Abstract
The International Studies Association (ISA) is widely recognized as an American-European-centric professional organization, with Global South scholars traditionally representing a minority ...of its membership. This pattern largely reflects the development of the International Relations (IR) discipline and its publication trends. In this Forum, we examine the progress made in the representation of Global South scholars within the IR discipline over the past decade, specifically focusing on the ISA as the primary professional body for IR scholars. We tackle some issues the Global South Task Force (GSTF) highlighted to a more assertive representativeness of the Global South within the ISA. Our analysis concentrates on ISA's journals data tracking to capture the current state of affairs and foster dialogue on developing inventive solutions to enhance diversity, intellectual plurality, and scholarly cultures within the IR discipline. Rather than resorting to outright criticism, we adopt a constructive stance, discussing attempted solutions and proposing steps to advance the discipline.
Americans are increasingly turning to social media for political information. However, given that the average social media user only clicks through on a small fraction of the political content ...available, the brief article previews that appear in the News Feed likely serve as shortcuts to political information. Yet, in addition to sharing political news, social media also allow users to make their own comments on news posts, comments which may challenge or distort the information contained in the articles. In this paper, we first analyze how social media posts on Twitter and Facebook differ from the actual content of their linked news articles, finding that social media comments regularly misrepresent the facts reported in the news. We then use a survey experiment to test the consequences of these information discrepancies. Specifically, we randomly assign individuals to read a full news article, a news article preview post (as seen on Facebook), or a news article preview with misinformative social commentary attached. We find that individuals in the social commentary conditions are more misinformed about the featured topic, tending to report the factually-incorrect information relayed in the comments rather than the factually-correct information embedded within the article preview.
We make use of a newly-available international data set from a survey of children aged 8 to 12years old across 16 diverse countries to explore variations in rates of schools-based bullying of ...children and the associations between experiences of being bullied and child subjective well-being, both within and between countries. The analysis is consistent with previous international studies in showing very substantial variation in rates of bullying at the country level. There are also between-country variations in the rates of different types of bullying. In terms of individual variations, we find significant variations in the likelihood of being bullied according to age, gender and deprivation, although the influence of these factors varies by country. There was no apparent link at a country-level between rates of bullying and mean life satisfaction scores. On the other hand, in almost all countries, children who had been bullied had significantly lower subjective well-being than children who had not. However there were substantial differences in the strength of association across countries. We find some tentative evidence to suggest that being bullied may make a greater contribution to explaining variations in child subjective well-being in rich countries than in poor countries. The implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.
•There is very substantial variation in rates of bullying at the country level.•There are also between-country variations in the rates of different types of bullying.•The likelihood of being bullied varies according to age, gender and deprivation.•There was no apparent link between rates of bullying and mean life satisfaction scores.
Much of the gender gap literature focuses on women’s greater average liberalism relative to men. This approach masks considerable heterogeneity in political identity and behavior among women based on ...race, class, and other key socio-demographic characteristics. In the 2016 Presidential contest, political divisions among women were evident in exit polling, which demonstrated that a majority of white women voted for Donald Trump. This was not an anomaly but reflects a more long-standing distinction between white women and women of other racial and ethnic identifications. In this paper, we draw on intersectionality and system justification theory as frameworks for exploring the distinctive political behavior of white women. Using data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies, we evaluate the factors that attracted white women voters to the GOP and kept them in the fold in spite of expectations that sexism in the campaign would drive women away from the party during the 2016 Presidential race. Our analyses show that many white women endorse sexist beliefs, and that these beliefs were strong determinants of their vote choice in 2016, more so than in 2012. Our findings also point to important divisions among white women based on educational attainment and household income in terms of both the endorsement of sexism and vote choice. These results shed new light on white women’s political behavior and qualify the existing gender gap literature in important ways, offering new insights into the ways whiteness, gender, and class intersect to shape political behavior.
This article develops a theoretical approach to stigma in international relations and resituates conventional approaches to the study of norms and international order. Correcting the general ...understanding that common values and norms are the building blocks of social order, this article claims that international society is in part constructed through the stigmatization of “transgressive” and norm-violating states and their ways of coping with stigma. Drawing on Erving Goffman, this article shows that states are not passive objects of socialization, but active agents. Stigmatized states cope strategically with their stigma and may, in some cases, challenge and even transform a dominant moral discourse. A typology of stigma management strategies is presented: stigma recognition (illustrated by Germany); stigma rejection (illustrated by Austria); and finally counter-stigmatization (illustrated by Cuba). Because of the lack of agreement on what constitutes normal state behavior, attempts to impose stigma may even have the opposite effect—the stigmatizers become the transgressive. A focus on stigma opens up new avenues for research on norms, identities, and international order.
National curricula need to change drastically to comply with the competences needed for the 21st century. In this paper eight frameworks describing 21st century competences were analysed. A ...comprehensive search for information about 21st century competences was conducted across the official websites of the selected frameworks, resulting in 32 documents that were analysed in detail. Travers and Westbury's framework of curriculum representations was used to determine horizontal and vertical consistency between the frameworks. The frameworks were compared on their underlying rationales and goals, their definition of 21st century competences, and the recommended strategies for the implementation and assessment of these skills in educational practice. In addition three international studies were examined to analyse how various countries (EU member states, OECD countries) and schools (SITES studies) deal (or not) with 21st century competences. The findings indicate a large extent of alignment between the frameworks about what 21st century competences are and why they are important (horizontal consistency), but intentions and practice seemed still far apart, indicating lack of vertical consistency. The implications of the implementation of 21st century competences in national curriculum policies are discussed and recommendations are provided.
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