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1501. Underrepresented Students in US Study Abroad: Investigating Impacts

Author:
Laura C. Engel
Publication Date:
10-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute of International Education
Abstract:
Underrepresented Students in US Study Abroad: Investigating Impacts synthesizes existing research on the association of study abroad with positive academic outcomes for minority and other underrepresented students, with the goal of ultimately helping enhance pathways of access to study abroad for all students. Enhancing pathways of access to study abroad for all students remains an essential objective for higher education institutions, researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers. Yet, not enough is definitively known about the impacts of study abroad on different groups of students, particularly racial/ethnic minority students and, one step further, what program approaches and strategies are most effective in bringing about these positive impacts. Underrepresented Students in US Study Abroad: Investigating Impacts aims to fill a notable gap by providing a synthesis of existing research on the association of study abroad with positive academic outcomes, degree retention, and completion rates for racial/ethnic minority and other underrepresented students.
Topic:
Education, Representation, Diversity, and Higher Education
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America

1502. Gaining an Employment Edge: The Impact of Study Abroad on 21st Century Skills & Career Prospects

Author:
Christine Farrugia and Jodi Sanger
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute of International Education
Abstract:
Gaining an Employment Edge: The Impact of Study Abroad on 21st Century Skills & Career Prospects investigates the connection between study abroad programs and the development of skills that contribute to employment and career development in today's workforce. For the study, IIE developed a specific list of 15 soft and hard skills drawn from competencies identified as being most desired by 21st century employers, and explored their link to study abroad. Based on survey responses from more than 4,500 U.S. college and university alumni at various stages of their careers, as well as in-depth interviews, IIE reports that study abroad contributes to the development of transferrable skills and positive employment gains, with the impact varying according to program characteristics, study destinations, and the students’ goals. The survey looked at what specific features of study abroad programs contribute to career success, in order to help educators better develop programs that prepare students for the global workforce.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, Mobility, Higher Education, and Survey
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

1503. Maintaining Civic Space in Backsliding Regimes: A Literature Review on Civic Space

Author:
Andy Baker, Carew Boulding, Shawnna Mullenax, Galen Murton, Meagan Todd, Ximena Velasco Guachalla, and Andrew Zackary
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute of International Education
Abstract:
In 2016, USAID’s Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance launched its Learning Agenda—a set of research questions designed to address the issues that confront staff in USAID field offices working on the intersection of development and democracy, human rights, and governance. This literature review—produced by a team of political scientists, geographers, and an anthropologist—synthesizes scholarship from diverse research traditions on the following Learning Agenda question: How can citizens keep civic space from shrinking? What enables civic and political participation in countries where civil liberties have been lost? How do forms of civic and political engagement in such contexts differ from forms of engagement in contexts in which civil liberties are protected? Are some forms of civic and political engagement generally more tolerated in newly repressive contexts than others? How do civic actors adapt their engagement tactics to achieve their objectives? The authors identify five strategies that have worked in at least some instances to pry open civic space under backsliding regimes: 1. Alliance-and coalition-building with other domestic civil society groups, since larger groups have greater resources and can reach a larger audience. 2. Indirect resistance and actions, such as charity provision, artistic expression, and local-level political involvement, since strategies that do not overtly confront the regime are less threatened and can still provide a space for community involvement, expression, and problem-solving. 3. Non-violent contentious action, especially protest, which is more likely to be successful and have domestic and international appeal than violent action. 4. Creative and careful use of digital technologies, since much of digital communication is beyond the reach of the state. 5. Maintaining organizational autonomy from the government and international actors, since co-optation by the regime and affiliation with international actors risk compromising a group’s message and goals.
Topic:
Education, Political Science, Higher Education, and USAID
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

1504. Making Human Rights Campaigns Effective While Limiting Unintended Consequences: A Literature Review on Human Rights

Author:
Elizabeth Heger Boyle, Cosette Creamer, Amy Hill Cosimini, Yagmur Karakaya, Suzy McElrath, Florencia Montal, and Wahutu James Nicholas Siguru
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute of International Education
Abstract:
In 2016, USAID’s Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance launched its Learning Agenda—a set of research questions designed to address the issues that confront staff in USAID field offices working on the intersection of development and democracy, human rights, and governance. This literature review—produced by a team of political scientists, sociologists, and lawyers—synthesizes scholarship from diverse research traditions on the following Learning Agenda question: What are the consequences of human rights awareness campaigns? What makes a human rights awareness campaign successful? Why do many campaigns fail? What are the unintended negative consequences of both successful and failed campaigns? How do local norms and other cultural factors constrain or enable the translation of campaigns from one context to another? This report synthesizes scholarship bearing on these questions from diverse research traditions and assesses the interdisciplinary state of knowledge regarding the effects, both intended and unintended, of human rights awareness campaigns and the characteristics that make such awareness campaigns effective. This review is divided into five sections: A broad overview of the steps involved in designing an effective awareness campaign. A review of research on campaigns generally, drawn from a broad range of fields, such as marketing, communications, public health, and political science. An overview of human rights awareness campaigns specifically, building on the well-known precept that to be successful, human rights campaigns must be adapted to the local context. The authors identify the mechanisms that facilitate and the barriers that impede local adaption, particularly the use of frames. Drawing on framing theory, the report highlights four points in communication where framing is critical: contexts, communicators, targeted populations, and message design. A discussion of effective media strategies, including ways to approach both traditional and new media, with the most effective campaigns combining traditional print media strategies with new social media forms. A discussion of the unintended negative consequences of campaigns, including backlash, confusion, desensitization, and/or frustration among targeted audience. This section also identifies the typical causes of these outcomes and ways to avoid them.
Topic:
Development, Human Rights, Governance, Democracy, and USAID
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America

1505. Grassroots Reform in the Global South: A Literature Review on Grassroots Reform

Author:
Patrick Heller, Andrew Schrank, Anindita Adhikari, Benjamin Bradlow, Rehan Jamil, Kristine Li, Chantel Pheiffer, and Marcus Walton
Publication Date:
09-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute of International Education
Abstract:
In 2016, USAID’s Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance launched its Learning Agenda—a set of research questions designed to address the issues that confront staff in USAID field offices working on the intersection of development and democracy, human rights, and governance. This literature review—produced by a team of sociologists and political scientists—synthesizes scholarship from diverse research traditions on the following Learning Agenda question: How and when does grassroots reform scale up? When citizen participation has led to local reforms in a particular sector (e.g., health), what processes lead to these reforms’ influencing the regional or national levels of that sector (e.g., citizen groups monitoring medicine supplies in local clinics leads eventually to pharmaceutical procurement reform in the Ministry of Health)? The report itself is divided into four principal sections: Section 1 outlines the context for the report by discussing the importance of grassroots reform, defining key terms, and describing its methodology. Section 2 documents the experiences of different regions with an eye toward intra-regional comparisons. Section 3 distills two types of lessons from the regional experiences: relatively abstract lessons of broad relevance and relatively precise lessons of less general relevance. Section 4 discusses the translation of the authors’ findings into actionable lessons and concludes by discussing the limits to their knowledge base, pending research questions, and methodological impediments to their resolution.
Topic:
Human Rights, Reform, Democracy, and USAID
Political Geography:
United States of America and Global South

1506. Strengthening Women’s Civic and Political Participation: A Synthesis of the Scholarly Literature

Author:
Wayne Eckert, Kyu-Nahm Jun, Sharon F. Lean, Nicole Gerring, Matthew Lacouture, Juan Liu, and Amanda Walter
Publication Date:
03-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Institute of International Education
Abstract:
In 2016, USAID’s Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance launched its Learning Agenda—a set of research questions designed to address the issues that confront staff in USAID field offices working on the intersection of development and democracy, human rights, and governance. This literature review—produced by a team of WSU professors and graduate students representing the academic disciplines of communication, history, and political science—synthesizes scholarship from diverse research traditions on the following Learning Agenda question: What are the most effective ways to encourage women’s civic (e.g., volunteer, advocacy, etc.) and political (e.g., voting, running for office) participation? What are the risks to women of these strategies in contexts where resistance to changing gender norms is strong? The team identified four strategies for increasing women’s civic and political participation that are analyzed in academic scholarship: Using quotas to enhance women’s representation. Using social media platforms to mobilize women and amplify their voices. Targeting women as participants or beneficiaries of social programs. Mobilizing women through their intersecting identities. The team found that quotas are effective in increasing the number of women in elected office at the national and local levels and may also encourage women to participate in political and civic activity more generally. However, how quotas are designed and implemented greatly influences their success, and it is unclear whether more women in office leads to substantive changes to women’s agency within the legislature. In addition, although gender equity reforms implemented in the legislature can make such reforms more likely in other institutional settings, quotas are not common in other government branches. Social media is a double-edged sword: it provides a relatively inexpensive, accessible tool for women to participate in civic and political life and bring attention to issues that disproportionately affect women; however, it also creates a new space in which women are contested, harassed, and silenced. Social programs that target women also can be effective, but they almost always impose unanticipated costs, burdens, or risks on the women who participate, and so can depress women’s participation while seeking to increase it. These adverse effects have predictable patterns, and programs that target women as beneficiaries should take these patterns into consideration during the design phase. Mobilizing women through their intersecting identities—as mothers, workers, members of a religious group—is an underdeveloped area of the literature. Although several articles covered cases of this sort of mobilization, the results are ambivalent. In addition, although mobilizing women through certain frames—such as “motherhood”—can be effective, this strategy also reinforces traditional norms of gender roles.
Topic:
Communications, Women, Social Media, Political Science, Representation, USAID, and Participation
Political Geography:
North America and Global Focus

1507. Executive Summary: The U.S. Army in the Iraq War, Vol. 1

Author:
Joel D. Rayburn and Frank K. Sobchak
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
Abstract:
Originally commissioned by Chief of Staff of the Army General Raymond T. Odierno, The U.S. Army in the Iraq War is the Army’s interim examination of military operations in Iraq from 2003 to 2011. This study, published in two volumes, is a narrative history that tells the story of U.S. forces in Iraq, mainly from the perspective of the theater command in Baghdad and the operational commands immediately subordinate to it. It focuses at the operational level of war, exploring the decisions and intent of the senior three- and four-star commanders and how these decisions effected the course of the war over time. This work was built from over 30,000 pages of previously unavailable declassified documents and hundreds of hours of interviews with senior defense leaders. While the Army will eventually publish a comprehensive, official “Green Book” history that describes Operation Iraqi Freedom in greater depth, this study is being released now in order that key lessons, insights, and innovations from this period of the conflict are available to the next generation of Soldiers and leaders to study, learn from, and adapt to ensure the future readiness of our Army and the Joint Force.
Topic:
Armed Forces, Military Affairs, Army, and Iraq War
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, North America, and United States of America

1508. Homicides of children and adolescents in Brazil

Author:
Julio Jacobo Waiselfisz
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Igarapé Institute
Abstract:
Brazil is the world's most homicidal country in absolute terms. It also exhibits some of the most prolific lethal violence against children and adolescents. The following assessment demonstrates an exponential increase in the total number and prevalence rate of child and youth homicides between 1980 and 2014 — 476.4% and 485%, respectively. Such violence is not evenly distributed. Several northeastern states exhibit the highest rates of intentional homicide in Brazil, with the most common victims consisting of 16- and 17-year old black males.
Topic:
Crime, Children, Youth, and Violence
Political Geography:
Brazil and Latin America

1509. Prospects of cooperation on restoring stability and institutional reform in Syria

Author:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy and Omran for Strategic Studies
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
Report on the workshop: “Prospects of cooperation on restoring stability and institutional reform in Syria” Geneva, 21-22 September 2017.
Topic:
Reform, Counter-terrorism, Conflict, Syrian War, Institutions, and Transition
Political Geography:
Russia, Ukraine, Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Syria

1510. Conference Proceedings 5: Ombuds Institutions & Security Sector Governance

Author:
Philipp H. Fluri, Oleksiy Melnyk, Valeria Lutkovska, Eden Cole, Ben Buckland, Svyatoslav Stetsenko, Kostyantyn Tarasenko, Arsen Ilyin, Oleksandra Matviychuk, Oleksandr Kopanytsia, Graziella Pavone, and Will McDermott
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Razumkov Centre
Abstract:
This publication offers the proceedings from Conference 5 on “The role of the ombuds Institutions in security sector governance”. The aim of the conference was to identify a range of priorities and recommendations for Ukraine. Key recommendations include: parliamentary oversight capacity building; improving communication and coordination between the Parliamentary Committees and the Commissioner; improving the implementation of oversight legislation; ensuring oversight is proactive; and oversight actors have the necessary expertise and specialisation in order to deal with the particular issues of the security sector.
Topic:
Security, Human Rights, Governance, Institutions, and Conference
Political Geography:
Europe, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe