Who matters for memory: Sources of institutional memory in international organization crisis management

Scholarship on organizational learning has explored how international organizations (IOs) reform but has paid little attention to the origins of institutional memory. For IOs engaged in crisis management operations, acquiring knowledge about strategic errors is necessary for adopting reforms that could save lives. This study seeks to identify the sources that affect whether or not IO elites will contribute knowledge to an IO’s institutional memory in crisis management. The study employs a survey experiment in the field on 120 NATO elites who decide on and plan operations. Findings indicate that when the United States introduces knowledge of a strategic error, NATO elites are significantly less likely to share it. This deterrent effect on knowledge-sharing illustrates an unexpected way in which the US influences international crisis management. The study also finds that an IO’s secretariat can somewhat increase elites’ likelihood of contributing to the IO’s institutional memory.     

A political ecology of socio-economic differentiation: debt,inputs and liberalization reforms in southwestern Burkina Faso

This paper builds on work from the agrarian change and political ecology literatures to analyze the process of agrarian change among smallholder cotton farmers in southwestern Burkina Faso. Specifically, we use a rural survey of 72 heads of household in three villages to examine whether and how (1) access to agricultural inputs, (2) debt and (3) liberalization reforms combine to produce rural socio-economic differentiation based on wealth. We find that wealthier farmers use more mineral fertilizer and manure inputs than their poorer counterparts. Wealthier farmers are also better able to remain debt-free as cotton prices drop and input prices rise. Moreover, they are able to take advantage of the neo-liberal restructuring of cotton cooperatives to change polices on debt repayment and input provisioning to their favor. This growing divide has large implications for rural food security, particularly as land becomes scarcer, fallows disappear and the need to intensify production grows. This research addresses two gaps in the agrarian change literature in relating how liberalization reforms and biophysical elements drive rural socio-economic differentiation. This work also shows that merging the concerns of political ecology with the agrarian change literature allows for a deeper examination of rural socio-economic differentiation.     

Why Do Foundations Follow the Law? Evidence from Adoption of the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act

Employing a large panel of over one million firm‐years, I find evidence consistent with widespread compliance with law among U.S. private foundations despite the absence of many formal deterrence mechanisms. The research design exploits rolling state adoption of the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, which lifted some existing limits on firm spending for a fraction of firms within each state. This allows the use of triple‐difference estimates that control for changes in local norms and economic conditions. UPMIFA increases firm spending, on average, implying that firms were complying with the pre‐UPMIFA regime. Interacting the triple‐difference factors with other predictors of compliance reveals no correlation between compliance and enforcement intensity, but some evidence that compliance is correlated with firm culture and reliance on accountants. These findings have potentially important implications for the governance of charitable organizations, and may speak more generally to drivers of compliance among other organizational forms.     

Book Review

Andrea Dworkin. Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant. New York: Basic Books, 2002.     

Anticipating Early Fatality: Friends’, Schoolmates’ and Individual Perceptions of Fatality on Adolescent Risk Behaviors

Past research indicates that anticipating adverse outcomes, such as early death (fatalism), is associated positively with adolescents’ likelihood of engaging in risky behaviors. Health researchers and criminologists have argued that fatalism influences present risk taking in part by informing individuals’ motivation for delaying gratification for the promise of future benefits. While past findings highlight the association between the anticipation of early death and a number of developmental outcomes, no known research has assessed the impact of location in a context characterized by high perceptions of fatality. Using data from Add Health and a sample of 9,584 adolescents (51 % female and 71 % white) nested in 113 schools, our study builds upon prior research by examining the association between friends’, school mates’, and individual perceptions of early fatality and adolescent risk behaviors. We test whether friends’ anticipation of being killed prior to age 21 or location in a school where a high proportion of the student body subscribes to attitudes of high fatality, is associated with risky behaviors. Results indicate that friends’ fatalism is positively associated with engaging in violent delinquency, non-violent delinquency, and drug use after controlling for individual covariates and prior individual risk-taking. Although friends’ delinquency accounts for much of the effect of friends’ fatalism on violence, none of the potential intervening variables fully explain the effect of friends’ fatalism on youth involvement in non-violent delinquency and drug use. Our results underscore the importance of friendship contextual effects in shaping adolescent risk-taking behavior and the very serious consequences perceptions of fatality have for adolescents’ involvement in delinquency and drug use.