Gender-differential patterns of adolescent socialization in three arenas

The study examines gender-differential socialization within and across the three major socialization arenas during adolescence—the home, the school, and the informal youth association. The point of departure for this comparative analysis is Erikson's theory of institutionalized moratorium. Elaborating upon the sociological dimension of that theory, institutionalized moratorium is defined here as an open social arrangement that allows for free experimentation and temporary deviation within lenient—albeit normative—boundaries of social control. Accordingly, we delineate three structural components of socialization arenas—openness, control, and deviation—focusing upon the degree to which the levels of openness and control predict the level of deviation in each arena and for each gender. Data were obtained from self-reports of 220 Israeli adolescents who responded to a closed questionnaire designed to assess perceptions of socialization structure. The findings suggest that the deviation of boys is a stronger and more sensitive function of openness and control than that of girls. This gender difference is largest in the school and smallest in the youth movement. Beyond gender differences, the results indicate a common pattern of socialization underlying the three arenas; more specifically, deviation was found to be related to both openness and control. This pattern is most salient in the home and least salient in the youth movement.This paper was written with the support of the NCJW Research Institute for Innovation in Education, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.She has a Ph.d. in Sociology of Education from the Hebrew University. Her research interests are sociology of education and youth, informal organizations, and gender socialization.     

Asymmetric Two-Stage Group Rent-Seeking: Comparison of Two Contest Structures

Two variations of a two-stage rent-seeking contest areconsidered. In the first stage of the Between-Groupmodel, groups compete through the expenditure of resources bytheir members. Based on group expenditures, one winning groupis probabilistically determined. On the second stage, membersof the winning group compete with one another for an exogenousprize. In the Semi-Finals model a player is chosen fromeach group and then these players compete for the prize.Groups differ in size or in their valuation of the prize.Subgame-perfect equilibrium solutions are constructed forthese two contest structures.     

Book review

In the Name of the People By Adam B. Ulam New York, The Viking Press, 1977, XII, 418 pp. $15.00.     

Before the Bombs There Were the Mobs: American Experiences with Terror 1

Terrorist studies rarely discuss activities before the invention of dynamite, which made modern terror possible. One important, interesting, and forgotten form is the mob terror campaign. Two significant successful American examples are examined and compared, “The Sons of Liberty” which ignited the American Revolution, and the Ku Klux Klan, which “won the peace” the South wanted after it lost the Civil War. The study concludes by briefly comparing modern with mob terror.     

Proportional representation: An empirical evaluation of single-stage,non-ranked voting procedures

Rapoport, Felsenthal and Maoz (1988) have proposed three alternative methods to discern the fair proportion of seats that a party in a representative assembly ought to receive as a function of voters' preference orderings. All three methods assume that the ratio between the number of voters preferring party i over j to the number of voters preferring party j over i can be tested for consistency, and, if sufficiently consistent, can be appropriately scaled to discover the proportion of seats each party ought to receive. Using these methods as standards, we use exit-poll data gathered during the 1985 elections to the general convention of the Israeli General Federation of Labor (Histadrut) to examine the extent to which plurality- and approval-voting procedures provide a fair allocation of seats. The findings indicate that: (a) all three methods yield sufficiently consistent matrices of preference ratios; (b) the plurality- and the approval-voting procedures yielded significantly different proportional representations; (c) the proposed proportion of seats according to the three aggregation methods fall midway between the proportion of seats that the plurality and the approval procedures allocate. We discuss practical implications of these findings. Requests for reprints should be sent to: Professor Amnon Rapoport, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina, Davie Hall 013A, Chapel Hill, NC 27514.     

Efficacy in small electorates under plurality and approval voting

Assuming independent voting and random tie-breaking, we describe a procedure for computing the efficacy of a voting strategy under approval voting (AV) and plurality voting (PV) in single winner elections. When the number of candidates exceeds three, the voter's efficacy — his or her ability to affect the outcome of an election — is greater under AV than PV. The relative advantage of AV over PV increases as the number of voters or number of candidates increases.This study has been supported by grant 84-00329 of the U.S.A.-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), Jerusalem, Israel, in collaboration with Steven Brams and Zeev Maoz.