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Articles 1 - 30 of 48
Full-Text Articles in Models and Methods
Textual Data Science With R By Monica Becue-Bertaut, Kenneth Benoit
Textual Data Science With R By Monica Becue-Bertaut, Kenneth Benoit
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Textual Data Science With R targets an important and rela-tively understudied area of data science: the statistical analysisof largely unstructured data in the form of natural languagetext. Using examples spanning fields such as free-form sur-vey responses, bibliographies, and speeches, the book presentsmulti-dimensional methods for mining patterns and insightsfrom textual data. Beginning with a practical and conceptualoverview of textual data and how to pre-preprocess and struc-ture this data, the book proceeds to explain the framework ofcorrespondence analysis and its application to textual data. Itthen discusses two other major approaches: clustering and afocus on cluster features, including characteristic words, andmultiple factor analysis. …
Text As Data: An Overview, Kenneth Benoit
Text As Data: An Overview, Kenneth Benoit
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
When it comes to textual data, the fields of political science and international relations face a genuine embarrassment of riches. Never before has so much text been so readily available on such a wide variety of topics that concern our discipline. Legislative debates, party manifestos, committee transcripts, candidate and other political speeches, lobbying documents, court opinions, laws – not only are all recorded and published today, but in many cases this is in a readily available form that is easily converted into structured data for systematic analysis.
“Daughter” As A Positionality And The Gendered Politics Of Taking Parents Into The Field, Menusha De Silva, Kanchan Gandhi
“Daughter” As A Positionality And The Gendered Politics Of Taking Parents Into The Field, Menusha De Silva, Kanchan Gandhi
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Research on gendered politics of the field has delved into the practices of accompaniment and its implications on research and knowledge production, particularly through the case of researchers’ children and partners. In comparison, the tendency to seek assistance from parents is neglected within the scholarship. Drawing on the PhD fieldwork experiences of two researchers in their “native” country, specifically a Sri Lankan researcher conducting fieldwork in Sri Lanka and a North Indian scholar researching in South India, the paper reveals parents’ contribution to the research process, in terms of enhancing researcher credibility, facilitating contact‐making and access, and providing emotional and …
Measuring And Explaining Political Sophistication Through Textual Complexity, Kenneth Benoit, Kevin Munger, Arthur Spirling
Measuring And Explaining Political Sophistication Through Textual Complexity, Kenneth Benoit, Kevin Munger, Arthur Spirling
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Political scientists lack domain-specific measures for the purpose of measuring the sophistication of political communication. We systematically review the shortcomings of existing approaches, before developing a new and better method along with software tools to apply it. We use crowdsourcing to perform thousands of pairwise comparisons of text snippets and incorporate these results into a statistical model of sophistication. This includes previously excluded features such as parts of speech and a measure of word rarity derived from dynamic term frequencies in the Google Books data set. Our technique not only shows which features are appropriate to the political domain and …
Perception Of Corrupt Acts: East Vs. West, Singapore Management University
Perception Of Corrupt Acts: East Vs. West, Singapore Management University
Perspectives@SMU
Corruption is a major threat faced by China and anyone who wants to do business in the country. In recent years, the Chinese government’s crackdowns in corruption has led to some success. In the Berlin-based non-profit Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2017, China ranked 77th with a score of 41 out of 100, a slight improvement from the score of 36 in 2014. The index ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople with a scale of 0 to 100, where 0 is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean.
Process-Tracing Research Designs: A Practical Guide, Jacob Ricks, Amy H. Liu
Process-Tracing Research Designs: A Practical Guide, Jacob Ricks, Amy H. Liu
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Process-tracing has grown in popularity among qualitative researchers. However, unlike statistical models and estimators—or even other topics in qualitative methods—process-tracing is largely bereft of guidelines, especially when it comes to teaching. We address this shortcoming by providing a step-by-step checklist for developing a research design to use process-tracing as a valid and substantial tool for hypothesis testing. This practical guide should be of interest for both research application and instructional purposes. An online appendix containing multiple examples facilitates teaching of the method.
Conceptualizing And Measuring Women’S Political Leadership: From Presence To Balance, Devin K. Joshi, Ryan Goehrung
Conceptualizing And Measuring Women’S Political Leadership: From Presence To Balance, Devin K. Joshi, Ryan Goehrung
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article conceptualizes an innovative understanding and measurement of women's political leadership, theoretically justifies its application, and analyzes contemporary variation in its patterns through comparative case studies. In recent years, scholars of comparative government have studied with great interest the election of female prime ministers and presidents (e.g., Derichs and Thompson 2013; Jalalzai 2013) and cross-national variation in female members of parliaments (MPs) and cabinets (e.g., Bauer and Tremblay 2011; Paxton and Hughes 2017; Suraj, Scherpereel, and Adams 2014). Yet, when it comes to regions beyond Europe and the Americas, comparative empirical analysis of women's political leadership (WPL) across national-level …
Conceptualizing And Measuring Women’S Political Leadership: From Presence To Balance, Devin K. Joshi, Ryan Goehrung
Conceptualizing And Measuring Women’S Political Leadership: From Presence To Balance, Devin K. Joshi, Ryan Goehrung
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
This article conceptualizes an innovative understanding and measurement of women's political leadership, theoretically justifies its application, and analyzes contemporary variation in its patterns through comparative case studies. In recent years, scholars of comparative government have studied with great interest the election of female prime ministers and presidents (e.g., Derichs and Thompson 2013; Jalalzai 2013) and cross-national variation in female members of parliaments (MPs) and cabinets (e.g., Bauer and Tremblay 2011; Paxton and Hughes 2017; Suraj, Scherpereel, and Adams 2014). Yet, when it comes to regions beyond Europe and the Americas, comparative empirical analysis of women's political leadership (WPL) across national-level …
Text Analysis In R, Kasper Welbers, Wouter Van Atteveldt, Kenneth Benoit
Text Analysis In R, Kasper Welbers, Wouter Van Atteveldt, Kenneth Benoit
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Computational text analysis has become an exciting research field with many applications in communication research. It can be a difficult method to apply, however, because it requires knowledge of various techniques, and the software required to perform most of these techniques is not readily available in common statistical software packages. In this teacher’s corner, we address these barriers by providing an overview of general steps and operations in a computational text analysis project, and demonstrate how each step can be performed using the R statistical software. As a popular open-source platform, R has an extensive user community that develops and …
Predicting The Brexit Vote By Tracking And Classifying Public Opinion Using Twitter Data, Julio C. Amador Diaz Lopez, Sofia Collignon-Delmar, Kenneth Benoit, Akitaka Matsuo
Predicting The Brexit Vote By Tracking And Classifying Public Opinion Using Twitter Data, Julio C. Amador Diaz Lopez, Sofia Collignon-Delmar, Kenneth Benoit, Akitaka Matsuo
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
We use 23M Tweets related to the EU referendum in the UK to predict the Brexit vote. In particular, we use user-generated labels known as hashtags to build training sets related to the Leave/Remain campaign. Next, we train SVMs in order to classify Tweets. Finally, we compare our results to Internet and telephone polls. This approach not only allows to reduce the time of hand-coding data to create a training set, but also achieves high level of correlations with Internet polls. Our results suggest that Twitter data may be a suitable substitute for Internet polls and may be a useful …
Street-Level Bureaucrats And Irrigation Policy Reform In Southeast Asia, Jacob I. Ricks
Street-Level Bureaucrats And Irrigation Policy Reform In Southeast Asia, Jacob I. Ricks
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Policy reforms are difficult for developing states, especially when they are meant to improve cooperation and collaboration between private citizens and state officials, such as in the case of education, health care provision, business-state relations, and policing. A large part of this challenge is that the policy reforms required for coproduction of services necessitate development of state capacity in new directions. Using the substantive issue of irrigation reforms, especially those aimed at improving service provision and farmer participation, I identify three lessons for reformers regarding the implementation of policy for the coproduction of services. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Thailand …
Estimating Intra-Party Preferences: Comparing Speeches To Votes, Daniel Schwarz, Denise Traber, Kenneth Benoit
Estimating Intra-Party Preferences: Comparing Speeches To Votes, Daniel Schwarz, Denise Traber, Kenneth Benoit
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Well-established methods exist for measuring party positions, but reliable means for estimating intra-party preferences remain underdeveloped. While most efforts focus on estimating the ideal points of individual legislators based on inductive scaling of roll call votes, this data suffers from two problems: selection bias due to unrecorded votes and strong party discipline, which tends to make voting a strategic rather than a sincere indication of preferences. By contrast, legislative speeches are relatively unconstrained, as party leaders are less likely to punish MPs for speaking freely as long as they vote with the party line. Yet, the differences between roll call …
Getting Town Councils To Raise Their Game, Tan K. B. Eugene
Getting Town Councils To Raise Their Game, Tan K. B. Eugene
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
Given that about 80 per cent of Singaporeans live in public housing estates, town councils are an integral part of Singapore life. Last month, the Ministry of National Development (MND) initiated a public consultation on the proposed amendments to the Town Councils Act (TCA), which was first enacted in 1988 to empower elected Members of Parliament and unelected town councillors to run public housing estates
Crowd-Sourced Text Analysis: Reproducible And Agile Production Of Political Data, Kenneth Benoit, Drew Conway, Benjamin E. Lauderdale, Michael Laver, Slava Mikhaylov
Crowd-Sourced Text Analysis: Reproducible And Agile Production Of Political Data, Kenneth Benoit, Drew Conway, Benjamin E. Lauderdale, Michael Laver, Slava Mikhaylov
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Empirical social science often relies on data that are not observed in the field, but are transformed into quantitative variables by expert researchers who analyze and interpret qualitative raw sources. While generally considered the most valid way to produce data, this expert-driven process is inherently difficult to replicate or to assess on grounds of reliability. Using crowd-sourcing to distribute text for reading and interpretation by massive numbers of nonexperts, we generate results comparable to those using experts to read and interpret the same texts, but do so far more quickly and flexibly. Crucially, the data we collect can be reproduced …
Weighing The Possible Changes To Singapore’S Political System, Tan K. B. Eugene
Weighing The Possible Changes To Singapore’S Political System, Tan K. B. Eugene
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan shared his views on the key issues outlined by President Tony Tan Keng Yam during his opening address at the first session of the 13th Parliament. Associate Prof Tan noted that President Tan had emphasised that our political system must be refreshed from time to time, as our circumstances change, and that the Government will study this matter carefully, to see whether and how we should improve our political system so that we can be assured of clean, effective, and accountable government over the long term. Associate Prof Tan said …
Asean's Role In Asia Pacific In The Driver's Seat Or Just A Back-Seat Driver?, Sudhir Devare
Asean's Role In Asia Pacific In The Driver's Seat Or Just A Back-Seat Driver?, Sudhir Devare
Asian Management Insights
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has often been described as the fulcrum around which the security, political and economic architecture of AsiaPacific will be built. But can ASEAN play that role?
Risk Regulation In China, Singapore Management University
Risk Regulation In China, Singapore Management University
Perspectives@SMU
Local political power poses a formidable challenge to Beijing's efforts to enforce regulation...and shore up popular support for the regime
On The Road To Watershed Hustings, Tan K. B. Eugene
On The Road To Watershed Hustings, Tan K. B. Eugene
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
In a commentary, SMU Associate Professor of Law and former Nominated Member of Parliament Eugene Tan noted that with just 23 months left in the 12th Parliament's five-year term, the next polls, which will have to be held by Jan 9, 2017, promise to be the watershed general election. He also commented that it will almost certainly be a straight fight between the ruling People's Action Party and the Workers' Party, providing some indication of whether Singapore is evolving from a one-party dominant to a two-party political system.
Debate On Bernard Yack’S Book Nationalism And The Moral Psychology Of Community, Jonathan Hearn, Chandran Kukathas, David Miller, Bernard Yack
Debate On Bernard Yack’S Book Nationalism And The Moral Psychology Of Community, Jonathan Hearn, Chandran Kukathas, David Miller, Bernard Yack
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Bernard Yack's Nationalism and the Moral Psychology of Community (2012) was the subject of the eighth in a long‐running series of debates hosted by the Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (ASEN) and the journal Nations and Nationalism in November of 2013. These debates bring together the authors of recent important works in the study of nationalism and ethnicity with appropriate scholars to explore the questions they have provoked. On this occasion Professor Yack was joined by Professor Chandran Kukathas and Professor David Miller.
Validating Estimates Of Latent Traits From Textual Data Using Human Judgment As A Benchmark, Will Lowe, Kenneth Benoit
Validating Estimates Of Latent Traits From Textual Data Using Human Judgment As A Benchmark, Will Lowe, Kenneth Benoit
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Automated and statistical methods for estimating latent political traits and classes from textual data hold great promise, because virtually every political act involves the production of text. Statistical models of natural language features, however, are heavily laden with unrealistic assumptions about the process that generates these data, including the stochastic process of text generation, the functional link between political variables and observed text, and the nature of the variables (and dimensions) on which observed text should be conditioned. While acknowledging statistical models of latent traits to be "wrong," political scientists nonetheless treat their results as sufficiently valid to be useful. …
Show Me The Money!, Singapore Management University
Show Me The Money!, Singapore Management University
Perspectives@SMU
Governments worldwide are accumulating reserves to guard against financial turmoil. Could they be contributing to it?
Coder Reliability And Misclassification In The Human Coding Of Party Manifestos, Slava Mikhaylov, Michael Laver, Kenneth Benoit
Coder Reliability And Misclassification In The Human Coding Of Party Manifestos, Slava Mikhaylov, Michael Laver, Kenneth Benoit
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
The Comparative Manifesto Project (CMP) provides the only time series of estimated party policy positions in political science and has been extensively used in a wide variety of applications. Recent work (e.g., Benoit, Laver, and Mikhaylov 2009; Klingemann et al. 2006) focuses on nonsystematic sources of error in these estimates that arise from the text generation process. Our concern here, by contrast, is with error that arises during the text coding process since nearly all manifestos are coded only once by a single coder. First, we discuss reliability and misclassification in the context of hand-coded content analysis methods. Second, we …
Natural Sentences As Valid Units For Coded Political Texts, Thomas Daubler, Kenneth Benoit, Slava Mikhaylov, Michael Laver
Natural Sentences As Valid Units For Coded Political Texts, Thomas Daubler, Kenneth Benoit, Slava Mikhaylov, Michael Laver
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
A rapidly growing area in political science has focused on perfecting techniques to treat politicaltext as ‘data’, usually for the purposes of estimating latent traits such as left–right political policypositions.1 More traditional approaches have applied classical content analysis to categorize sub-unitsof political text, such as sentences in manifestos. Prominent examples of this latter approach includethe thirty-year old Comparative Manifestos Project and the Policy Agendas Project.2 ‘Text as data’approaches use machines to convert text to quantitative information and use statistical tools to makeinferences about characteristics of the author of the text. Content analysis schemes use humans to readtextual sub-units and assign …
How To Scale Coded Text Units Without Bias: A Response To Gemenis, Kenneth Benoit, Michael Laver, Will Lowe, Slava Mikhaylov
How To Scale Coded Text Units Without Bias: A Response To Gemenis, Kenneth Benoit, Michael Laver, Will Lowe, Slava Mikhaylov
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Coding non-manifesto documents as if they were genuine policy platforms produced at election time clearly raises serious issues with error when these codings are used in the standard manner to estimate left-right policy positions. In addition to the long term solution of improving the document base of the Manifesto Project identified by Gemenis (2012), we argue that immediate gains in manifesto-based estimates of policy positions can be realised by using the confrontational logit scales from Lowe et al. (2011), which addresses the problems of scale content and scale construction that are exacerbated by but not unique to the problems found …
Will The Obama Administration Change Tack On Protectionism Before Things Get Worse?, Singapore Management University
Will The Obama Administration Change Tack On Protectionism Before Things Get Worse?, Singapore Management University
Perspectives@SMU
The new American government under President Barrack Obama is not the biggest cheerleader for free trade. With its own domestic economy entering this steep downturn, talks of protectionism in one form or another have been voiced every now and then. Catchy buzzwords like “Buy America” are gaining traction. The temptation to turn inwards, driven by the obligation to votes is growing stronger.
The Dimensionality Of Political Space: Epistemological And Methodological Considerations, Kenneth Benoit, Michael Laver
The Dimensionality Of Political Space: Epistemological And Methodological Considerations, Kenneth Benoit, Michael Laver
Research Collection School of Social Sciences
Spatial characterizations of agents' preferences lie at the heart of many theories of political competition. These give rise to explicitly dimensional interpretations. Parties define and differentiate themselves in terms of substantive policy issues, and the configuration of such issues that is required for a good description of political competition affects how we think substantively about the underlying political space in which parties compete. For this reason a great deal of activity in political science consists of estimating such configurations in particular real settings. We focus on three main issues in this article. First, we discuss the nature of political differences …
Adaptability In Socio-Political Contexts: Moving Beyond Ability And Intelligence, Singapore Management University
Adaptability In Socio-Political Contexts: Moving Beyond Ability And Intelligence, Singapore Management University
Perspectives@SMU
The ability to adapt in an ever-changing environment is critical for success, if not, survival. Most people would acknowledge that change management can sometimes be a discomforting and bumpy process. This applies not just with individuals and organisations, but also with governments. While the former two may adapt privately, governments, represented by politicians and public officers, often have the unenviable task of demonstrating adaptability under the watchful eyes of their public. Slip-ups, trips and falls thus come at greater costs, which go well beyond mere embarrassment.
From Boardroom To Parliament, Singapore Management University
From Boardroom To Parliament, Singapore Management University
Perspectives@SMU
Everyone has different motivations for working, . But the primary incentive for slogging it out in the corporate jungle would be money— at least that is what employers believe. This helps explain why companies are often willing to shell out wads of cash to outbid one another in the labour market for top executives.
Let Political System Be A Connecting Tool, Tan K. B. Eugene
Let Political System Be A Connecting Tool, Tan K. B. Eugene
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
An article by Eugene K B Tan, Assistant Professor of Law analysing the Prime Minister's National Day Rally speech. He suggests the PM could have used the speech to highlight how the political system can evolve to generate greater public ownership of the system of governance.
New Cabinet Will Have Its Work Cut Out, Tan K. B. Eugene
New Cabinet Will Have Its Work Cut Out, Tan K. B. Eugene
Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law
Eugene Tan, asst professor of law at SMU writes a commentary about how the PAP Government will have to renew trust with the people.