The Exoteric Politics of Bank Mergers in Australia

The Australian government's 1997 policy ban on in-market mergers among the largest four domestic banks has been a key intervention shaping the direction of bank consolidation in Australia as such mergers significantly accelerated from 1997 through 1999 in developed economies. This paper will show that the knowledge about the social and economic impacts of the bank mergers and the Treasurer's merger veto power made the policy debate exoteric (political and public) by including interests outside the banking policy community (i.e., interest organisations of employees, customers, and farmers, as well as political parties, and the broad public). Thus, the merger policy discussions were not esoteric, technical and limited to a small number of influential public and private sector institutions leaving policy discussions vulnerable to be structured to favour the interests of large, financial firms over other interests. This, in turn, created significant pressure on government for to retain the policy. The paper also outlines the significance of the domestic political conflicts and electoral politics in a world of global finance.     

A wave of psychological forces in second language learning： An Arabic experience at IIUM

Psychological bases of success deal with relatively inner-self factors. The paper presents basic understandings of learning process as well as a model of identifying factors of second language learning success. There are a number of reasons why some students learn Arabic much more quickly than the others. Learner＇s psychological situation is one of the most expected determination factor. Therefore, its nature has to be described, its function needs to be identified and analyzed, especially in term of motivating students to have better performance in learning Arabic as a second language in the context of International Islamic University Malaysia （IIUM）.     

Political-intelligence elites,Strategic Political Communication and the press: the need for,and utility of,a benchmark of public accountability demands

This article explores whether the contemporary press adequately holds political-intelligence elites accountable when facing Strategic Political Communication (SPC) during those long periods when whistle-blowers are absent (‘journalism-as-usual’). It develops an original benchmark of public accountability demands of political-intelligence elites that the press should be capable of making, thereby providing concrete discursive strategies to facilitate this difficult task. Demonstrating its utility, this benchmark is used to evaluate press oversight during journalism-as-usual and facing Obama administration political-intelligence elite SPC on the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program. This shows that manipulation of the contemporary press occurs through subtle, but effective, SPC techniques involving a certain style of information provision that influences national, international, mainstream and alternative press outlets’ accountability demands.     

How can interactions among interdependent structures,institutions, and agents inform financial stability? What we have still to learn from global financial crisis

How national financial systems can avoid costly banking crises is a persistent and intriguing question for institutional scholars and policymakers worldwide. In this context, although considerable research has recently focused on structural, institutional, and agency-level factors in explaining the global financial crisis, it mostly offered each of these explanatory factors in isolation, thus leaving interactions among these interrelated factors incomplete. Building on a deviant case study on Australian exceptionalism examined in a comparative perspective, this paper introduces an integrative framework that views financial stability as a function of these interactions that reinforce prudent financial behavior. In doing so, it offers an insight into the previous research on institutional complementarity and how to guard against similar crises in the future. It suggests that financial stability (instability) is more likely when interactions among structural and institutional complementarities and agents reinforce conservative (opportunistic) banking.     

The importance of policy entrepreneurs in developing countries: A systematic review and future research agenda

How and with what effect policy entrepreneurship occurs is a persistent and intriguing question for scholars of public policy and administration and political science. So far, the main interest has been on policy entrepreneurship in developed countries rather than developing countries, which largely remains a black box. Adopting a systematic approach to reviewing the literature, this article aims to fill this void. It investigates when, why, and how policy and institutional reforms in developing countries take place, with special reference to the role of policy entrepreneurs. It reviews selected articles published in the Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge Social Science Citation Index database from 1984 to 2018. It aims to show the current state of empirical and theoretical knowledge about policy entrepreneurship in developing countries and persistent knowledge gaps. The present review contributes to the body of knowledge on this topic in three main ways. First, we provide a comprehensive review of policy entrepreneurship in developing countries. Second, we consolidate existing research in the political science, public policy and administration, and politicial economy disciplines. Third, we establish connections between fragmented literatures, identify gaps between different research streams, and suggest promising paths for future research on policy entrepreneurship in developing countries.     

The role of educational strategies in human development： An example of using key word method in teaching Arabic as a second language in Malaysia

This paper is an attempt to discover and recognize the important role of educational strategies in developing human capital in which they become positive agents of human society, such as academic achievement, intellectual abilities, interpersonal skills and also self-esteem. These will be measured using a survey instrument that classifies learning performance via test scores, to test the hypothesis that learning a language will lead to comparable positive self-development, but indirected language learning will affect academic achievement negatively. Therefore, key word methods in learning Arabic language will be used as directed Arabic language learning to measure the significant correlation to both academic and non-academic development of the learners in which the effectiveness of mnemonic strategy in vocabulary memorization is associated with the self-consciousness and personal psyches of the learners. Consequently, they appreciate the knowledge and values they gained from their learning activities, which help them to perform better than students who did not use this type of learning strategy in learning Arabic language. Teachers, on the other hand, would also able to observe the important impact of Arabic language learning on learners＇ academic performance and personality development. Therefore, education is simply a process of acquiring a new knowledge in creating an environment in which students and teachers learn something for themselves.     

Marital Violence: Is it a Factor Affecting the Reproductive Health Status of Women?

The aim of this study is to determine the effects of violence on the reproductive health of women and utilization of reproductive health services. The study population consisted of 250 married women aged 15 to 49, selected from patients at two different hospitals’ obstetrics and gynecology clinics in Ankara, Turkey. A data collection form and the “Scale of Marital Violence Against Women” were used to obtain data. According to the study, women who have lower education levels and who first experience marriage and sexual intercourse at a younger age suffer from violence more frequently. Women experiencing violence have higher gravida and para numbers. The majority of these women has not undergone appropriate prenatal care and delivered their babies under the supervision of a health care professional. These women have been using traditional and ineffective contraceptive methods. Marital violence has led to unfavorable effects on these women’s reproductive health and utilization of reproductive health services.