A training approach for community maternal health volunteers that builds sustainable capacity

This article examines a training approach for community health volunteers which increased access to maternal health services in rural communities in Zambia. The effectiveness of the training approach was evaluated in an operations research component. Skilled birth attendance rates increased by 63% from baseline over a two-year period in the intervention districts, out-performing increases recorded in control sites at statistically significant levels. As a low-cost, high-impact intervention which shows good sustainability potential, the approach is suitable for national level scale-up and for adaptation for use in other countries in support of maternal and new-born health goals.     

Participatory numbers for integrating knowledge and actions in development

This article discusses the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of quantitative participatory methods and participatory numbers for integrating locals’ and outsiders’ knowledge, as well as actions from the bottom-up and top-down, in development. It places emphasis on the contribution of quantitative participatory methods and participatory numbers to foster dialogue between a wide range of stakeholders, for example, local people, NGOs, government agencies and scientists, who usually seldom directly engage with each other. The article draws on case studies that discuss remittances and disasters in Samoa, and disaster risk reduction in the Philippines.     

The Forces of Law: Duty,Coercion, and Power

This paper addresses the relationship between law and coercive force. It defends, against Frederick Schauer's contrary claims, the following propositions: (a) The force of law consists in three things, not one: the imposition of duties, the use of coercion, and the exercise of social power. These are different and distinct. (b) Even if coercion is not part of the concept of law, coercion is connected to law many important ways, and these are amply recognized in contemporary analytic jurisprudence. (c) We cannot determine how important coercion is to the efficacy of law until we know what counts as coercive force. The question of what counts as coercion is not a matter for generalization or stipulation. It requires an explanation of the concept of coercion.     

Terrorism and Terrorist Leaders: Insights from Developmental and Ecological Psychology

A recent increase in terrorist actions where the terrorist's death is planned and intentional has raised interest in the psychological functioning, motivation, and reasoning of those who engage in terrorism and those who support it. No consensus exists among Western ¹ 1. That is, American or European. psychologists regarding terrorists who plan to die in their attack, and no Western psychological perspective has thus far contributed substantively to explaining or predicting it. Although most agree that groups engaging in such actions typically have a wider network of support, the psychology of supporters is also unexplained. This article proposes a developmental psychological model of the conditions that favor focused terrorist actions that have publicly discernible goals ascribed to a political or religious cause. The article describes a common pattern of cognitive complexity among terrorist leaders, using Osama bin Laden as a model, where entrenched cognitive simplicity in one key ideological domain (religious or political) is coupled with behavior reflecting the capacity for far greater complexity in other domains (organizational skills, planning, problem-solving.) This pattern, in specifiable historical and ecological context, makes terrorist tactics, including those in which the attacker intentionally dies, more likely, and increases the challenges associated with attempts at diplomacy or negotiated peace.     

Rethinking Caretaker Conventions for Australian Governments

Australia has well‐established conventions for caretaker governments. These conventions regulate how a government should operate once an election is called, and have been documented for some decades. Yet the current conventions date from an era when elections usually produced clear and immediate results. Can our caretaker conventions cope with the emerging reality of indecisive elections and long delays before a new government is confirmed? This paper canvasses the state of Australia's caretaker conventions and offers suggestions for an expanded, contemporary code.     

Regionalism's multiple negotiations: ASEAN in East Asia

This article explains East Asian regionalism as the product of two sets of negotiations. The first negotiation is between East Asia on the one hand and global forces and structures on the other. The second negotiation is intra-regional and includes a critical negotiation between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-Southeast Asia and East/Northeast Asia, which also provides the primary focus of this article. This article details ASEAN's extensions into East Asian regionalism as part of interdependent efforts to adapt transitioning global and regional systems. Conceiving these regional negotiations to be not just economic and utilitarian but first and foremost normative, this article details the opportunities and dilemmas represented by ‘East Asia’ for ASEAN, ASEAN-Southeast Asia and Southeast Asia as a meaningful organizing principle. Dilemmas associated with the ASEAN Plus Three process, an East Asia free-trade area and the ASEAN Charter provide illustrations of East Asia's understood challenges for Southeast Asia in addition to the ways that Southeast Asian agencies have been shaping the form and content of recent East Asian efforts and also how regional-global and intra-ASEAN negotiations continue to provide key constraints.