Widespread Claim Research Articles

The limits of representativeness in citizens? assemblies: A critical analysis of democratic minipublics

This article critically examines the widespread claim that minipublics, such as citizens assemblies, typically represent the broader population in democratic decision-making. Through systematic analysis, we identify four fundamental challenges to representativeness: small sample sizes, group effects that complicate output legitimacy, sampling biases from population lists, and low acceptance rates. We evaluate three common strategies used to justify small sample minipublics — stratification, supermajority voting, and second-best arguments — and demonstrate why these approaches fail to resolve the underlying representativeness problems. Rather than abandoning minipublics entirely, we propose three alternative ways forward: (1) scaling up and integrating multiple independent minipublics, (2) targeting specific inclusion failures rather than pursuing broad representation, and (3) leveraging nondomination claims instead of representativeness. While the first approach faces significant technical and cost challenges, the latter two offer more practical paths forward, particularly in addressing concrete democratic deficits in existing institutions. We conclude that minipublics remain valuable democratic innovations, but their legitimacy should be grounded in their ability to address specific inclusion failures and prevent domination by organized minorities rather than claims of broad population representation.

Pluralising pluralism in the study of populism

Despite the widespread claim that populism and pluralism are incompatible, the latter is rarely defined clearly in the existing literature. This is significant as such purported incompatibility is used to argue that populist politics cannot sit comfortably within liberal democracy. I begin this article by examining the theoretical foundations of research on populism and pluralism, particularly from scholars who adopt the ideational approach. I highlight how this conception of pluralism is limited to protecting minority rights through liberal-democratic institutions, without considering how such institutions are often exclusionary. I then turn to the contributions of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe on populism, pluralism, and hegemony. I suggest that while Mouffe sacrifices the counter-hegemonic potential of populism in pursuit of pluralism, Laclau sacrifices pluralism for counter-hegemony through his insistence that the universal can only be articulated through the particular. Moving beyond Laclau’s part-as-whole formulation, I develop an understanding of pluralism rooted in non-belonging, which grounds plurality in shared constitutive lack. This allows for the advancement of an indeterminate concept of ‘the people’ without the imposition of a universalised particular. Thinking of pluralism in these terms provides critical scholars of populism with a conceptualisation which does not depend solely on a liberal vocabulary.

Societies of strangers do not speak less complex languages.

Many recent proposals claim that languages adapt to their environments. The linguistic niche hypothesis claims that languages with numerous native speakers and substantial proportions of nonnative speakers (societies of strangers) tend to lose grammatical distinctions. In contrast, languages in small, isolated communities should maintain or expand their grammatical markers. Here, we test these claims using a global dataset of grammatical structures, Grambank. We model the impact of the number of native speakers, the proportion of nonnative speakers, the number of linguistic neighbors, and the status of a language on grammatical complexity while controlling for spatial and phylogenetic autocorrelation. We deconstruct "grammatical complexity" into two separate dimensions: how much morphology a language has ("fusion") and the amount of information obligatorily encoded in the grammar ("informativity"). We find several instances of weak positive associations but no inverse correlations between grammatical complexity and sociodemographic factors. Our findings cast doubt on the widespread claim that grammatical complexity is shaped by the sociolinguistic environment.

The Trajectory of International Relations Dissertations in Turkish Academia between 2000 and 2020

Dissertations are among the most important elements of academic production, along with scientific research articles and books. They not only reveal an academic’s field of research, but also provide clues as to what research methods and tools scholars will employ in postdoctoral studies. Moreover, and crucial to this paper, they are important indicators of the trajectory of research fields, as well as their general roles in the academic world. This study aims to reveal general trends/indicators in Turkish International Relations (hereafter IR) dissertations through an analysis of IR dissertations written in various Turkish universities between 2000 and 2020. There is a rather widespread claim among IR academics in Turkey that this particular community largely contributes to the Western-oriented discipline of IR as local or regional experts, dealing mainly with Turkish foreign policy and regional problems rather than with theoretical concerns in IR. A further aim of this study is to test whether this claim remains valid with the analysis of recent IR dissertations produced in Turkish universities.

“Just the Same as Fascism for Us”

Recent scholarship on fascism has largely centered on identifying the defining features of fascism to determine whether political figures and parties are fascist. These debates take European fascism as paradigmatic, thereby obscuring alternative traditions of antifascist theorizing that can shed new light on the contemporary ascendancy of fascism in the United States and elsewhere. This paper examines one such alternative in the antifascist thought and praxis of the Black Panther Party. Against the widespread claim that fascism could not happen in the United States, the Black Panther Party insisted that the United States had its own forms of fascism. We reconstruct the Panther’s concept of fascism as the generalization of racialized exclusion constitutive of American democracy and explore the antifascist practices to which this definition gave rise.

Some Considerations on “Black Swan Theory”, COVID-19 and Involved Heuristics †

In this paper, we investigate the widespread claim – in scientific literature and mass-media - that COVID-19 constitutes an example of a “Black Swan”. This is an important feature in order to classify some rare events. Given the high speed of dissemination of information via mass-media and the Internet, with the possible consequences on the financial markets, it is relevant to ask whether this attribution is right or not. Thanks to more precise use of the different color definitions introduced by the famous researcher and our more explicit description of the relative properties, we show instead that the correct shade to be attributed to the Swan for this pandemic is gray. Besides, we also explain misclassification as the effect of some behavioral heuristics.

The Pronunciation of German ch as Velar or Palatal from 1784 to 1841

Abstract Throughout most of the eighteenth-century, grammarians believed that ch in German words like Macht ‘power’ and Licht ‘light’ had only one place of articulation. In the final quarter of that century three studies discovered that ch in such words represented two places of articulation corresponding to what modern-day linguists call ‘velar’ and ‘palatal’ (Mäzke 1776; Hemmer 1776; Fränklin 1778). The present article concentrates on the years following those three works. While the most widespread claim was that ch represented only one place of articulation, a number of scholars continued in the tradition of Mäzke, Hemmer, and Fränklin by recognizing that ch had more than one place of articulation. The purpose of this article is to document those innovative studies and to assess their understanding of the phonetics and phonology of German ch.

Is the Soil-Cement Brick an Ecological Brick? An Analysis of the Life Cycle Environmental and Energy Performance of Masonry Walls

Masonry wall is a key construction subsystem, but it embodies significant environmental and energy burdens within the life cycle of buildings. Soil-cement bricks and blocks stand as an alternative low-cost masonry material, but despite the widespread claim to be environmentally friendly, more systematic investigation is lacking. This study aimed to assess the life cycle environmental and energy performance of 1.0 m2 of a soil-cement brick masonry wall from cradle-to-construction in terms of carbon, energy, and water footprints, and fossil and mineral resource use, as well as compare it with conventional technologies such as ceramic and concrete block masonries in Brazil. Results showed that raw materials are a major contribution to soil cement masonry walls, followed by the joints and links with columns, in which cement stands out among other inputs. Hydraulic pressing in brick production had a negligible burden increase compared with manual pressing. The PVA mortar joint outperformed the PVA glue one, whereas resin coating performed better than cement mortar. In comparison with ceramic and concrete masonry walls, the soil cement masonry presented overall better environmental and energy performance and was the least affected by the inclusion of finishing coating layers and transport of materials in the sensitivity analysis scenarios, although improved scenarios of conventional options could be competitive, e.g., ceramic masonry with blocks produced by firing reforested wood for the carbon footprint. Scale-up analysis revealed that widespread deployment of soil cement masonry in the built environment would substantially avoid environmental and energy burdens compared with conventional technologies.

Publicize or Perish—Challenger party success through megaphones and locomotives

AbstractWhat makes some challenger parties succeed and others fail? Existing research on party‐level factors finds that it is essential for parties to close a representational gap. However, this condition cannot be sufficient. For each successful challenger, there are many others proclaiming a similar message but going unheard. Hence, we argue that, instead of only to the messages, more attention should be paid to parties’ abilities to communicate their messages effectively.Using an original dataset on 74 challenger parties in five countries in a similar political and economic situation (during the post‐2008 economic crisis), we show that communication is key for electoral success. In particular, we show that challenger parties can win over voters by, on the one hand, harnessing the prominence of a well‐known personality (a locomotive) and by, on the other hand, establishing a means of contacting voters which bypasses the traditional news media and amplifies their message (like a megaphone). But this megaphone only works if it amplifies a message that fills a representational gap (here: an anti‐austerity message) – only then do parties benefit. Furthermore, we provide evidence for the widespread but unproven claim that populism helps challenger parties succeed, but this, too, depends on whether parties are able to contact voters on a large scale.By including three crucial aspects of communication (sender, channel, and message), we can explain a large share of the high variability in challenger party success.

Accepting Violence? A Laboratory Experiment of the Violent Consequences of Deliberation in Politically Aggrieved Enclaves

ABSTRACT Do discussions in echo chambers break down barriers on the acceptance political violence? We know from research within political science, social psychology and communication that deliberation in echo chambers—called enclave deliberation—works as a driver for the amplification of existing political attitudes. Moreover, scholars of radicalization have argued that enclave deliberation can lead to extremist ideas and the acceptance of political violence in response to political grievances. Yet, amplification of attitudes, even into extremist ideas, is not the same as accepting violence. We still lack causal backing for the widespread claim that enclave deliberation fuels acceptance of political violence. Utilizing a novel laboratory experiment with 188 participants, this article delivers causal evidence suggesting that enclave deliberation increases politically aggrieved group members’ acceptance of violence. In addition, I find causal evidence supporting the claim that enclave deliberation amplifies existing political attitudes and makes group members’ opinions less diverse.

On the rational resolution of (deep) disagreements

Disagreements come in all shapes and sizes, but epistemologists and argumentation theorists have singled out a special category referred to as deep disagreements. These deep disagreements are thought to pose philosophical and practical difficulties pertaining to their rational resolution. In this paper, I start with a critique of the widespread claim that deep disagreements are qualitatively different from normal disagreements because they arise from a difference in ‘fundamental principles’ or ‘hinge commitments.’ I then defend the following two claims: (1) All disagreements are deep to the extent that they are actual disagreements. This first claim implies, I will argue, that disagreements typically regarded as normal (‘shallow’) can be explained away as misunderstandings or communicative mishaps. (2) The resolution of a disagreement can be rational either through a joint experience of mutually recognized facts or through an exchange of arguments that leads to a reformulation of the disagreement that, in this new form, lends itself to a resolution through a joint experience of mutually recognized facts. I conclude with a reflection on the consequences of these two theses for the idea of deep disagreement and that of rational resolution.

Metascience Is Not Enough – A Plea for Psychological Humanities in the Wake of the Replication Crisis

The replication crisis led to the rise of metascience as a possible solution. In this article, we examine central metascientific premises and argue that attempts to solve the replication crisis in psychology will benefit from a tighter integration of approaches from the psychological humanities. The first part of our article identifies central epistemic merits that metascientific endeavors can contribute to psychology. However, we argue secondly against the widespread claim that metascience is the only way to deal with the replication crisis in psychology and point to major epistemic problems: the one-sided notion of a singular scientific method, the homogenizing view of psychology, and the exclusion of practices of theorizing. As a possible compensation for such shortcomings, we introduce, third, the reflective and pluralistic approach of psychological humanities. In so doing, we show how psychological humanities can serve as an important complement to the objective of improving psychological research. Psychological humanities contribute to a more precise determination of validity, to ethical considerations, and a better understanding of psychology’s objects in regard to replication. Accordingly, we argue for the integration of psychological humanities into both metascience and psychology to provide a better basis for addressing epistemic and ethical questions.

Debunking the myths of historiography. Russians and Romanians at the capture of Rahovo (November 9, 1877)

The capture of the town of Rahovo in Bulgaria (now Oryahovo) on November 9, 1877 does not belong to the significant events of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, but in the history of Romania, where this war is treated as a war for independence, it is interpreted as “an important moment of the operation to encircle the Plevna Ottoman grouping” and is on a par with the capture of Grivitsky redoubt No. 1 on August 30, 1877. There is a widespread claim in historiography that the Romanian detachment stormed Rahovo. The study of published documents, primarily the multi-volume “Collection of Materials on the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 on the Balkan Peninsula”, as well as the diaries of Russian officers who participated in this war, allows us to show how factual errors and historical myths arise. The article shows that the Russian-Romanian detachment solved a tactical problem — Rahovo was liberated from the Turks, and a Romanian garrison was located in it. But the fortifications and the city were not taken during the fight, the Romanian troops could not defeat the Turks in battle, and entered Rahovo only after the Turkish garrison had left it. The statements about the storming of Rahovo as well as Grivitsky redoubt No. 1 by Romanians refer to the same hoax, deliberately created in 1877 for the glory and growth of popularity of Prince Charles in Romania, to strengthen the authority of his dynasty.

Looking for the Economy‐Wide Effects of Stock Market Short‐Termism

To investigate the widespread claim that stock market “short‐termism” is a major drag on U.S. corporate investment and the broad economy, the author examines the evidence on long‐run trends in corporate capital investment, buybacks, and R&D. As critics of market‐driven corporate short‐termism have pointed out, U.S. corporate investment in capital equipment and other tangible assets has been falling steadily since the late 1970s and buybacks are rising. But if the story of economy‐wide decline due to short‐termism were valid, we would expect to see the following: (1) investment spending in the United States declining faster than in Europe and Japan, where large companies depend less on stock markets for capital and shareholder activists are less influential; (2) cash from all the large share buybacks bleeding out from the U.S. corporate sector; and (3) economy‐wide declines in corporate R&D spending.What the author reports, however, is that real U.S. corporate R&D spending, has been steadily rising since the 1970s and rising faster than the economy is growing. And even as corporate distributions of capital through dividends and buybacks have also been rising sharply for decades, corporate cash holdings (as a percentage of total assets), are at near record‐high levels. The explanation for such high cash holdings together with record‐high payouts—and perhaps the author's most striking finding—is that such distributions, which tend to be concentrated among larger, mature companies, are closely matched by new corporate borrowings and stock issuance—the latter often by smaller (non‐S&P 500) companies. What's more, while there's an outflow of cash from the S&P 500 from net buybacks and borrowing, there's a substantial cash inflow into the non‐S&P 500 from net stock issuances and borrowing.Finally, the fact that capital spending by European and Japanese companies—which face neither U.S.‐style quarterly‐oriented stock markets nor aggressive activist investors—has been falling more rapidly than in American companies suggests that U.S. capital markets are not a major reason for declining capital investment. And, while there's good reason for further R&D support, the author suggests in closing, reversing the U.S. government's sharply declining spending on R&D since the global financial crisis is the low‐hanging R&D fruit that should be bolstered first.

The Politics of Rightful Killing: Civil Society, Gender, and Sexuality in Weblogistan

The Politics of Rightful Killing: Civil Society, Gender, and Sexuality in Weblogistan

In the basic auction model, the optimal reserve price may depend on the number of bidders

A widespread claim in the auction literature about the most well known auction setting with i.i.d. private values is that the optimal reserve price for a second price auction is independent of the number n of bidders. This is indeed the case if the virtual valuation function is increasing, but this result fails to hold if the virtual valuation is non-monotone. In such case the optimal reserve price is weakly increasing in n and, as n tends to infinity, it tends to the highest regular valuation with zero virtual value.

Preparatory Control Against Distraction Is Not Feature-Based.

Salient-but-irrelevant stimuli (distractors) co-occurring with search targets can capture attention against the observer's will. Recently, evidence has accumulated that preparatory control can prevent this misguidance of spatial attention in predictable situations. However, the underlying mechanisms have remained elusive. Most pertinent theories assume that attention is guided by specific features. This widespread theoretical claim provides several strong predictions with regard to distractor handling that are disconfirmed here: Employing electrophysiological markers of covert attentional dynamics, in three experiments, we show that distractors standing out by a feature that is categorically different from the target consistently captures attention. However, equally salient distractors standing out in a different feature dimension are effectively down-weighted, even if unpredictably swapping their defining feature with the target. This shows that preparing for a distractor's feature is neither necessary nor sufficient for successful avoidance of attentional capture. Rather, capture is prevented by preparing for the distractor's feature dimension.

The ‘Antipoet of the Greeks’, or, how Euripides became a modernist

AbstractThis essay pursues the history of the widespread and influential claim that the ancient Greek tragedian Euripides anticipates the social concerns of modernity and the formal strategies of modernism. The claim originated at the same time as the development of the canon of German tragic criticism at the turn of the nineteenth century. Building on but importantly altering the ancient criticism of Euripides from Aristophanes and Aristotle, Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel and Friedrich Schiller each understood Euripides in close and uncomfortable proximity to their own political moment. The criticism that developed out of this canon both identified Euripides as an untimely modern and produced a series of hostile appraisals of his work. In the conjuncture of modernism in the early twentieth century, professional classicists and modernist poets both accepted the claim of Euripides’ untimely modernity and transvalued its terms: the projection of a ruptural, anticipatory modernity onto Euripides allowed the tragedian to assume the cast of a fellow-traveler of the literary projects of modernism itself. Following the modernist conjuncture, the untimely modernity claim has thoroughly influenced, and frequently dominated, the translation, adaptation, and interpretation of Euripides both inside and outside the professional study of Classics.

Spatiotemporal Analysis of Highway Traffic Patterns in Hurricane Irma Evacuation

The State of Florida is significantly vulnerable to catastrophic hurricanes that cause widespread infrastructural damage and claim lives annually. In 2017, Hurricane Irma, a Category 4 hurricane, took on the entirety of Florida, causing the state’s largest evacuation ever as 7 million residents fled the hurricane. Floridians fleeing the hurricane faced the unique challenge of where to go, since Irma made an unusual landfall from the south, enveloping the entire state, forcing evacuees to drive farther north, and creating traffic jams along Florida’s evacuation routes that were worse than during any other hurricane in Florida's history. This study aimed to assess the spatiotemporal traffic impacts of Irma on Florida’s major highways based on real-time traffic data before, during, and after the hurricane made landfall. First, we conducted a time-series-based analysis to evaluate the temporal evacuation patterns of this large-scale evacuation. Second, we developed a metric, namely the congestion index (CI), to assess the spatiotemporal evacuation patterns on I-95, I-75, I-10, I-4, and turnpike (SR-91) highways with a focus on both evacuation and returning traffic. Third, we employed a geographic information system-based analysis to visually illustrate the CI values of corresponding highway sections with respect to different dates and times. Findings clearly showed that imperfect forecasts and the uncertainty surrounding Irma’s predicted path resulted in high levels of congestion and severe delays on Florida’s major evacuation routes.

Learner Centred methods of Business English Learning

This research was started by following the widespread claim regarding the success of ‘learner-centred teaching approach’ across all disciplines throughout the world. It seeks to look at whether such a claim is true by implementing a theoretical framework of learner centred teaching in an EFL1 Classroom. A qualitative design involving an English teacher of and a number of learners from a vocational2 higher institution were used. The findings of this study overall proved that the implementation of this ‘learner-centred teaching’ framework could make a difference in students’ learning. Their learning became more meaningful, interesting and democratic3. This ‘Learner Centred Method’ approach emphasizes a spread of various sorts of methods that focuses on what the scholars are learning, it changes the role of the teachers from a provider of information to facilitating student learning. Traditional teaching often results in students who are passive learners and who don't take responsibility for his or her own learning, this traditional method (“instructor-centred teaching.”) In contrast with, ‘learner centred teaching’ occurs when instructors specialise in student learning. English is a basic language in all educational institution around the world. People learns the English language in order they can communicate with other people throughout the world. A student who wishes to go abroad for higher studies he/she should have the basic knowledge in English language just to communicate with the people there and understand what they are trying to express. And in business world English is the basic language for establishing communication between the client and the businessman. Teaching business English, or other ESP4 classes, usually pays better than teaching "conversation" English classes and some teachers find them more enjoyable. These classes will centre around a work environment and utilize business or ESP vocabulary5. Business English students are usually quite different from typical school students. They are often older, experienced and tired from an extended day at work and have a particular idea about what they want to learn. Also, sometimes, they're required to require English classes if they need to progress in their company.