We discuss an emerging group of successful parties in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) that combine anti-establishment appeals with support for moderate policies of political and social reform, which we term anti-establishment reform parties (AERPs). Examples include the Simeon II National Movement (Bulgaria), Res Publica (Estonia), New Era (Latvia), Freedom and Solidarity (Slovakia), TOP09 and...

During the past two decades, a set of systematic comparative case analysis techniques has been developing at a steady pace. During the last few years especially, the main initial technique, qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), has been complemented by other related methods and techniques. The purpose of this article is to critically assess some main recent developments in this field. QCA and...

This work builds on complexity theory in order to identify different types of learners that use video-based learning (VBL). VBL has great value as an educational tool which has already been identified in various contexts. This study combines learners’ demographics with learners’ experience in a conceptual model to explain the adoption of VBL technologies. We test and validate the proposed model...

A new rough-fuzzy model for pattern classification based on granular computing is described in the present article. In this model, we propose the formulation of class-dependent granules in fuzzy environment. Fuzzy membership functions are used to represent the feature-wise belonging to different classes, thereby producing fuzzy granulation of the feature space. The fuzzy granules thus generated...

Having incorporated the characteristics of Chinese politics, this article puts forward an exploratory analytic framework for understanding protest success and points out how political opportunities and protest frames can explain protest success. Political opportunities not only include direct intervention by the central government but also support from state-sponsored media and favourable polic...

Existing similarity measures between intuitionistic fuzzy sets/vague sets are analyzed, compared and summarized by their counterintuitive examples in pattern recognition. The positive aspects of each similarity measure are demonstrated, along with counter cases and discussion of the conditions under which each may not work as desired. The research presented here could benefit selection and appl...

A house is an essential human factor. A housing market is formed by the demand and supply of houses. A global housing market fluctuates by each country's policies and situations. Because of the various social, cultural and economic aspects affecting complexity, it is difficult to analyze the factors affecting the housing market. Consequently, in this paper, we analyze several housing market fac...

This paper is an attempt to provide the basic guidelines on how to implement configurational analysis in the context of learning analytics. In detail, we offer a step by step approach on the fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). Learning analytics gain increased popularity, however studies use traditional symmetric statistical methods to analyze them. Building on the theory of com...

Recommender systems provide suggestions for products, services, or information that match users’ interests and/or needs. However, not all recommendations persuade users to select or use the recommended item. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) suggests that individuals with low motivation or ability to process the information provided with a recommended item could eventually get persuaded to...

Customers continuously evaluate the credibility and reliability of a range of signals both separately and jointly. However, existing econometric studies pay insufficient attention to the interactions and complex combinations of these signals, and are typically limited as a result of difficulties controlling for multicollinearity and endogeneity in their data. We develop a novel theoretical appr...