Life Satisfaction and Student Engagement in Adolescents

Situated within a positive psychology perspective, this study explored linkages between adolescent students’ positive subjective well-being and their levels of engagement in schooling. Specifically, using structural equation modeling techniques, we evaluated the nature and directionality of longitudinal relationships between life satisfaction and student engagement variables. It was hypothesized that adolescents’ life satisfaction and student engagement variables would show bidirectional relationships. To test this hypothesis, 779 students (53% female, 62% Caucasian) in a Southeastern US middle school completed a measure of global life satisfaction and measures of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral engagement at two time points, 5 months apart. A statistically significant bidirectional relationship between life satisfaction and cognitive engagement was found; however, non-significant relationships were found between life satisfaction and emotional and behavioral student engagement. The findings provide important evidence of the role of early adolescents’ life satisfaction in their engagement in schooling during the important transition grades between elementary and high school. The findings also help extend the positive psychology perspective to the relatively neglected context of education.     

Bound for Glory: The Hostage Crisis as Captivity Narrative in Iran

Eschewing conventional analyses of foreign policymaking during the Iranian hostage crisis, this paper examines how media representations of the crisis (November 1979–January 1981) contained important elements of classic American captivity narratives. Five themes are culled from the secondary literature on captivity stories and are used as categories in a content analysis of mass circulation media such as People Magazine and Time as well as more elite publications such as The New York Times and The New Republic . Depictions of Iranians as "devilish savages," calls to rally around the flag, anxious depictions of the hostages' plight and fears that they will "go native," exhortations to stand firm, and heroic leadership are found to be recurring themes in widely read media accounts of the hostage crisis. The results suggest that captivity stories have a continuing influence on popular understandings of America's mission in the world.     

Die Wiederherstellung des Marktsubjekts

The UK is generally considered a laboratory for styles of governance influenced by New Public Management: outsourcing, internal markets, targets, auditing. The shifts in governance style, and the new instruments that have accompanied them, were once synonymous with “Thatcherism” but have since been adopted and refined by New Labour. Early critical social scientific analyses deployed the Gramscian notion of hegemony to analyse this shift. This was followed by Foucault inspired analyses of “governmentality”. The latter focused more explicitly on the micro-level of conduct. This article follows that lead, but seeks to address the central puzzles thrown up by this experiment through Max Weber’s conception of a “bureaucratic revolution” and Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the constitution of a “market subject” via a “double movement”: a simultaneous loosening and tightening of control. The Weber-Polanyi approach allows us, we argue, to make the link more explicit between micro-level changes in the “conduct of life” (Lebensführung) and the meso-level instruments designed to bring about such a re-orientation of conduct. The article makes the case with reference to empirical material from a number of public services, notably education and health. Overall, the decisive factor is not a weakening of the state, but a change in its capacities and instruments.     

Between Russia and a Hard Place: Great Power Grievances and Central Asian Ambivalence

Abstract

This essay asks how Central Asian states have responded to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and salvos against the West, as a means to assess how Russia and the Central Asian states understand their national interests and exercise state power. It argues that the post-Soviet region shares a cynical and geopolitically driven view of the exercise of global power. Yet Russia has sometimes deployed its resources to advance short-term ideological objectives, whereas Central Asian foreign policy is pragmatic and opportunistic. The Ukraine crisis threatened to coerce the Central Asian states into conformity with Russia’s interests; ironically, their dependence on Russia has enabled their freedom of action in foreign policy, within limits. The essay highlights the ways that geography enables and constrains the execution of foreign policy, and considers the ambiguous role ideology plays in the formulation of national interests and the prospects for international cooperation.     

The British Labour Party and leadership election mandate(s) of Jeremy Corbyn: patterns of opinion and opposition within the parliamentary Labour Party

This paper offers the first systematic evaluation of opinion within the 2015–2017 parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) towards the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. We do this by identifying whether individual parliamentarians remained supportive of Corbyn as their party leader or not, and then relating opinion on this to a series of variables that form the basis of a unique data set on the PLP. By constructing this data set we are able to test, via logistic regression analysis, a series of hypotheses based around (1) demographic variables – i.e. age, gender and trade union membership; (2) political variables – i.e. year of entry, constituency region, marginality, main competition and the endorsement of their constituency Labour Party (CLP) in the leadership election of 2016 and (3) ideological variables – i.e. views on continued European Union [EU] membership, immigration, intervention in Syria and the renewal of Trident.     

The Democracy Aid Calculus: Regimes,Political Opponents,and the Allocation of US Democracy Assistance, 1981–2009

To encourage the spread of democracy throughout the developing world, the United States provides targeted aid to governments, political parties, and other non-governmental groups and organizations. This study examines the calculations behind the allocation of democracy assistance, with special attention to the role of regime conditions and policy compatibility in the provision of aid. We argue that both concerns—the opportunity for successful democratization and critical goals related to containing and countering political opponents—are central to democracy aid allocations. We theorize how these two concerns determine the amount of aid allocated, operationalizing these concepts using measures of the original democracy level, change in the democracy level, and policy compatibility. We find support for our argument in tests of US democracy aid allocations by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) from 1981–2009.     

The Heterogeneous Effects of a Food Price Crisis on Child School Enrolment and Labour: Evidence from Pakistan

Using a panel survey, this paper investigates how food price increases in Pakistan in 2008–2010 affect children’s school enrolment and labour. The causal identification relies on the geographical variations in food (wheat) price. The results show that the negative impacts of food price increase on school enrolment differ by gender, economic status and the presence of siblings. The negative effects on school do not directly correspond to the increase in child labour because the transition from being idle to labour activity or from school to being idle is significant, particularly among poor girls. The results also show that children in households with access to agricultural lands are not affected by higher food prices. The analyses reveal a more dynamic picture of the impact of food price increase on child status and contribute to broader policy discussion to mitigate the impact of crises on child education.     

The Lawfulness of U.S. Targeted Killing Operations Outside Afghanistan

Targeted killing operations conducted outside Afghanistan have prompted debate regarding their lawfulness. For opponents of targeted killing operations, the debate tends to center on the number of civilians killed. Proponents respond by questioning the credibility and validity of the methods employed to determine the number of civilian casualties. This debate is important, but it also obscures the fact that the lawfulness of targeting killings is not determined by whether civilians were killed alone, while also lending legitimacy to unsubstantiated claims that the United States is engaged in an armed conflict with Al Qaeda and “associated forces.” This article classifies the hostilities in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. It then applies the applicable body of law to targeted killing operations in each of these respective states based on how the hostilities were classified.     

Permanency for Children in Foster Care: Issues and Barriers for Adoption

The desired outcome for children in foster care is to be reunited with their parents or to be permanently placed in a stable home. Federal and state legislation directs increased efforts by the social welfare and judicial systems in the United States to act in the best interests of the child and to identify and reduce barriers to permanency. Records from two county dependency courts in Florida were examined and caregivers surveyed to identify issues that prevented them from adopting the child in their care, and to identify services that would have enhanced the likelihood of adoption. The findings and their implications suggest that more integration of the two systems and support for concrete assistance to caregivers are paramount to facilitating adoption of children in foster care.