Maternal Child-Rearing Attitudes and Role Satisfaction and Children's Temperament as Antecedents of Adolescent Depressive Tendencies: Follow-up Study of 6- to 15-Year-Olds

Development of depressive tendencies was assessed over a 9-year period in a random sample of 389 Finnish children. Predictors of maternal role satisfaction and hostile child-rearing attitudes, assessed when the children were ages 6 and 9 years, respectively, and a temperament predictor of perceived child difficultness, assessed when the children were age 6 years, were measured using questionnaires designed for this study. Depressive tendencies were assessed by a self-report at age 15 (modification of Beck's Depression Inventory). Using structural equation modeling, we tested a hypothesized model comprising direct as well as mediated effects between the childhood predictor variables and adolescent depressive tendencies. The results indicated support for a similar mediational model in girls and boys. Low maternal role satisfaction and maternal perceptions of child difficultness, measured when children were age 6 years, predicted hostile maternal child-rearing attitudes measured when children were age 9 years, which in turn had a significant direct effect on depressive tendencies among these children during adolescence. The only other direct effect was found solely in girls: Low maternal role satisfaction predicted adolescent depressive tendencies. These results underline the close interplay of child temperament and mothering factors in the development of depressive tendencies in girls and boys.     

The Communist Defeat in the 1948 Finnish Election: Notes on the Impact of Organization

The main purpose of this article is to find out those factors which caused the 1948 election defeat of the Communists in Finland. The central explanatory factors will be found in political and other organizations. Socio-economic factors did not have any significant impact. The author, however, emphasizes the fact that the rapid increase of industrial population in certain regions in the postwar years weakened social control and consequently made easier the operation of the "organization of party agents" which was created by the Social Democrats. This "organization" had a crucial impact on the election defeat of the Communists. The rumours of revolution also had their own significance, for the rumours could be utilized skillfully in the election campaign against Communists.     

Organisations as Epistemic Capital: the Case of Independent Children’s Rights Institutions

Why do national organisations proliferate in practically all areas of policymaking and organisational life, and why are they involved in supranational networks and organisations? The article approaches this mystery by exploring how organisations are built and used as authorities in domestic policymaking. The empirical focus is on the establishment of the institution of children’s ombudsman and its uses in influencing Finnish child policy. The theory developed in the article suggests that organisations are accumulations of authority, here termed epistemic capital, which is the primary reason that they are established and sustained. Once these are institutionalised, various actors can use the authority of organisations to legitimate their policy objectives. The case of independent children’s rights institutions shows how this mechanism operates in child policy. The Finnish office of the ombudsman for children has worked actively to become an established ontological and moral authority in child policy, and it has also attempted to utilise the mandate and authority of the United Nations and the Convention on the Rights of the Child to pressure the state into more child-friendly policy decisions.     

Some Aspects of the Division of the Finnish Working Class Movement after the Civil War: A Research Note

The article is a summary of a research programme utilising aggregate data at the communal level to explore regional variations in Social Democratic and Communist electoral strength. These variations have persisted since the party split of 1920. The most important factors explaining electoral strength seem to be geopolitical, geoeconomic, or organisational in nature. Political developments preceding the Civil War do not seem to be very significant.     

A Manifesto for Social Europe

The European Union is still far from having social legitimacy. The issue is indicative of a huge uncertainty about Social Europe. What is it? What are the principles of social justice behind it? In our view, a new social constitution of the European Union is needed. Political democratisation must be accompanied by the foundation of a social Europe. We argue that were the IGC to combine the Charter of The Fundamental Social Rights of Workers with the Maastricht Protocol on Social Policy, inserting both into the TEU, it would lay the legal foundations for a dynamic European social constitution; a Social Europe dedicated to the combating of social exclusion and the maintenance of solidarity.     

America's Old/New Meets Russia's True/False: The Case of Europe's North

Recent talk about Europe's diminishing importance to America's policymaking is here regarded as unfounded. Europe remains an indispensable signifier tightly embedded in the soul of the US as well as that of Russia. With identity being a relational process and profoundly social in character, both America and Russia employ Europe as the main mirror in which they portray themselves. This article unpacks their respective delineations of Europe: the American old/new as outlined by Donald Rumsfeld, and the Russian true/false, focusing on Europe's North as a region where the two perspectives might potentially clash.