Towards stratarchy? European integration and the intra-party power of Austrian MEPs and delegation leaders

'Dieser Artikel untersucht die Auswirkung der EU-Mitgliedschaft auf die binnenparteiliche Macht österreichischer MEPs und Delegationsleiter. Er bietet eine erste Bewertung der österreich-spezifischen Daten der ersten systematischen und multinationalen Untersuchung der organisatorischen Anpassung sämtlicher 'relevanter' politischer Parteien Westeuropas an die europäische Integration. Die hauptsächliche Datenquelle bildet der vom Autor zwischen 2004 und 2005 durchgeführte österreichische Teil der standardisierten Umfrage eines multinationalen Projekts. Die Befunde werden weiter mittels Einsichten verdichtet, die der Autor aus mehreren für dasselbe Projekt mit österreichischen Parteieliten durchgeführten semi-strukturierten Interviews gewonnen hat (ebenfalls zwischen 2004 und 2005). Der Aufsatz befasst sich vor allem mit der Selektion von MEPs und Delegationsleitern, mit ihren politischen Karrieren vor und nach Aufnahme ihrer EU-Rolle sowie mit der Autonomie, die sie gegenüber ihren Parteien haben, wenn sie auf EU-Ebene tätig sind. In diesem Zusammenhang werden u.a. die ex ante und ex post Verantwortlichkeitsmechanismen sowie ihre Handlungsfreiheit untersucht. Der Artikel kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass MEPs und Delegationsleiter, wenn sie auf EU-Ebene tätig sind, gegenüber ihren parteilichen 'Principals' beträchtliche Autonomie genießen, diese jedoch nur selten in breitere innerparteiliche Macht umwandeln können.' (Autorenreferat)'This article examines the impact of Austrian membership of the European Union on the intra-party power of MEP5 and EP delegation leaders. It provides a preliminary evaluation of the Austrian part of the first systematic cross-national study of politically 'relevant' west European parties' organizational adaptation to European integration. The main data source is the Austrian part of that study's standardised postal questionnaire, administered by the author to selected party elites in 2004 and 2005. Those findings are complemented by insights derived from the in-depth semi-structured interviews with Austrian party elites which he conducted for the study during the same period. The paper concentrates on MEP and delegation leader selection; these actors' career paths before and after their EU-level role and on the degree of autonomy from their party which MEPs and delegation leaders enjoy when acting at the EU level. This involves considering ex ante and ex post accountability mechanisms to which they are subjected, as well as their levels of discretion. The article finds that MEPs and delegation leaders enjoy considerable autonomy from their party principals when operating at the EU-level, but few are able to convert this into broader intra-party power.' (author's abstract

Federalism and Federation in Europe: A Comparative Study of The Germanic Tradition

Merged with duplicate record 10026.1/1656 on 27.02.2017 by CS (TIS)This thesis defines "federation" as a set of structures and techniques, by means of which the constituent members of a union are given guaranteed access to and are accommodated within the decision-procedure of the centre. Meanwhile, "federalism" is taken to signify the philosophical, or ideological prescription, or promotion, of such a union. The thesis commences by identifying the major shortcomings of the Anglo-Saxon academic literature on federation for a comparative analysis of federalism and federation in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. The two main aims of the thesis are then outlined. These are first, to identify the nature of the tradition of federalism in Austria, Switzerland and Germany. The second is to illustrate, by reference to the period immediately preceding the crystallisation of the party systems of those countries, the use of federalism as a political ideology. These aims are fulfiled in Parts 2 & 3 of the thesis. By means of its systematic, comparative analysis of federalism in Austria, Switzerland and Germany from the early sixteenth century until 1850, the thesis develops a typology of federalism, which permits it to identify the six “dimensions" of a distinctive, "Germanic”, tradition of federalism. Second, the detailed analysis in the thesis of the use of federalism during the first half of the nineteenth century shows how, within existing federations, a wide range of political groupings constituting the antecedents of modern political parties availed themselves of federalism for the promotion of their political aims. Amongst the conclusions of Part 4 of the thesis is that more attention should be devoted to the study of the interaction of federalism and federation and in particular, to how federalism is utilised by politial parties, both to legitimate and to reform federations.University of Leicester, Dept. of Politic

DoubleCheck: Designing Community-based Assessability for Historical Person Identification

Historical photos are valuable for their cultural and economic significance, but can be difficult to identify accurately due to various challenges such as low-quality images, lack of corroborating evidence, and limited research resources. Misidentified photos can have significant negative consequences, including lost economic value, incorrect historical records, and the spread of misinformation that can lead to perpetuating conspiracy theories. To accurately assess the credibility of a photo identification (ID), it may be necessary to conduct investigative research, use domain knowledge, and consult experts. In this paper, we introduce DoubleCheck, a quality assessment framework for verifying historical photo IDs on Civil War Photo Sleuth (CWPS), a popular online platform for identifying American Civil War-era photos using facial recognition and crowdsourcing. DoubleCheck focuses on improving CWPS's user experience and system architecture to display information useful for assessing the quality of historical photo IDs on CWPS. In a mixed-methods evaluation of DoubleCheck, we found that users contributed a wide diversity of sources for photo IDs, which helped facilitate the community's assessment of these IDs through DoubleCheck's provenance visualizations. Further, DoubleCheck's quality assessment badges and visualizations supported users in making accurate assessments of photo IDs, even in cases involving ID conflicts.Comment: Accepted to ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH

OSINT Research Studios: A Flexible Crowdsourcing Framework to Scale Up Open Source Intelligence Investigations

Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) investigations, which rely entirely on publicly available data such as social media, play an increasingly important role in solving crimes and holding governments accountable. The growing volume of data and complex nature of tasks, however, means there is a pressing need to scale and speed up OSINT investigations. Expert-led crowdsourcing approaches show promise but tend to either focus on narrow tasks or domains or require resource-intense, long-term relationships between expert investigators and crowds. We address this gap by providing a flexible framework that enables investigators across domains to enlist crowdsourced support for the discovery and verification of OSINT. We use a design-based research (DBR) approach to develop OSINT Research Studios (ORS), a sociotechnical system in which novice crowds are trained to support professional investigators with complex OSINT investigations. Through our qualitative evaluation, we found that ORS facilitates ethical and effective OSINT investigations across multiple domains. We also discuss broader implications of expert-crowd collaboration and opportunities for future work.Comment: To be published in CSCW 202

What Lies Beneath? Exploring the Impact of Underlying AI Model Updates in AI-Infused Systems

As AI models evolve, understanding the influence of underlying models on user experience and performance in AI-infused systems becomes critical, particularly while transitioning between different model versions. We studied the influence of model change by conducting two complementary studies in the context of AI-based facial recognition for historical person identification tasks. First, we ran an online experiment where crowd workers interacted with two different facial recognition models: an older version and a recently updated, developer-certified more accurate model. Second, we studied a real-world deployment of these models on a popular historical photo platform through a diary study with 10 users. Our findings sheds light on models affecting human-AI team performance, users' abilities to differentiate between different models, the folk theories they develop, and how these theories influence their preferences. Drawing from these insights, we discuss design implications for updating models in AI-infused systems

Designing for Schadenfreude (or, how to express well-being and see if you're boring people)

This position paper presents two studies of content not normally expressed in status updates—well-being and status feedback—and considers how they may be processed, valued and used for potential quality-of-life benefits in terms of personal and social reflection and awareness. Do I Tweet Good? (poor grammar intentional) is a site investigating more nuanced forms of status feedback than current microblogging sites allow, towards understanding self-identity, reflection, and online perception. Healthii is a tool for sharing physical and emotional well-being via status updates, investigating concepts of self-reflection and social awareness. Together, these projects consider furthering the value of microblogging on two fronts: 1) refining the online personal/social networking experience, and 2) using the status update for enhancing the personal/social experience in the offline world, and considering how to leverage that online/offline split. We offer results from two different methods of study and target groups—one co-workers in an academic setting, the other followers on Twitter—to consider how microblogging can become more than just a communication medium if it facilitates these types of reflective practice

Converged vs. Dedicated IPSec Encryption Testing in Gigabit Ethernet Networks

In January, 2005, Safenet, Inc. contacted the networking group to investigate the possibility of using our students for the purpose of comparing the performance of dedicated encryption device to an integrated encrypting device. The tests would also include a performance comparison between Data Link Layer (Layer 2) devices and Network Layer (Layer 3) devices. It was decided that the tests would consist of throughput, frame loss, and network latency. Two network topologies were used for the experiments: gigabit Ethernet and SONET OC-48. The equipment to be tested was Safenet’s High Assurance 4000 Gateway (HA4000) for the gigabit Ethernet topology and the SafeNet SSE Encryptor for the SONET topology. The Cisco Catalyst 6509 equipped with the Cisco VPN Accelerator was used for both topologies. An IXIA400T was used to generate the traffic for the performance tests. The procedure was straight forward. Baselines for each of the criteria (throughput, frame loss, and latency) by connecting the Cisco 6509’s back to back for each of the topologies to be tested. Once the baselines were established, the performance tests were performed for each of the encryption technologies and data was collected for each of the criteria

Synthesis and Characterization of Cyclic and Linear Phosphazenes with Phosphorus-Sulfur Linkages

Recent research at the INEEL has focused on the versatility inherent in polyphosphazene chemistry to membrane separations involving water transport through polymer materials.1 Polyphosphazenes, a hybrid organic and inorganic polymer, have been shown to be effective membranes in gas separation2 and liquid pervaporation applications.3 These characteristics are due to the inorganic nature of the backbone that provides these materials with remarkable chemical and mechanical stability. Additionally, phosphazene materials can be tailored to specific applications depending on the type of pendant groups that are attached to the phosphorus atoms of the backbone

Wikum: Bridging Discussion Forums and Wikis Using Recursive Summarization

Large-scale discussions between many participants abound on the internet today, on topics ranging from political arguments to group coordination. But as these discussions grow to tens of thousands of posts, they become ever more difficult for a reader to digest. In this article, we describe a workflow called recursive summarization, implemented in our Wikum prototype, that enables a large population of readers or editors to work in small doses to refine out the main points of the discussion. More than just a single summary, our workflow produces a summary tree that enables a reader to explore distinct subtopics at multiple levels of detail based on their interests. We describe lab evaluations showing that (i) Wikum can be used more effectively than a control to quickly construct a summary tree and (ii) the summary tree is more effective than the original discussion in helping readers identify and explore the main topics

Flud: a hybrid crowd-algorithm approach for visualizing biological networks

Modern experiments in many disciplines generate large quantities of network (graph) data. Researchers require aesthetic layouts of these networks that clearly convey the domain knowledge and meaning. However, the problem remains challenging due to multiple conflicting aesthetic criteria and complex domain-specific constraints. In this paper, we present a strategy for generating visualizations that can help network biologists understand the protein interactions that underlie processes that take place in the cell. Specifically, we have developed Flud, an online game with a purpose (GWAP) that allows humans with no expertise to design biologically meaningful graph layouts with the help of algorithmically generated suggestions. Further, we propose a novel hybrid approach for graph layout wherein crowdworkers and a simulated annealing algorithm build on each other's progress. To showcase the effectiveness of Flud, we recruited crowd workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk to lay out complex networks that represent signaling pathways. Our results show that the proposed hybrid approach outperforms state-of-the-art techniques for graphs with a large number of feedback loops. We also found that the algorithmically generated suggestions guided the players when they are stuck and helped them improve their score. Finally, we discuss broader implications for mixed-initiative interactions in human computation games.Comment: This manuscript is currently under revie