Two houses: legislative studies and the Atlantic divide

Legislative scholars have a history of stepping back occasionally to examine the development and state of the sub-discipline (Budge 1973; Gamm and Huber 2002; Loewenberg, Patterson, and Jewell 1985; Mezey 1993; Morris-Jones 1983; Pasquino 1973; Patterson 1989). Many of these existing reviews, although valuable, are predominantly of a qualitative and subjective nature and are, in most cases, now dated. This paper provides a bibliometrical analysis of the state of legislative studies in the United States and Europe by exploring the content of eight political science journals. I looked at six general political science journals, three originating in the United States and three in Europe, as well as the content of two legislative studies journals—the American-based Legislative Studies Quarterly and the British-based Journal of Legislative Studies

The internet as a relationship marketing tool - some evidence from Irish companies

This article explores the strategies underlying the use of the internet as a marketing tool by Irish businesses. Three different approaches to internet Marketing are described: the ornamental, the informational and the relational. It is shown that, theoretically, the internet offers a unique opportunity for marketers to build up and maintain relationships with their clients. However, data collected through a mail survey and a content analysis of web sites reveal that currently the most frequent use of the internet by Irish companies still follows an ornamental or, at most, informational pattern. The authors discuss whether this discrepancy between internet potential and practice is due to the social basis of market relationships or whether it can be seen as evidence that the adaptation of a new marketing tool follows an incremental pattern

Extracting Build Changes with BUILDDIFF

Build systems are an essential part of modern software engineering projects. As software projects change continuously, it is crucial to understand how the build system changes because neglecting its maintenance can lead to expensive build breakage. Recent studies have investigated the (co-)evolution of build configurations and reasons for build breakage, but they did this only on a coarse grained level. In this paper, we present BUILDDIFF, an approach to extract detailed build changes from MAVEN build files and classify them into 95 change types. In a manual evaluation of 400 build changing commits, we show that BUILDDIFF can extract and classify build changes with an average precision and recall of 0.96 and 0.98, respectively. We then present two studies using the build changes extracted from 30 open source Java projects to study the frequency and time of build changes. The results show that the top 10 most frequent change types account for 73% of the build changes. Among them, changes to version numbers and changes to dependencies of the projects occur most frequently. Furthermore, our results show that build changes occur frequently around releases. With these results, we provide the basis for further research, such as for analyzing the (co-)evolution of build files with other artifacts or improving effort estimation approaches. Furthermore, our detailed change information enables improvements of refactoring approaches for build configurations and improvements of models to identify error-prone build files.Comment: Accepted at the International Conference of Mining Software Repositories (MSR), 201

The parliamentary representation of British Muslims

Parliamentary parties in the British House of Commons tend to experience high levels of voting unity with individual MPs only occasionally dissenting from party policy. Although constituency influence has been used extensively to predict legislative behaviour in candidate-centred electoral environments, it is argued here that constituency preferences can, under certain circumstances, shape parliamentary behaviour in a strong-party, weak personal-vote, electoral environment such as the United Kingdom. To empirically test this argument, the interest representation of British Muslims in the British House of Commons and specifically the voting record of MPs on proposed domestic anti-terrorism legislation seen to target British Muslims is investigated. The data shows that Labour MPs with certain constituency characteristics (relatively large Muslim, ethnic minority and migrant populations) were more likely to vote against the leadership position on anti-terrorism proposals perceived to target certain minorities

Using parliamentary questions to measure constituency orientation

Individual legislators differ in the degree to which they work to cultivate personal votes. While conventional wisdom declares that the electoral system typically motivates the choice of legislative role, researchers have found difficulty assessing empirically the role-orientation of legislators. This study suggests using content analysis of parliamentary questions as a mechanism to measure variations in personal vote earning strategies. To demonstrate the usefulness of this approach, and the constituency-orientation of Irish parliamentarians, 123,762 questions tabled by Dáil Deputies between 1997 and 2002 are analysed. While evidence of some orientation toward localism is apparent, the data suggests significant variations in role-orientation within the chamber. Explanations of intra-system variation in personal vote earning effort are hypothesised and tested. Characteristics such as electoral vulnerability, geography, intra-party competition and career only partially explain the variation. The results highlight the need to move beyond using electoral rules as a general proxy for role-orientation

Why electoral systems don’t always matter: The impact of “Mega-seats” on legislative behavior

A significant and influential body of research suggests that electoral systems influence legislators’ behavior. Yet, empirical research frequently fails to uncover the existence of such a relationship. This study offers a potential solution: The core suggestion is that the mechanisms by which prized post-election positions (mega-seats) are distributed within a legislature impacts legislative behavior. When party leaders cartelize the allocation of mega-seats, the anticipated effects of the electoral system on legislators’ behavior may dissolve. Ireland’s candidate-centered electoral system and party-controlled mega-seat allocation provides for a hard empirical test of the argument. New data on mega-seats and voting behavior in the Irish parliament between 1980 and 2010 supports the notion that mega-seat considerations rather than the electoral system shapes roll-call behavior. The implication is that what goes on within the legislature may be more important for influencing legislators’ behavior than what goes on at the ballot box. This observation may resolve the puzzle of why electoral systems do not always exert their purported influence

The Genesis Trajectory and Heteroclinic Cycles

Genesis will be NASA's first robotic sample return mission. The purpose of this mission is to collect solar wind samples for two years in an L_1 halo orbit and return them to the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) for mid-air retrieval by helicopters. To do this, the Genesis spacecraft makes an excursion into the region around L_2 . This transfer between L_1 and L_2 requires no deterministic maneuvers and is provided by the existence of heteroclinic cycles defined below. The Genesis trajectory was designed with the knowledge of the conjectured existence of these heteroclinic cycles. We now have provided the first systematic, semi-analytic construction of such cycles. The heteroclinic cycle provides several interesting applications for future missions. First, it provides a rapid low-energy dynamical channel between L_1 and L_2 such as used by the Genesis Discovery Mission. Second, it provides a dynamical mechanism for the temporary capture of objects around a planet without propulsion. Third, interactions with the Moon. Here we speak of the interactions of the Sun-Earth Lagrange point dynamics with the Earth-Moon Lagrange point dynamics. We motivate the discussion using Jupiter comet orbits as examples. By studying the natural dynamics of the Solar System, we enhance current and future space mission design