From Laggard to Leader: Explaining the Belgian Gender Quotas and Parity Clause

One of the defining features of post-reunified East German political culture has been an enduring affinity for socialism. Although firmly opposed to the pre-1989 one-party state, a sizeable majority of East Germans nevertheless continue to value socialism. Whilst much scholarly research has investigated the strength and depth of socialist values, as well as their sources, comparatively little is known about their consequences, about if and how socialist values matter. This article seeks to redress this by examining linkages between socialist values and political participation, asking whether socialist values are merely passive, romanticised expressions, the effects of which are largely benign, or whether they have real-life behavioural consequences for democracy. Exploring this question using ALLBUS data from East Germany, five hypotheses are tested at the individual level. The results strongly demonstrate that socialist values impact upon social capital and electoral behaviour.     

China in Africa: challenging US global hegemony

In the first decade of the 21st century China has been able to enter political, military and commercial deals with countries of the asean community, the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the countries and observers in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (sco). In November 2006 China sealed this circle with a strategic partnership with Africa at a major feast of leaders celebrating the friendship and co-operation between the two. The emergence of China as a force in Africa complicated the tussle between the EU and the USA over the ‘who controls Africa’. The new relations between Africa and China could be described in the words of Gramsci, as, ‘the old is dying yet the new is yet to be born’. Chinese relations with Africa combine elements of the old (extraction of raw materials), yet the experience of transformation in China ensures that there are many positive and negative lessons to be learnt. What is new is the prospect for the consolidation of African independence and the challenge to the hegemony of the dollar and US imperialism. I argue in this paper that, in the short term, one of China's most important roles will be to break the disarticulation between the financial and productive sectors of the economy and to stem the outflow of capital from Africa. In the long run the experience of linking new ideas of science and technology to a home grown path of reconstruction can be an important lesson for Africa. State-to-state relations are usually opportunistic and it is for this reason that transnational civil society linkages between the Chinese and African people will be more important than relations between leaders.     

Excerpts from research study ‘weapons of mass destruction and terrorism: Proliferation by non‐state actors’

In the wake of the Cold War, a new world disorder seems to be emerging wherein the legitimacy of many states is being challenged from within by increasing non‐state calls for self‐determination from the likes of religious cults, hate groups, isolationist movements, ethnic groups and revivalist movements. These movements often prey on the insecurities of the population, offering to fill psychological, sociological, political or religious security needs of those who would join them. Religious oriented groups appear to share a common ideological thread that rejects existing social, economic and political structure demanding a structural revision of the world, a world where they become the authoritarian, dominant influence. Emanating from these movements will be the ‘Post Modern Terrorists’ who possess a ‘ripeness’ to threaten use of weapons of mass destruction.

This article concerns asymmetric warfare: terrorism, specifically Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) terrorism. It argues that the terrorist WMD threat will emanate from non‐state groups operating under a veneer of religion and ethnic‐racist hate. These groups, plus the occasional cult, are the most likely candidates to threaten use of weapons of mass destruction in a mass casualty causing ‘super‐terrorist act’.     

Assessing Children’s Risk for Homicide in the Context of Domestic Violence

Increasing evidence indicates that children are at risk of homicide in the context of domestic violence. Using a retrospective case analysis of 84 domestic homicide cases, this study sought to identify the unique factors that place a child at risk of homicide. Three groups of domestic homicide cases in which there were no children in the home (No Child in the Home, n?=?44), a child was targeted (Child Target, n?=?13), and a child was present, but not targeted (No Child Target, n?=?27) were compared. Overall, there were no significant differences amongst cases involving children (targeted or not) on major factors except for the higher number of agencies involved with couples with children. Few cases had risk assessment or safety plans completed. Despite the study limitations, the findings speak to the need for professionals to assess child risk and include children in safety planning in all cases of domestic violence.     

Strategic Involuntary Teacher Transfers and Teacher Performance: Examining Equity and Efficiency

Despite claims that school districts need flexibility in teacher assignment to allocate teachers more equitably across schools and improve district performance, the power to involuntarily transfer teachers across schools remains hotly contested. Little research has examined involuntary teacher transfer policies or their effects on schools, teachers, or students. This article uses administrative data from Miami‐Dade County Public Schools to investigate the implementation and effects of the district's involuntary transfer policy, including which schools transferred and received teachers, which teachers were transferred, what kinds of teachers replaced them in their former schools, and how their performance—as measured by their work absences and value‐added in math and reading—compared before and after the transfer. We find that, under the policy, principals in the lowest performing schools identified relatively low‐performing teachers for transfer who, based on observable characteristics, would have been unlikely to leave on their own. Consistent with an equity improvement, we find that involuntarily transferred teachers were systematically moved to higher performing schools and generally were outperformed by the teachers who replaced them. Efficiency impacts are mixed; although transferred teachers had nearly two fewer absences per year in their new positions, transferred teachers continued to have low value‐added in their new schools.     

Fueling the Populist Divide: Nativist and Cosmopolitan Preferences for Representation at the Elite and Mass Level

Political Behavior - Although populist leaders often employ an anti-elite discourse which presents the elite as unable or unwilling to represent ordinary citizens, we know very little about who...     

The development of a sexual abuse severity score: characteristics of childhood sexual abuse associated with trauma symptomatology, somatization, and alcohol abuse

Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is common and is associated with both mental and physical health problems in adulthood. Using data from an age- and sex-stratified population survey of 600 Olmsted County, Minnesota, residents, a Sexual Abuse Severity Score was developed. The abuse characteristics of 156 CSA respondents were associated with self-reported trauma, somatization, and alcohol use. Characteristics included age of first sexual abuse, more than one perpetrator, degree of coercion, severity of abuse (i.e., attempted intercourse is more severe than fondling), and the number of occurrences. This is one of the few reports to develop a risk summary that quantifies the severity of CSA.     

Why do rape survivors volunteer for face-to-face interviews? A meta-study of victims' reasons for and concerns about research participation

There is growing interest in understanding how different research methods are perceived by victims of violence and what survivors will reveal to researchers (termed meta-research or meta-studies). The purpose of this project was to conduct a qualitative meta-study on why rape survivors chose to participate in community-based, face-to-face interviews. Participants mentioned four primary reasons for why they decided to participate in this study: (a) to help other survivors, (b) to help themselves, (c) to support research on rape/sexual assault, and (d) to receive financial compensation. Implications for designing research recruitment protocols are discussed.     

Free and unfree labor in Qing China: Emigration and escape among the bannermen of northeast China, 1789–1909

Though internal migration in China during the Qing era (1644–1911) was mostly unrestricted, the government tightly controlled the movement of peasants who worked state lands in frontier regions and certain other locations. Such peasants accounted for 5–10% of China's population. In the state farms of northeast China, households could move legally only from one place to another within the system. Departure from the system was illegal. In this article, one of the first quantitative studies of migration in late imperial China, we apply discrete-time event-history methods to longitudinal, nominative household register data from six northeast Chinese state farm systems to compare how characteristics of the farm system, village, and household influenced the chances of legal moves and illegal departures. We show that among these state peasants, who were supposedly “unfree,” migration was not uncommon. We also show that the determinants of legal and illegal migration differed substantially. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for our understanding of migration processes in late imperial China.