Adopt or Not and Innovation Variation: A Dynamic Comparison Study of Policy Innovation and Diffusion Mechanisms

Abstract

Policy innovation and diffusion literature mainly focuses on the decision to adopt a new policy, while ignoring the differences among new policies. This study divides the decision-making process of policy innovation diffusion into two phases: in the “innovate or not” phase, governments make the decision to adopt or reject the new policy, while “how to innovate” is the process by which governments formulate specific content for the new policy. A dynamic comparative analysis finds that effects of internal determinants and diffusion mechanisms vary during these two phases and that internal determinants moderate the effects of diffusion mechanisms.     

Repression,spontaneity, and collective action: the 2013 Turkish Gezi protests

Scholars have identified various conditions that influence the formation of spontaneous collective action. Certain types of opposition strategies and geographic conditions make it likelier for protesters to be able to overcome reactive repression and keep mobilizing after experiencing state violence. As such, it is still unclear why a small protest sometimes diffuses into an unforeseen mass wave of dissent. Through examination of Turkish civil society, this study introduces a framework to explain the emergence of the 2013 Gezi protest, which was the largest in the Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (Justice and Development Party) government-led era of Turkish politics. A sequence of mechanisms including viral diffusion, elite updating/cover-up, public outrage, and coordination are categorized and linked to previously identified antecedent conditions as well as Twitter activity of social movement organizations which took part in the protests. The framework advances our knowledge of repression backfire by identifying its causal mechanisms and classifying a configuration of conditions under which the phenomenon is likely to empirically take place.     

Voter Ideology, the Economy, and the International Environment in Western Democracies, 1952–1989

Although it is commonly assumed that voters shift on an ideological spectrum over time, there has been relatively little scientific inquiry into the reasons for shifts in voter ideology. In this article, we attempt to explain why voter ideological shifts occur utilizing an interval measure of voter ideology recently developed by Kim and Fording. A pooled time-series analysis of 13 Western democracies for the period of 1952–1989 identifies several internal and external factors causing shifts in voter ideology. With respect to domestic influences, the state of the country's national economy, primarily inflation, seems to drive movement in voter ideology in a most significant way, but we find that the direction of this relationship is dependent on the ideological disposition of the incumbent government. With respect to international influences, we find significant ideological diffusion across neighboring countries of Western democracies. The effects of ideological diffusion are strongest within countries that are small relative to their neighbors. We also find that ideology is influenced by the international political environment, especially the level of East-West tension during the Cold War.     

Profiling and imaging of forensic evidence – A pan-European forensic round robin study part 1: Document forgery

The forensic scenario, on which the round robin study was based, simulated a suspected intentional manipulation of a real estate rental agreement consisting of a total of three pages. The aims of this study were to (i) establish the amount and reliability of information extractable from a single type of evidence and to (ii) provide suggestions on the most suitable combination of compatible techniques for a multi-modal imaging approach to forgery detection. To address these aims, seventeen laboratories from sixteen countries were invited to answer the following tasks questions: (i) which printing technique was used? (ii) were the three pages printed with the same printer? (iii) were the three pages made from the same paper? (iv) were the three pages originally stapled? (v) were the headings and signatures written with the same ink? and (vi) were headings and signatures of the same age on all pages? The methods used were classified into the following categories: Optical spectroscopy, including multispectral imaging, smartphone mapping, UV-luminescence and LIBS; Infrared spectroscopy, including Raman and FTIR (micro-)spectroscopy; X-ray spectroscopy, including SEM-EDX, PIXE and XPS; Mass spectrometry, including ICPMS, SIMS, MALDI and LDIMS; Electrostatic imaging, as well as non-imaging methods, such as non-multimodal visual inspection, (micro-)spectroscopy, physical testing and thin layer chromatography. The performance of the techniques was evaluated as the proportion of discriminated sample pairs to all possible sample pairs. For the undiscriminated sample pairs, a distinction was made between undecidability and false positive claims. It was found that none of the methods used were able to solve all tasks completely and/or correctly and that certain methods were a priori judged unsuitable by the laboratories for some tasks. Correct results were generally achieved for the discrimination of printer toners, whereas incorrect results in the discrimination of inks. For the discrimination of paper, solid state analytical methods proved to be superior to mass spectrometric methods. None of the participating laboratories deemed addressing ink age feasible. It was concluded that correct forensic statements can only be achieved by the complementary application of different methods and that the classical approach of round robin studies to send standardised subsamples to the participants is not feasible for a true multimodal approach if the techniques are not available at one location.     

Carbon‐Based Fingerprint Powder as a One‐Step Development and Matrix Application for High‐Resolution Mass Spectrometry Imaging of Latent Fingerprints

Carbon‐based materials are often used as matrices for matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI‐MS) and its imaging (MALDI‐MSI). However, researchers have refrained from using carbon‐based fingerprint powder (CFP) as a matrix due to high background and contamination. In this work, the compatibility of CFP is reevaluated with MALDI‐MSI using a high‐resolution mass spectrometer (HRMS) and compared to traditional organic matrices. Relevant fingerprint compounds were easily distinguished from carbon cluster peaks when using HRMS. For fair comparison, half of a fingerprint was dusted with CFP while the other half was dusted with traditional organic matrices. All compounds studied had comparable, or higher, signal‐to‐noise (S/N) ratios when CFP was used as the matrix. Additionally, chemical image qualities closely followed the trend of S/N ratios. CFP proved to be an effective one‐step development and matrix application technique for MALDI‐MSI of latent fingerprints, when carbon cluster peaks are well separated by a HRMS.     

Application of MALDI‐TOF MS for Estimating the Postmortem Interval in Rat Muscle Samples

Estimating the postmortem interval (PMI) is very important in the forensic sciences. Although many approaches have been used for estimating the PMI, accurate PMI calculations are still difficult. In this study, four Sprague Dawley (SD) rats were sacrificed by suffocation, and muscle samples were collected by dissection at various time intervals (0, 48, 96, and 144 h) after death. All samples were probed using matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionization time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (MALDI‐TOFMS) to obtain molecular images and data for principal component analysis (PCA). The results showed that the peaks at m/z 1511, 1543, 1564, 1586 clearly decreased in intensity from 0 to 144 h postmortem and that the time groups were separated from each other on the PCA score plot. The prediction model showed high recognition capability (95.93%) and cross‐validation (83.72%). Our work suggests that MALDI‐TOF MS can be used to determine the PMI.     

Effect of History and Context on Forensic Pathologist Interpretation of Photographs of Patterned Injury of the Skin

In a previous study, a survey‐based analysis of pathologist diagnoses of patterned injury was performed. Subjects were provided with photographs of “classic” injuries and asked to diagnose the lesion in the absence of history or context. There was a relatively low diagnostic consensus among respondents. A second survey suggested that the disparate answers were not due to a strong belief in different diagnoses, but instead reflected how the respondents dealt with ambiguity. A third survey was created that asked participants to evaluate patterned injuries of the skin, but provided history and contextual information. The addition of history and contextual information increased consensus from a median of 80% to 98% on a per‐question basis. Confidence increased from a median of 56%–92%. These results demonstrate the importance of history and context in medical diagnosis of patterned injuries of the skin.     

4种影像学检查方法应用于肩关节损伤法医学鉴定的比较

目的 评价X线、CT、MRI及CT气-碘双对比造影4种方法在肩关节损伤法医学鉴定中的应用价值.方法通过对肩关节损伤患者行X线摄片、CT扫描、MRI成像与CT气-碘双对比造影检查,观察、分析4种方法所得的影像学资料.结果 X线摄片对骨折的诊断率为52.8%,对软组织损伤的诊断率为0%;CT对骨折的诊断率为72.0%.对软...     

基于水印技术的司法数码影像防伪信息系统

数码影像作为证据使用存在一定的争议,针对此提出并建立了基于水印技术的司法数码影像防伪信息系统,该系统由加密防伪子系统、信息管理子系统和加密信息验证子系统组成,为确保司法数码影像的证据效力提供了一种技术方案。     

府际关系与政府创新扩散：一个文献综述

本文对有关府际关系及其对政府创新扩散的影响的相关文献进行了初步综述,并探讨了这些文献对中国的启示。本文从垂直和水平两个方向分析了府际关系,并进一步将垂直关系分为自上而下和自下而上两个方面,将水平关系划分成竞争和学习两个维度,进而从上述四个方面对已有研究文献进行综述,发现了目前研究的主要特征及问题,并指出了未来研究方向。最后,文章探讨了中国政治体制的特点及其同这些文献的关系,并对中国政府创新扩散的实践与研究前景进行了总结。