http://journals.ed.ac.uk/hydra <p><em>Hydra: </em><em>Interdisciplinary </em><em>Journal of Social Sciences </em>is a student-focused, peer-reviewed academic journal, which strives to highlight the best of current postgraduate student scholarship at the University of Edinburgh. The journal’s title represents its strong commitment to interdisciplinary research, in the belief that by opening a channel of dialogue between diverse disciplines within the realm of the social sciences, classic debates may be infused with innovative and even unexpected observations.</p> Graduate School of Social and Political Science en-US Hydra 2052-8590 <p>Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:</p><p>a. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 UK: Scotland license that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.</p><p>More information on Creative Commons here: <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/scotland/">http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/scotland/</a></p><p>b. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.</p><p>c. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See <a href="http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html" target="_new">The Effect of Open Access</a>).</p> http://journals.ed.ac.uk/hydra/article/view/722 A warm welcome to the second issue of Hydra Hydra Editorial Team ##submission.copyrightStatement## 1 2 http://journals.ed.ac.uk/hydra/article/view/716 <p>In 2010, the United States Congress was entangled in a debate over healthcare reform that divided the nation. Some supporters of healthcare reform questioned why the US failed to emulate the United Kingdom with a National Health Service (NHS) characterized by universal coverage. This paper explores the evolution of healthcare systems in the US and the UK in the first half of the twentieth century to demonstrate the importance of historical institutionalism and path dependency in shaping their present systems. Drawing upon historical analyses of the US and UK systems, this paper then seeks to analyse the passage of the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) under the Obama administration. While the overall ramifications of the ACA remain uncertain, its passage marks a critical moment in the development of the US healthcare system, diverging from a history of failed reforms.</p> Jacque Clinton ##submission.copyrightStatement## 1 2 http://journals.ed.ac.uk/hydra/article/view/717 <p>This paper will discuss the plight of the Bihari Muslims who were denied citizenship by the Bangladeshi and Pakistani government. The essay begins by highlighting the historical events that led to the prosecution of the Biharis residing in Bangladesh. The paper seeks to provide the different arguments presented by the three main agents in the discussion i.e. the government of Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Biharis. It discusses how the Bangladeshi government labelled thousands of Biharis as enemy collaborators for their alleged role in supporting the Pakistani government during the war of liberation. They were denied citizenship and, fearing for their lives. were forced to seek shelter in refugee camps. Similarly, the Pakistani government did not accept the citizenship appeals of the Biharis despite giving them repeated assurances of repatriation to Pakistan. The essay explores the political and ethnic disturbances that led to this decision by Pakistan. Denied citizenship, the Bihari people have been living in refugee camps till this day; forty-two years after Bangladesh gained independence. The final part of the paper discusses the current struggle for citizenship by the Biharis and attempts to locate the issue of citizenship within the South Asian region. </p> Nida Sattar ##submission.copyrightStatement## 1 2 http://journals.ed.ac.uk/hydra/article/view/721 <p>Global health has been identified as a ‘tracer-sector’ for advancement in regards to aid-effectiveness. This paper interrogates how evidence of aid effectiveness has been generated within one of the central, most resource-rich global health actors: The Global Fund to fight Tuberculosis, Aids and Malaria. Key terms are defined, processes for generating evidence of aid-effectiveness within both the public and global health arenas examined, and conclusions around the predominance of vertical interventions in the global health arena proposed. Ultimately, it is argued that the need for strategic and financial legitimacy has driven the Global Fund to generate very specific kinds of evidence of AE and that the Global Fund only generates the kind of evidence it can take.</p> Katherine Heus ##submission.copyrightStatement## 1 2 http://journals.ed.ac.uk/hydra/article/view/710 <p>This paper looks at the World Bank’s anti-corruption agenda and critiques it in two ways. It first looks at the limitations within the organization of the World Bank itself: its apolitical nature, lending culture and its ignorance of the role it has played and continues to play in perpetuating corruption. It then looks at three recommended reforms that the World Bank encourages as vehicles to stamp out corruption: privatization, empowering civil society and good governance. By analyzing the World Bank as an organization and recognizing its limitations in addressing corruption within the three reforms that will be exemplified, this essay argues that the World Bank remains more concerned with pushing its own neo-liberal agenda than taking a hard stance on deep-rooted corruption and has therefore failed to make significant progress on the fight against corruption.</p> Megan Wanless ##submission.copyrightStatement## 1 2 http://journals.ed.ac.uk/hydra/article/view/725 <p>Today, nearly six billion of the world’s seven billion people have mobile phones (UN ITU, 2013:1). As this technology has grown in popularity in the developing world, its potential capacity as a development tool has been explored by international agencies, governments, and businesses. While time will reveal the long-term effectiveness and morality of for-profit development ventures, M-PESA stands as an early example of aid agency, government, and commercial cooperation. Its capacity as a program to adapt and change to best suit the needs of its users, and its ability to overcome the many challenges to its success, serve as a precedent for development projects to come.</p> Katherine Allen ##submission.copyrightStatement## 1 2 http://journals.ed.ac.uk/hydra/article/view/720 <p>The old African proverb  “If you educate a man you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a family (nation)” was a pioneer in its time for realizing the importance of women’s education when men predominated education opportunities. This maxim recognized the benefits of education and has repeatedly become the motivation for global development efforts to offer education opportunities for women. Yet, fundamentally this maxim bears problematic assumptions that further disempower women and reinforce patriarchal stereotypes. This essay seeks to unpack the assumptions behind the proverb by viewing how educating women is believed to lead to the development of the family and nation in the context of sub-Saharan Africa, an area still facing low female literacy rates and high gender disparity in the enrolment of formal schooling.</p> Serena Suen ##submission.copyrightStatement## 1 2