Perceptions of Cannabis in sub-Saharan Africa: Findings from a general population survey in six African countries with different Cannabis policies.

Background Recently, legislative shifts in cannabis regulation away from exclusively prohibitionist controls have been seen in sub-Saharan African countries. However, the extent to which public perceptions are aligned with policy trends is unclear. Given that views concerning cannabis may be influenced by associated legislation we aimed to compare public opinion towards cannabis amongst countries with legislatively different cannabis policies. Methods We conducted an online survey of the general adult population in six purposively selected countries representative of maximum policy variation across sub-Saharan Africa i.e., Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Survey questions covered perceptions towards users, risks and benefits, regulations and public health impacts as well as sociodemographic characteristics. Chi square tests were used to analyse the association between categorical variables and explore country level differences. Results Totally 1216 responses were received. Large variations were noted in responses towards user stereotypes, risks and preferred legislation. In relation to users being honest (X2=43.316, P<0.0001), most in Sierra Leone(52.9%), Nigeria (45.6%) and Uganda(48.6%) disagreed whereas in Ghana(39.4%), South Africa(43.3%) and Zimbabwe(40.1%) most agreed. Differences in smoking cannabis and smoking tobacco products(X2= 27.712, P=0.002) saw respondents from Ghana(51.4%), Nigeria(58.8%), Uganda(50.9%) and Zimbabwe(46.8%) agreeing that smoking cannabis is more harmful to health, whereas majorities in Sierra Leone(45.7%) and South Africa(49.8%) disagreed. Apart from South Africa were the greater proportion opted to allow cannabis for all purposes(28.8%), majorities in other countries supported only medicinal legalisation(X2= 96.631, P<0.0001). Conclusion Dependent upon the question of focus, at the liberal end of the policy spectrum are Ghana, South Africa and Zimbabwe whilst Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Uganda were more conservative. Responses tended to reflect the policy position of respective countries, however our findings suggest overall increasing medicinal cannabis support. Greater understanding of policy dynamics may help create frameworks for countries contemplating reforms.

A Political Economy of Wellbeing/Wellness in Nigeria

Since the turn of the new millennium, which was the period of clear comparison and computation of the misery index, Nigeria had always record low in the index for the report. Within the last three years, the misery index that was published has shown that Nigeria is the sixth (6th) most miserable country that one can reside. This measure of misery index was also substantiated by the recent report from the World Bank on the issue of poverty, inequality, and wellness. However, it seems to be an intensified interest in how Nigeria will overcome such an unpleasant pattern. In this research, the study examined how macroeconomic indices in enhancing people’s wellbeing—utilising economic growth, monetary policy position, and governance efficiency as, unemployment, interest rate, and inflation rate for macroeconomic performance indicators. The conclusions drawn suggest that economic growth, resulting in the advancement of wellbeing via allocative as well as distributive productivity is possible. Second, there is a stiffening effect on the wellbeing of contractionary monetary policy which increases interest rates and unemployment rates. The outcome extracted also shows that unnecessary domestic lending characteristics of the Nigerian economic system invalidate the wellbeing of the Nigerian people. Therefore, it proposed that the monetary authority reevaluate its present position on sustaining a high level of rediscount rate. Received: 17 November 2021 / Accepted: 30 December 2021 / Published: 5 January 2022

Negative Shocks and Political Parties’ Territorial Demands: The Institutional Roots of Party Competition

Why do political parties set an extreme or a more moderate position on the territorial dimension? Despite previous works have paid recent interest on the dynamics of the political competition on the territorial dimension, we know much less about the factors that lead to a centrifugal or a centripetal party competition on the same dimension. In this article, we offer a new way of understanding it: we argue that parties’ policy position on the decentralization continuum not only depends on the level of territorial decentralization, but also on the credibility of the institutional agreement established through the country’s constitutional rigidity. If the original territorial pact does not guarantee that the majority group will have its “hands tied” so that it does not reverse the territorial agreement, political parties will have incentives to adopt more extreme positions on the territorial dimension. We test this argument with a dataset covering around 460 political parties clustered in 28 European countries from 1999 to 2019 and by exploiting the fact that the 2008 economic crisis unleashed a shock on the territorial design. Our results confirm our expectations. We show that both the federal deal and the credibility of the institutional arrangement through constitutional rigidity are necessary conditions to appease parties’ demands on the territorial dimension. Our results have important implications for our understanding of how institutions shape political competition along the territorial dimension.

Research-led teaching in higher education: Perspectives of Cambodian and New Zealand academics

<p>Research and teaching are the core mission of most universities in the "knowledge society" during the 21st century. However, the exact nature of the connection between research and teaching is not obvious. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to contribute to the debate by investigating how research was used to inform teaching and to benefit student learning. The study also intended to identify the benefits and drawbacks of Research-Led Teaching (RLT) for academics as well as to examine what scholars considered to be the main supports and challenges academics experienced while practicing RLT. A qualitative single-case study was employed for this study. The perceptions and experiences from twelve academics from a university in Cambodia and another in New Zealand (NZ) were collected using semi-structure interviews. Official documents such as university policy, position descriptions from each university and course outlines or syllabi from each participant were collected for the purpose of document analysis. This study provided an understanding of RLT and the current practices of academics. Four conceptualizations of RLT emerged: teaching informed by academics' own research; teaching informed by other people's recent research; teaching that promoted student engagement in research; and teaching informed by academics' performance research. The findings indicated that the benefits of RLT outweigh the drawbacks. The lack of support was the main challenge for Cambodian participants. However, some participants suggested personal commitment, and institution accountability were important factors that support RLT. Perceptions and experiences that academics in Cambodian and NZ tertiary education have about the practices of RLT provide a useful basis for consideration of possible changes and how to implement such changes. Recommendations to enhance the practice of RLT include the emphasis of RLT in position descriptions and strategies to promote the implementation of RLT in institutions to ensure the improvement of student learning. Academic professional development and university supports are also needed for enhancing RLT practices.</p>

Research-led teaching in higher education: Perspectives of Cambodian and New Zealand academics

<p>Research and teaching are the core mission of most universities in the "knowledge society" during the 21st century. However, the exact nature of the connection between research and teaching is not obvious. The purpose of this study was, therefore, to contribute to the debate by investigating how research was used to inform teaching and to benefit student learning. The study also intended to identify the benefits and drawbacks of Research-Led Teaching (RLT) for academics as well as to examine what scholars considered to be the main supports and challenges academics experienced while practicing RLT. A qualitative single-case study was employed for this study. The perceptions and experiences from twelve academics from a university in Cambodia and another in New Zealand (NZ) were collected using semi-structure interviews. Official documents such as university policy, position descriptions from each university and course outlines or syllabi from each participant were collected for the purpose of document analysis. This study provided an understanding of RLT and the current practices of academics. Four conceptualizations of RLT emerged: teaching informed by academics' own research; teaching informed by other people's recent research; teaching that promoted student engagement in research; and teaching informed by academics' performance research. The findings indicated that the benefits of RLT outweigh the drawbacks. The lack of support was the main challenge for Cambodian participants. However, some participants suggested personal commitment, and institution accountability were important factors that support RLT. Perceptions and experiences that academics in Cambodian and NZ tertiary education have about the practices of RLT provide a useful basis for consideration of possible changes and how to implement such changes. Recommendations to enhance the practice of RLT include the emphasis of RLT in position descriptions and strategies to promote the implementation of RLT in institutions to ensure the improvement of student learning. Academic professional development and university supports are also needed for enhancing RLT practices.</p>

Modeling the emergence of affective polarization in the social media society

Rising political polarization in recent decades has hampered and gridlocked policymaking, as well as weakened trust in democratic institutions. These developments have been linked to the idea that new media technology fosters extreme views and political conflict by facilitating self-segregation into “echo chambers” where opinions are isolated and reinforced. This opinion-centered picture has recently been challenged by an emerging political science literature on “affective polarization”, which suggests that current polarization is better understood as driven by partisanship emerging as a strong social identity. Through this lens, politics has become a question of competing social groups rather than differences in policy position. Contrary to the opinion-centered view, this identity-centered perspective has not been subject to dynamical formal modeling, which generally permits hypotheses about micro-level explanations for macro-level phenomena to be systematically tested and explored. We here propose a formal model that links new information technology to affective polarization via social psychological mechanisms of social identity. Our results suggest that new information technology catalyzes affective polarization by lowering search and interaction costs, which shifts the balance between centrifugal and centripetal forces of social identity. We find that the macro-dynamics of social identity is characterized by two stable regimes on the societal level: one fluid regime, in which identities are weak and social connections heterogeneous, and one solid regime in which identities are strong and groups homogeneous. We also find evidence of hysteresis, meaning that a transition into a fragmented state is not readily reversed by again increasing those costs. This suggests that, due to systemic feedback effects, if polarization passes certain tipping points, we may experience run-away political polarization that is highly difficult to reverse.

Voters’ Motivation for Selecting the Party Leader: The Case of the Italian Democratic Party

Political parties suffer from a lasting, consolidated and, probably, irreversible crisis. However, they have begun a laborious process of adaptation which, among other things, has led to the spread of some new organizational practices. In general terms, looking at the party on the ground, we have seen a significant spread of inclusive procedures in party decision-making, which, in other words, has meant a strengthening of intra-party democracy. In particular, the inclusion of party members and, sometimes, sympathizers concerns not only the formulation of a policy position, but also the selection of party candidates and leadership. This article focuses on the inclusive process of leadership selection of the Italian Democratic Party (DP) occurred in 2013, 2017 and 2019. Since its inception, the Democratic Party has introduced the figure of the supporter, i.e. a voter not formally enrolled in the party but authorized to participate in a number of internal decision-making processes, including the selection of the party leader. Using the survey data from the research group Candidate and Leader Selection (CLS), the article explores the relationship between selectors and the primaries, looking particularly to the motivations behind the choice of vote. The analysis is based on over 8,000 interviews conducted through the exit poll technique and collected from 2013 to 2019. The article shows that voters self-positioning on the left-right axis and their strategic orientation are, in all three cases of primaries, the most relevant variables for explaining the selectors’ motivations.

Implementing COVIDSafe: The Role of Trustworthiness and Information Privacy Law

Governments worldwide view contact tracing as a key tool to mitigate COVID-19 community transmission. Contact tracing investigations are time consuming and labour intensive. Mobile phone location tracking has been a new data-driven option to potentially obviate investigative inefficiencies. However, using mobile phone apps for contact tracing purposes gives rise to complex privacy issues. Governmental presentation and implementation of contact tracing apps, therefore, requires careful and sensitive delivery of a coherent policy position to establish citizen trust, which is an essential component of uptake and use. This article critically examines the Australian Government’s initial implementation of the COVIDSafe app. We outline a series of implementation misalignments that juxtapose an underpinning regulatory rationality predicated on the implementation of information privacy law protections with rhetorical campaigns to reinforce different justifications for the app’s use. We then examine these implementation misalignments from Mayer and colleagues’ lens of trustworthiness (1995) and its three core domains: ability, integrity and benevolence. The three domains are used to examine how the Australian Government’s implementation strategy provided a confused understanding of processes that enhance trustworthiness in the adoption of new technologies. In conclusion, we provide a better understanding about securing trustworthiness in new technologies through the establishment of a value consensus that requires alignment of regulatory rationales and rhetorical campaigning.

A Critical Review of South Africa’s Foreign Policy in Promoting Continental Integration

Since 1994, South Africa has demonstrated a strong commitment to promote the interests of Africa and in being the “voice” of the continent. Through its foreign policy posture, South Africa has played a pivotal role in the African continent and the world over. After gaining its independence, South Africa had to promote a strategy of Africans speaking with one voice while still building coalitions amongst themselves. This paper examines South Africa’s approach to global issues on addressing the challenges of underdevelopment, the restructured global division of labour, the increasing iniquitous distribution of global wealth, global poverty, the growing power of trans-nationals and the implications for progressive governance and administration. The paper seeks to discuss South Africa’s foreign policy position on globalization in the era of neoliberalism. This paper uses the critical theory to report on the comprehensive scholarly literature review on the role of South Africa’s foreign policy on continental integration. The results show that South Africa needs to position itself in a new international economic paradigm that incorporates both democratic governance and an accountable and responsible market place beyond the anti-globalization stance. Furthermore, South Africa has attempted to cut the powers of colonizers in Africa, particularly the new powers whose motives fail to promote the African agenda. The paper concludes that South Africa’s policies and actions since 1994 have significantly helped the country to enhance its benefits for its population, while domestic challenges and weaknesses in its conduct have at times had a weakening effect on its endeavour to promote continental integration.