The role of limited‐equity cooperatives in providing affordable housing

Abstract

This article develops an economic analysis of the role of limited‐equity cooperatives (LECs) in providing affordable housing. Using a model of the user costs of housing that focuses on housing externalities, it examines methods for overcoming externalities in multiunit rental dwellings.

Investment in management can reduce these externalities and thereby improve the quality of the housing environment, but the added cost excludes low‐income households from housing with a high level of management. LECs can reduce housing externalities without imposing the dollar costs of management on residents. They do this principally by attempting to attract a favorable resident population and by substituting self‐management for traditional hierarchical management. Given these findings, the article makes recommendations regarding the structure of a federally sponsored LEC program and draws implications for affordable housing policies in general. Finally, it calls for further empirical research into the desirable (and undesirable) features of self‐managed affordable housing.     

Orthodoxy and nation-building: Nichifor Crainic and religious nationalism in 1920s Romania

This article uses the early career of Nichifor Crainic (1889–1972) to show why Orthodox Christianity became a central element of Romanian ultra-nationalism during the 1920s. Most Romanian nationalists were atheists prior to the First World War, but state-sponsored nation-building efforts catalyzed by territorial expansion and the incorporation of ethnic and religious minorities allowed individuals such as Crainic to introduce religious nationalism into the public sphere. Examining Crainic's work during the 1920s shows how his nationalism was shaped by mainstream political and ideological currents, including state institutions such as the Royal Foundations of Prince Carol and the Ministry of Cults and of Art. Despite championing “tradition,” Crainic was committed to changing Romanian society so long as that change followed autochthonous Romanian models. State sponsorship allowed Crainic to promote religious nationalism through his periodical Gândirea. Crainic's literary achievements earned him a chair in theology, from which he pioneered new ways of thinking about mysticism as an expression of Romanian culture and as crucial to understanding the Romanian nation.     

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Not the only game in towns: explaining changes in municipal councils in post-revolutionary Tunisia

This study sheds light on the relationship between local and national elites during political transitions. Examining local councils in post-revolutionary Tunisia (2011–2013), it examines why and when the composition of councils changed in the absence of local elections. The study yields two important lessons. First, changes in councils resulted from a power struggle between national and local elites. Councils were more likely to remain in place when local parties and unions helped council members resist pressures from above. The interplay of local and national actors, and not the council’s competencies, explains when changes took place. Second, all councils became politicized in the process. Far from being caretaker councils impartially addressing local needs, the councils were institutions playing important roles in the struggles between local and national political elites. Councils were arenas in which political power, and notions of legitimate representation, were contested in the absence of elections. The argument is supported by quantitative analyses of original data and four comparative case studies based on qualitative fieldwork. The findings highlight the importance of local councils in transition processes and provide a basis for further work exploring local-national engagement in democratization.     

Recent developments

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The Jews of early modern Marburg, 1640s—1800

This article examines Jewish household and family organization in a middle-sized German city, the Upper Hessian regional center of Marburg, the population of which ranged from 2500 to 6000 from the Thirty Years War to the end of the 18th century. Some general hypotheses about population development, household structure, and family life conveniently summarized by Toch [Toch, M. (1995). Aspects of stratification in early modern German Jewry: Population history and village Jews. In R. P. Hsia & H. Lehmann (Eds.). In and out of the ghetto: Jewish-Gentile relations in late medieval and early modern Germany (pp. 77-89). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] serve as an organizational frame for the case study. In Toch's view, Jews' comparative wealth, as well as governmental restrictions on their settlement and marriage in central Europe, led to their having larger and more complex households than those of the Christian majority. While household enumerations over time confirm several of Toch's observations, especially the larger size of Jewish families, neither Hessian settlement policy nor local Marburg opposition prevented the Jewish minority of about 1% from keeping pace with general population growth. Moreover, Jews did not respond to their regulated living conditions and status as cultural outsiders with a family organization exhibiting remarkably more internal complexity than did Christian households.     

Ill-Treatment of Pain in the DSM-5

The just-published psychiatric diagnostic manual, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5), American Psychiatric Association (2013), has been lauded by its organizers (e.g., Regier, Kuhl, and Kupfer in World Psychiatry 12, pp. 92–98, 2013), but has been criticized on multiple grounds, as well. Several of its major diagnostic categories concern the area of psychological injury and law (e.g., tort cases involving posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), chronic pain, and traumatic brain injury (TBI)). The one for chronic pain seems the one most greatly changed. The approach to chronic pain in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition, text revision (American Psychiatric Association 2000) and the DSM-5 are compared, leading to an alternative diagnostic criteria list partly based on the changes in the DSM-5. The DSM-5 should be used with caution in forensic assessments. This applies especially to the psychological injury patient, including the pain one, given the high stakes involved and the need for accuracy in assessment based on a reliable and valid diagnostic system. Future iterations of the manual should be improved in both these regards.     

Core Poverty,Vagueness and Adaptation: A New Methodology and Some Results for South Africa

Amartya Sen has argued that poverty is a vague concept. This paper develops a methodology for applying a framework which uses a ‘supervaluationist’ account of vagueness in the context of poverty. Within this framework people or households are termed ‘core poor’ if there is no ambiguity about whether or not they are poor. The framework is applied using data from a survey on the ‘Essentials of Life’ conducted in three locations in South Africa in 2001. The methodology relates the data to the framework using an insight of Max Black's. While the application of the methodology is, in its very nature, somewhat arbitrary, we illustrate how it can lead to an estimate of core poverty which differs from standard measures of the ‘ultra-poor’ and ‘most deprived’. Finally, the possibility that respondents may have adapted to their living conditions is investigated. A first look at the data does not provide conclusive evidence of such adaptation.     

Giving Peace a Chance: Croatia's Branitelji and the Imperative of Reintegration

This article focuses on ex-combatants (branitelji) in the town of Vukovar. It argues that while veterans currently present an obstacle to inter-ethnic reconciliation, this need not be the case; they can potentially play an important role as peace builders. As a first step, however, they need to be reintegrated into society, and to a large extent this has not yet happened. The purpose of this article is thus to reflect on possible ways of advancing the reintegration process, focusing on the core themes of identity and trauma.