Interest Group Analysis Research Articles

Age and Gender voice Recognition using Deep learning

Since the advent of social media, there has been an increased interest in automatic age and gender classification through facial images. So, the process of age and gender classification is a crucial stage for many applications such as face verification, aging analysis, ad targeting and targeting of interest groups. Yet most age and gender classification systems still have some problems in real-world applications. This work involves an approach to age and gender classification using multiple convolutional neural networks (CNN). The proposed method has 5 phases as follows: face detection, remove background, face alignment, multiple CNN and voting systems. The multiple CNN model consists of three different CNN in structure and depth; the goal of this difference It is to extract various features for each network. Each network is trained separately on the AGFW dataset, and then we use the Voting system to combine predictions to get the result.

Comparative Study on Tobacco Control in India and the United Kingdom: Analysis of Executive Policies

Context: In recent decades, the tobacco epidemic has spread worldwide. The impact of tobacco control policies has been different among countries. This paper aims to explain how two countries, the United Kingdom (UK) and India, with different political, social, and cultural contexts, implemented the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Evidence Acquisition: A comparative study was done for tobacco control in UK and India in 2022. A review of literature in five databases, observational data and legal documents on tobacco use were undertaken. To identify and explain the factors that pose challenges to the implementation of tobacco control policies, country reports and health policy monitoring and research databases (in total, 27 papers and 16 reports) were reviewed. Results: Having different economic, social, and cultural backgrounds, a similar pathway to control the tobacco industry can be seen in UK and India. The factors that can explain the similar outcomes in two countries are the global pressure of WHO, increased awareness of people and policymakers, and a sense of urgency about the tobacco problem in both societies. Conclusions: At different stages of tobacco control in both countries, various interest groups with different routes of political influence used veto opportunities to overturn political decisions in the policy process. Continuous analysis of interest groups and their status quo is necessary to restrict the tobacco industry in favor of public health. Governments should carefully recognize the stakeholders and stake challengers in the policy domain and balance their interests.

Determining the strategic position of car-sharing services in Poland based on the stakeholder analysis method

This article presents the use of the stakeholder analysis method to characterize the strategic position of car-sharing services in Poland. The theoretical part presents a detailed theory of stakeholders, as well as detailed methods and the course of the interest group analysis procedure. It covers the fundamentals of stakeholder theory which refers to the concept of strategic planning, system theory, organization theory, social responsibility and strategic management. The characteristics of stakeholder analysis are presented together with mostly used methodology. The focus is put on most common analysis tools including the matrix of M. Johanson and K. Scholes based on the earlier Mendelow matrix and the map of stakeholders. The legitimacy and benefits of using the discussed method to determine the strategic position of modern and developing services have been presented. The research part presents an example of the use of the stakeholder analysis method in the Polish sector of car sharing services. The car-sharing services company stakeholder analysis of 23 entities provided knowledge on building relationships with employees and their involvement in the company's processes. The analysis made it possible to improve the strategic position of the company and determination of its position in negotiations with other organizations.

Analysis of Interest Groups in the Process of Installing Elevators in Shanghai

The interest groups related to the installation of elevators in old residential areas are multiple interest groups with specific purposes and identities. The negotiation dilemma caused by the redistribution of group interests due to the installation of elevators led to the stagnation of the installation of elevators, which should have net income. Using the method of interest group analysis, the method of consultative democracy and the conceptual model, this paper makes a detailed analysis of the attitude of different interest groups under the new situation of installing elevators, and finally puts forward measures to solve the negotiation problems from the calculation of average net income and the government's work in installing elevators.

Electoral Preferences of Youth Voters in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Understanding electoral decisions in voters are crucial, especially for parties that are rising and want to attract more voters. This study is focused on researching how different means of communication with political candidates as well as their education level, have a considerable impact on electoral preferences on youth voters in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Through literature review on what determines electoral preferences of youth voters, interest group survey and analysis of the electoral indicators and official data resources, this research attempts to explain what influences youth voters to vote in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is shown that depending on what type the political campaign is and what it is trying to portray, it will have an influence on youth voters. Presidential elections and local elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina take place every four years. Through this research, data from BiH 2015 presidential and 2020 local elections were used to answer the research question.

Development of lobbying in Russia: pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods

The article is dedicated to the political, sociological and historical analysis of lobbying development in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. This article opens a series of two articles on the genesis of the institution of lobbying in Russia. Numerous discussions on lobbying in Russia over the past three decades boil down to arguments that the country is not ready to institutionalize interaction between interest groups and the government. There is a widespread opinion that this institution is not rooted in Russian political culture and political traditions. However, analysis of interest groups and their interactions with the government in different periods of Russian history allows us to conclude that this is not a new phenomenon. Analysis of how of lobbying was formed, first under the monarchy, then in Soviet times contributes to a better understanding of the way mechanisms of interest representation evolved over time. It also helps to understand how these mechanisms gave birth to informal lobbying practices that were evolving in the 1990s and why lobbying activities continue to take place in the shadows and under unclear rules of the game.

Основи на съвременната икономика: Мансър Олсън и колективното действие

Mancur Olson (1932-1998) became famous with one great idea: the failure of collective action. Since interest groups provide their members with public (collective) goods with corresponding externalities, he assumed that free riding as a rational individual strategy would be a ubiquitous problem hampering the realization of efficient collective action in the provision of such goods. This remarkable idea – the application of methodological individualism and the assumption of rational individual behavior in the analysis of interest groups, provided a fertile ground for theory building in all social sciences, most notably in political science. In the field of economics, Olson’s ideas contributed to the establishment of the Public Choice Theory and became a prerequisite for fundamental research in experimental economics – on public goods, voluntary contribution mechanisms and games such as the prisoner dilemma. The present paper briefly discusses his two best-known books.

The Institute of International Finance: From Poacher to Gamekeeper?

AbstractThe Institute of International Finance (IIF) is a key actor in global finance, mixing private-interest representation and market governance roles. Analyzing the historical development of the IIF offers important insights into the interaction between state and business and the resulting patterns of public and private governance. Based on archive sources and a unique set of interviews with elite policymakers spanning three decades, I argue that market structures, interest groups, and public policymaking processes stand in a recursive relationship. Secondly, I argue that interest groups take on private governance roles with the aim to remain the focal point of public policymakers vis-à-vis competing interest groups. This has important implications for the study of interest groups and global financial governance. The analysis of interest groups should be extended to the way they shape markets through private governance mechanisms and how that recursively feeds back into interest group advocacy and public policymaking processes to fully grasp lobbying dynamics. The study of global governance should include analysis of interest group competition within the opportunities and constraints emanating from public policymaking processes so as to understand the emergence of private patterns of governance and their interaction with public governance mechanisms.

Age and Gender Classification using Multiple Convolutional Neural Network

Since the advent of social media, there has been an increased interest in automatic age and gender classification through facial images. So, the process of age and gender classification is a crucial stage for many applications such as face verification, aging analysis, ad targeting and targeting of interest groups. Yet most age and gender classification systems still have some problems in real-world applications. This work involves an approach to age and gender classification using multiple convolutional neural networks (CNN). The proposed method has 5 phases as follows: face detection, remove background, face alignment, multiple CNN and voting systems. The multiple CNN model consists of three different CNN in structure and depth; the goal of this difference It is to extract various features for each network. Each network is trained separately on the AGFW dataset, and then we use the Voting system to combine predictions to get the result.

Morality Politics of Physician-Assisted Suicide: Comparing Canada and the United States

In contrast to the European tendency toward parliamentary enactment of euthanasia reforms, policies on physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in both Canada and the United States were promulgated by high court rulings. These rulings were very different, however: the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a constitutional right to assisted-suicide while the Supreme Court of the United States denied that any constitutional right exists. This comparative analysis of public opinion, media coverage, federalism, interest groups, and jurisprudence argues that the key variable explaining these divergent policy outcomes was the one-sided debate over PAS in the United States, while a two-sided debate occurred in Canada.

Morality Politics of Physician-Assisted Suicide: Comparing Canada and the United States

In contrast to the European tendency toward parliamentary enactment of euthanasia reforms, policies on physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in both Canada and the United States were promulgated by high court rulings. These rulings were very different, however: the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a constitutional right to assisted-suicide while the Supreme Court of the United States denied that any constitutional right exists. This comparative analysis of public opinion, media coverage, federalism, interest groups, and jurisprudence argues that the key variable explaining these divergent policy outcomes was the one-sided debate over PAS in the United States, while a two-sided debate occurred in Canada.

Exploring the impact of partisan gatekeeping on interest group representation and bias: the case of Italy (1987–2015)

With a very few exceptions, scholars have devoted little attention to the analysis of the Italian interest system so far. This paper aims to address exactly this lacuna. Following a diachronic perspective, the combination of a population ecology approach with the analysis of interest groups’ access to parliament makes it possible to measure the level of bias characterising a fundamental part of interest group representation in Italy. Empirical findings suggest that—over time—the density of the system increased, and also diversity changed to a great extent. Furthermore, the Italian interest system—at least with regard to parliamentary access—appears less biased in recent years than it was in the 1980s. Among the potential factors that pushed in this direction, this article sheds light on a factor often neglected in the literature: the impact of parties and party systems on interest group representation and bias. More precisely, due to the political and institutional turmoil of early 1990s, parties lost their previous role of policy gatekeepers and this implied that the policymaking process is now more chaotic, as well as open to many more different actors than it was in the past, when only interest groups which were ‘collateral’ to parties could have a role in the policymaking.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF LOBBYING MODELS: THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF INTEREST GROUPS RESEARCH

The article examines the features of a comparative analysis of interest groups and lobbying. This is a relatively new trend for political sociology and comparative politics that only begins to gain theoretical and methodological outlines. Nevertheless, despite the fact that the comparative analysis of interest groups and lobbying has gone beyond the scope of American political science and American studies, the scientific community still lacks understanding what should be the basis of the research. The variables for comparative analysis that are proposed in this paper are based on the revision of Gabriel Almond’s views, as well as on the concepts that have been used in the study of lobbyism in the last two decades. The author shows that Almond’s approach to comparative analysis of interest groups and interest groups systems has not lost its acuteness, but it requires actualization in the current stage of political systems’ development. As a result, the author proposes the following variables: types of interest groups systems, the interrelationship of interest groups with the party system, the interaction of interest groups with bureaucracy, the influence of interest groups on public opinion, their role in public policy, the processes of lobbying institutionalization, types of strategies used by interests groups in interaction with authorities. This set of criteria covers the most part of theoretical and methodological spectrum of comparative studies of interest groups and lobbying which are conducted by different scientists in different countries. The article aims to show that a more comprehensive and in-depth comparative analysis of interest groups and lobbying brings new opportunities for studying contemporary political processes under the conditions of changing institutional, social and economic environment of the society.

Explaining Interest Group Density Across Economic Sectors: Evidence from Germany

Why does the number of interest groups vary across economic sectors? Interest groups are an important channel through which companies can transmit their policy preferences to decision-makers. However, empirical research shows that the number of interest groups varies considerably across sectors. We argue that the size and the wealth of the potential constituency as well as government activity positively affect interest group density. We test our theoretical expectations based on an unprecedented longitudinal analysis of interest groups that registered at the German Bundestag from 1978 until 2013 and show that the number of firms, the wealth of an economic sector, and government activity positively influence interest group density. However, we also find that the relationship between interest groups and legislative activity is reciprocal as legislative activity positively impacts the number of interest groups in an economic sector, but at the same time interest group density also positively affects legislative activity.

To engage or not to engage with host governments: Corporate political activity and host country political risk

Research summary: We analyze how a host market’s institutional context can influence a multinational enterprise’s (MNE’s) senior management’s choice and deployment of corporate political activity (CPA). First, we argue that a non‐engaged approach to CPA is likely to be chosen when senior management perceives high host country political risk, arising not only from host country political institutions, but also from the distance between home and host government relations. Second, we propose that the deployment of this approach can require active adaptation through four political strategies: low visibility, ensuring a minimal degree of general attention from other actors; rapid compliance, entailing high speed actions to obey the rules; reconfiguration, involving rearranging the MNE’s structure and processes for competitiveness; and anticipation, implying the prediction of public policy and analysis of interest groups to anticipate responses. Managerial summary: Senior managers of multinational enterprises often examine when and how to engage, or not to engage, with host governments. We argue that senior managers are likely to choose to evade engagement with a host government when they perceive high host country political risk, not only through public political risk ratings, but also via their home and host government relations. We show that this choice can require senior managers to lead active adaptation through four strategies: low visibility, enabling the MNE to operate under the radar of host governments; rapid compliance, entailing high speed actions to obey the rules; reconfiguration, involving rearranging the MNE’s structure and processes for competitiveness; and anticipation, implying the prediction of public policy and analysis of interest groups to anticipate responses.A video abstract is available at https://youtu.be/DL1LlQEhGU0.

Masks and Staffs: Identity Politics in the Cameroon Grassfields. Michaela Pelican. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015, 258 pp. $95.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-78238-728-2.

Masks and Staffs: Identity Politics in the Cameroon Grassfields. Michaela Pelican. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015, 258 pp. $95.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-78238-728-2.

Policy and Politics in Contract Law Reform in Japan

Japan is proceeding apace with its first-ever comprehensive overhaul of the contract law provisions in the Civil Code, originally enacted in 1896 with strong influence from German law. Interim recommendations were published in February 2013, after almost three and a half years of official law reform deliberations within the Ministry of Justice's Legislative Council, and amendments may be introduced into Parliament by the end of 2014. Most of the interim recommendations track those from a semi-private “Reform Commission” published in 2009, after 260 meetings since 2006 and mainly involving legal academics. Yet, as explained in the first half of this paper, tensions remain in the underlying policy behind these contract law reform proposals. Despite shifts towards giving greater priority to the parties’ agreement, partly influenced by international contract law instruments, some proposals envisage greater protection for weaker parties or leave considerable discretion to judges. Two remarkable changes of government, in 2009 and 2012, have not impacted significantly on this major law reform project in Japan. Far more important than such “macro-politics” has been “micro-politics”. The second half of this paper therefore presents an interest group analysis of the Civil Code reform process. Key academics -- assisted by one legal publisher in particular -- have been able to mobilise a powerful “bureaucratic coalition”, comprising Ministry of Justice officials and judges seconded by the Supreme Court of Japan, despite pockets of opposition from other academics, smaller law firms and certain business sectors. This analysis therefore presents some significant parallels with recent contract law reform initiatives and debates within the European Union. Very different concatenations of interest groups arguably exist in common law jurisdictions such as the US (where major Uniform Commercial Code reforms have foundered) or Australia (where the government commenced in 2012 a consultation into whether and how to reform contract law). Comprehensive reform in those jurisdictions therefore seems unlikely, reducing the potential for the world-wide harmonisation of contract law. A shorter version of this paper is adapted for Maurice Adams and Dirk Thilbaut (eds) The Method and Culture of Comparative Law, Hart, 2014.

Social Processes in Lobbyist Agenda Development: A Longitudinal Network Analysis of Interest Groups and Legislation

How are lobbying agendas formed? While individual interest matters, a social process may also affect why lobbyists choose legislation on which to lobby. In a crowded environment, looking at what credible others do may help lobbyists lower their search and information costs with regard to an issue. Using longitudinal network data on lobbyists' legislative choices, I analyze the choices of organizations using an actor‐based dynamic model of network change that conditions agenda changes on the choices made by other organizations. The results suggest both a “bandwagon” process in which organizations converge on “popular” bills and an influence process in which lobbying organizations influence each other when their lobbying agendas overlap. In support of the quantitative findings, interviews with lobbyists show that the policy domain is a social community that consists of ongoing relationships, trust, and information sharing.

Throwing the Baby Out with the Bathwater: Australia’s New Policy on Treaty-Based Investor-State Arbitration and its Impact in Asia

Treaties allowing investors to initiate arbitration claims directly against host states for illegally interfering with cross-border investments are becoming increasingly common in Asia, but Australia announced in 2011 that it will no longer include such protections in future treaties. The backdrop to this decision includes keen interest from Asia in foreign direct investment (FDI) into Australia’s resources sector, meaning that potential investors may not be significantly deterred by a lack of arbitration provisions in future treaties. This article argues, however, that Australia’s policy shift risks undermining the entire investor-state arbitration (ISA) system, with the earliest impact being felt by major pending treaty negotiations by Australia with Japan, China and Korea (respectively); and that the shift may significantly reduce FDI flows or have other adverse effects. The article criticises the cost-benefit analysis of ISA protections in one pivotal study conducted in 2010 by an Australian Government think-tank, arguing that this assessment is insufficiently nuanced. Instead, the article presents a justification for more tailored and moderate changes to ISA provisions in future treaties. Its tentative interest-group analysis suggests, however, that there may be surprisingly few public or private constituencies that would prefer such moderate reforms, and that most may well prefer the more extreme position recently adopted by Australia, despite the damage that will be done to the ISA system as a whole. The article also argues that Australia’s policy shift and think-tank analysis may make Asian countries more cautious about ISA, especially those (like the Philippines and Vietnam) which have traditionally been more cautious about this dispute resolution system.

Interest-group analysis in economic history and the history of economic thought

This article reviews Bob Tollison’s conjoined contributions to the scholarly literature in the closely related fields of economic history and history of economic thought, underscoring his integration of public choice and interest-group analysis into the historian’s purview. It identifies the overarching themes of his research and summarizes the major findings of his key publications.