Individual Party Donors: True Allies or Free Agents?

Habitual party donors represent an important revenue source for American political parties. What remains unclear is whether the party committees can also count on these donors to support the congressional candidates who represent the parties’ best chances for seat maximization. Utilizing structural equation modeling and contribution data from the 2006 to the 2012 election cycles, I find habitual party donors and certain new party donors respond to changes in party control of the House by providing more support to incumbents when their party is in the majority and more support to nonincumbents when their party is in the minority. Moreover, party donors are more likely to give to congressional candidates, especially those competing in priority races, than nonparty donors. Party donors additionally are revealed to be an important funding source for congressional candidates

Carlo Emilio Gadda's Luigi di Francia

The work that Gadda prepared for publication from the series of broadcasts on Louis XIII-XV of France during 1952 has largely been overlooked by critics. It is the aim of this article to show that, although there are certain unusual features in the text of I Luigi di Francia which arise from its origins in radio scripts, the work is recognisably Gaddian in its main stylistic and thematic concerns. In tracing some of the background to the text, due acknowledgement is made of the scholarly work already done on the history of the text by Gianmarco Gaspari, the compiler of the Notes on this text for the Garzanti edition of Gadda's Opere; Gaspari's implied conclusion that this is not the least Gaddian of the author's work, and his important conclusions about the degree to which the work was based on source material, offers the opportunity here for an analysis and explicit statement of the nature of the text and of its reflection of significant points in the span of Gadda's writing

The Fundraising Disadvantages Confronting American Political Parties

In the wake of the Bi-Partisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002 and subsequent rulings by the Supreme Court, American political parties face greater regulation than interest groups in terms of their ability to finance federal elections. While parties continue to be constrained by contribution limits, nearly all interest groups can now raise and spend money in unlimited amounts to influence elections. Further, many new groups formed to take advantage of these legal changes. Few studies address the ramifications of these developments for political parties’ fundraising capabilities. To see whether these disadvantages hamper party fundraising, I examine parties’ direct fundraising costs overtime and I use structural equation analysis to investigate the giving habits of party donors overtime. I find the fundraising cost of each dollar raised has risen and habitual party donors provide significant support to Super PACs. Habitual party donors have also become less consistent givers in the Democratic Party. I discuss the relationship of these findings to changes in party fundraising tactics and their implications for future efforts by the parties to maintain their revenue streams

Library resources, student success and the distance-learning university

Purpose - Research at the Open University Library Services has been investigating the relationshipbetween access to online library resources and student success to help to understand whether there is asimilar relationship at a distance-learning university to that found in other institutions. Design/methodology/approach - A small library data project was established to investigate this area.The study analysed online library resource data from access logs from the EZproxy and OpenAthens systems. A data set of 1.7 million online resource accesses was combined with student success data for around 90,000 undergraduate students and a series of analyses undertaken.Findings The study found a pattern where students who are more successful are accessing more library resources. A chi-square test indicated a statistically significant association between library resource accesses and module result, while an ANOVA test suggests a medium sized effect. The study also found that 152 (76%) of 199 modules had a small, medium or large positive correlation between student success, measured by the overall assessment score, and online library resource accesses.Originality/value - This study builds on evidence that there is a relationship between library use and student success by showing that this relationship extends to the setting of a non-traditional, innovative library service supporting part-time distance learners

Through a Gender Lens: The Economic Security of Women and Girls in Forsyth County

The first research of its kind to focus specifically on the circumstances and needs of women in Forsyth County, this report draws attention to the individual, social and systemic issues and barriers to economic security by examining poverty rates, wages, educational attainment and occupations as well as the cost of necessary expenses such as housing, utilities, food, transportation, childcare and healthcare

Noun classification and congruence in German and Zulu – a contrastive analysis

Teaching German as a foreign language in post-apartheid South Africa is different and more complex than before, because of the multilingual nature of the groups of learners with which the teachers are confronted, as opposed to the monolingual and monocultural groups before 1994. Taking cognizance of the full repertoire of languages represented in the classroom is not a new idea, but the current situation is such that teachers of German in South Africa have little or no knowledge of the Bantu languages, which renders them unable to do so. Contrastive analyses of German and the Nguni and Sotho languages and textbooks aimed specifically at the needs of South African learners of German as a foreign language have become a necessity. The focal point of this article is a comparison of the congruence systems in German and Zulu.Keywords: contrastive analysis, cognitive approach to language learning, primary language, first language, foreign language, congruenceJournal for Language Teaching Vol. 39(1) 2005: 1-1

Sprachvermittlung und Spracherwerb in Afrika. Deutsch nach Englisch im südafrikanischen Kontext: Theorie und Praxis

Teaching foreign languages in a multilingual context, such as one finds in South African schools, poses unique questions. The theory that pedagogically underpins and articulates the value of the study of foreign languages is internationally established and thus also valid in the South African context. Nevertheless, one has to consider language constellations in given multilingual circumstances in planning for the introduction and development of foreign languages in education, particularly where the primary language of learners is not a language of instruction and learning. This paper addresses the question of the desirability of teaching German as a foreign language to learners whose language of learning is not their first language and who have not yet mastered this language on an enabling level.Keywords: multilingualism, language-constellation, metalinguistic and linguistic awareness, socioeconomic relationshipsSchlüsselbegriffe: Multilingualismus, Sprachenkonstellation, metalinguistisches und linguistisches Bewusstsein, sozio-ökonomische Verhältniss