Remitting Behaviour of Nepalese Rural-to-Urban Migrants: Implications for Theory and Policy

This article uses data for Nepal to test contemporary hypotheses about the remitting behaviour and associated motives of rural-to-urban migrants and to consider the likely impact of such remittances on rural development. Possibilities for inheritance, degree of family attachment, likelihood of eventual return to place of origin and family investment in the education of the migrants are found to be significant influences on levels of remittances by Nepalese migrants. However, in Nepal, remittances do not seem to result in long-term capital investment in rural areas and so may not promote long-term development of these areas.     

SANE/SART Services for Sexual Assault Victims: Policy Implications

A study of 530 sexual assault cases from three jurisdictions tested the efficacy of sexual assault nurse examiner/sexual assault response team (SANE/SART) programs as a tool in the criminal justice system. Policy implications from the findings recommend a SANE training curriculum for the rape examination and biological evidence collection; SANE/SART programs for a multidisciplinary effort in the investigation and prosecution of cases, alternative disposition for cases whereby the victim and offender know each other, and a risk management plan for combating recidivism.     

Identity in Transformation: Russian-speakers in Post-Soviet Ukraine

Abstract

This essay examines the transformation of identity of Russian-speakers in independent Ukraine. Based on survey, focus groups and public discourse data, it explores the hierarchy of identities of those people who use predominantly Russian in their everyday lives and the meaning they attach to their perceived belonging to the Ukrainian nation. Although many scholars argued after the breakup of the USSR that Ukraine’s Russian-speakers would form into a community distinguished by its preferred language, the present analysis shows that they have instead been transformed from Soviet people into Ukrainians—and that without drastic changes in their language practice.     

上海青少年事务社工在“合适成年人参与”工作中的实践与思考

开展“合适成年人参与”工作,既是未成年人健康成长的迫切需要,也是维护社会稳定的重要内容。近年来,上海共青团在这方面作了一些初步的探索。依托上海比较成熟的青少年事务社工专业队伍,让青少年事务社工承担“合适成年人’这个角色,以专业知识为基础,以社会工作方法为指导,本着“平等、尊重、接纳”的态度和“以人为本”的服务理念介入涉罪青少年的教育管理服务,保护未成年人在司法阶段的权益,协助其在司法程序后的发展,使司法公正体现人性化的一面。     

社区社会资本与乡村“问题少年”

社会解组与社公控制理论虽能有效解释乡村青少年越轨现象，却未能揭示乡村“问题少年”现象发生机制的关键环节。实证研究发现，社会转型过程中社区社会资本匮乏是导致乡村少年越轨问题日益突出的重要原因。因此，防范、矫治乡村青少年越轨的思路之一是重构乡村社区社会资本。     

Worlds Apart: Social Policy Regimes in Latin America

The region of Latin America exhibits significant diversity with regard to the size and scope of social protection programs. In this article, I propose a new way of measuring a country’s “social policy regime,” moving past expenditure-based conceptions of welfare provision to incorporate the coverage of programs. Employing this new measure, I use cluster analysis to demonstrate that Latin American social policy regimes cluster into four distinct categories. I then employ the comparative historical method to test a theory of why countries fall into each of these four categories. The analysis provides evidence that a country’s record of industrialization, the nature of political incorporation, and levels of ethnic and racial diversity are key determinants of the size and scope of Latin America’s social policy regimes.     

Social Capital and Access to Credit: Evidence from Uganda

We use a nationally representative survey in Uganda to study the links between social capital and financial access. Our results indicate a positive association between individual social capital and access to institutional credit, but no significant relationship between generalised trust and credit access. The effect of individual social capital is more pronounced for poorer people, in rural areas, and in areas where generalised trust is low. Individual social capital seems to promote access especially to semiformal and informal financial institutions.     

Geostrategic Interest and Democracy Promotion: Evidence from Post-Soviet Space

To become successful, the American policy of promoting democracy abroad needs to be scaled down and decoupled from geopolitics. In the post-Soviet world, the democracy–geopolitics doublespeak breeds cynicism and achieves mixed results at best. Particularly discouraging are the outcomes of democracy promotion in the so-called cleft countries, straddled by a cultural divide. In Ukraine, American foreign policy achieved some success at the price of intensifying inter-regional antagonisms, which subsequently compromised and offset the progress that had been achieved in democratic forms of governance. In Belarus, democracy promotion failed altogether because inter-regional antagonisms in that country are too modest and are therefore difficult to leverage.     

Rationality and Rhetoric: The Contribution To Social Care Policy

Between 1982 and 1992 Roy Griffiths, then Managing Director of the Sainsbury supermarket chain, wrote two reports which led to significant changes in the organization and management of health and social services in the UK. This article provides a detailed account of the policy process which led to the latter of these reports, which dealt with community care, in order to assesses Griffiths' personal contribution to policy making.     

Systems of Partial Control: Ethnic Dynamics in Post-Soviet Estonia and Latvia

This article offers a theory to capture ethnic dynamics in post-Soviet Estonia and Latvia. It also explores a research question of great interest to political scientists, historians, sociologists, and economists: what accounts for stability in deeply divided societies? Drawing on Ian Lustick’s formulation of control, the author suggests that stability in deeply divided societies is a result of conscious efforts made by elites to construct what she calls “systems of partial control.” In such systems, the majority ethnic group controls the political sector, but shares control of the economic sector with minority ethnic groups. Economic prosperity derived from dispersed economic control accounts for stability in Estonia and Latvia. The article identifies two conditions that must be satisfied for elites to tolerate partial control. First, elites must reach a threshold of political hegemony at which point they dominate the political sector and second, the respective state must have a flourishing private sector. The article concludes with an assessment of whether or not systems of partial control are likely to be stable, and a reflection on implications of these systems beyond the post-Soviet region.