"Objective" Ambiguity and Ex Ante Trade

We explore the implications of assuming that individuals have maxmin preferences incorporating objective but imprecise probabilistic information on the features of Pareto optimal allocations

Factions and fissions in the aftermath of the 2013 elections: why Italian politics never gets boring

The aftermath of the 2013 Italian elections produced a lengthy political stalemate between Italy’s main political parties before the formation of Enrico Letta’s coalition government. As Andrea Ceron writes, however, there are also intense rivalries within Italy’s political parties. Outlining a game-theoretic model of party factions, he assesses the effect of the elections and current developments on the stability of Italy’s main political parties, including the potential for a possible split to take place within the centre-left Partito Democratico (PD)

The Educational Opportunity Structure and Stratification of College Counseling at Southern California Public High Schools

This study documents how organizational strategies underlying college counseling departments modify counselors’ ability to perform their academic and college advising duties. To examine this, fifteen semi-structured, in-depth interviews with public high school counselors in Southern California were conducted. A district’s commitment to college access and opportunity, as well as parents’ expectations for maintaining a college-going culture, shaped the nature of college counseling and organizational habitus in a school. Counselors reported that access to different forms of institutional support and resources diminish or exacerbate the structural constraints known to surface in public schools. This influenced when and how counselors advised students, which offered different views of the educational opportunity structure. Additionally, findings indicate that both college preparation programs and culturally sensitive counselors work to remedy educational disparities and increase the college enrollment rates of working-class minority students

The politics of fission: an analysis of Faction Breakaways among Italian Parties (1946–2011)

This article investigates intra-party politics and explores the determinants of factional breakaways, going beyond the unitary actor assumption. It presents a game-theoretic model that focuses on intra-party competition and bargaining dynamics to analyse the interplay between party leaders and minority factions. It tests several hypotheses based on the formal model using a new dataset that contains information about the strength and policy positions of factions inside Italian parties, from 1946 to 2011, measured through quantitative content analysis of motions presented during party congresses. The results show that office, policy and electoral motives influence factions' decisions to break away. Other elements - such as intra-party democracy, the electoral system and party system competitiveness - also affect leaders' attitudes toward compromising and alter the likelihood of a split

What an algorithm for expelling rebels and rewarding a party’s loyal MPs could look like

The use of modern technology in politics has become increasingly important in recent years, but what new opportunities could technology have for the political parties of the future? Taking inspiration from a statement by the Five Star Movement’s Beppe Grillo, Andrea Ceron outlines what an algorithm for expelling rebel MPs and rewarding loyal party members could look like. He argues that while Grillo’s comments were regarded as far-fetched, it is not too far from reality that technology could soon be used by political parties in this way

Barriers Among Latino Children in Accessing and Utilizing Mental Health Services

Latino children make up the largest ethnic group in the United States today. Latino children are also the ethnic group less likely to access and utilize mental health services. As a result, Latino children have higher rates of unmet mental health needs. There is limited research focusing on the mental health services needs of Latino children and lack of access and use of such services. This qualitative study explored barriers among Latino children in accessing and utilizing mental health services. This study conducted face-to-face and Skype interviews with eight mental health providers who work or have worked with Latino children with mental health needs. The eight interviews were transcribed and analyzed to identify common themes regarding barriers Latino children face in accessing and utilizing mental health services in participant responses. The major themes identified by this study included: cultural values, insurance, socioeconomic status, lack of bilingual providers, agency days and hours of operation, immigration status, and lack of awareness of mental health. Through identifying such barriers, this study may raise social worker awareness of barriers Latino children face and better equip social workers to plan and implement approaches to address identified barriers in efforts to increase Latino children’s access and use of mental health services to meet their mental health needs

Changing politics, changing language : The effect of institutional and communicative changes on political language measured through content analysis of Italian intra-party debates

This paper examines the changes in political language that occurred after 1989 in Italy and focuses on textual documents drafted by intra-party subgroups between 1946 and 2010 that were related to the internal debates of Italian political parties. These documents, which are addressed to party members and activists rather than the wider public, have been analyzed through quantitative text analysis of word frequencies. The results confirm that a few relevant changes occurred that involve the lexicon, tone, and content of messages. However, concepts such as left and right are still relevant, and we observed neither a strong decline in the use of ideological terms nor a wider usage of populist words. Despite the growing personalization of politics, the main political leaders are not frequently mentioned, with two exceptions: Prodi and Berlusconi. Overall, there is a distance between intra-party politics and the logic of entertainment

Intra-party politics in 140 characters

Scholars have emphasized the need to deepen investigation of intraparty politics. Recent studies look at social media as a source of information on the ideological preferences of politicians and political actors. In this regard, the present article tests whether social media messages published by politicians are a suitable source of data. It applies quantitative text analysis to the public statements released by politicians on social media in order to measure intraparty heterogeneity and assess its effects. Three different applications to the Italian case are discussed. Indeed, the content of messages posted online is informative on the ideological preferences of politicians and proved to be useful to understand intraparty dynamics. Intraparty divergences measured through social media analysis explain: (a) a politician\u2019s choice to endorse one or another party leader, (b) a politician\u2019s likelihood to switch off from his or her parliamentary party group; and (c) a politician\u2019s probability to be appointed as a minister

Post-COVID Prospects for the EMU: The Pandemic Core-Periphery Divide, Palliative Measures and the Stakes of the Conference on the Future of Europe

The policy brief draws from previous and ongoing research on the heterogeneities of the impact of the - in principle - symmetric shock of the pandemic within the EU. Considering the pre-existing gaps within the core and periphery, further worsened by the Covid-19 outbreak, the analysis presents the economic and social prospects in 2020 and in the years to come across the Member States. In doing so the work identifies the key challenges in line with the legacy of the Eurozone crisis and well-established limits of EMU governance assessing palliative emergency instruments such as Next Generation EU against the benchmark of the scale of the core-periphery divide. In doing so the contribution puts forward policy recommendation for ambitious reform of economic governance of the Eurozone, against the backdrop of an unprecedented window of opportunity for transnational solidarity opened by the pandemic crisis in parallel with the onset of the Conference of the Future of Europe