Offline and Online Civic Engagement Among Adolescents and Young Adults from Three Ethnic Groups

Levels of civic engagement are assumed to vary according to numerous social and psychological characteristics, but not much is known about online civic engagement. This study aimed to investigate differences and similarities in young people’s offline and online civic engagement and to clarify, based on Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior (TPB), associations between motivation for civic engagement, peer and parental norms, collective efficacy, and civic engagement. The sample consisted of 755 youth (native German, ethnic German Diaspora, and Turkish migrants) from two age groups (16–18 and 19–26; mean age 20.5 years; 52 % female). Results showed that ethnic group membership and age moderated the frequency of engagement behavior, with Turkish migrants taking part more than native Germans, who were followed by ethnic German Diaspora migrants. Analyses based on TPB showed good fit for a model relating intention for offline and online civic engagement to motivation for civic engagement, peer and parental norms, and collective efficacy. Ethnic group moderated the findings for offline civic engagement and questioned the universality of some model parameters (e.g., peer and parental norms). This study showed the utility of the TPB framework for studying civic engagement but also reveals that the predictive utility of peer and parental norms seems to vary depending on the group and the behavior under study. This study highlights the importance of including minority samples in the study of civic engagement in order to identify between-group similarities and differences.     

Multilevel policy from the municipal perspective: A pan‐Canadian survey

Building on in‐depth case studies and extensive theory‐building by Canadian multilevel governance scholars, this article identifies and describes multilevel policy involvement by federal, provincial, municipal, private, and NGO actors in three policy phases and eighteen policy domains that specifically involve local governments in Canada. Drawing from an original pan‐Canadian survey of municipal mayors and councillors, we show that municipal politicians see multilevel policy involvement as remarkably prevalent across many policy domains. Using an original measure of multilevel policy involvement, we identify the policy domains in which policy involvement is most concentrated or fragmented and then describe the correlates of this measure. Multilevel policy involvement, we argue, is more clearly associated with policy phase and policy domain than with municipal population or region. We conclude with a discussion of implications for future research.     

Performing Ghana: the politics of being a black woman on the stage, 1966–1979

This article examines the politics of belonging for women in Ghana’s entertainment scene. As a result of instability while a series of different military and civilian leaders controlled the country between 1966 and 1979, Ghanaian women were scrutinized in local newspapers for actions that were deemed inappropriate, such as provocative dancing. Yet, these same Ghanaian journalists contradicted their own language and respectability ideals by celebrating the sexualized images and performances of Caribbean and African American women visiting Ghana during this period. By distinguishing between the actions of Ghanaian women and women of African descent, their language demonstrates that journalists prioritized national identity politics over the claims of respectability expected of all women in their country. Through the use of what I describe as ‘Ghanaianness’, a term indicating that ‘authenticity politics’ were at stake, I argue that journalists purposefully excluded diasporic women from Ghanaian belonging.     

‘This fair lady,in her laces’: Margaret Howie Strang Hall,the first woman in Scotland to try to become a lawyer

ABSTRACT

Margaret Howie Strang Hall was the first woman in Scotland, and the youngest woman in the UK, to try to become a lawyer through the same formal process open to her male contemporaries. This examination of Hall’s attempt aims to set it in context, using contemporary court documents and newspaper reports, while expanding on what is known of her life. Hall’s story is an important one in the struggle for equal professional opportunities and her experience in the Scottish legal system provides a counterpoint to the better-known English examples.     

“Illegalizing” Families: State,Status, and Deportability NPS Christian Bay Best Paper Award Winner,APSA 2018, Boston

There is a paradox within United States immigration policy. Immigration policy separates families while also promising family unity. We address this paradox by arguing that state actors use “family” as a state-granted status. The state perceives some households as families and grants them benefits, while forcing other households to live as legal strangers. Individuals may form familial relationships, but the privileges and status of family are controlled by state actors and institutions. When state actors separate low-wage immigrant worker families, the state's family-status-granting power keeps these workers and their families in a state of “deportability”-a legally ambiguous limbo-satiating business interests and securing a captive low-wage workforce. Lacking legal legitimacy, but financially and socially tied to their families and communities in the U.S., these immigrants have few options but to accept off-the-radar work and to raise their children while living as “outlaws.”     

Vicarious Annihilation: The Effect of Mortality Salience on Perceptions of Hate Crimes

Previous research has found that reminding participants of their mortality creates a need for individuals to maintain and defend subjective cultural worldviews. As a result, mortality salient participants typically strive to uphold legal sanctions and also react negatively to individuals who espouse alternative worldview beliefs, exhibiting behaviors toward those targets ranging from verbal derogation to physical aggression. This paper extends this line of research by examining perceptions of hate crimes. Hate crimes represent a unique class of crime where both the perpetrator and victim may be viewed as worldview violators. Study 1 revealed that mortality salient participants were more supportive of hate crime legislation than were control participants when hate crimes were described in abstract terms and no specific victim was mentioned. In Study 2, a specific victim who posed a potential worldview threat was identified. In this case, mortality salient participants were less punitive toward offenders who attacked these specific worldview-threatening victims.     

Safeguarding Children's Welfare in Non‐Contentious Divorce: Towards a New Conception of the Legal Process?

This article considers the working of the current procedure intended to ensure the welfare of children when their parents divorce but are not seeking any orders relating to them. It shows that the process is ineffective in safeguarding children's welfare and is not geared to ensuring that their wishes and feelings are taken into account. It argues that the focus of policy should shift away from assuming that the legal system can handle the problems of divorce, towards using the legal process as a point of contact through which families can be offered the full range of services they may need during relationship breakdown.     

Local governance under the Conservatives: super-austerity,devolution and the ‘smarter state’

Through their ambitious devolution programme, the Conservatives show a new assertiveness in relation to restructuring the local state, in contrast to the laissez-faire approach of the previous Coalition government. Although the Coalition piloted devolution, its signature policies of ‘localism’ and the ‘Big Society’ focused on non-state actors, providing rights and opportunities for communities to challenge local government and establish their own services. The Conservatives are promoting devolution as a strategy to stimulate economic growth based on greater sub-regional autonomy and increased competitiveness across and between English localities. ‘Combined authorities’ have the opportunity to champion local identities and acquire new economic development powers from Whitehall. But devolution could be a strategy to decentralise austerity, shifting responsibility to the local level for deeper cuts (56% by 2020) and inevitable service reductions. Local government confronts ‘super-austerity’, where new cuts come on top of previous ones, compounding original impacts and creating dangerous (and unevenly spread) multiplier effects. The Conservatives’ ‘smarter state’ policies, aimed at delivering ‘more for less’, amount to little more than a recycling of new public management diktats. The emerging patchwork of ‘devolution deals’ challenges the redistributive assumptions of the grant regime and could leave disadvantaged areas at particular risk of failure. ‘Metro mayors’ are intended to provide visible and accountable leadership; but roles for locally elected councillors, and prospects for community and citizen engagement, remain unclear. The public has yet to be adequately engaged in what is in danger of becoming a technocratic transfer of power.