Explaining italian politics visually

 

This diagramme shows why Bersani prefers Grillo to Berlusconi. The first option would be Monti, but they cant get a majority.

Pro Europe/Against Europe is more precisely defined as pro or against Rehn-style austerity.

This diagramme is particularly powerful because it reminds me of a more traditional diagramme of italian politics, which had the two axis of Left/Right and Catholic/Secular.

Has Europe substituted the Religion in Italian politics?

Best books on government 2.0? cc @tonylBxl

I was recently asked by Tony Lockett about good books on Government 2.0, as a follow up to our State of the eUnion book.

The first consideration is that books are not the best source for such a recent and evolving trend.

There are some good and famous books, such as: Wiki Government by Beth Noveck; O’Reilly’s book which is open to feedback here.

But in reality, the best books I can think of are only loosely related to government 2.0: they address some of its foundations and theoretical underpinning.

In this sense, I would rather recommend some old classics:

Toqueville’s Democracy in America

Titmuss, Richard, The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy (1970).

Salamon, L.M. & Anheier, H.K., 1996. The Emerging Nonprofit Sector: An Overview (Johns Hopkins Nonprofit Sector Series, 1), Manchester Univ Pr.

Finally, the most illuminating report on government 2.0 for me remains The Power of Information.

Applying counterfactual approach to #science20

In our work on Science 2.0, one of the question is:

Is science 2.0 or open science more effective?

One paper starts discussing the issue by comparing the open science and the traditional approach, hinting about similar results being achieved with less time and money.

However, the evidence is thin.

Are there more robust studies on this?

Otherwise: one idea would be to launch a counterfactual research-action.

For every research project funded by FP7, reserve 20K Euros for a competition on an open innovation platform (e.g. innocentive, sci-starter) to solve the same problem.

Or for a subset of project, invest the same funding in an open science way.

Then compare the results of the two approaches.