Search results for "ECONOMICS"
showing 10 items of 14389 documents
Effects of seniority, gender and geography on the bibliometric output and collaboration networks of European Research Council (ERC) grant recipients.
2019
Assessing the success and performance of researchers is a difficult task, as their grant output is influenced by a series of factors, including seniority, gender and geographical location of their host institution. In order to assess the effects of these factors, we analysed the publication and citation outputs, using Scopus and Web of Science, and the collaboration networks of European Research Council (ERC) starting (junior) and advanced (senior) grantees. For this study, we used a cohort of 355 grantees from the Life Sciences domain of years 2007-09. While senior grantees had overall greater publication output, junior grantees had a significantly greater pre-post grant award increase in …
¿Qué conduce a un citricultor a ser "orgánico"? Evidencia empírica a partir de la citricultura española
2012
Organic farming is increasing its share of total world food output and receiving grow-ing support from policymakers concerned with agricultural sustainability issues. This paper studies the characteristics of citrus farmers in the Spanish region of Valencia that affect their probability of becoming organic farmers. A fair understanding of these characteristics may help policymakers improve the design of agricultural policies aimed at supporting organic citrus practices. As regards the methodology, a probit model is estimated with information from a sample of conventional and organic citrus farmers obtained from a survey designed for a larger research project aimed at analysing Valencian cit…
New Arrivals, Old Places: Demographic Changes and New Planning Challenges in Palermo and Naples
2008
If we look at the demographic changes in the largest cities in Southern Italy, the most significant trend is a balance between population growth and decline, affecting in particular inner urban areas, which is due to the predominance of new ethnic inhabitants. After having described these demographic changes in Naples and Palermo, the paper will include some considerations on the ‘institutional’ landscape of planning and the related policies. How do planning policies and practices face this quick change in such peripheral contexts, which are new to the phenomenon? Can the plural composition of the local society be viewed as an opportunity, and not just as a threat? The paper will use some a…
Rethinking Civil Society in Development: Scales and Situated Hegemonies
2016
Ethnic residential segregation is often explained with the claim that ‘immigrants don’t want to integrate—they prefer to stick together with co-ethnics’. By contrast, mixed neighbourhoods are seen as crucial for achieving social cohesion. In line with spatial assimilation theory there is a normative assumption that people interact with those living nearby. From interviews on neighbourhood qualities and locations valued by Oslo residents of Turkish, Somali and Polish backgrounds, we raise questions about the validity of two assumptions: that most immigrants want to live in the same neighbourhoods as co-ethnics; and that they want to live close to co-ethnics because they do not want to integr…
Civil Society in the 2004 Romanian Elections: Watchdog, Involved Arbiter or Political Actor?
2010
Abstract Civil society has proven outstanding capacities of involvement in the 2004 general elections in Romania and put a remarkable pressure on the political society. This paper aims to discuss the consequences of such involvement for both the political and civil society. We also investigate the conditions that have favoured a successful challenge of the main political actors by the most visible civic advocacy organizations. Further, we inquire how deep can an actor from the civil society go into the lands of the political society. In the end, we weight the achievements and the failures of civil society’s active involvement in the game of elections.
Spain: commercialization drives public debate and precaution
2000
Since the commercialization of genetically modified (GM) crops and foods in Spain in 1996, these products have become a topic of public concern and conflict. Several important social protagonists from science, industry and civil society have become involved in the public debate. The conflicts have influenced the regulation, improving its precautionary content, in response to social pressures in Spain and elsewhere in Europe. As Spain has become the primary cultivator of GM crops in the European Union, commercial cultivation there has been scientifically monitored for possible long-term environmental effects. Regulators have also asked industry to cease using antibiotic-resistant marker gene…
The Paradox of Effectiveness: Growth, Institutionalisation and Evaluation of Anti-Mafia Policies in Italy
2004
This contribution focuses on Italian policies that have been envisaged and implemented to combat, prevent or contain mafia-type organised crime.1 After having shown that a proper analysis of anti-mafia policies is strangely lacking (section 2), policies directly addressing the mafia are dealt with, hinting at the norms concerning specific criminal offences, vast investigatory powers and penetrating preventive measures, financial transactions and money laundering, collaborators of justice, the peculiarity of mafia trials, judicial attitudes and sanctions (section 3.1). Section 3.2 presents the wide variety of other policies addressing civil society and public administrations, and only indire…
Institutions, crises, and political confidence in seven contemporary democracies. An elite-mass analysis
2017
There is ample consensus in the literature that institutional confidence by the public is needed in democracies and at the same time elites, particularly political elites, need to share this confidence in their guidance of state institutions, if political stability in established democracies and the consolidation of new democracies are desired. The research takes the form of a quantitative analysis based on the World Values Surveys and the elite surveys (parliamentarians) conducted in 2006 (before the financial crisis) and in 2012–2013 (post the crisis when apparently, the worst of the economic crunch had lessened up) in the 7 countries selected. We explore what lies at the base of politica…
Liberalism, Governmentality and Counter-Conduct; An Introduction to Foucauldian Analytics of Liberal Civil Society Notions
2015
This article gives an analysis of Foucault’s studies of civil society and the various liberalist critiques of government. It follows from Foucault’s genealogical approach that “civil society” does not in itself possess any form of transcendental existence; its historical reality must be seen as the result of the productive nature of the power-knowledge-matrices. Foucault emphasizes that modern governmentality—and more specifically the procedures he names “the conduct of conduct”—is not exercised through coercive power and domination, but is dependent on the freedom and activeness of individuals and groups of society. Civil society is thus analyzed as fundamentally ambivalent: on the one han…
The New Co-Development Agenda: Official and Non-Official Initiatives between Morocco and Spain
2011
A search for approaches that can positively connect migration with development in migrants’ countries of origin has begun in Europe along with a new perception of the phenomenon of migration and a response to change in the cycle of movement. Pressure has intensified in the last few years during which Europe has set up higher barriers against the arrival of new migrants, and the living conditions for those already settled have become more harsh. Awareness of the intensification of (northward) migration – which is not always in answer to the labour market’s needs – has shifted the search for ‘solutions’ towards the countries of origin.