Creating and contesting meanings of place and community in the Ylay Talaa Valley of Kyrgyzstan

Formal schooling was virtually non-existent before the Soviet power in nomadic Kyrgyzstan, as communal life and learning was organized informally at the household and clan level. During the Soviet period, however, educational success became an avenue to a new form of upward social and geographical mobility, and the school provided new and prestigious positions for local teachers and administrators. This paper explores how the externally imposed Soviet collectivization policies reshaped the understandings and meanings of place and community during the twentieth century, a reshaping that centrally involved redefining education and the importance of ‘the school’. In the post-Soviet period, the utility of secondary and higher education in local and national labour markets has diminished, as has the power and prestige of educators. Yet the appeal of education lingers on. The authors seek to document these claims using oral histories, ethnographic interviews and participant observations in the Ylay Talaa Valley of the Kyrgyz Republic.     

Do Perceptions of Ballot Secrecy Influence Turnout? Results from a Field Experiment

Although the secret ballot has been secured as a legal matter in the United States, formal secrecy protections are not equivalent to convincing citizens that they may vote privately and without fear of reprisal. We present survey evidence that those who have not previously voted are particularly likely to voice doubts about the secrecy of the voting process. We then report results from a field experiment where we mailed information about protections of ballot secrecy to registered voters prior to the 2010 general election. Consistent with our survey data, we find that these letters increased turnout for registered citizens without records of previous turnout, but they did not appear to influence the behavior of citizens who had previously voted. The increase in turnout of more than three percentage points (20%) for those without previous records of voting is notably larger than the effect of a standard get‐out‐the‐vote mailing for this group. Overall, these results suggest that although the secret ballot is a long‐standing institution in the United States, beliefs about this institution may not match the legal reality.     

Influencing Public Opinion of Space Policy: Programmatic Effects Versus Education Effects

The public is generally supportive of space policy, but less supportive of spending for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) compared to other government programs. Previous research has helped identify who is more likely to be supportive of NASA spending, but not why. This study seeks to understand the causal mechanisms that influence support for NASA. Using natural between-survey and induced within-survey experiments, this study attempts to identify factors influencing changes in public support for NASA spending. Short-term programmatic and related media effects appear to have no influence on public support for NASA spending. However, correcting information asymmetries in regard to NASA's budget appears to have a significant positive effect on public support for NASA spending. The findings speak to the importance of the public being well informed on policy issues in order to make a correct policy choice, and demonstrate that individual programmatic aspects may not be as important as overall agency direction.     

Singaporean foreign policy and the Asian Values Debate, 1992–2000: reflections on an experiment in soft power

Between 1992 and 2000, the international order witnessed a clash of discourses not seen since the height of the Cold War when both superpowers engaged in propaganda offensives to assert the superiority of their respective governing ideologies. However, unlike the Cold War, the Asian Values Debate did not involve a supporting cast of armed occupations, insurgencies and the preaching of revolution. It involved instead statements of difference couched in intellectual and material terms, and also relied heavily on persuasion by words and symbolic deeds. This article seeks to evaluate Singaporean foreign policy in the Asian Values Debate by using the concept of soft power as described by Joseph Nye. However, soft power, as the ability to obtain foreign policy ends through attraction or convincing rather than through coercion, is itself vulnerable to instances where the ideas propounded diverge from the practices they purport to inspire. Singapore’s role in the Debate will be examined through three events at its zenith between 1992 and 2000: the clash between Asia and the West at the 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights at Vienna, the Michael Fay Caning Affair which directly pitted Singapore against the US in 1994, and the fate of the Asian exceptionalist argument in the face of the 1997–99 Asian Financial Crisis. The conclusion suggests that Singaporean foreign policy’s experiment in soft power has had its successes, but it remains qualified in its applicability to other Asian foreign policies by certain limits inherent in the Singaporean discourse.     

Race, Income, and College in 25 Years: Evaluating Justice O'Connor's Conjecture

In Grutter v. Bollinger, Justice O’Connor conjecturedthat in 25 years affirmative action in college admissions willbe unnecessary. We project the test score distribution of blackand white college applicants 25 years from now, focusing onthe role of black–white family income gaps. Economic progressalone is unlikely to narrow the achievement gap enough in 25years to produce today’s racial diversity levels withrace-blind admissions. A return to the rapid black–whitetest score convergence of the 1980s could plausibly cause blackrepresentation to approach current levels at moderately selectiveschools, but not at the most selective schools.     

Human Rights in the Scottish Courts

This article looks at the use made of the human rights legislation in the Scottish courts since the devolution of legislative and executive power to Scotland, based on research undertaken in all the ordinary courts, but excluding tribunals. It concludes that the incorporation of the Convention via the human rights legislation has had significant effects within the Scottish court system and on policy development without amounting to a major upheaval.