Progress,democracy, efficiency: normative narratives in political science EU studies

ABSTRACT

This article identifies influential political narratives in the 73 currently most highly cited political science articles on the EU. It is based on systematic analysis of expressions of normativity, which signal that European integration, or its institutions or policies, are bad, good, flourishing or declining. A normative narrative of continuous progress in integration, connected with a 1990s grand theoretical debate in EU studies, accounts for much of the positive tone of EU studies until about 1998. Narratives about the EU's democratic deficit and its impact beyond its borders help explain the subsequent negative turn in EU studies normativity.     

Fundamental principles of network formation among preschool children

The goal of this research was to investigate the origins of social networks by examining the formation of children's peer relationships in 11 preschool classes throughout the school year. We investigated whether several fundamental processes of relationship formation were evident at this age, including reciprocity, popularity, and triadic closure effects. We expected these mechanisms to change in importance over time as the network crystallizes, allowing more complex structures to evolve from simpler ones in a process we refer to as structural cascading. We analyzed intensive longitudinal observational data of children's interactions using the SIENA actor-based model. We found evidence that reciprocity, popularity, and triadic closure all shaped the formation of preschool children's networks. The influence of reciprocity remained consistent, whereas popularity and triadic closure became increasingly important over the course of the school year. Interactions between age and endogenous network effects were non-significant, suggesting that these network formation processes were not moderated by age in this sample of young children. We discuss the implications of our longitudinal network approach and findings for the study of early network developmental processes.     

Multicultural awareness through English: a potential contribution of TESOL in Greek schools

The cultural diversity now evident in Greek society creates educational challenges and opportunities. Space to address these is provided by the multicultural awareness aspects of the discourse of the Cross‐Thematic Curriculum Framework (CTCF). For English language classes, multicultural direction is provided through the disciplinary discussion of new teaching paradigm possibilities. In particular, these discussions encourage us to explore the repositioning of English teaching in Greek state schooling from a foreign language orientation towards a multicultural one. In this article, having set the context, we present the Multicultural Awareness Through English (MATE) paradigm. We conclude by illustrating the MATE paradigm in action.

     

The Pendulum Effect: Explaining Shifts in the Democratic Response to Terrorism

Successful modern democracies act to balance the twin obligations of maintaining secure and tolerant environments for their citizens. When faced with external threats such as global terrorism, democracies respond in a pendulum fashion—acting initially by giving security precedence over other values and then swinging back towards moderation, the pursuit of tolerance, and the promotion of policies that match the preferences of the median voter in society. Understanding this behavior helps to explain shifts in U.S. security policy since 9/11, and suggests fruitful avenues for research in political psychology .     

A REVIEW OF BOUNDS FOR THE EFFICIENCY FACTOR OF BLOCK DESIGNS

This paper draws together bounds for the efficiency factor of block designs, starting with the papers of Conniffe & Stone (1974) and Williams & Patterson (1977). By extending the methods of Jarrett (1983), firstly to cover supercomplete block designs and then to cover resolvable designs, a set of bounds is obtained which provides the best current bounds for any block design with equal replication and equal block size, including resolvable designs and two-replicate resolvable designs as special cases. The bounds given for non-resolvable designs apply strictly only to designs which are either regular-graph (John & Mitchell, 1977) or whose duals are regular-graph. It is conjectured (John & Williams, 1982) that they are in fact global bounds. Similar qualifications apply to the bounds for resolvable designs.