. They preconsciously create order in the mind by facilitating the dynamics of symbolic mapping as the mind attempts to make sense of what it senses, bridging the imaginative with the real. This autonomous and often dominating impact of the numerical archetypes manifests itself: • in individual consciousness via numerical intuition, and • in crowd consciousness via participation mystique which underlies intersubjectivity. The thesis will argue that both are supported cerebrally. The collective intersubjective nature of the market’s mind and its symbolic expression via prices make it an exemplary phenomenon to be researched because the archetypal dynamics are strongest in such spheres. The PhD’s goal, as part of the AMH proposition, is twofold. First, to formalise theoretically the concept of the market’s mind, in particular the collective experience of market states, generally known as market moods, and how these shift as a result of herd instinct. Second, to propose a framework for further empirical research to show that representing market data in a non-traditional way, based on Jung’s active imagination and similar techniques, can improve investors’ understanding of those states. If successful, the method (including bespoke software) can complement analytical investment research methods currently used by investor

Audio and visual characteristics of television news broadcasting: their effects on opinion change

The audio-visual character of television was used as the conceptual focus of this examination of television news broadcasting. The research comprised both a macro and micro level analysis. On the macro level, a study was undertaken to examine the influences of the cultural context of broadcasting with special reference to the structure of television and its news organizations upon the formats and content of television news programmes. A comparative content analysis was carried out of the principle evening newscast during one fortnight of news broadcast by the public and the private broadcast networks, in Britain and Canada, and the NBC in the United States. A special "code" was developed for this purpose which would categorize not only content but also format, with a special emphasis on the relative role of the commentary and the visuals. Comparison between the countries revealed differences in both content and format, pointing to different cultural emphasis upon specific issues. Differences in the formats used in the news revealed a greater trend to entertainment values - particularly the use of the action visuals and the newsreader in the more commercialised cultural settings. Within Canada and Britain, those differences between the public and private sectors which did occur, had to do with the style of news presentation, not with its contents, pointing to the standardization of production within the news organization under the conditions of competition and inter-dependence inherent in the structure of broadcasting in these countries. The micro level study examined the effects of the visual and auditory components of the news story by means of an experimental study. A BBC type newscast about demonstrations was systematically varied in six experimental conditions to examine the relative effects and their interactions of modality, consistency or inconsistency between the modalities and of content bias on retention and opinion change. Specifically designed verb/visual techniques of measuring the impression and the visual retention of the event were used. The results showed that viewers shifted their opinions in the direction of the story bias. Visual information increased the impact of the commentary and had its effects principally on the affective component of the opinion. Where visual information and commentary were at variance, the visuals had greater impact on the affective component, with the commentary influencing the cognitive or belief component more. The research points to the need to extend the concept of bias beyond that traditionally used in communication research, not only beyond content to style of presentation, but also to an examination of the different cultural and organizational factors within the industry in which lead to variations in the emphasis upon the visual element within news programmes