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I develop a new measure of interpersonal influence on the U.S. Supreme Court. Following Altfeld and Spaeth, I define influence as "the act of producing an effect on the behavior of another without the use of coercion, authority, or political control." I propose a measure of influence based on the number of times a justice cites her colleagues' concurring and dissenting opinions. My analysis proceeds in two stages. First, I verify that this citation-based measure is a valid method of gauging influence. From there, I use this measure to help explain justice behavior in two pivotal stages of the Supreme Court's decision-making process: oral arguments and opinion assignments. The results demonstrate that a citation-based measure of influence can help explain and predict behavior on the Supreme Court.

This article introduces centrality in covoting networks as a measure of influence. Based on a simple cueing dynamic, it conceptualizes those lawmakers as most central—and thus as having the greatest signaling influence—who impact the greatest number of colleagues' voting decisions. A formal proof and an agent‐based simulation show that cue‐providers are always more central than followers; hence, we can use real‐world voting data to identify the most influential legislators. To confirm the measure's construct validity, we predict covoting centrality in the European Parliament and find those factors that are expected to impact legislators' influence to predict their centrality.

For three decades new social movements have undergone scrutiny from political scientists with much written about why social movements exist and how they attract members. However little has been done on the influence of these mass mobilisations. In this paper I investigate normative and empirical statements about social movements in order to develop a way to measure the influence of these phenomenon. Current social movement literature provides few tools that can be used to measure social movement influence. I will argue that the influence of mass mobilisations on the political realm can be measured using discourse analysis techniques and by looking to public policy literature. I will then test this methodology by looking at the influence of the New Zealand women's movement on debates surrounding child care and unpaid work.

For three decades new social movements have undergone scrutiny from political scientists with much written about why social movements exist and how they attract members. However little has been done on the influence of these mass mobilisations. In this paper I investigate normative and empirical statements about social movements in order to develop a way to measure the influence of these phenomenon. Current social movement literature provides few tools that can be used to measure social movement influence. I will argue that the influence of mass mobilisations on the political realm can be measured using discourse analysis techniques and by looking to public policy literature. I will then test this methodology by looking at the influence of the New Zealand women's movement on debates surrounding child care and unpaid work.

Master in the Electric Power Industry ; Red Eléctrica España is the TSO of the Spanish electricity system. They are wondering how the energy savings from the Energy Efficiency Directive imposed by the European Union are calculated on a European level and on a Member State level and how these will influence the electricity demand in the system. Therefore, the way these energy saving measures are calculated are extensively described on both levels and subsequently the changes on the electricity demand are calculated with the help of GDP forecasts from the IMF and the electricity demand model of Red Eléctrica España including the possible direct rebound effects. Following an analysis is made of the change in electricity demand caused by the energy saving measures.

The importance of the Latino electorate has been the subject of both academic inquiry and media discourses. The question of Latino influence is frequently limited by an approach that focuses on single variable considerations (e.g., voter turnout or ethnic-targeted campaign spending) that are often contest-specific idiosyncrasies. Relying on theoretically appropriate concepts, the authors measure Latino political influence as a function of three factors: in-group population traits, electoral volatility, and mobilization. Using the 2008 presidential election, the authors demonstrate the utility of incorporating a multifaceted measure that accounts for the contemporary complexity within the electoral environment. Because this framework is rooted in theoretical concepts, as opposed to discrete group or contest characteristics, it may be applied to any "influence group" in different electoral settings. Data are culled from several publicly available outlets, making it possible for scholars to replicate these measures and further investigate questions associated with group influence in American politics.

Although weblogs are a popular medium of communication, their influence on society is unclear. In particular, studies that investigate the impact and influence of blogosphere on the community and government have not been fully exploited. Such studies are important especially to the government in reshaping and realigning the policies related to new media. This article presents the outcomes of a study to identify measures on how to assess the influence of weblogs. At least four dimensions are critical for measuring weblog influence, which are recognition (number of in links and number of visitors), activity generation (number of comments and number of posts), novelty (number of out links), and credibility of a blog (number of information presentation type, number of factual errors, and number of hyperlink citations). It is hereby proposed that these dimensions make up a measure called the Blog Influence Index.

AbstractWhile there is nearly unanimous agreement among social scientists that the defendant's prior record is important in explaining the sentence imposed on the defendant, there is little agreement on the "best" or most appropriate measure of prior record to use in examining sentence disparity. This study provides an assessment of the utility of 11 commonly used measures of prior record. We find that the various measures are not interrelated highly and thus necessarily are not interchangeable. We also find that the measures of prior record affect sentence severity differently and that the relationships between these measures and sentence severity varies for black and white defendants.