Suchergebnisse

On 7 February 2010, almost 20 million Costa Ricans (69% of the registered electorate) voted in the country's general election, the fifteenth consecutive general election to be held since the end of the short but bloody civil war of 1948. Laura Chinchilla was elected as Costa Rica's first woman president but her Liberacion Nacional (National Liberation Party, PLN) fell short of a parliamentary majority and so will have to sustain agreements with other parties in the legislature in order to pursue its policy agenda. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

On 7 February 2010, almost 20 million Costa Ricans (69% of the registered electorate) voted in the country's general election, the fifteenth consecutive general election to be held since the end of the short but bloody civil war of 1948. Laura Chinchilla was elected as Costa Rica's first woman president but her Liberacion Nacional (National Liberation Party, PLN) fell short of a parliamentary majority and so will have to sustain agreements with other parties in the legislature in order to pursue its policy agenda. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

How does institutional change in established democracies affect the distribution of political power in society? The new constitutional court in Costa Rica allows the authors to analyze the effects of judicial reform on the capacity of politically marginalized groups to safeguard their constitutional rights. Particular attention is paid to homosexuals, AIDS patients, and labor unions. The authors argue that it was not the establishment of the court as such but rather the specific rules regulating access to and cost of approaching the court that enabled marginalized groups to push for their rights and effectively circumvent the traditional policy-making process. Although these groups did not win all their cases, they have nonetheless been able to achieve considerable success in the protection of their previously denied constitutional rights. The legal reform partially redistributed power in society from policy makers to social groups and individuals.

ABSTRACTUnder what conditions can a human rights‐based approach be successfully utilized? This article argues that the efficacy of a human rights discourse is, in large part, determined by the nature of the arena in which rights are claimed. Utilizing process tracing, involving content analysis and in‐depth interviews, the article examines the decades‐long struggle to block the construction of a large dam in southeastern Turkey. The analysis focuses on the struggle's three core dimensions: (a) international activism to influence foreign financial stakeholders; (b) domestic activism targeting the government; and (c) regional conflict over international water flows. Each of these dimensions is characterized by vastly different degrees of discursive rights consensus and leverage. In the international dimension, activists achieved both discursive consensus and leverage and were able to successfully thwart the Turkish government's goal of building a major dam. However, this ultimately proved to be a pyrrhic victory when the Turkish government secured domestic financing for the project. The loss of leverage in the domestic arena rendered anti‐dam activists' rights discourse ineffectual. Finally, the lack of regional consensus on water sharing and Iraq's lack of leverage enabled Turkey to complete the dam.

Why do students vary in their performance on exams? It may be that their test preparation is insufficient because they overestimate their anticipated grade. Our study investigates four issues related to performance on a final examination. First, we analyze whether students' ability to accurately predict their grade and their subjective confidence in this prediction may account for their grade. Second, we ask whether students at different levels of performance vary in their ability to accurately predict their grade, and if so, whether subjective confidence also differs. Third, we ask whether the accuracy and confidence of learners' predictions are conditioned by self-efficacy beliefs and causal attribution habits, which serve as indices of motivation for test preparation. Fourth, we ask whether different causal attribution preferences contribute to self-efficacy. We use statistical analysis of data from a general education course at a large public university in the United States. Our results indicate that poor performers' overestimates are likely to be wishful thinking as they are expressed with low subjective confidence. Self-efficacy is a significant contributor to the inaccuracy of students' predicted grades and subjective confidence in such predictions. Professors' understanding of learners' forecasting mechanisms informs strategies devoted to academic success.