The Cultural Realignment of State White Electorates in the 21st Century

Political Behavior - Since the beginning of the new millennium, the partisan leanings and presidential voting of state white electorates have been changing. Drawing on party realignment theories...     

An Afrocentric exploration of Jacob Zuma's anti Apartheid stance: The question of Israeli–Palestinian struggle

In this article, the author utilizes interdisciplinary critical discourse analysis to analyse the state of South Africa–Israel relations under the Zuma‐led African National Congress (ANC). The author ground roots this article on Afrocentricity as the alternative theoretical framework to identify the position of the ANC in relation to the unfolding events in Israel and broadly analyse this position in order to make sense of it. This is done within the context of the Zuma‐led ANC in order to tease out major contradictions, which characterizes the administration of Zuma's stance on attested Apartheid Israel. The central question engaged with in this article is to determine whether political and ideological counterstatements to those the ANC communicated, by some of the opposition political parties such as African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP), had any major implications on South Africa's foreign policy on the Apartheid Israel. In this article, the author argues extensively that Zuma's foreign policy on Israel can best be understood when located into his entire term as president of South Africa and the NASREC resolution of 2017.     

An Afrocentric critique of China's security concerns in Africa: The cases of Mali and South Sudan

China's security concerns in Africa has recently become a subject of much academic debate. Most of the academic studies on this subject have wrongly assumed a continental standpoint, which does not take into contemplation the distinctive national captivates of China toward each distinctive African State. Such analytic discourse analysis were also heavily subjected to North [ern] angled perspectives as expressed in either liberal or realist contextual lens, views, and critics. Despite this, the Scholarly discourse on the security concerns of China towards Mali and South Sudan have not been proportionately apprehended. Based on the alternative Afrocentric perspective, this article seeks to employ Mali and South Sudan as test cases to critique the Security Concerns of China toward Mali and South Sudan. The central argument of this article is that, China's Security Concerns towards Mali and South Sudan can best be understood when located within the context of mineral resources complex. Methodologically, this article is based on document review and interdisciplinary discourse analysis in their comprehensive form.     

A Quarter Century of Participation in School-Based Extracurricular Activities: Inequalities by Race,Class, Gender and Age?

Extracurricular activity participation is linked to positive development, but it is also a setting for inequality. Using a quarter century of data from Monitoring the Future (N?=?593,979; 51% female; 65% non-Hispanic white; 13% non-Hispanic black; 12% Hispanic; 4% non-Hispanic Asian/Pacific Islander; 7% other race), this article documents patterns and trends in school-based extracurricular participation by race, social class, gender, and age, and their links to academic and substance use outcomes. Findings reveal differences by race and confirm a division by social class that has worsened over time. Further, girls are gaining on boys and surpass them in some types of school-based activities. Participation is linked to better academic outcomes and less substance use, affirming the importance of redressing the inequalities revealed.     

Policy adoption in dynamic international environments: Evidence from national AIDS programs

The policy adoption is often seen as a function of internal determinants, external determinants, or a combination of the two. In the years since the start of the HIV/AIDS epidemic nearly every country in the world has adopted of some nature a program to combat the epidemic. This article demonstrates the mixed mechanisms influencing the adoption of AIDS programs, in a quantitative study of 90 countries. Prior studies have claimed that multilateral organizations were vital to global action against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This study provides empirical evidence showing the actions taken by the multilateral organizations have both helped and hindered efforts to combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Political Significance of Social Media Activity and Social Networks

This paper examines panel data from two waves of the Youth Participatory Politics Survey, a nationally representative sample of young people in the United States. It employs a cross-lagged design to investigate the extent to which common forms of online activity create pathways to online and offline forms of political activity. Specifically, we examine the influence of Friendship-Driven (FD) and Interest-Driven (ID) online activity on online participatory politics and on offline forms of political action. Our findings reveal that FD and ID activity relate to political engagement, but in different ways. In addition, we find that the size of young people’s social networks interacts with both FD and ID online activity to promote political activity. This indicates that having exposure to “weak-ties” (resulting from large social networks) promote higher levels of political engagement. These findings demonstrate the need to specify the kinds of online activities in which youth are engaged and, more broadly, the political significance of social media and social networks     

Effect of Victimization on Impulse Control and Binge Drinking among Serious Juvenile Offenders from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

A vast literature has found longitudinal effects of early life stress on substance use and self-regulatory processes. These associations may vary by period-specific development among youth involved in the juvenile justice system. The current study used an accelerated longitudinal design and auto-regressive latent trajectory with structure residuals (ALT-SR) model to examine the within-person cross-lagged associations between binge drinking, impulse control, and victimization from 15 to 25 years of age. A large sample (N?=?1100) of justice-involved youth were followed longitudinally for 7 years (M _{age baseline} ?=?15.8, M _{age conclusion} ?=?22.8). In general, the sample was ethnically diverse (41% Black, 34% Hispanic, 21% White, 4.3% Other) and primarily male (87.2%). Participants reported on their frequency of binge drinking, impulse control, and frequency of victimization at each time point. The results indicated that, during adolescence, victimization and binge drinking attenuated impulse control, which resulted in more binge drinking and victimization during young adulthood. The current study highlights the importance of assessing developmental processes and period-specific transitions among at risk youth, especially for youth experiencing early life stress.     

Ideological congruence over government mandates under majoritarian and proportional representation electoral systems

The existing literature on ideological congruence has typically looked at congruence immediately after elections when governments are formed. This article goes beyond that comparative static approach by examining changes in citizen-government ideological congruence between two fixed points in time, namely at the beginning and end of government mandates. Building on a veto player approach and dynamics of party competition under majoritarian and proportional representation (PR) electoral systems, the results indicate, first, that government positions are more stable in between elections, as the number of parties and their ideological distance increase in cabinet. Second, it appears that single-party and homogeneous coalition governments decrease ideological congruence between elections under low levels of polarisation, while they increase congruence under very high levels of polarisation. Third, it was found that governments under majoritarian systems slightly decrease congruence between elections while congruence stays stable on average under PR systems. The different levels of party system polarisation across majoritarian and PR electoral systems mostly explain this difference.