Suchergebnisse

Abstract
This paper discusses the development of a podcast assignment as an alternative to a literature review paper in the international studies classroom. A podcast assignment still enables students to read, evaluate, and synthesize research in a given field, but also allows them to meet other important educational objectives such as application of research to a real-world problem or setting, teamwork, problem-solving, feeling a part of an intellectual community, communication and digital media skills, engagement with the field and the material, and ability to communicate academic research to an interested nonexpert audience. The paper situates podcasts within the scholarship of active teaching and learning, and describes the rationale for the development of the assignment in a course on international political economy, in part to deal with issues arising from the COVID-19 disruption. It describes how the assignment was run and was evaluated, and provides the assignment task description and scoring rubric, as well as supporting materials and resources. Finally, the paper uses student postexperience surveys to gather indirect assessment data on the podcast assignment's effectiveness in achieving a range of educational objectives.

This study tests the effectiveness of naming and shaming by transnational advocacy networks in reducing the severity of ongoing instances of genocide or politicide. I argue that naming and shaming should force perpetrators to reduce the severity of these ongoing atrocities in order to shift the spotlight, save their reputation, reframe their identity, maintain international legitimacy and domestic viability, and ease pressure placed on them by states or IOs. I test whether naming and shaming by NGOs, the media, and IOs significantly reduces the severity of the killing. Ordered logit analyses of ongoing genocides and politicides from 1976 to 2008 reveal that naming and shaming by Amnesty International, the Northern media, and the UNCHR have significant ameliorative effects on the severity of the most extreme atrocities. Transnational advocacy networks have the potential, through naming and shaming, to lead to life-saving changes in these murderous policies. Adapted from the source document.

Few have questioned how democracies as a group differ within and among themselves. The most important study in this area of inquiry is Powell's (1982) Contemporary Democracies. Unfortunately, some of his results may be both inefficient and biased due to the use of what we now understand to be an inappropriate method. This study applies more appropriate event count models to Powell's data in hopes of gaining new insights into the relationship between political violence and elements of democracy. Evidence to support Collective Action explanations of political violence was found. Strong support for the argument that presidencies can be detrimental to the state and that representational electoral systems and constitutions, especially consociational constitutions, outperform majoritarian systems was also supported. Environmental factors are important, but constitutional variables, discounted to some degree by Powell, were also found to have extremely important and significant effects on the degrees of violence in democracies.