The two faces of power-sharing

Lijphart’s claim that power-sharing spurs democratization in divided societies has strongly influenced ‘institutional engineering’ and is widely accepted among scholars despite the fact that empirical tests of its merits remain rare. This article revisits the democratic effect of power-sharing, arguing that it has two antagonist faces. On the positive side, it provides guarantees of inclusion to political elites, allowing them to commit to democratic rules. On the negative side, it also has an illiberal face, entailing limits on competition and individual rights. In this article, these contrary characteristics are traced back to two institutional types of power-sharing: a more flexible and open, liberal, type and a more rigid, corporate one. Using a novel dataset on power-sharing rules for 138 multi-ethnic countries and the period from 1945 to 2016, their respective democratic merits are tested. Conforming to theoretical expectations, the findings indicate that only liberal forms of power-sharing exhibit strong positive effects on democracy while corporate forms exert mixed or even negative ones. These findings are robust to a series of alternate model specifications and operationalizations as well as to instrumental variable approaches. In conclusion, the article indicates only a partial democratic effect of power-sharing, limited to its liberal subtype.

Research Production and International Visibility in Higher Education: The Evolution of Romanian Universities from 2011 to 2019

The international visibility of Romanian universities is relatively weak, even when compared with neighboring countries. This is explained by the historical heritage of the former communist regime and the lack of a clear vision for a post-communist strategic policy that could guide the research enterprise. This study examined whether the higher education reforms launched in 2011 had an effect on the research output, impact and international visibility of Romanian universities. The researchers used bibliometric data and university ranking data from ARWU, THE and QS Rankings. Trends in aggregate bibliometric indicators were analyzed for 38 universities as a whole, and by type of institution. Additionally, the Theil index was utilized to measure the degree of concentration of the research output across three institutional types. The findings reveal that there was significant growth in research output during the first years following the 2011 Education Law. However, this growth could not be sustained beyond 2014, except for Teaching & Research Universities and medical universities. This suggests that the reforms are producing the expected results at institutions that implemented and enforced new evaluation systems heavily oriented toward research.

ECONOMIC DISCOURSE AS A TYPE OF INSTITUTIONAL DISCOURSE

The research deals with the study of the English language economic discourse and its basic characteristics. The object of the article is discourse in general and the main approaches to its interpretation. The subject of the investigation is the English economic discourse as one of its institutional types. The aim of the research is to highlight the main linguistic characteristics of the English economic discourse. Economic discourse is defined as a type of discourse, in which the process of speech production based on certain economic ideas. Each of the texts of discourse creates a special field of discussion in relation to economy, and the texts within this discourse are aimed at the communication between the experts in the field which determines the institutionality of the communication. Thus, economic discourse is a complex communicative phenomenon implemented in the speech practice of subjects of economic activity. The characteristic features of the economic discourse are strict visual design, minimum usage of tropes and figures of speech, the use of persuasive devices, neologisms, idioms and numerous abbreviations used with the aim of compressing the transmitted knowledge. Neologisms, idioms and abbreviations that function in English economic discourse present special difficulties for translators. Therefore the perspective of the further research is seen in the study of translation techniques in reproducing various lexical, grammatical and syntactical features of the English economic discourse into the Ukrainian language.

Policy Dialogue: The Problems and Promises of Higher Education in the United States

Nearly 70 percent of American students enroll in postsecondary education immediately after graduating high school. Yet college and university completion rates remain highly disparate across social and economic groups. White students in the US are 20 percent more likely than Black and Latino students to graduate, and students from high-income backgrounds are roughly five times more likely to graduate than their lower-income peers. As a result, many students leave higher education without a degree, bearing debt that cannot be discharged through bankruptcy. The upshot is that much of the $1.7 trillion in student loan obligations today is held by those who cannot afford to repay it—an immediate crisis for millions of individuals and a looming threat to the US economy. How did we arrive at this juncture? And what should we do from here?For this Policy Dialogue, the HEQ editors asked Sara Goldrick-Rab and David Labaree to explore the past, present, and future of pressing issues facing American higher education. Goldrick-Rab is professor of sociology and medicine at Temple University as well as President and Founder of the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice in Philadelphia. She is also the chief strategy officer for emergency aid at Edquity, a student financial success and emergency aid company, and founder of Believe in Students, a nonprofit distributing emergency aid. Labaree is a past president of the History of Education Society and the Lee L. Jacks Professor Emeritus at Stanford University. Their dialogue takes readers on a quick and heady jaunt across time, across the country, and across almost all institutional types in higher education.HEQ Policy Dialogues are, by design, intended to promote an informal, free exchange of ideas between scholars. At the end of the exchange, we offer a list of references for readers who wish to follow up on sources relevant to the discussion.

The Organizational Ecology of State Support for Public Flagship Universities

Background/Context: Several studies have investigated state political and economic factors that explain differences in levels of state appropriations for colleges and universities. Few studies have considered how stakeholder beliefs or taken-for-granted assumptions about various institutions may impact budgeting decisions for specific campuses. A gap in the literature remains in understanding how normative agreements about various institutional types—such as public flagship universities—may influence levels of state appropriations for these institutions. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study investigates how levels of state support for research universities might relate to their formal, informal, or even contested status as public flagship institutions. The research question guiding this study is: How might flagship identity relate to differences in levels of state appropriations for public research universities across states? Research Design: This multicase study examines differences in levels of state support for four flagship universities between 1984 and 2004. Case institutions were generated from an analysis of outlier institutions that received lower- or higher-than-predicted levels of appropriations during the two-decade period. Outliers analyzed for this study include the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and University of Virginia (lower-than-predicted support) and the University of Connecticut and the University of Maryland-College Park (higher-than-predicted support). Qualitative data were collected and analyzed to investigate disparities in state support among these four institutions. Findings/Results: This study found that a “flagship ideal” exists across the four cases, which provides meaning for stakeholders as they consider levels of state funding for these institutions. Idealized views of flagships provided advantages to some institutions and disadvantaged others in state budgeting processes during the study period. In addition, normative beliefs about the case institutions were mediated by state culture, politics, and powerful regional influences. Higher education governance structure was less important than cultural and political context in making sense of variations in state support across the institutions. Conclusions/Recommendations: The study suggests that flagship university leaders must be mindful about taken-for-granted assumptions held by key stakeholders and resource providers as they create appeals for state support. Across all institutional types, leaders must be attuned to the historical, cultural, economic, or political factors that shape understandings about their institutions. In addition, leaders must evaluate the influence of allies or foes in shaping the narrative about the institution’s unique identity and need for funding. Strategic leaders leverage their institutional identities and unique governing arrangements in ways that expand resource opportunities.

Gender, Family and Caregiving Leave, and Advancement in Academic Science: Effects across the Life Course

Family and caregiving leave are increasingly important dimensions for careers in academic science, and for vital, sustainable institutional structures. These forms of leave are intended to support equity, and particularly gender equity. A key question is how the actual use of leave affects critical milestones of advancement for women—compared to men—in (1) time to tenure and (2) the odds of promotion to full professor. We address this question with descriptive statistics and event history analyses, based on responses to a survey of 3688 US faculty members in 4 scientific fields within a range of Carnegie institutional types. We find that leave that stops the tenure clock extends time to tenure for both men and women—the effect is gender neutral. Promotion to full professor is another matter. Being a woman has a strong negative effect on the likelihood of promotion to full professor, and women are especially disadvantaged in promotion when they used tenure leave years earlier. These findings have implications for a life-course perspective on gender and advancement in academic science, the roles of caretaking and leave, and the intended and unintended consequences of leave policies for equitable and sustainable university systems.

Conceptualisations and pedagogical practices of academic literacy in Namibian higher education

The purpose of this study was to investigate academic literacy development lecturers’ conceptualisations of academic literacy and resultant pedagogical practices in academic development courses at three different Higher Education Institutional types in Namibia. The research sites were a Traditional University, a University of Technology and a Comprehensive University. The focus was to understand the extent to which the academics’ conceptions of academic literacy and the resultant pedagogical practices in the academic development courses at these three Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) facilitate epistemological access into students’ chosen fields of study. Bernstein’s Pedagogical theory (1990), Genre theory (1996) and Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (1978) were used as the study’s theoretical lenses and analytical framework. An interpretative paradigm and a qualitative case study design were employed as the research approach. Semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and documentary evidence were used to generate data. Research findings revealed a common (mis)conception of the nature of academic literacy, the resultant inadequate learning support offered to students in the selected academic literacy development courses, and a clear divorcing of academic literacy interventions from the students’ ‘home’ or mainstream disciplines at the three HEIs. The participants understood academic literacy from an autonomous position as a set of generic skills which could be taught outside of mainstream classes. Moreover, findings revealed that this understanding impacted on the design and assessments of all the academic literacy courses across the three universities under study. The study calls for a context sensitive model through which academic literacy acquisition can be scaffolded to meet the discipline-specific epistemological needs of the students.