How Local Economic Conditions Affect School Finances,Teacher Quality,and Student Achievement: Evidence from the Texas Shale Boom

Whether improved local economic conditions lead to better student outcomes is theoretically ambiguous and will depend on how schools use additional revenues and how students and teachers respond to rising private sector wages. The Texas boom in shale oil and gas drilling, with its large and localized effects on wages and the tax base, provides a unique opportunity to address this question that spans the areas of education, labor markets, and public finance. An empirical approach using variation in shale geology across school districts shows that the boom reduced test scores and student attendance, despite tripling the local tax base and creating a revenue windfall. Schools spent additional revenue on capital projects and debt service, but not on teachers. As the gap between teacher wages and private sector wages grew, so did teacher turnover and the percentage of inexperienced teachers, which helps explain the decline in student achievement. Changes in student composition did not account for the achievement decline but instead helped to moderate it. The findings illustrate the potential value of using revenue growth to retain teachers in times of rising private sector wages.     

Patriotic history and anti-LGBT rhetoric in Zimbabwean politics

Over the past 20 years, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and his political party, Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), have relied heavily on political rhetoric that demonizes lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. In this paper, it is argued that the anti-LGBT political rhetoric in Zimbabwe is part of a larger program known as “patriotic history,” which emphasizes a particular kind of Zimbabwean identity to legitimize the continued rule of Mugabe and ZANU-PF. The value of combining patriotic history and political homophobia emerges out of the unique political and economic context which Mugabe’s regime found itself unable to adequately address. To illustrate how and why this has happened, the paper focuses on two key incidents: the 1995 Zimbabwe International Book Fair, and the public conversation over writing a new constitution between 2010 and 2013.     

Government, Interest Groups and Policy Change

Much of the British and European literature on the role of interest groups in the policy process focuses on their participation in policy networks of various types. Possibly reflecting the original development of the policy community and policy network 'models' in the late 1970s, these approaches tend to emphasize stability and continuity – of both networks and policies. However, the 1980s and 1990s have witnessed much policy change and instability in most Western European states. In particular, some governments have adopted a more impositional policy style, and interest groups have learned to exploit the opportunities presented by a policy process which is increasingly characterized by multiple opportunity structures. This is especially the case following Europeanization of many policy sectors within the fifteen EU member states. The article focuses on the possible causes of policy change, including the importance of state power; changes in the behaviour of interest groups as they adjust to and exploit the opportunities presented by multi-arena policy-making; the impact of new policy fashions, reflecting knowledge and ideas which can act as a virus-like threat to existing policy communities.     

Reparations for Historical Human Rights Violations: The International and Historical Dimensions of the Alien Torts Claims Act Genocide Case of the Herero of Namibia

Between 1904 and 1908, German colonialists in German South West Africa (GSWA, known today as Namibia) committed genocide and other international crimes against two indigenous groups, the Herero and the Nama. From the late 1990s, the Herero have sought reparations from the German government and several German corporations for what occurred more than a hundred years ago. This article examines and contextualizes the issues concerning reparations for historical human rights claims. It describes and analyzes the events in GSWA at the time. It further explores whether international humanitarian law and international human rights law today permit reparatations to be obtained. The article therefore examines the origins of international criminal law, as well as international human rights and humanitarian law, to determine whether what occurred then were violations of the law already in force. Finally, the article examines and evaluates the Herero reparations cases, as well as the potential impact of the cases on the wider reparations movement that sees an increasing number of claims for events that occurred during colonial times.

Promoting the Rights of Victims in Under-Resourced Places by Using Science and Technology That Can be Used by Ordinary People,to Deal with Human Rights Violations: Bolstering the Right to the Truth

Liverpool Law Review - This article argues that while the right to the truth has come to the fore over the last few decades, victims around the world have not really felt its practical effect. It...     

Court outcomes among female juveniles with sexual offences

ABSTRACT

Female juveniles with sexual offences (FJSOs) are an understudied population. The current study compares FJSOs with their male counterparts and evaluates whether male and female juveniles with sexual offences from different family types have similar charges and court outcomes. Data were obtained from a statewide court dataset in Alabama from 2004 to 2014 (n?=?205 females, 2816 males). Participants were categorised by offence category, family type, and court outcome. Chi-square tests and hierarchical logistic regressions were conducted to test for differences in offence patterns and court outcomes by gender and family type, respectively. Females committed less severe offences and received less severe punishments for a given offence compared with males. Family type and two-way interactions between family type, gender, and offence severity played limited roles in offence patterns and in court sentencing. Disposition patterns in females point towards the feasibility of providing more services for all juveniles with sexual offences.