Job Satisfaction among Primary School Personnel in Madagascar

This article analyses the job satisfaction of primary school teachers in Madagascar. Based on the estimation of multilevel models, low wages and problems getting paid, job insecurity, lack of in-service training, high pupil-teacher ratios, and lack of basic infrastructure and teaching materials are identified as the main reasons for dissatisfaction. Principals’ control of teachers’ activities also adversely affects satisfaction, suggesting that, in Malagasy schools, neither school directors nor teachers have succeeded in adopting organisational cultures based on cooperation among their members. These results are likely to stimulate debates on educational policy, both in Madagascar and in many other developing countries.     

Does Health Aid Reduce Infant and Child Mortality from Diarrhoea in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Achieving sustained improvements in health outcomes remains a challenge for sub-Saharan Africa, where diarrhoea remains a leading cause of death in children under the age of five. This paper examines the impact of foreign aid to the health sector on diarrhoea mortality in children under five in 47 sub-Saharan African countries, using panel data on the sectoral allocation of official development assistance in conjunction with country-level data on health outcomes. After controlling for fixed effects and the potential endogeneity of health aid, we find that increased health aid and increased public health expenditure are associated with lower diarrhoea mortality in children under five. In addition, health aid increases government spending on health, suggesting that the overall impact of health aid on diarrheal death rates could exceed the direct effect. Furthermore, increased access to improved sources of water and sanitation are important in reducing child mortality from diarrhoea.     

A Political Sociology Approach to the Diffusion of Conflict from Chechnya to Dagestan and Ingushetia

This article seeks to foster a better understanding of the diffusion of conflict in the North Caucasus. We argue that diffusion of conflict is a dynamic and adaptive process in which outcomes are shaped by the intersection of three social mechanisms—attribution of similarity, brokerage, and outbidding—and the political, social, and religious contexts. We suggest that a distinction should be made between horizontal and vertical processes of diffusion. We also approach the empirical diffusion of conflict from a different perspective, showing that non-Chechen actors have played a key role in both the diffusion process and its outcomes.     

Classifying Political Regimes in Latin

This article is about how political regimes should generally be classified, and how Latin American regimes should be classified for the 1945–99 period. We make five general claims about regime classification. First, regime classification should rest on sound concepts and definitions. Second, it should be based on explicit and sensible coding and aggregation rules. Third, it necessarily involves some subjective judgments. Fourth, the debate about dichotomous versus continuous measures of democracy creates a false dilemma. Neither democratic theory, nor coding requirements, nor the reality underlying democratic practice compel either a dichotomous or a continuous approach in all cases. Fifth, dichotomous measures of democracy fail to capture intermediate regime types, obscuring variation that is essential for studying political regimes. This general discussion provides the grounding for our trichotomous ordinal scale, which codes regimes as democratic, semi-democratic or authoritarian in nineteen Latin American countries from 1945 to 1999. Our trichotomous classification achieves greater differentiation than dichotomous classifications and yet avoids the need for massive information that a very fine-grained measure would require.