Kazakhstani public opinion of the United States and Russia: testing variables of (un)favourability

ABSTRACT

Though Central Asia is often studied through the prism of its relationships with external powers, research on local public perceptions of these different actors has largely been overlooked. The literature on Kazakhstanis’ perceptions of their neighbours, for instance, is scarce, and mostly focused on analysis of official discourse on Kazakhstan’s multi-vector policy, with little exploration of how this is received, appropriated or refuted by the population. On the basis of Gallup data spanning the last decade, and several other surveys, we test most of the main hypotheses usually advanced to explain attitudes to the US and Russia – age, ethnicity and access to information – and draw five main conclusions: (1) Kazakhstanis are not defined by an exclusive pro-US/pro-Russian dichotomy; (2) they nevertheless largely choose Russia over the US if forced to pick; (3) age does not have a significant effect on foreign policy attitudes; (4) ethnicity does affect some of the attitudes under consideration, but its effects are not large enough to produce markedly different opinions among ethnic Kazakhs and ethnic Russians in aggregate; and (5) consumption of media from Russia and access to non-governmental and Western sources of information do not seem to have significant effects on the attitudes under consideration.     

Killing Time: The World Politics of Civil War Duration, 1820–1992

Policymakers often trumpet the potential for third parties to stop the killing associated with civil wars, yet third parties as strategic actors also have incentives to encourage longer civil wars. We argue that in order to assess the influence of third parties on civil war duration, it is necessary to consider the interdependent nature of third party interventions as they are distributed across the set of civil war combatants. We also argue that it is important to consider the geopolitical context in which civil wars occur, rather than focusing solely on characteristics internal to these conflicts. To test our hypotheses about the impact of third parties and geopolitical factors on civil war duration, we rely on event history analysis and a sample of 152 civil wars for the period 1820–1992. We find empirical support for the idea that extremely long civil wars correspond to the equitable distribution of third party interventions—stalemates prolong wars. The analysis also indicates that separatist civil wars and ongoing civil wars in states proximate to the civil war state result in civil wars of longer duration. Finally, we find that when third parties raise the stakes of the conflict by engaging in the use of militarized force against the civil war state, the duration of these conflicts is reduced. In general, our analysis underscores the importance of modeling the interdependent and dynamic aspects of third party intervention as well as the world politics of civil wars when forecasting their duration and formulating policy.     

Explaining race,poverty, and gender disparities in advanced course‐taking

We use panel data on Florida high school students to examine race, poverty, and gender disparities in advanced course‐taking. While white students are more likely to take advanced courses than black and Hispanic students, these disparities are eliminated when we condition on observable pre–high school characteristics. In fact, black and Hispanic students are more likely than observably similar white students to take advanced courses. Controlling for students' pre–high school characteristics substantially reduces poverty gaps, modestly reduces Asian–white gaps, and makes little dent in female–male gaps. Black and Hispanic students attend high schools that increase their likelihood of taking advanced courses relative to observably similar white students; this advantage is largely driven by minorities disproportionately attending magnet schools. Finally, recent federal and state efforts aimed at increasing access to advanced courses to poor and minority students appear to have succeeded in raising the share of students who take advanced courses from 2003 to 2006. However, secular trends (or spillovers of the policies to non‐poor, non‐minority students) have spurred faster growth for other students, contributing to widening demographic gaps in these years. © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The influence of neuropsychological deficits in early childhood on low self-control and misconduct through early adolescence

Purpose

Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) contend that low self-control is the result of parental management techniques. However, an emerging line of research has revealed that neuropsychological deficits influence the development of low self-control ( and ). Nevertheless, these studies have largely tested the effects of neuropsychological deficits on low self-control cross-sectionally or in the short term. This study addresses an important void in the literature by examining the influence of neuropsychological deficits in early childhood on levels of self-control and misconduct through early adolescence.

Methods

Data come from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey, Kindergarten (ECLS-K), the largest nationally representative sample of U.S. children.

Results

We found that deficits in neuropsychological functioning during kindergarten were consistently predictive of lower levels of self-control during the third, fifth, and eighth grade as well as higher levels of conduct problems during the eighth grade. These effects remained significant after accounting for demographic variables, features of the neighborhood, and a number of parenting variables.

Conclusions

Neuropsychological deficits during early childhood play an important role in the development of low self-control through early adolescence and misconduct during early adolescence.