Brexit: A Cliff Edge or a Small Bump in the Road?

It is becoming increasingly accepted, not least by the Prime Minister and opposition leadership, that the negotiation of a comprehensive trade relationship with the EU is necessary to prevent the UK economy falling off a ‘cliff edge’. This concern is shaping the UK's strategy towards negotiations with the EU and has provided at least part of the motivation for the UK to consider requesting a transition period to facilitate the Brexit process. But how accurate are these fears? What evidence is there for the existence of a ‘cliff edge’? How disastrous would it be for the UK to revert to trading with the EU on the same basis as most other countries in the world, namely according to World Trade Organisation rules? This article seeks to address these issues and it highlights a number of implications for policy makers which flow from understanding the available evidence a little more clearly.     

How Americans Think About Trade: Reconciling Conflicts Among Money, Power, and Principles

Trade has again emerged as a controversial issue in America, yet we know little about the ideas that guide American thinking on these questions. By combining traditional survey methods with experimental manipulation of problem content, this study explores the ideational landscape among elite Americans and pays particular attention to how elite Americans combine their ideas about commerce with their ideas about national security and social justice. We find that most American leaders think like intuitive neoclassical economists and that only a minority think along intuitive neorealist or Rawlsian lines. Among the mass public, in contrast, a majority make judgments like intuitive neorealists and intuitive Rawlsians. Although elite respondents see international institutions as promising vehicles in principle, in practice they favor exploiting America's advantage in bilateral bargaining power over granting authority to the World Trade Organization. The distribution of these ideas in America is not arrayed neatly along traditional ideological divisions. To understand the ideational landscape, it is necessary to identify how distinctive mentaal models—mercantilist, neorealist, egalitarian, and neoclassical economic—sensitize or desensitize people to particular aspects of geopolitical problems, an approach we call cognitive interactionism.     

EU–Russian Relations and Turkey's Role as an Energy Corridor

This article analyses the impact of EU–Russian relations on Turkey's role as a corridor for the transit of energy supplies to Europe. While the European Union (EU) has inherent leverage in its collective purchase of most Russian gas exports, market power has shifted in Russia's favour. Russian efforts to build new pipelines and widen downstream access have stimulated EU interest in diversifying energy imports and transit routes. In this sense, the EU has recognised Turkey's potential value as a secure and independent route for importing non-Russian energy supplies, which may in turn have an impact on Turkey's EU accession process.     

Development of Friendship and Task Values in a New School: Friend Selection for the Arts and Physical Education but Socialization for Academic Subjects

Friends provide important social contexts for student development. Research has shown that adolescent friends are similar to each other in their interest and values for different school subjects. Yet our current understanding does not extend to knowing whether selection, deselection, or socialization processes are responsible for this phenomena. Without this knowledge, it is very difficult for parents, teachers, and schools to know how and when to intervene. This study investigated selection, deselection, and socialization effects on adolescent students’ task values for academic (languages, math and science, and social sciences) and non-academic subject areas (the arts and physical education). A social network approach was used to examine two waves of annual data collected from school-based networks of adolescents in the first and second years of high school education in Finland (N?=?1419; female?=?48.6%; mean age at first measurement point?=?16). The results revealed that adolescents tended to select friends with similar levels of task values (friend selection) for the arts and physical education, but friends did not become more similar in these areas over time (friend socialization). In contrast, there was evidence of friend socialization, but not friend selection, for the academic school subjects. Across all subjects, differences in task values did not predict friendship dissolution (friend deselection). These findings suggest that to a significant extent, students make agentic choices in developing friendship with schoolmates based on their task values in non-academic subjects. The resultant friend contexts that individuals created, in turn, affected their task values in academic subject areas. These results shed light on the complexity of friend effect mechanisms on task values at the subject domain-specific level.     

Reading between the lines: party cues and SNP support for Scottish independence and Brexit

Scotland’s future within the European Union (EU) played a prominent role in the 2014 independence referendum. The story goes that latent supporters of independence voted to stay within the UK to maintain EU access. Defeated, Scottish leaders declared the referendum a once-in-a-life-time event only repeated if conditions substantially changed. With the UK now facing a chaotic exit from the EU, proponents of Scottish independence have suggested that a second referendum may occur after Brexit negotiations are completed. Faced with a consensus among Scottish party leaders in supporting EU membership, those hoping for a second independence referendum, we argue, looked to alternate sources of information that saw Brexit as an opportunity to create the conditions that would spur a second referendum. Using panel data from the British Election Study, we examine whether Scottish voters voted tactically to leave the EU. We argue that Scottish National Party voters were likely to interpret statements on the conditions for a second independence referendum as an implicit signal to vote “Leave.” The results have important implications for the role of referendums in representative democracy, strategic voting, and the importance of intra-party division on individual vote choices.     

Reciprocal Relationships between Teacher Ratings of Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors in Adolescents with Different Levels of Cognitive Abilities

Are internalizing and externalizing behavior problems interrelated via mutually reinforcing relationships (with each behavior leading to increases over time in levels of the other behavior) or mutually suppressing relationships (with each behavior leading to decreases over time in levels of the other behavior)? Past research on the directionality of these relationships has led to ambiguous results, particularly in adolescence. Furthermore, the extent to which prior results will generalize to adolescents with low levels of cognitive abilities remains unknown. This second limit is particularly important, given that these adolescents are known to present higher levels of externalizing and internalizing behaviors than their peers with average-to-high levels of cognitive abilities, and that the mechanisms involved in the reciprocal relationships between these two types of behaviors may differ across both populations. This study examines the directionality of the longitudinal relationships between externalizing and internalizing behavior problems as rated by teachers across three measurement waves (corresponding to Grades 8–10) in matched samples of 138 adolescents (34.78?% girls) with low levels of cognitive abilities and 556 adolescents (44.88?% girls) with average-to-high levels of cognitive abilities. The results showed that the measurement structure was fully equivalent across time periods and groups of adolescents, revealing high levels of developmental stability in both types of problems, and moderately high levels of cross-sectional associations. Levels of both internalizing and externalizing behaviors were higher among adolescents with low levels of cognitive abilities relative to those with average-to-high levels of cognitive abilities. Finally, the predictive analyses revealed negative reciprocal longitudinal relationships (i.e., mutually suppressing relationships) between externalizing and internalizing problems, a result that was replicated within samples of adolescents with low, and average-to-high levels of cognitive ability.     

African farmer-led irrigation development: re-framing agricultural policy and investment?

The past decade has witnessed an intensifying focus on the development of irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa. It follows a 20-year hiatus in the wake of disappointing irrigation performance during the 1970s and 1980s. Persistent low productivity in African agriculture and vulnerability of African food supplies to increasing instability in international commodity markets are driving pan-African agricultural investment initiatives, such as the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), that identify as a priority the improvement in reliability of water control for agriculture. The paper argues that, for such initiatives to be effective, there needs to be a re-appraisal of current dynamics of irrigation development in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly with respect to the role of small-scale producers’ initiatives in expanding irrigation. The paper reviews the principal forms such initiatives take and argues that official narratives and statistics on African irrigation often underestimate the extent of such activities. The paper identifies five key characteristics which, it argues, contradict widely held assumptions that inform irrigation policy in Africa. The paper concludes by offering a definition of ‘farmer-led irrigation’ that embraces a range of interaction between producers and commercial, government and non-government agencies, and identifies priority areas for research on the growth potential and impact of such interactions and strategies for their future development.     

Adolescent Neglect, Juvenile Delinquency and the Risk of Recidivism

Victims of child abuse and neglect are at an increased risk of involvement with the juvenile justice and adult correctional systems. Yet, little is known about the continuation and trajectories of offending beyond initial contact with law enforcement. Neglect likely plays a critical role in continued offending as parental monitoring, parental rejection and family relationships are instrumental in explaining juvenile conduct problems. This study sought to determine whether neglect is associated with recidivism for moderate and high risk juvenile offenders in Washington State. Statewide risk assessments and administrative records for child welfare, juvenile justice, and adult corrections were analyzed. The sample was diverse (24 % female, 13 % African American, 8 % Hispanic, 5 % Native American) and included all moderate and high risk juvenile offenders screened by juvenile probation between 2004 and 2007 (n = 19,833). Official records from child protection were used to identify juvenile offenders with a history of child neglect and to identify juvenile offenders with an ongoing case of neglect. Event history models were developed to estimate the risk of subsequent offending. Adolescents with an ongoing case neglect were significantly more likely to continue offending as compared with youth with no official history of neglect. These findings remain even after controlling for a wide range of family, peer, academic, mental health, and substance abuse covariates. Interrupting trajectories of offending is a primary focus of juvenile justice. The findings of the current study indicate that ongoing dependency issues play a critical role in explaining the outcomes achieved for adolescents in juvenile justice settings. The implications for improved collaboration between child welfare and juvenile justice are discussed.