It’s called “Measuring the formal independence of regulatory agencies”, it’s written together with Christel Koop, and it’s available online through JEPP.

The argument we make is quite simple, even if the graphs and models we use aren’t.

We take an existing index of independence, and we test whether all the items in the index fit, and whether the different item response categories are correctly ordered.

We find that items on method of appointment and the powers of the regulator aren’t related to the rest of the items, and so should be dropped.

Unfortunately, the article is a bit hard to understand unless you’ve read the original Gilardi article and have an idea of what the different response categories are. To see the different response categories, and full descriptives for the data we used, check out our previous report.

Some of the documents in support of the application have an upper limit on the number of characters; some have an upper limit on the number of pages.

I find limits on the number of pages annoying. The quantity of pages of a document has no relationship to the quantity of content contained therein. They do have a relationship with font size, and line length.

I don’t want my grant application to fail because I didn’t mention x, y, or z. So I’ll try and meet the limit that’s been set me. I’ll decrease page margins, increase line length, and — by consequence — decrease legibility. (Thankfully, I’m barred from decreasing font-size).

This is not good for me, and it’s not good for reviewers. Why can’t grant bodies set limits in terms of characters or words?

So I made my own PDF programme for Reykjavik 2011. It’s in A5 format, and is optimized for e-readers, so very thin margins. Other formats on request.

Thanks to the lack of detailed specifications in the Italian constitution, and, to the great benefit of peaceful governance, the President’s significance and capacity for autonomous action varies depending on the specific circumstances. This raises a large number of potential questions for analysis. How has the role of the presidency changed over the post-war period? To what extent have the office and its incumbents influenced the events and processes of political change that have underlain the so-called transition from first to second republics in recent years? What are the limits on presidential powers and to what extent have these been influenced by the characteristics and the actions of the specific individuals who have held the post? Why has reform of the presidency been an issue on the agenda of Italian politics in recent years? How does the role of the presidency compare with the role of heads of state in other liberal democracies? In short, how significant is the presidency for the Italian political system and for our understanding of the role of heads of state in democracies in general?

Offers of papers exploring any of these or related issues are welcome.

Paper abstracts (circa 250 words) should be e-mailed, by 22 September at the very latest, to me, Jim Newell (j.l.newell@salford.ac.uk)

Matching my output to the requirements of the journal is the worst of them.

I spent a lot of time learning LaTeX in order to make my documents look good.

But now I find that journals require me to make changes to my document which, in almost every instance, damage the appearance and intelligibility of the document.

For example: for an article I’m preparing now, I must:

• turn off hyphenation and full justification
• turn off all formatting for section headings (all caps only for top-level section marks)
• place awkward placeholders for images, of the type [INSERT FIGURE 1 HERE]

Some of these (the last in particular) I don’t even know how to do in LaTeX. Indeed, the last requirement is, for me, the most noxious: I imagine the reviewer would far rather have the figure close at hand in the text, rather than having to page-down to see the figure, and then page-up to get back to the argument.

What’s the rationale? Are these attempts to mitigate the potential damage which comes from over-fine control in MS Word?

(Note: for the rest of the changes, I used the following:

\usepackage[none]{hyphenat}
\usepackage{ragged2e}

\usepackage{sectsty}
\sectionfont{\mdseries\MakeUppercase} % All caps, middle weight
\subsectionfont{\mdseries} % middle weight

)

I’ve spent most of today listening to my robotic overlord (his name is Alan) read out chunks of my thesis in the vain hope that I would better spot typos or errors that way. The idea — far too good to be my own, and I think stolen from Nick Anstead — is better in theory than in practice.

The rest of the day has been spent battling for BibTeX style files, and finally making up my own. I never realized how many bibliographic choices one has until I had to sit through the custom-bib dialog. Editor names reversed or firstname lastname? Proceedings and Collections in quotes or not? Years in brackets? Unfortunately, no optimal solution is known to exist: congealed preferences (mine and publishers’) seem to dominate.

Oh, I must just say a couple of things: Wheats is teh awsumz, David was never quiet, my flatmates suffered, and Bianca might even make it to the defence.

That is all. Goodnight.