Conspiracism in Populist Radical Right Candidates: Rallying the Base or Mainstreaming the Fringe?

International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society - As evidenced by the 2016 US presidential election, conspiracy theories such as birtherism, the belief that Barack Obama is not a...     

Notes Toward a Theory of Ideology in Historlcal Writing on Modern Afrlca

Since the publication of her first novel Le ventre de l’Atlantique (2003), Fatou Diome, a Senegalese author who immigrated to France in the 1990s, has been regularly invited to French cultural TV programmes, in which she often criticises European foreign policy, as well as social and racial segregation. Despite her public political commitment, in several interviews, Fatou Diome argues that literature should be dissociated from politics. This article analyses Diome’s narrative techniques when depicting current social issues in her second novel Kétala (2006). In Kétala, Diome shows how Senegalese gay people and women face social violence and exclusion. Drawing on queer theory and the concept of performance, this article describes the various strategies through which marginalised identities in Kétala contest heteronormative social representations. This paper argues that Fatou Diome’s novel captures the reality through a singular poetics.     

Making future leaders in the US intelligence community: challenges and opportunities

This article explores what factors are important in developing the future leaders of the US intelligence community in the post-9/11 security environment. It surveys traditional leadership theory to assess whether any of its perspectives are applicable to understanding leadership in the intelligence context. It argues, that although some leadership theory may be applicable, the intelligence studies field may be better served by developing its own body of leadership theory. Second, any leadership theory needs to consider together the two synergistic components of intelligence leadership: personal leadership development and the ability to lead organization reform. Furthermore, the role of intelligence governance may be the most critical factor in promoting better leaders of US intelligence agencies and the broader community.     

The limits and benefits of international mobility: an empirical examination of the biographies of Australian legal academics

ABSTRACT

Academics are becoming increasingly internationally mobile, and yet there is still limited research into the nature, outcomes and limits of academic mobility. This paper examines the biographies of over 700 academics employed within Australian law schools. It identifies legal academics who hold academics qualifications have been employed outside of Australia. Almost a quarter of legal academics in our sample hold a first degree outside of Australia, over a third hold a non-Australian post-graduate degree. While it could be expected that possessing international experience would broaden an academic’s cultural experiences, we also found that the internationally mobile academics have typically studied and worked previously within an elite international law school, and are now employed within an elite Australian law school. In addition, experiences of international mobility are not equally distributed, and male legal academics are significantly more likely to have international experience than female legal academics.     

IMPROVING EARLY‐GRADE LITERACY IN EAST AFRICA: EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM KENYA AND UGANDA

Primary school enrollments have increased rapidly in sub‐Saharan Africa, spurring concerns about low levels of learning. We analyze field experiments in Kenya and Uganda that assessed whether the Reading to Learn intervention, implemented by the Aga Khan Foundation in both countries, improved early‐grade literacy as measured by common assessments. We find that Ugandan literacy (in Lango) increased by 0.2 standard deviations. We find a smaller effect (0.08) on a Swahili literacy test in Kenya. We find no evidence that differential effects are explained by baseline differences across countries in student test scores, classroom attributes, or implementation fidelity. A plausible explanation that cannot be directly tested is differential effective exposure to the literacy treatment in the tested languages. Students in Kenya were tested in Swahili, which is not necessarily the main language of instruction in primary schools, despite official policy.