Suchergebnisse

The dichotomy between major/minority languages and its political and social implications, which is prevalent in multilingual societies, is a question of language policy. Nigeria is a multilingual country that has adopted the English language as its official language, and Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa as major languages. These languages are compulsory subjects in the school curriculum to be taught all over the country. This policy has enhanced the development of the major languages through research and training, while at the same time endangering the minority languages, thereby compromising their growth and capacity to incorporate contemporary phenomena. Accordingly, the Department of English Language, Plateau State University, initiated the Native Language Preservation Programme to serve as an intervention measure for the preservation and perpetuation of the minority languages in the state. This paper appraises the Language Preservation Programme by examining Nigeria's language policy and the objectives of the programme. The paper concludes that the programme is timely, because the minority languages are greatly endangered. The paper also highlights the constraints in the implementation of the programme and recommends the teaching of minority languages in schools. --- La dichotomie entre les langues majoritaires et les langues minoritaires, et de ses implications politiques et sociales, qui est très répandue dans les sociétés multilingues, est une question de politique linguistique. Le Nigeria est un pays multilingue qui a adopté l'anglais comme langue officielle, et l'igbo, le yoruba et le hausa comme langues principales. Ces langues sont des matières obligatoires dans les programmes scolaires dans tout le pays. Cette politique a favorisé le développement des langues principales, la recherche et la formation, mais en même temps a mis en danger les langues minoritaires, compromettant ainsi leur croissance et leur capacité à intégrer les phénomènes contemporains. En conséquence, le Département d'anglais, à l'Université de Plateau State, a lancé le Programme autochtone de la préservation des langues minoritaires. Cet article évalue ce programme de préservation des langues en examinant la politique linguistique du Nigeria et les objectifs du programme. Nous concluons que le programme arrive à point nommé, car les langues minoritaires sont fortement menacées. Nous soulignons également les contraintes dans la mise en oeuvre du programme et recommandons l'enseignement des langues minoritaires dans les écoles.

With English language education increasingly viewed worldwide as an important mechanism for global economic development, many policy makers in developing countries are promoting the English language as the vital skill necessary for successful competition in an ever changing world. Perhaps nowhere is this phenomenon more momentous than in the United Arab Emirates, where the Emirate of Abu Dhabi has committed its vast economic resources towards a new curriculum mandating the change from Arabic to English language instruction in core subjects like Science and Math. To date, few studies have emerged from the Middle East examining the roles teachers play in the growing phenomenon of English language education reform. Conducted in a small, suburban secondary school in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), this dissertation investigates the ways teachers' beliefs impact how they interpret, and subsequently implement, the official curriculum. More specifically, this study examines how teachers' beliefs about the nature of teaching and the role of language in the world impact their interpretations of a government-mandated English language curriculum. Drawing on extensive interview and participant observation data, this study focuses on how teachers use narratives to both construct the role of the teacher and to negotiate the value of the English and Arabic languages. The findings indicate that although teachers at the Najah Boy's High School incorporated their beliefs in often unpredictable ways, particular beliefs shared common structures corresponding to shared cultural frameworks. Drawing from cognitive anthropology, this study found that two such structured belief systems manifested through the utterances and behaviors of teachers at Najah: the teacher as enthusiastic motivational speaker and the teacher as familial role model. The findings also indicated that although the contextual constraints teachers encountered in the school setting (including the mandate that they follow the curriculum verbatim) impacted their interpretations of the school curriculum, teachers' beliefs, in particular those linked to one or more poignant episodes in a teacher's past, had the capacity to trump the impact of contextual social constraints on their interpretations of the curriculum. The findings of this study suggest that teachers are the key to the realization of educational policy. Instead of treating teachers as obedient automatons, policy makers must find ways to include them in the change process.

Agriculture is considered to be "climate-smart" when it contributes to increasing food security, adaptation and mitigation in a sustainable way. This new concept now dominates current discussions in agricultural development because of its capacity to unite the agendas of the agriculture, development and climate change communities under one brand. In this opinion piece authored by scientists from a variety of international agricultural and climate research communities, we argue that the concept needs to be evaluated critically because the relationship between the three dimensions is poorly understood, such that practically any improved agricultural practice can be considered climate-smart. This lack of clarity may have contributed to the broad appeal of the concept. From the understanding that we must hold ourselves accountable to demonstrably better meet human needs in the short and long term within foreseeable local and planetary limits, we develop a conceptualization of climate-smart agriculture as agriculture that can be shown to bring us closer to safe operating spaces for agricultural and food systems across spatial and temporal scales. Improvements in the management of agricultural systems that bring us significantly closer to safe operating spaces will require transformations in governance and use of our natural resources, underpinned by enabling political, social and economic conditions beyond incremental changes. Establishing scientifically credible indicators and metrics of long-term safe operating spaces in the context of a changing climate and growing social-ecological challenges is critical to creating the societal demand and political will required to motivate deep transformations. Answering questions on how the needed transformational change can be achieved will require actively setting and testing hypotheses to refine and characterize our concepts of safer spaces for social-ecological systems across scales. This effort will demand prioritizing key areas of innovation, such as (1) improved adaptive management and governance of social-ecological systems; (2) development of meaningful and relevant integrated indicators of social-ecological systems; (3) gathering of quality integrated data, information, knowledge and analytical tools for improved models and scenarios in time frames and at scales relevant for decision-making; and (4) establishment of legitimate and empowered science policy dialogues on local to international scales to facilitate decision making informed by metrics and indicators of safe operating spaces.

What brings about normative change in developing states with histories of corruption and poor governance? Post-NAFTA Mexico gives us a unique opportunity to study a single norm (rule of law) applied to two different sectors (environment and labor). Much can be controlled – the timing of new oversight pressures from outside (NAFTA and the US) as well as inside (courts and freedom of information agency). Socialization of rule of law norms is therefore best explained by looking carefully at differences between the relevant agencies. I show that variation in 1) levels of professionalization among agency officials; and 2) permeability of domestic agencies to outside influence, explains much of the variation between labor and environmental officials over attitudes to rule of law. Labor agencies were far more constrained by legacies of highly influential vested interests, and this limited their capacity to adapt to new normative pressures. These findings sharpen our understandings of how a pro-rule of law culture can be embedded, because the two sectors were simultaneously subject to the new oversight and spotlighting pressures. ; ¿Cómo podemos entender los cambios normativos en Estados en vías de desarrollo con historias de corrupción y gobernanza débil? Después de la entrada en vigor del TLCAN, México nos da una oportunidad única para estudiar una norma -el Estado de Derecho o "rule of law"- aplicada a dos diferentes sectores, el ambiental y el laboral. El TLCAN y la democratización crearon nuevas presiones sobre el gobierno mexicano, tanto desde fuera (producidas por el TLCAN y por Estados Unidos) como desde el interior (a través de las cortes y del IFAI). Así, la socialización del principio del Estado de Derecho se entiende mejor a través de las diferencias entre las agencias relevantes. Mostraré que 1) los niveles de profesionalización en las agencias estatales; y 2) la permeabilidad de las agencias a la influencia externa, son las variables más importantes para explicar el Estado de Derecho. Cuando dichos niveles son altos, es más probable que se respete el Estado de Derecho. Las agencias laborales también estuvieron muy limitadas por la influencia de fuertes intereses, los cuales acotaron la capacidad de dichas agencias para adaptarse a las nuevas normas.

Agriculture is considered to be "climate-smart" when it contributes to increasing food security, adaptation and mitigation in a sustainable way. This new concept now dominates current discussions in agricultural development because of its capacity to unite the agendas of the agriculture, development and climate change communities under one brand. In this opinion piece authored by scientists from a variety of international agricultural and climate research communities, we argue that the concept needs to be evaluated critically because the relationship between the three dimensions is poorly understood, such that practically any improved agricultural practice can be considered climate-smart. This lack of clarity may have contributed to the broad appeal of the concept. From the understanding that we must hold ourselves accountable to demonstrably better meet human needs in the short and long term within foreseeable local and planetary limits, we develop a conceptualization of climate-smart agriculture as agriculture that can be shown to bring us closer to safe operating spaces for agricultural and food systems across spatial and temporal scales. Improvements in the management of agricultural systems that bring us significantly closer to safe operating spaces will require transformations in governance and use of our natural resources, underpinned by enabling political, social and economic conditions beyond incremental changes. Establishing scientifically credible indicators and metrics of long-term safe operating spaces in the context of a changing climate and growing social-ecological challenges is critical to creating the societal demand and political will required to motivate deep transformations. Answering questions on how the needed transformational change can be achieved will require actively setting and testing hypotheses to refine and characterize our concepts of safer spaces for social-ecological systems across scales. This effort will demand prioritizing key areas of innovation, such as (1) improved adaptive management and governance of social-ecological systems; (2) development of meaningful and relevant integrated indicators of social-ecological systems; (3) gathering of quality integrated data, information, knowledge and analytical tools for improved models and scenarios in time frames and at scales relevant for decision-making; and (4) establishment of legitimate and empowered science policy dialogues on local to international scales to facilitate decision making informed by metrics and indicators of safe operating spaces.

This study was conducted in two Indian states of Punjab (in the north) and Karnataka (in the south). An analysis of long term trends in groundwater development and agricultural growth in Karnataka shows two things. First, the growth in irrigation was largely contributed by expansion of groundwater irrigation. Second, with the groundwater development, the state experienced a quantum jump in electricity supply to agriculture. In 1981, electric tubewells were de-metered and a flat tariff regime was introduced. This led to rapid increase in tubewell connections. Electricity was made free in 1998, further perpetuating this crisis. This in turn brought its own share of problems such as difficulty in accounting for agricultural electricity consumption mounting losses of electricity utilities and deterioration of quality of supply to farmers over the years. The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission was formed in 2000 and since then it has urged the electricity distribution companies to improve their agricultural energy consumption estimates, but their methodologies remain as fraught with problems as before with the result that agricultural electricity consumption is likely to be grossly over-estimated as are the number of electric pump sets in the state. The farmers in turn esort to illegal connections and under-reporting of their pump capacity making it even more difficult to arrive at independent estimates of agricultural power consumption. Overall, there is anarchy below the feeder level an anarchy that leaves farmers, utilities and the state government much worse off than they need be. A collateral damage of this anarchy is the deep level of mistrust between the farmers and the utility staff. An analysis of groundwater development and agricultural growth in Punjab shows two important trends. First, growth in irrigation extent and irrigation intensity was largely contributed by expansion of groundwater irrigation. Second, with the groundwater development, the state experienced crop specialization to bi-crop rotation of rice-wheat which further increased the demand of groundwater. Since the increase in groundwater irrigation was made possible with tube-well energization, Punjab's agriculture got highly dependent on electricity supply. This in turn brought its own share of problems such as difficulty in accounting for agricultural electricity consumption in the absence of metering, mounting losses of state utility due to non-payment of subsidy amount by the government and deterioration of quality of supply to farmers over the years.

Purpose of the studyEpidemiological studies have consistently demonstrated an inverse association between plasma HDL concentrations and cardiovascular risk. Although this cardioprotective role has been mainly attributed to its role in promoting cellular cholesterol efflux, there is an emerging interest in the anti‐inflammatory and antioxidant properties of HDL. The aim of the study is to investigate the anti‐inflammatory properties of HDL isolated from HIV‐infected patients.MethodsCross‐sectional study of 113 HIV‐infected patients and 70 non‐infected control subjects without evident CVD. From each subject, HDL was isolated by ultracentrifugation and its anti‐inflammatory status was tested as its ability to inhibit MCP‐1‐induced migration of the monocytic cell line THP‐1 using transwell cell culture chamber inserts with micropore filters of 5 microns pore size. HDL‐associated proteins were measured by commercial ELISAs.ResultsTwenty‐three HIV‐infected patients were ART‐naïve (32±15 years, 66.7% male) and ninety were currently on ART (46±11 years, 78.9 % male). Most patients on ART (91.1%) had undetectable viral load (<50 copies/mL). When compared to healthy subjects, both naïve and treated HIV‐infected patients had lower plasma HDL‐cholesterol levels (naïve: 45±12, ART: 50±10, controls: 55±10 mg/dL, p<0.05). HDL isolated from HIV naïve patients showed a significantly reduced anti‐inflammatory activity (THP‐1 monocyte migration capacity was 203% times higher in HIV patients than in control subjects). The anti‐inflammatory activity of HDL from ART‐treated HIV‐infected patients was significantly improved when compared to naïve patients, although it remained significantly lower than controls (130% THP‐1 monocyte migration vs controls). HDL from HIV‐infected patients had a decreased concentration of the anti‐inflammatory proteins Apo A1 (controls: 2.1±0.3, naïve: 1.4±0.2, ART: 1.6±0.1 mg/ml) and LCAT (controls: 0.53±0.09, naïve: 0.34±0.06, ART: 0.48±0.05 μg/ml), and increased of the pro‐inflammatory protein serum amiloid (controls: 1.42±0.53, naïve: 3.23±1.29, ART: 2.72±0.70 μg/ml) than healthy controls.ConclusionsOur data demonstrate HIV‐infected patients, even with effective therapy, showed a marked reduction of HDL anti‐inflammatory properties. This dysfunctional HDL seems to be associated with changes HDL composition and may contribute to the increased CVD risk observed in HIV infection.

Microfinance has been one of the fastest growing "industries" of the new millennium, with the sector now containing over 10,000 microfinance institutions (MFIs) worth an estimated USD with over $60 billion in assets (Microfinance Information Exchange 2011). This expansion has stimulated interest from both scholars and the mainstream media. There is a growing volume of academic research which broadly centres on two approaches: an "institutionalist perspective" that highlights microfinance as an innovation in applying market solutions to social problems; and the other approach, often described as welfarist, that questions the capacity of an increasingly commericalised sector to realize a mission of poverty reduction. But do these themes and concerns permeate academic boundaries? Specifically, does media coverage in key donor and recipient countries confirm or challenge or even engage with these debates? To date much of this academic literature has overlooked how "microfinance" has been socially constructed in the public sphere through the mass media. Through its interpretation of events, the media can influence the way an issue is discussed and evaluated and in this way influence individual perceptions (Gamson 1988). In this article we present an analysis of recent media coverage of microfinance in one key donor country, the United States and one major recipient country, India. By conducting a media content analysis of 100 newspaper articles (sorted by level of relevance) that appeared in the top 10 highest circulating English language newspapers in India and the US over a 12 month period January-December 2008 we discuss how media coverage in these two countries differed in significant ways. The Indian media sample tended to focus on operational issues and report on specific business activity within the microfinance industry, in general treating it as a 'regular' part of the financial and banking system. While the US media sample made broader generalizations about the industry, linking it to meta narratives and broader themes – peculiarly microfinance as an innovation due to its harnessing of market forces to realize positive social outcomes. This finding contributes to understanding of the interpretations, and the differences in interpretations, of microfinance between donor and recipient countries and offers insights into the power relations at play within the microfinance industry and the broader development and business community.

SUMMARYOver the last two decades, efforts have been made to find the right formula or formulae for delivering services to poor rural communities. Beginning in the late 1980s, decentralisation entailing the dispersal of powers and redistribution of resources and responsibility for public goods provision from the centre to local authorities assumed centre stage in public administration. This was in reaction to what was widely agreed to be the failure by highly centralised governments in developing countries to deliver basic services to their citizens. The failure justified a shift away from centralised public administration systems to their decentralised variant, with democratic decentralisation as the strategy of choice for reformist governments across the developing world. Accompanying decentralisation as part of the broad good governance promotion were efforts to empower local communities to participate in decision‐making processes as a strategy seeking to ensure both accountability of service providers to users, and ownership over public goods and the infrastructure through which they were supplied. There is broad agreement today that the hopes of the advocates and architects of these reforms were not fulfilled. On the contrary, many of the failures and weaknesses they were intended to address proved intractable, mostly for the same reasons highly centralised systems had failed to tackle them. Indeed, it was that very intractability that led to a renewed search for a new right formula and the eventual adoption of privatisation or public–private partnerships as an alternative or complement to public and community‐driven actions. This article examines the evolution of these efforts in Rwanda and Uganda and analyses their impact in terms of outcomes in the water sector where private contractors were brought in to mediate between a decentralised state and community in the provision of safe water in rural areas. It argues that, as was the case with democratic decentralisation and associated popular participation, privatisation or public–private partnerships are in themselves not the answer to problems of maladministration and accompanying failures in service delivery. It demonstrates that ultimately, the key to effective public goods provision is capacity for vertical and horizontal co‐ordination, inspection and supervision, and the strength of accountability enforcement mechanisms. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In Left Turn: How Liberal Bias Distorts The American Mind, Tim Groseclose argues that media effects play a crucial role in American politics. His case rests on three arguments: (1) that journalists tend overwhelmingly to be liberal rather than conservative; (2) that their innate political bias slants their views in empirically measurable ways; and (3) that this bias fundamentally shapes American politics, by bringing US citizens further to the left than they would naturally be. According to Groseclose, in a world where media bias did not exist, American citizens would on average hold views close to those of Ben Stein or Bill O'Reilly. In such a world, John McCain would have defeated Barack Obama by a popular vote margin of 56%—42% in the 2008 presidential election.In making these claims, Groseclose draws on his own research, and on recent media scholarship by both political scientists and economists, making the broader claim that peer-reviewed social science—which seeks to deal with problems such as endogeneity and selection bias—should be the starting point for public arguments about the role of the media. His book, then, is clearly an effort to bring social scientific arguments into mainstream debates. Groseclose makes no secret of his conservative political leanings—but recent books from left-leaning political scientists such as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson are equally unapologetic. It is at least plausible that political scientists' typical unwillingness to engage directly in political arguments has weakened the discipline's capacity for public engagement.In this symposium a diverse group of contributors have been invited to engage with Groseclose's arguments in ways that bring together specific empirical and/or theoretical points and arguments aimed at the broader "political science public sphere" that Perspectives on Politics seeks to nurture. Contributors were asked to consider these five questions: (1): How do we best measure media effects? (2): If media bias exists, what are its plausible sources? (3): Can one use work on media effects to determine what people's views would be in the absence of such bias? (4): Do you agree that American politics is insufficiently representative, and if so what do you consider the primary sources of this problem? (5): What kinds of political and/or media institutions or practices might enhance democratic discourse?—Henry Farrell, Associate Editor

In Left Turn: How Liberal Bias Distorts The American Mind, Tim Groseclose argues that media effects play a crucial role in American politics. His case rests on three arguments: (1) that journalists tend overwhelmingly to be liberal rather than conservative; (2) that their innate political bias slants their views in empirically measurable ways; and (3) that this bias fundamentally shapes American politics, by bringing US citizens further to the left than they would naturally be. According to Groseclose, in a world where media bias did not exist, American citizens would on average hold views close to those of Ben Stein or Bill O'Reilly. In such a world, John McCain would have defeated Barack Obama by a popular vote margin of 56%—42% in the 2008 presidential election.In making these claims, Groseclose draws on his own research, and on recent media scholarship by both political scientists and economists, making the broader claim that peer-reviewed social science—which seeks to deal with problems such as endogeneity and selection bias—should be the starting point for public arguments about the role of the media. His book, then, is clearly an effort to bring social scientific arguments into mainstream debates. Groseclose makes no secret of his conservative political leanings—but recent books from left-leaning political scientists such as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson are equally unapologetic. It is at least plausible that political scientists' typical unwillingness to engage directly in political arguments has weakened the discipline's capacity for public engagement.In this symposium a diverse group of contributors have been invited to engage with Groseclose's arguments in ways that bring together specific empirical and/or theoretical points and arguments aimed at the broader "political science public sphere" that Perspectives on Politics seeks to nurture. Contributors were asked to consider these five questions: (1): How do we best measure media effects? (2): If media bias exists, what are its plausible sources? (3): Can one use work on media effects to determine what people's views would be in the absence of such bias? (4): Do you agree that American politics is insufficiently representative, and if so what do you consider the primary sources of this problem? (5): What kinds of political and/or media institutions or practices might enhance democratic discourse?—Henry Farrell, Associate Editor

In Left Turn: How Liberal Bias Distorts The American Mind, Tim Groseclose argues that media effects play a crucial role in American politics. His case rests on three arguments: (1) that journalists tend overwhelmingly to be liberal rather than conservative; (2) that their innate political bias slants their views in empirically measurable ways; and (3) that this bias fundamentally shapes American politics, by bringing US citizens further to the left than they would naturally be. According to Groseclose, in a world where media bias did not exist, American citizens would on average hold views close to those of Ben Stein or Bill O'Reilly. In such a world, John McCain would have defeated Barack Obama by a popular vote margin of 56%—42% in the 2008 presidential election.In making these claims, Groseclose draws on his own research, and on recent media scholarship by both political scientists and economists, making the broader claim that peer-reviewed social science—which seeks to deal with problems such as endogeneity and selection bias—should be the starting point for public arguments about the role of the media. His book, then, is clearly an effort to bring social scientific arguments into mainstream debates. Groseclose makes no secret of his conservative political leanings—but recent books from left-leaning political scientists such as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson are equally unapologetic. It is at least plausible that political scientists' typical unwillingness to engage directly in political arguments has weakened the discipline's capacity for public engagement.In this symposium a diverse group of contributors have been invited to engage with Groseclose's arguments in ways that bring together specific empirical and/or theoretical points and arguments aimed at the broader "political science public sphere" that Perspectives on Politics seeks to nurture. Contributors were asked to consider these five questions: (1): How do we best measure media effects? (2): If media bias exists, what are its plausible sources? (3): Can one use work on media effects to determine what people's views would be in the absence of such bias? (4): Do you agree that American politics is insufficiently representative, and if so what do you consider the primary sources of this problem? (5): What kinds of political and/or media institutions or practices might enhance democratic discourse?—Henry Farrell, Associate Editor

In Left Turn: How Liberal Bias Distorts The American Mind, Tim Groseclose argues that media effects play a crucial role in American politics. His case rests on three arguments: (1) that journalists tend overwhelmingly to be liberal rather than conservative; (2) that their innate political bias slants their views in empirically measurable ways; and (3) that this bias fundamentally shapes American politics, by bringing US citizens further to the left than they would naturally be. According to Groseclose, in a world where media bias did not exist, American citizens would on average hold views close to those of Ben Stein or Bill O'Reilly. In such a world, John McCain would have defeated Barack Obama by a popular vote margin of 56%—42% in the 2008 presidential election.In making these claims, Groseclose draws on his own research, and on recent media scholarship by both political scientists and economists, making the broader claim that peer-reviewed social science—which seeks to deal with problems such as endogeneity and selection bias—should be the starting point for public arguments about the role of the media. His book, then, is clearly an effort to bring social scientific arguments into mainstream debates. Groseclose makes no secret of his conservative political leanings—but recent books from left-leaning political scientists such as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson are equally unapologetic. It is at least plausible that political scientists' typical unwillingness to engage directly in political arguments has weakened the discipline's capacity for public engagement.In this symposium a diverse group of contributors have been invited to engage with Groseclose's arguments in ways that bring together specific empirical and/or theoretical points and arguments aimed at the broader "political science public sphere" that Perspectives on Politics seeks to nurture. Contributors were asked to consider these five questions: (1): How do we best measure media effects? (2): If media bias exists, what are its plausible sources? (3): Can one use work on media effects to determine what people's views would be in the absence of such bias? (4): Do you agree that American politics is insufficiently representative, and if so what do you consider the primary sources of this problem? (5): What kinds of political and/or media institutions or practices might enhance democratic discourse?—Henry Farrell, Associate Editor

InLeft Turn: How Liberal Bias Distorts The American Mind,Tim Groseclose argues that media effects play a crucial role in American politics. His case rests on three arguments: (1) that journalists tend overwhelmingly to be liberal rather than conservative; (2) that their innate political bias slants their views in empirically measurable ways; and (3) that this bias fundamentally shapes American politics, by bringing US citizens further to the left than they would naturally be. According to Groseclose, in a world where media bias did not exist, American citizens would on average hold views close to those of Ben Stein or Bill O'Reilly. In such a world, John McCain would have defeated Barack Obama by a popular vote margin of 56%—42% in the 2008 presidential election.In making these claims, Groseclose draws on his own research, and on recent media scholarship by both political scientists and economists, making the broader claim that peer-reviewed social science—which seeks to deal with problems such as endogeneity and selection bias—should be the starting point for public arguments about the role of the media. His book, then, is clearly an effort to bring social scientific arguments into mainstream debates. Groseclose makes no secret of his conservative political leanings—but recent books from left-leaning political scientists such as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson are equally unapologetic. It is at least plausible that political scientists' typical unwillingness to engage directly in political arguments has weakened the discipline's capacity for public engagement.In this symposium a diverse group of contributors have been invited to engage with Groseclose's arguments in ways that bring together specific empirical and/or theoretical points and arguments aimed at the broader "political science public sphere" thatPerspectives on Politicsseeks to nurture. Contributors were asked to consider these five questions: (1): How do we best measure media effects? (2): If media bias exists, what are its plausible sources? (3): Can one use work on media effects to determine what people's views would be in the absence of such bias? (4): Do you agree that American politics is insufficiently representative, and if so what do you consider the primary sources of this problem? (5): What kinds of political and/or media institutions or practices might enhance democratic discourse?—Henry Farrell, Associate Editor

IntroductionEarly diagnosis of children living with HIV is a prerequisite for accessing timely paediatric HIV care and treatment services and for optimizing treatment outcomes. Testing of HIV‐exposed infants at 6 weeks and later is part of the national prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV programme in Zimbabwe, but many opportunities to test infants and children are being missed. Early childhood development (ECD) playcentres can act as an entry point providing multiple health and social services for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) under 5 years, including facilitating access to HIV treatment and care.MethodsSixteen rural community‐based, community‐run ECD playcentres were established to provide health, nutritional and psychosocial support for OVC aged 5 years and younger exposed to or living with HIV, coupled with family support groups (FSGs) for their families/caregivers. These centres were located in close proximity to health centres giving access to nurse‐led monitoring of 697 OVC and their caregivers. Community mobilisers identified OVC within the community, supported their registration process and followed up defaulters. Records profiling each child's attendance, development and health status (including illness episodes), vaccinations and HIV status were compiled at the playcentres and regularly reviewed, updated and acted upon by nurse supervisors. Through FSGs, community cadres and a range of officers from local services established linkages and built the capacity of parents/caregivers and communities to provide protection, aid psychosocial development and facilitate referral for treatment and support.ResultsAvailable data as of September 2011 for 16 rural centres indicate that 58.8% (n=410) of the 697 children attending the centres were tested for HIV; 18% (n=74) tested positive and were initiated on antibiotic prophylaxis. All those deemed eligible for antiretroviral therapy were commenced on treatment and adherence was monitored.ConclusionsThis community‐based playcentre model strengthens comprehensive care (improving emotional, cognitive and physical development) for OVC younger than 5 years and provides opportunities for caregivers to access testing, care and treatment for children exposed to, affected by and infected with HIV in a secure and supportive environment. More research is required to evaluate barriers to counselling and testing of young children and the long‐term impact of playcentres upon specific health and developmental outcomes.