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This research focused on a behavioral model as a significant tangible enabler for smart city plans and initiatives across Asian and EU regions as per transportation projects. This study aimed to create a behavioral model to serve as a planning tool for policymakers, planners, and implementers of transportation initiatives in smart cities. The paper discusses the validity of the proposed model framework for fostering the diffusion of a successful smart city project transformation in a general smart city ecosystem and particularly within the transportation industry. The framework was verified using three different methods: literature review to give a speculative understanding of current smart city approaches; case studies from Germany and South Korea smart city ecosystems that were selected and applied against the behavioral model; and finally, desktop research (behavioral model) performed for smart city project development. As a result, the authors recognized key variables for deriving a possible successful behavioral model as a suggested efficient framework for further smart city strategic projects. Researchers developed and tested, with two validated examples, the suggested behavioral model for smart city projects with a focus on the transportation industry. Results of this survey could help stakeholders in different countries analyze factors influencing decision-making processes and adopt smart city projects to local business environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines politicians' changes of party labels during the life of a legislature. The authors view a legislator's choice of party as a strategic decision recurring throughout the parliamentary cycle. In their approach, individuals are open to switching parties as they pursue goals specific to the stage in the parliamentary cycle. Analyzing Italy and Russia, they identify among legislators in both countries patterns of heightened switching for office benefits, policy advantage, and vote seeking at distinctive moments in the parliamentary cycle. The commonalities across the two systems provide compelling support for their theoretical framework. The evidence also points to a midterm peak in switching in both countries. Differences appear, however, in the timing of preelectoral positioning--contrasts that the authors attribute to differences in the degree of party system institutionalization, the age of the democratic regimes, and thus the information available to players in electoral politics. Keywords: legislative parties; party switching; Russia; Italy; parliamentary cycle; midterm effect