This thinking lacks a language: Heidegger and Gadamer's question of being

Martin Heidegger's preparation of the question of human existence was the focus of his seminal work Being and Time, first published in 1927. This paper refers to Heidegger's phenomenological work through Heidegger's colleague and friend Hans-Georg Gadamer to focus on how Heidegger prepares the question of Being and the problem of language in his later work. In his conversation with the Japanese scholar professor Tezuka, the meaning of language in the west appears to restrict an understanding of Being by conceptualising it ad infinitum. To the Japanese the simple term "what is" appears to be closer to Being because it does not attempt to conceptualise it. Therefore, Heidegger, Gadamer and Tezuka's discussion about ontology concludes that language does get in the way of understanding Being

Incumbency Advantage in Irish Elections: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis

Ireland provides an interesting setting for the study of incumbency advantage. Its electoral system creates incentives for political candidates to cultivate a loyal, personal following and the rate of incumbent re-election is one of the highest in the world. This paper exploits the quasi-experimental features of the system of proportional representation with a single transferable vote (PR-STV) to estimate incumbency advantage in Ireland’s lower house of parliament. In very close elections, where there is a narrow margin of victory, it is likely that bare winners are comparable in their unobservable characteristics to bare losers. Regression discontinuity design (RDD) identifies the causal effect of incumbency by comparing the subsequent electoral outcomes of bare winners and losers. The analysis indicates that incumbency causes an eighteen percentage point increase in the probability that a candidate is successful in a subsequent election. We show that Ireland’s multi-party, multi-candidate system is particularly suited to the application of the RDD methodology

Incumbency Advantage in Irish Elections: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis

Ireland provides an interesting setting for the study of incumbency advantage. Its electoral system creates incentives for political candidates to cultivate a loyal, personal following and the rate of incumbent re-election is one of the highest in the world. This paper exploits the quasi-experimental features of the system of proportional representation with a single transferable vote (PR-STV) to estimate incumbency advantage in Ireland’s lower house of parliament. In very close elections, where there is a narrow margin of victory, it is likely that bare winners are comparable in their unobservable characteristics to bare losers. Regression discontinuity design (RDD) identifies the causal effect of incumbency by comparing the subsequent electoral outcomes of bare winners and losers. The analysis indicates that incumbency causes an eighteen percentage point increase in the probability that a candidate is successful in a subsequent election. We show that Ireland’s multi-party, multi-candidate system is particularly suited to the application of the RDD methodology. JEL: C21

An unhealthy alliance

The NHS junior doctors' strike on 12 January was a timely reminder of the productivity agenda having an impact on working practices. The unprecedented dispute between the Department of Health (DH) and the British Medical Association (BMA) concerns, among other things, pay progression, relaxing rules on rest, working a Saturday for the same pay as a weekday, and what constitutes a night duty (BMA, 2016). If the contractual demands are accepted then the likely effect would be the same pay for working a Sunday, and night duties being extended to nursing and throughout the NHS

Tracing Shifting Conceptual Vocabularies Through Time

This paper presents work in progress on an algorithm to track and identify changes in the vocabulary used to describe particular concepts over time, with emphasis on treating concepts as distinct from changes in word meaning. We apply the algorithm to word vectors generated from Google Books n-grams from 1800-1990 and evaluate the induced networks with respect to their flexibility (robustness to changes in vocabulary) and stability (they should not leap from topic to topic). We also describe work in progress using the British National Biography Linked Open Data Serials to construct a “ground truth” evaluation dataset for algorithms which aim to detect shifts in the vocabulary used to describe concepts. Finally, we discuss limitations of the proposed method, ways in which the method could be improved in the future, and other considerations.Cambridge Centre for Digital Knowledge, University of Cambridg

The Idea of Liberty, 1600-1800: A Distributional Concept Analysis.

This article uses computational and statistical methods for analyzing the concept of liberty 1600-1800. Based on a bespoke set of tools for parsing conceptual structures it contributes to the literature on the concept of liberty and engages with the thesis concerning negative liberty first put forward by Isaiah Berlin and subsequently modified by Quentin Skinner

Progress on the introduction of supervisory ward manager roles since the Francis report recommendations

Recommendation 195 of the Francis report suggested that the introduction of supervisory ward managers into clinical practice could improve the quality of patient care in England. The Department of Health and NHS Commissioning Board's vision and strategy Compassion in Practice in 2012 restated the recommendation in action area four, with trusts required to publish progress. With the aim of identifying whether the lessons of the Francis report had been learned, a review of the published literature since 2012 retrieved only five articles on the subject, with many anecdotal accounts of its implementation in local trusts. The three subsequent update reports of Compassion in Practice stopped backing recommendation 195 and promoted black and ethnic minority leadership, a laudable initiative, but not a recommendation of the Francis report. The authors suggest recommendation 195 and Compassion in Practice's original action area four should be promoted again to ensure public safety and address the notion that lessons learned are less likely to be repeated