Evaluating the Effectiveness of Adopting Open Educational Resources in an Introductory American Government Course

In this article, we present findings from a grant-funded initiative to replace traditional, proprietary textbooks with an open content textbook under a Creative Commons license in the introductory American government course (POLS 1101) at Middle Georgia State University. We find that the use of an open content textbook led to somewhat negative effects on student learning outcomes and student course satisfaction, although the associated lower textbook cost increased textbook accessibility to students. We conclude with some suggestions to those adopting textbooks in this course and to the wider discipline regarding measures that may lead to more unequivocally positive outcomes than those experienced in this study.     

What Draws Politicians’ Attention? An Experimental Study of Issue Framing and its Effect on Individual Political Elites

What politicians devote attention to, is an important question as political attention is a precondition of policy change. We use an experimental design to study politicians’ attention to incoming information and deploy it among large samples of elected politicians in three countries: Belgium, Canada, and Israel. Our sample includes party leaders, ministers and regular members of parliament. These elites were confronted with short bits of summary information framed in various ways and were then asked how likely it was that they would read the full information. We test for three frames: conflict, political conflict, and responsibility. We find that framing moderates the effect of messages on politicians’ attention to information. Politicians react more strongly (i.e., they devote more attention) to political conflict frames than to non-political conflict frames and they react stronger to political responsibility attributions than to non-political responsibility attributions. Conflict frames attract more attention than consensus frames only from members of opposition parties. Political conflict frames attract more attention from government party politicians. These effects occur largely across issues and across the three countries.     

Dynamics in the Dutch policy advisory system: externalization,politicization and the legacy of pillarization

Although the literature on policy advisory systems has experienced a revival in recent years, its empirical focus has mainly been on Anglophone countries (Craft and Halligan 2016). This paper applies the policy advisory systems approach to the Netherlands, which can serve as an example of the dynamics in the policy advisory systems of consensus-driven, neo-corporatist polities Lijphart in Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, 21, 235–266 1999). Using a historical-institutionalist perspective, the dynamics of the Dutch policy advisory system from the mid-1960s to the present day are examined. Based on original cross-time survey data and an analysis of secondary sources, the impact of depillarization (mid-1960s–mid-1990s), new public management (mid-1980s onwards) and an increased pressure on the executive have had for the Dutch policy advisory system (from the late 1990s): fragmentation, externalization and a non-partisan brand of politicization are shown. More specifically, the use of the institutionalized system of permanent advisory councils has lost part of its significance in favour of both external consultants and ad hoc advisory committees. The Dutch case, with its accumulative institutional design based on Weberianism, neo-corporatism and new public management elements, has thus experienced markedly different dynamics in its policy advice system than the Anglophone countries.     

An Examination of Reciprocal Associations Between Social Preference,Popularity, and Friendship during Early Adolescence

Getting along with peers becomes increasingly important to health and well-being during early adolescence (10–14 years). Young adolescents may succeed with peers when they are well-liked by and popular among the larger peer group (or at the group-level of social complexity). They might also fare well with peers when they are able to form numerous mutual and high quality friendships (at the dyadic-level of social complexity). Theory emphasizes the interrelatedness of different types of peer experiences, but few longitudinal studies have examined the interplay among and between group- and dyadic-level peer experiences in the same study. As a result, it is not known whether group-level peer experiences are predictors of dyadic-level peer experiences, and/or vice versa. To address this limitation, this study examined the prospective and reciprocal relations between four indices of peer experiences, preference (or being highly liked and not disliked by peers), popularity (or having a reputation as popular), friendship quantity (or having many mutual friends), and friendship or relationship quality, during early adolescence. Participants were 271 adolescents (49% girls; M_age?=?11.52 years) who completed peer nominations of preference and popularity, a self-report measure of friendship quality, and nominated friends at two waves (Wave 1: November, Grade 6; Wave 2: October, Grade 7). Structural equation modeling indicated that friendship quantity predicted increases in preference and popularity and that friendship quality predicted increases in friendship quantity. Initial popularity was associated with decreases in preference. The importance of these findings for future research is discussed along with study limitations.     

Regional lobbying and Structural funds: Do regional representation offices in Brussels deliver?

In recent years regional representation offices have proliferated in Brussels. Among the many aims of these offices are influencing the allocation and securing the transfer of European Structural and Cohesion funds. However, our knowledge about whether they have succeeded in this goal is limited. In this paper, we assess whether regional offices in Brussels have managed to affect the commitment and payment of Structural and Cohesion funds beyond the officially stated economic criteria of eligibility. The paper uses a custom-made survey of Brussels offices, complemented by economic, institutional, and political data. The results of the analyses for 123 regions over the period 2009–13 highlight that the capacity – proxied by the budget and staff of the office – of the regional offices to influence the commitment and payment of Structural and Cohesion funds has been negligible, when not outright negative. Regional lobbying in Brussels does not lead to more funds or to an easier disbursement of regional development funds.     

Silence and Articulation—Whiteness,Racialization and Feminist Memory Work

Racialization is a constant process of “doing race”. Critical whiteness studies make efforts to address the silencing of whiteness in mainstream white feminism. In this article memory work is explored as a possible method for studies of whiteness as an unmarked majority position. The focus is on methodological practices or “how‐to‐do” questions. Starting from feminist epistemology the author investigates ways of practising the epistemological standpoint of situated knowledges. Feminist epistemology, despite its disagreements, has pointed to the importance of positioning work for scientific knowledge production. The relationship between racialization as an analytical concept and whiteness as dominant majority position is complicated. Usually memory work is employed to address gender or more specifically femininity, but, as argued here, it is well suited to investigations of racialization, too. The analysis shows that silent avoidance of matters associated with whiteness helps keep the majority position in place; whiteness is co‐produced with silence through avoidance in concrete everyday situations. Despite a number of problematic aspects, memory work proved productive in bridging the gap between an epistemological standpoint and the nitty‐gritty work of doing empirical research. It helped clarify racialization as a relational phenomenon and shows how lack of attention to or awareness of race has implications for scientific knowledge production.     

Savings at the Periphery of Markets: Evidence from Forager-Farmers in the Bolivian Amazon

Abstract

We used survey and ethnographic data to study savings in a highly autarkic society of native Amazonians in Bolivia (Tsimane’). We equated savings with the amount of maize and rice in storage, area planted with plantains and manioc, and number of edible domesticated animals owned by a household or an adult. We found no large inter-annual change in savings possibly due to low income, impulsivity and a bundle of institutions and norms, such as borrowing, theft and reciprocity norms. The bundle attenuates the need for household formal savings at the periphery of markets.