A Better Place to Be: Republicanism as an Alternative to the Authoritarianism-Democracy Dichotomy

ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: A BETTER PLACE TO BE: REPUBLICANISM AS AN ALTENATIVE TO THE AUTHORITARIANISM-DEMOCRACY DICHOTOMY Christopher Ronald Binetti, Doctor of Philosophy, and 2016 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Charled Frederick Alford, Department of Government and Politics In this dissertation, I argue that in modern or ancient regimes, the simple dichotomy between democracies and autocracies/dictatorships is both factually wrong and problematic for policy purposes. It is factually wrong because regimes between the two opposite regime types exist and it is problematic because the either/or dichotomy leads to extreme thinking in terms of nation-building in places like Afghanistan. In planning for Afghanistan, the argument is that either we can quickly nation-build it into a liberal democracy or else we must leave it in the hands of a despotic dictator. This is a false choice created by both a faulty categorization of regime types and most importantly, a failure to understand history. History shows us that the republic is a regime type that defies the authoritarian-democracy dichotomy. A republic by my definition is a non-dominating regime, characterized by a (relative) lack of domination by any one interest group or actor, mostly non-violent competition for power among various interest groups/factions, the ability of factions/interest groups/individual actors to continue to legitimately play the political game even after electoral or issue-area defeat and some measure of effectiveness. Thus, a republic is a system of government that has institutions, laws, norms, attitudes, and beliefs that minimize the violation of the rule of law and monopolization of power by one individual or group as much as possible. These norms, laws, attitudes, and beliefs ae essential to the republican system in that they make those institutions that check and balance power work. My four cases are Assyria, Persia, Venice and Florence. Assyria and Persia are ancient regimes, the first was a republic and then became the frightening opposite of a republic, while the latter was a good republic for a long time, but had effectiveness issues towards the end. Venice is a classical example of a medieval or early modern republic, which was very inspirational to Madison and others in building republican America. Florence is the example of a medieval republic that fell to despotism, as immortalized by Machiavelli’s writings. In all of these examples, I test certain alternative hypotheses as well as my own.

Community-based Data Validation Practices in Citizen Science

Technology-supported citizen science has created huge volumes of data with increasing potential to facilitate scientific progress, however, verifying data quality is still a substantial hurdle due to the limitations of existing data quality mechanisms. In this study, we adopted a mixed methods approach to investigate community-based data validation practices and the characteristics of records of wildlife species observations that affected the outcomes of collaborative data quality management in an online community where people record what they see in the nature. The findings describe the processes that both relied upon and added to information provenance through information stewardship behaviors, which led to improved reliability and informativity. The likelihood of community-based validation interactions were predicted by several factors, including the types of organisms observed and whether the data were submitted from a mobile device. We conclude with implications for technology design, citizen science practices, and research.