From Journeymen Envoys to Skilled Diplomats: Change in Canada's Education-Related International Activities, 1815-1968

For much of the nineteenth century, Canadian education-related international activities resided outside the realm of traditional diplomacy. This situation was exacerbated by Canada's colonial link with Great Britain. Obstacles that prevented educationalists from playing a more substantive role in diplomacy were local, imperial, and ecclesiastical in origin. Educational activities were also a tool in the service of governments in the era between the zenith of British Imperialism in the 1890s and the founding of the United Nations in 1945. In the post-1945 era there was greater collaboration between the federal Ministry of External Affairs and provincial ministries of education. Education also emerged in the late twentieth century as part of the new diplomacy. A flowering of new international governmental organizations dedicated to furthering creative diplomacy brought new energy to this field.     

Technology transfer in the navy: The historical background

This report reviews technology transfer in light of the Stevenson-Wydler Technology Innovation Act of 1980. Following a brief introduction, a section on “Definitions” explains the several meanings that the phrase “technology transfer” now carries in policy discussions. The next section, on “Passive Technology Transfer”, reviews traditional Department of Defense scientific and technical information programs that relate to technology transfer. A section on “Military Industrial Transfer” examines technology transfer from the Defense Department to private industry, expecially to defense contractors. A section on “The Stevenson-Wydler Act and Active Technology Transfer” describes the principal provisions of the new act and why Congress passed it. The next two sections, on “NASA’s Technology Transfer Program” and “The Federal Laboratory Consortium” outline the two existing Government programs Congress relied upon in developing ideas for the new law. A section on “Implementation of the Stevenson-Wydler Act”, discusses several important issues that must be considered by Navy laboratory management as the new law is put into effect in the Navy. Finally, a brief conclusion emphasizes the major point of the report: That Congress, in passing the Stevenson-Wydler Act, did not fully consider what relationship the new technology transfer programs it was requiring in the Executive Branch should bear to existing programs with similar purposes. If the public interest is to be served, the report argues, the Navy must consciously and carefully determine the proper nature of this relationship.     

Electoral Fraud and Electoral Geography: United Russia Strongholds in the 2007 and 2011 Russian Parliamentary Elections*

Despite United Russia’s (Edinaya Rossiya—UR) dominance in repeated Russian legislative elections, the correlates of the party’s electoral support remain noticeably understudied beyond the influence of electoral manipulation. I pinpoint the specific contours of UR’s strongholds in the two most recent parliamentary elections in Russia—2007 and 2011—focusing on raion- and regional-level correlates of the vote using an original dataset. UR has been undergirded by geographically concentrated ethnic minorities and the countryside, and these patterns of support have persisted even in the absence of fraud, suggesting that the dominant party’s electoral windfalls cannot be attributed solely to electoral malfeasance.     

Don't Forget to Vote: Text Message Reminders as a Mobilization Tool

Current explanations of effective voter mobilization strategies maintain that turnout increases only when a potential voter is persuaded to participate through increased social connectedness. The connectedness explanation does not take into account, however, that registered voters, by registering, have already signaled their interest in voting. The theory presented in this article predicts that impersonal, noticeable   messages can succeed in increasing the likelihood that a registered voter will turn out by reminding the recipient that Election Day is approaching. Text messaging is examined as an example of an impersonal, noticeable communication to potential voters. A nationwide field experiment (n = 8,053) in the 2006 election finds that text message reminders produce a statistically significant 3.0 percentage point increase in the likelihood of voting. While increasing social connectedness has been shown to positively affect voter turnout, the results of this study, in combination with empirical evidence from prior studies, suggest that connectedness is not a necessary condition for a successful mobilization campaign. For certain voters, a noticeable reminder is sufficient to drive them to the polls.     

Sandra Grady: Improvised Adolescence: Somali Bantu Teenage Refugees in America. Madison,WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015, 174pp,ISBN 978-0-299-30324-2

Journal of Youth and Adolescence -     

Changing Owners,Changing Content: Does Who Owns the News Matter for the News?

The press is essential for creating an informed citizenry, but its existence depends on attracting and maintaining an audience. It is unclear whether supply-side effects—including those dictated by the owners of the media—influence how the media cover politics, yet this question is essential given their abilities to set the agenda and frame issues that are covered. We examine how ownership influences media behavior by investigating the impact of Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in August 2007. We collect data on every front-page story and editorial for 27 months, and we compare the difference in political coverage between the New York Times (NYT) and WSJ using a difference-in-differences design. We show that the amount of political content in the opinion pages of the two papers were unchanged by the sale, but the WSJ’s front-page coverage of politics increased markedly relative to the NYT. Similar patterns emerge when comparing the WSJ’s content to USA Today and the Washington Post. Our finding highlights potential limits to journalists’ ability to fulfill their supposed watchdog role in democracies without interference from owners in the boardroom.