Editorial

Abstract

Mentors and school heads play cardinal roles in teacher education programmes in most countries, including Zimbabwe. The side-effects of such symbiosis have not yet been investigated fully. This article used a qualitative methodological approach to investigate the perceptions of some Zimbabwean student teachers regarding their teaching practice experiences. A sample of 10 ex-teaching practice students from a teacher education college was selected and interviewed during data collection using a semi-structured interview schedule. The participants reported a high prevalence of sexual harassment/aggression of the students by the host schools' heads and mentors, irrespective of student gender. The form of aggression included seeking sexual favours and intimidation. Most perpetrators used metaphors and satirical or sarcastic language to convey their intentions. The female student teachers reported higher incidences than did the male students. Constant workshopping is imperative to remind mentors and school heads of their professional and social obligations regarding teacher education.     

Gun incidents at the local level: understanding the demographic variables

To maintain public safety and improve system response, a strong need exists for understanding the demographic variables associated with gun offenders and gun cases. This paper was focused on exploring these variables by creating and analyzing a weapon-related database at a local police department. The findings, although limited due to the explorative nature of the study and the quality of case files, shed some light on the personal background variables of suspects such as age, race, residence, and prior record and the weapon offenses they were involved in. The research also reveals certain challenges in developing and analyzing a gun-case database at the local level. Future researchers need to resolve these difficulties before achieving a more accurate and systematic understanding of individuals involved in gun crimes.     

Statistical Critiques of the Democratic Peace: Caveat Emptor

The “democratic peace”—the inference that democracies rarely fight each other—is one of the most important and empirically robust findings in international relations (IR). This article surveys the statistical challenges to the democratic peace and critically analyzes a prominent recent critique ( Gartzke 2007 ). Gartzke's claim that capitalist dynamics explain away the democratic peace relies on results problematically driven by (1) the censoring from the sample of observations containing certain communist countries or occurring before 1966, (2) the inclusion of regional controls, and (3) a misspecification of temporal controls. Analysis of these issues contributes to broader methodological debates and reveals novel characteristics of the democratic peace. Gartzke and other critics have contributed valuably to the study of IR; however, the democratic peace remains one of the most robust empirical associations in IR.     

Yes we can! Valence politics and electoral choice in America, 2008

The claim that the 2008 presidential election was a transformative one is fast becoming part of the conventional wisdom of American politics. Despite the election’s undoubted significance, this paper argues that factors affecting voting decisions were strikingly similar to those operating in many previous presidential elections. Using data from the CCAP six-wave national election survey, we demonstrate that a valence politics model provides a powerful, parsimonious explanation of the ballot decisions Americans made in 2008. As is typical in presidential elections, candidate images had major effects on electoral choice. Controlling for several other relevant factors, racial attitudes were strongly associated with how voters reacted to the candidates. Other models of electoral choice, such as a Downsian issue-proximity model, are also relevant, but their explanatory power is considerably less than that provided by the valence politics model.