Mother-Adolescent Language Proficiency and Adolescent Academic and Emotional Adjustment Among Chinese American Families

This study examined the role of adolescents’ and mothers’ self-reports of English and heritage language proficiency in youth’s academic and emotional adjustment among 444 Chinese American families. Adolescents who were proficient in English tended to exhibit higher reading achievement scores, math achievement scores, and overall GPA. Mothers who were English proficient tended to have children with higher academic achievement and fewer depressive symptoms. Results also indicated that adolescents’ heritage language maintenance was associated with positive adjustment, particularly amongst foreign-born youth and for youth whose parents were highly proficient in the heritage language. Mother-adolescent match in heritage language proficiency was related to higher math achievement scores and overall GPA. Additionally, higher heritage language proficiency was associated with fewer depressive symptoms for foreign-born but not U.S.-born youth. Overall, the findings suggest that proficiency in both the English and heritage language may confer advantages to Chinese American youth.

Lean models,complex realities: elite interactions in post-conflict democratisation at the local level

Abstract

This article argues that accounting for the complexity of interaction in post-conflict democracy promotion is important to understand how interactions influence post-conflict democratisation. Using the case of democracy promotion in Kosovo, the article uncovers two aspects in interaction processes where accounting for complexity is particularly useful: domestic goals and actor constellations. Taking into account the variety of domestic goals helps to understand how democratic reforms are subverted by domestic elites for the sake of their own domestic agenda. Disentangling the complexity of actor constellations demonstrates that interaction dynamics are shaped by the leverage and the number of international actors involved in the negotiation. The article draws on fine-grained local-level data from Kosovo to illustrate the argument.     

Civil Society Democratising Global Governance? Potentials and Limitations of “Counter-Democracy”

A major aspect of global interdependencies during the last two decades has been the intensified interactions between international organizations (IOs) and civil society organizations (CSOs). In this paper, we propose a new way of analysing the potential of CSO inclusion to democratise global governance. The aim is to explore the possibility for CSOs to function as a form of counter-democratic force. This approach contrasts with earlier research that has tended to focus on participation, voice or representation when evaluating IO-CSO interaction from a democratisation perspective. Using Pierre Rosanvallon's term, we argue that counter-democratic actors organise distrust against power-holders, pressuring them to strengthen accountability. Counter-democracy is manifested in the institutions, agents and functions that are committed to overseeing ruling institutions, expressing mistrust and channelling dissent. Importantly, counter-democracy is not contrary to democracy, but a vital and perennial aspect of it. Our argument is that Rosanvallon's concept of counter-democracy can help us understand how the monitoring activities of CSOs may restrain the power of IOs and make them more responsible which in turn can be related to democratic qualities of global governance. However, we maintain that not all activities of transnational CSOs have counter-democratic qualities. To examine if and how a specific CSO might serve as a democratising force in global governance, we suggest that the actors and their activities should be scrutinised according to an analytical framework centred on the concepts of power-resources, ideational foundations and activities. Empirically, we investigate three carefully selected cases of CSOs that perform monitoring activities in a global governance context: the Corporate Europe Observatory, the NGO forum on the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and NGO Monitor.     

Coproducing the Endangered Polar Bear: Science,Climate Change,and Legal Mobilization

Applying insights from science and technology studies about the “coproduction” of science and sociopolitical order to research on legal mobilization yields important theoretical insights. Using the polar bear petition campaign by the Center for Biological Diversity as an illustrative case, this article shows how this protracted legal campaign around protection of the polar bear and its habitat opened up new legal opportunities for those advocating for the regulation of carbon emissions, mandated state-sponsored generation of climate science, legally constructed the polar bear as “endangered,” and helped to shape the priorities of the nongovernmental organization itself.     

Nudging Early Reduces Administrative Burden: Three Field Experiments to Improve Code Enforcement

In the past decade, public sector organizations around the world have worked to simplify administrative processes as a way to improve user experience and compliance. Academic evidence on administrative burden supports this approach and there is a strong body of research showing that learning costs, compliance costs, and psychological costs help to explain why residents do not always take up programs for which they are eligible. This article considers the role of these types of costs in a different set of resident-state interactions: compliance with regulations. We present the results of three large field experiments aimed at improving resident compliance with municipal housing codes using targeted behavioral interventions. We find that contacting property owners earlier, redesigning first notices, and proactively communicating with previous violators, can significantly improve compliance by 14.7 percent, 3.3 percent, and 9.2 percent, respectively, with costs savings ranging from 6 to 15 percent of a city's annual enforcement budget. Our results counterintuitively suggest that sometimes adding steps to an administrative process can reduce the costs associated with the resident-state interaction.     

Assessing the Impact of Harassment by Peers: Incident Characteristics and Outcomes in a National Sample of Youth

Although there are widely held assumptions about the characteristics of peer bullying that are of greatest concern, very few studies have empirically assessed which characteristics most affect its impact. The current research addresses this gap by using a nationally representative U.S. sample of youth ages 10–20 to examine the relative effects of a variety of potentially aggravating incident characteristics on emotional, physical health, and school-related outcomes. Findings show support for power imbalance and duration (a stronger predictor than repetition) as incident characteristics that exacerbate the negative impact of peer harassment. However, several other incident characteristics have substantial effects with or without the presence of these qualities. Injury, sexual content, involvement of multiple perpetrators, and hate/bias components of peer harassment incidents each increased at least one negative outcome. Findings point to several features of peer harassment that can provide a basis for prioritizing victimization experiences in greatest need of intervention efforts.     

Adolescent Bystander Behavior in the School and Online Environments and the Implications for Interventions Targeting Cyberbullying

The aim of this study was to add to the emerging knowledge about the role of bystanders in cyberbullying. To differentiate online versus offline bystander behaviors, 292 Australian children (mean age = 15.2; female = 54.4%) reviewed hypothetical scenarios experimentally manipulated by bystander sex, relationship to target and perpetrator, and severity of bullying incident. In both environments, bystander helping behaviors were more likely when the target was a close friend, perceived harm to the target was high, and when bystanders were female. Bystanders also reported being less likely to approach teachers or publicly defend targets in online versus offline environments. This suggests programs designed to encourage positive bystander behaviors online can be similar to face-to-face approaches, but they need to recognize some aspects unique to the online environment.     

Book review

Richard Wolin. The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism, Poststructuralism. Columbia University Press, 1992. pp. 251.

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church 1880–1920. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. xii + 306 pp. $34.95.)

Rickie Solinger. Wake Up Little Susie: Single pregnancy and race before Roe v. Wade. New York & London: Routledge, 1992

Sonia Kruks. Situation and Human Existence: Freedom, Subjectivity and Society. London: Unwin Hyman, 1990.