African farmer-led irrigation development: re-framing agricultural policy and investment?

The past decade has witnessed an intensifying focus on the development of irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa. It follows a 20-year hiatus in the wake of disappointing irrigation performance during the 1970s and 1980s. Persistent low productivity in African agriculture and vulnerability of African food supplies to increasing instability in international commodity markets are driving pan-African agricultural investment initiatives, such as the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), that identify as a priority the improvement in reliability of water control for agriculture. The paper argues that, for such initiatives to be effective, there needs to be a re-appraisal of current dynamics of irrigation development in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly with respect to the role of small-scale producers’ initiatives in expanding irrigation. The paper reviews the principal forms such initiatives take and argues that official narratives and statistics on African irrigation often underestimate the extent of such activities. The paper identifies five key characteristics which, it argues, contradict widely held assumptions that inform irrigation policy in Africa. The paper concludes by offering a definition of ‘farmer-led irrigation’ that embraces a range of interaction between producers and commercial, government and non-government agencies, and identifies priority areas for research on the growth potential and impact of such interactions and strategies for their future development.     

Restructuring structured analytic techniques in intelligence

Structured analytic techniques (SATs) are intended to improve intelligence analysis by checking the two canonical sources of error: systematic biases and random noise. Although both goals are achievable, no one knows how close the current generation of SATs comes to achieving either of them. We identify two root problems: (1) SATs treat bipolar biases as unipolar. As a result, we lack metrics for gauging possible over-shooting—and have no way of knowing when SATs that focus on suppressing one bias (e.g., over-confidence) are triggering the opposing bias (e.g., under-confidence); (2) SATs tacitly assume that problem decomposition (e.g., breaking reasoning into rows and columns of matrices corresponding to hypotheses and evidence) is a sound means of reducing noise in assessments. But no one has ever actually tested whether decomposition is adding or subtracting noise from the analytic process—and there are good reasons for suspecting that decomposition will, on balance, degrade the reliability of analytic judgment. The central shortcoming is that SATs have not been subject to sustained scientific of the sort that could reveal when they are helping or harming the cause of delivering accurate assessments of the world to the policy community.     

Judging the “Vapid and Hollow Charade”: Citizen Evaluations and the Candor of U.S. Supreme Court Nominees

Supreme Court confirmation hearings have been famously called a “vapid and hollow charade” by Elena Kagan. Indeed, perceptions of nominees’ refusal to answer questions about pending cases, prominent political issues, or give any hint of their ideological leanings have become a cornerstone of the modern confirmation process. We investigate the extent to which this reticence to speak of their ideological views, or candor, influences how individuals evaluate the nominee. To this end, we present the results of a survey experiment which examines how support for a hypothetical Supreme Court nominee is affected by information, especially when a nominee is presented to be very forthright or very reticent in answering ideological questions during the confirmation hearings. We find that while partisan compatibility with the president is the main determinant of support for a nominee, nominees who refuse to answer ideological questions can bolster support from respondents who would not support them on partisan grounds. We supplement these findings with observational state-level support data from real nominees over the last 40 years.     

Carpool Karaoke: deconstructing the directly lived experience of hearing oneself singing

The various ways whereby spatial conditions afford to monumentalize culture and to appropriate geographically demarcated places in terms of individual and collective meaning structures has been amply documented in urban cultural studies. However, considerably less attention has been paid to how cultural identity is produced against the background of musical temporality. By way of a phenomenological inquiry into the staged spectacle of James Corden’s (the host of CBS Network’s Late Late Show) Carpool Karaoke, this paper addresses the issues of directly lived experience and authenticity as facets of cultural identity. By critically discussing the assumptions of self-presence and auto-affectivity while singing and listening to one’s sung voice against the background of pre-recorded songs, the notion of directly lived musical experience is put to the test. Furthermore, by examining the dramaturgical scaffolding of Carpool Karaoke, the analysis points to wider implications for post-modern cultural studies in terms of an identified ironic reversal of modernist universal criteria of legitimacy in favor of a celebration of post-modern being-with inauthentically. The analysis of the selected Carpool Karaoke corpus utilizes a resourceful blend of phenomenological method, semiotics and interpretive videography while challenging embedded orthodoxies in the extant literature.     

Associations Between Adolescents’ Perceived Discrimination and Prosocial Tendencies: The Mediating Role of Mexican American Values

Experiences with perceived discrimination (e.g., perceptions of being treated unfairly due to race or ethnicity) are expected to impact negatively youths’ prosocial development. However, resilience often occurs in light of such experiences through cultural factors. The current longitudinal study examined the influence of perceived discrimination on the emergence of Mexican American adolescents’ later prosocial tendencies, and examined the mediating role of Mexican American values (e.g., familism, respect, and religiosity). Participants included 749 adolescents (49 % female) interviewed at 5th, 7th, and 10th grade. Results of the current study suggested that, although perceived discrimination was associated negatively with some types of prosocial tendencies (e.g., compliant, emotional, and dire) and related positively to public prosocial helping, the associations were mediated by youths’ Mexican American values. Directions for future research are presented and practical implications for promoting adolescents’ resilience are discussed.     

The struggle for power and control: shifting policy‐making models and the Harris agenda for education in Ontario

Abstract: This article describes the evolution of three different models in educational policy‐making in Ontario. In the late 1960s, education policy moved away from reliance on a traditional, centralized, administrative‐agency approach and gravitated towards a decentralized, asymmetrical policy interdependence that dominated until the mid‐1990s. The ndp government erected a more centralized scaffolding, with the centre undertaking a greater tutelary role vis à vis local authorities. The aim was to make more transparent the rules and standards by which local authorities, trustees and educators would operate and be held accountable. The education minister also sought to bolster local democracy by widening local parental participation in decision‐making, Since 1995, the Conservative government has erected a politicized administrative agency that has adopted a confrontational stance towards stakeholders, reduced the powers of school board trustees, decimated middle‐level professional staffing, and muffled teacher union executives. Decision‐making now seems to reside with Harris advisers and key cabinet ministers, whose stance is driven by an amalgam of neo‐liberal and neo‐conservative ideology and by voter opinion. This neo‐conservative approach differs in its embrace of a social conservatism ‐ that government maintain social order and that excessive concern for individual choice and liberty not be allowed to undermine it. Harris' social conservatism, in its K‐12 reforms, includes an embrace of regulation, hierarchy, monopoly and uniformity in the design of public policy. Sommaire: Cet article décrit l'évolution de trois modèles différents d'élaboration de politiques en matière d'éducation en Ontario. Vers la fin des anébes 1960, ces politiques d'éducation ne suivaient plus l'approche classique et centralisée caractéristique d'un organisme administratif; elles tendaient plutôt vers une interdépendance décentralisée et asymétrique, qui prédomina jusqu'au milieu des années 1990. Le gouvemement néo‐démocrate érigea une structure plus centralisée qui accordait au centre un plus grand rôle tutelaire par rapport aux autorités locales. Ceci, aux fins d'une plus grande transparence des règles et normes de fonctionnement et de redev‐abilité pour les autorités locales, les conseillers scolaires et les enseignants. Le minis‐tre de l'Éducation s'est efforcé aussi de favoriser la démocratic locale en amplifiant la participation parentale dans la prise de décisions. Depuis 1995, le gouvemement conservateur a éigé un organisme administratif politicisé qui a adopté des positions conflictuelles envers les intervenants, qui a réduit les pouvoirs des conseillers scolaires et qui a sabré dans les rangs du personnel professionnel de niveau intermédi‐aire tout en muselant les dirigeants syndicaux des enseignants. II semblerait que les décisions sont maintenant prises par les conseillers de Harris et par certains de ses ministres ‐ clé, poussés par l'opinion des électeurs et une idélogie à la fois néo‐libérale et néo‐conservatrice. Cette approche néo‐conservatrice embrasse un certain conservatisme social: le gouvemement doit maintenir l'ordre social qui ne doit pas être sapé par une trop grande préocupation concemant la liberté et les choix personnels. Le conservatisme social de Harris dans le cadre des réformes scolaires fait appel à la réglementation, à la hiérarchie, au monopole et à l'uniformité dans l'élaboration des politiques gouvemementales.     

20世纪国际关系领域的基准时间:历史视角中的三次世界大战

基准时间是宏观历史过程中的临界点,标志着一连串的重大变革可能会在较长时间内延续。基准时间具有九条标准,可以分为一等基准时间、二等基准时间和三等基准时间。20世纪的基准时间主要包括三次世界大战(一战、二战和冷战),第二次世界大战前后发生的变革比第一次世界大战和冷战前后的变革都要来得更为深远。将20世纪的三个基准时间置于两个世纪的视角中加以审视,可以突出现代性革命,这种视角能够观察20世纪的三个基准时间在正在展开的"全球性变革"这一大的主题下是否会相互联接、是如何相互联接的。20世纪国际政治的关键事件,都应该被视为19世纪"全球性变革"所引发的发展态势和挑战的后期结果。     

The politics and mythology of organized crime: A Philadelphia case-study

Although much criticized, the “Cosa Nostra” theory of organized crime continues to exert considerable influence over lawmakers and law enforcement officials. This theory has been extensively studied on a national level, but few local case studies trace the transition from the multiethnic organized crime of the 1930s and 1940s to the (supposed) Italian hegemony of the years since 1960. Philadelphia provides an excellent opportunity for such a study, as the base of a strong Jewish-dominated structure before 1960 and a “Mafia town” thereafter.A major concern of this article is the manner in which the history of crime in the city was retroactively rewritten during the 1970s, in order to provide a basis for contemporary theories and bureaucratic needs.