Parental Postconflict Explanations: Implications for Children's Adjustment Outcomes

The Post Conflict Explanations (PCE) scale is a compilation of behaviors commonly seen in parent‐child postconflict communications. Following exploratory factor analysis, the PCE emerged as a four‐dimension scale with adequate subscale internal consistency and intercorrelations: Dismissive (α = 0.86), Emotion Dysregulation (α = 0.85), Constructive (α = 0.97), and Blaming (α = 0.77). The PCE and its subscales were further validated through moderate‐to‐strong associations with established scales of family conflict, emotional security, and adjustment outcomes. The identification of these postconflict explanations represents a step forward in distinguishing constructive and destructive conflict behaviors.     

The Political Economy: Political Attitudes and Economic Behavior

It has long been recognized that voters bring their political behaviors in line with economic assessments. Recent work, however, suggests that citizens also engage in economic behaviors that align with their confidence—or lack thereof—in the political system. This alignment can happen consciously or, as we suggest, unconsciously, in the same way that positivity carries over to other behaviors on a micro-level. Using monthly time series data from 1978 to 2008, we contribute further evidence of this relationship by demonstrating that political confidence affects consumer behavior at the aggregate level over time. Our analyses employ measures more closely tied to the theoretical concepts of interest while simultaneously accounting for the complex relationships between subjective and objective economic indicators, economic behavior, political attitudes, and the media. Our results suggest that approval of the president not only increases the electorate’s willingness to spend money, but also affects the volatility of this spending. These findings suggest that the economy is influenced by politics beyond elections, and gives the “Chief Economist” another avenue by which they can affect the behavior of the electorate.     

Strategies of Resistance: Diversification and Diffusion

Why do organizations choose to use nonviolence? Why do they choose specific nonviolent tactics? Existing quantitative work centers on mass nonviolent campaign, but much of the nonviolence employed in contentious politics is smaller‐scale nonviolent direct action. In this article, we explore the determinants of nonviolence with new data at the organization level in self‐determination disputes from 1960 to 2005. We present a novel argument about the interdependence of tactical choices among nonviolent options in self‐determination movements. Given limitations on their capabilities, competition among organizations in a shared movement, and different resource requirements for nonviolent strategies, we show that organizations have incentives to diversify tactics rather than just copy other organizations. The empirical analysis reveals a rich picture of varied organizational resistance choices, and a complex web of interdependence among tactics.     

The green revolution in South India and North Vietnam

Abstract

In late 1976 I spent ten months in Thanjavur District of southeast India, re-studying two villages after an absence of twenty-five years. I had gone back to find out what had happened to the village people, especially with respect to their standard of living, their relations of production and their integration into the world economy. I was particularly interested in the effects of land reforms passed between 1952 and 1974, and of the introduction of “green revolution” technology since 1965.