Youth’s Causal Beliefs About Success: Socioeconomic Differences and Prediction of Early Career Development

Youth’s career attainment is associated with socioeconomic background, but may also be related to their beliefs about causes of success. Relationships between 17-year-olds’ socioeconomic status (SES) and causal beliefs about success, and whether these beliefs predict career attainment after completing a vocational or university degree were examined using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (n?=?997, 48.5% female). Youth with higher SES parents and those who attended higher levels of high schools were less likely to believe that success in society is due to external causes, but SES was unrelated to the belief that success is due to personal merit or ability. Youth who believe that success is due to external causes attained lower income, occupational prestige, and job autonomy, and slower increases in income over time. There were also significant indirect effects of youth’s parents’ SES and their own high school levels on career attainment through such external causal beliefs; merit beliefs, by contrast, were largely unrelated to career attainment. These results suggest that beliefs about external causes of success may uniquely contribute to the transmission and maintenance of SES across generations and over time.     

Agricultural commercialisation models,agrarian dynamics and local development in Ghana

The renewed commitment of African states to modernising agriculture has reignited longstanding debates about different models of agricultural commercialisation. Which forms of commercialisation models will reduce land dispossession and the impoverishment of smallholders, and transform smallholder agriculture and the wider economy? Of the three broad models of agriculture commercialisation in this debate – plantation, contract farming and medium-scale commercial farming – contract farming has been identified as central to the future of Africa’s commercial agriculture. This paper provides empirical evidence from Ghana on the impacts of these three models on land, labour/employment, livelihoods and local economic linkages. Our findings show that the plantation and the commercial farming areas have highly commercialised land relations, land scarcity and high land prices, compared to the outgrower area where traditional systems of accessing land still dominate, enabling families to produce their own food crops while also diversifying into wage labour and other activities. Food insecurity was highest in the plantation area followed by the commercial area, but lowest in the outgrower area. Here, semi-proletarianised seasonal workers combine self-provisioning from their own farms with wages, and this results in better livelihood outcomes than for permanent workers in plantations and commercial farms. Due to the processing units in the plantation and the outgrower models, they provided more employment. However, the casualisation of labour and gender discrimination in employment and access to land occur in all three cases. All three models generated strong economic linkages mainly because they combined attributes such as processing, provided markets for nearby farmers, induced state infrastructural development and diffused technology in competitive ways. The effects of the models on household and local development are coproduced by their interaction with pre-existing conditions and wider national economic structures.     

Child rights and protection in slum settlements of Kampala,Uganda: A qualitative study

Child abuse and neglect are complex and polarizing issues in many low and middle income countries. We explore them through a situation analysis of child rights and protection in Uganda. A qualitative study, incorporating 10 focus group discussions (FGDs; N = 113) and 20 individual interviews was undertaken in Kampala, Uganda. Emerging themes were grouped into family and community-level factors; legal framework, structure and continuum of services, and human and financial resources. Violation of child rights was characterized by physical, emotional, and sexual abuse and exploitation; child neglect, homelessness, and child labor; dysfunctional families and abject poverty; and poor accommodation conditions; school drop-out due to economic hardship; early pregnancy, and social exclusion. Legal and regulatory factors included traditional harmful practices (including child sacrifice and witchcraft practices); forced marriage; and the perceived lack of the government's commitment to child protection. Without a strong legislation that protects children against abuse, promotes confidential reporting systems, and tackles domestic violence, children will still remain prone to various forms of abuses and exploitation.     

Delegating Terror: Principal–Agent Based Decision Making in State Sponsorship of Terrorism

State sponsorship of terrorism, where a government deliberately provides resources and material support to a terrorist organization, is common in the international system. Sponsorship can provide significant strategic and political benefits for a state, but there are inherent international and domestic risks associated with delegating foreign policy to these actors. Using principal–agent analysis, I develop a model that evaluates the impact of potential costs and benefits on a state’s decision to sponsor terrorism. I test my model by using a novel dataset on sponsorship behaviors that ranges from 1970 to 2008. The results of my analysis support the validity of the principal–agent model in explaining sponsorship, as states will be more likely to engage in sponsorship when the strategic benefits of weakening the targeted state are high and the risks of international reputation loss and domestic dissatisfaction are low.     

Following the donor-designed path to Mozambique’s US$2.2 billion secret debt deal

Strenuous efforts by donors and lenders over four decades turned Mozambique from a socialist success story into a neoliberal capitalist one. The private sector dominates; a domestic elite dependent on foreign companies has been created. But a secret US$2.2 billion arms and fishing boat deal involving Swiss and Russian banks and Mozambican purchases from France, Germany, and Israel, with large profits on all sides, was a step too far down the donor’s capitalist road. The International Monetary Fund cut off its programme and western donors ended budget support.     

A comprehensive approach to providing services to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Democratic Republic of Congo: addressing more than physical trauma

ABSTRACT

The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is impacted by a prolonged conflict and humanitarian crisis. Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) affects an estimated 39.7% of women and 23.6% of men in the region, and is associated with serious medical, psychological, and socio-economic outcomes for survivors and communities. IMA World Health, a faith-based non-profit organisation, implements a USAID-funded project, Ushindi, which is a collaborative effort with three national NGOs and one technical partner in response to SGBV in eastern DRC. The consortium provides a comprehensive package of services to SGBV survivors, focusing on medical, emotional, psychological, legal, and socio-economic needs.