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Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs) as active participants within global security environments has increased in the last two decades exponentially. States have progressively incorporated PMSCs in their security functions, both domestically and internationally. Since the conflict in Iraq in the early 2000s, there have been numerous plausible reports of PMSCs violating international humanitarian law. Despite this, only a few have ever been prosecuted, suggesting a fundamental challenge to understandings regarding state control and monopoly over violence. Utilising a historical case study of an Australian PMSC in Operation Iraqi Freedom, this article argues that PMSCs undermine Australian sovereign legitimacy. It demonstrates how Australian oversight and accountability regarding its use of PMSCs is significantly fractured and current regulatory mechanisms concerning PMSCs are deficient. Thus, the Australian government's ability to provide control over the actions of PMSCs is diminished, affecting its sovereign legitimacy and ability to monopolise violence. The article overall conveys the dubious position states come into when the use‐of‐force is wielded by actors for distinct material incentives.

Issues addressed in the Core Curriculum and General Education track
at this year's conference are more important than ever. With the
release of Academically Adrift (Arum and Roksa
2011), increasing budget shortfalls as a result of the economic
recession, and calls for assessment and accountability, higher
education and its usefulness have come under scrutiny. While this
increasing scrutiny is a concern that others besides those in
political science should address, our field's expertise within the
political arena would suggest that we have insight into political
decision-making and can act as experts that translate information
from the classroom to the real world in a variety of ways.

With many OECD countries experiencing a decline in their populations, this book offers a theoretical model of coping with demographic change and examines different strategies that societies have used to come to terms with demographic change. In particular, it details the different ways that Germany and Poland have tried to cope with this challenge and reveals three conflicting strategies: expansion, reduction, and phasing out. Coverage includes: · How and why demographic change was used in Poland to expand the education system · The variance of linkage between demographic change and growth rates in different fields of education in a German Bundesland · Modes of reflexivity and personnel policy in German and Polish municipalities · Effects of demographic change and forms of coping on fiscal capacity and unemployment rates in German municipalities. Coping with Demographic Change examines how and why societies cope with these detrimental effects. It conceptualizes the challenges a society faces as a result of demographic change and focuses on the processes by which actors, organizations and nation-states try to cope with this new situation.

This article critically engages with Israel's settler-colonial racial regime in Palestine as an Agambenian state of exception. The first part reiterates the author's argument that the Israeli state extends its laws to rule occupied and besieged Palestine while excluding itself and its Jewish citizen-colonists from legal instruments of oppression, occupation and siege. Positioning itself above and outside domestic and international law as far as Palestinian citizens and occupied and besieged subjects are concerned, Israel is theorized as a textbook example of state of exception, racial state and settler colony. The second part follows Weheliye in placing race front and centre in theorizing political violence as a socio-political process of differentiation and hierarchization that differentiates between the human, the not-quite-human and the non-human, employed by the State of Israel in dehumanizing and racializing Palestinian citizens, occupied and besieged subjects.

This study critically examines the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) policy documents of Nepal, not only to understand the specific plans of the government agencies in designing, implementing and expanding TVET programmes but also to problematise discursive practices of TVET programmes in the existing socioeconomic and power hierarchy of Nepali society. More specifically, it aims at understanding the ineffectiveness of these training programmes concerning the target groups. This study makes use of Fairclough's (1995) model of Critical Discourse Analysis of three inter-related dimensions of description, interpretation and explanation within the theoretical framework of capabilities approach (Sen, 2009). The findings indicate that the policy documents of Nepali TVET prioritise the development of semi-skilled human resources for the low-paid international labour market but ignore the conservation and development of indigenous knowledge systems of diverse ethnic communities of Nepal. The study initiates the discourse that integrating indigenous knowledge systems in TVET programmes provides a sustainable model of development.

Examines institutional changes resulting from international market pressures, involving the introduction of market mechanisms into the governance of welfare states. Decentralizing operational authority to line agencies and centralizing control over the volume of government spending.

This study seeks to establish the role decentralised governance has played in the performance of primary schools in eastern Uganda. Exploratory and descriptive data drawn from 104 school managers and district officials participating in the study indicate that decentralised governance has strengthened management of the payroll, increased regularity of monitoring and supervision and introduced school management committees. Despite these improvements in governance, there is however evidence that the quality of primary education continues to be low. Only a small and declining percentage of pupils complete primary education, and with increasingly poor grades. This is because, for a number of reasons, both the supply and demand side of governance are still weak. Despite this, overall the author finds that decentralised governance of primary education is a positive development, as it has enhanced the supply side of governance. There is, however, a need to control negative practices in the supply side of governance, and to systematically develop the demand side of governance, if the performance of Ugandan pupils is to improve.

Immigration is a controversial topic in most developed economies. The presence of a redistributive welfare state in all major immigrant host countries creates a margin on which immigration affects native welfare. The primary focus of the paper is whether a large intake of immigrants reduces welfare state effort. It is usually argued that steady increases in immigration lead to public pressure for lower levels of publicly-funded social expenditures. In contrast to the earlier empirical literature on this topic, we find little evidence in favour of this hypothesis. While immigration does have a relatively modest effect on the welfare state, if anything there is some support for the view that a greater influx of immigrants has lead policy-makers to increase welfare state spending. [Copyright Elsevier B.V.]

AbstractThis issue highlights leadership development approaches within institutional contexts that have not been well represented in leadership education research. As the first publication in the field to address racial equity through the lens of institutional type in this way, authors were given the challenging task of laying a conceptual, historical, and empirical foundation for readers in the absence of a robust body of literature. What follows is a synthesis of themes observed across each of the articles, concluding with implications for inclusive leadership research and practice.

ABSTRACTThis essay discusses select aspects of managing an academic program including quality and quantity of students and student recruitment, curricular development, measuring program quality and department performance, funding, and accreditation that affect the quality of accounting education. We include a broad overview of how the topics are interrelated and discuss observable output measures of program quality including CPA exam and other standardized test results, student placement, and longer-term measures of career success. We discuss select research to identify current knowledge and research related to managing an academic program. We also suggest unanswered research questions related to managing an academic program to encourage future research in this area. Many of these research questions are particularly important as accounting appears to be entering a period of declining enrollment and resources.

"In First-Generation Student Experiences in Higher Education: Counterstories, we meet eight students who attended university through an access program, and hear their stories of deciding to enter university, navigating the institution, and bringing their university experiences with them into adult life. Their "counterstories"-drawn from application statements, weekly group meetings, diary entries, group conversations, interviews, and media reports-challenge the stereotypes commonly applied to marginalized students in higher education. Chapters offer insights into a range of salient themes and highlight the students' strategies, challenges, successes, and trajectories, as well as their nuanced relationships with their networks, communities, families, and significant others. With this volume, James and Taylor present a valuable resource for educators, administrators, scholars, students and community agencies interested in extending understandings of first-generation university students"--

This item is part of the Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements (PRISM) digital collection, a collaborative initiative between Florida Atlantic University and University of Central Florida in the Publication of Archival, Library & Museum Materials (PALMM).