Investigating the influence of social costs and benefits of environmental policies through social capital theory

The level of effectiveness of an environmental policy depends to a significant degree on the level of acceptance and cooperation of citizens. The relevant literature indicates that social capital may significantly influence environmentally responsible behaviour connected with the implementation of an environmental policy. In this context, the present article aims to further explore this field by introducing the issue of non-economic social costs and benefits imposed from environmental policies. In particular, it is supported, both theoretically and empirically, that social costs and benefits may influence the decision of individuals to cooperate and comply with an environmental policy and thus may be a significant indicator for environmental behaviour. Furthermore, these social costs and benefits may differ among individuals and are influenced by social capital elements. Consequently, through the article the need of exploring social capital prior to environmental policy implementation is underlined along with the need of creating social capital assessment techniques.     

‘Good governance’ and ‘state failure’: genealogies of imperial discourse

Current international policy discourse routinely characterizes the condition of African states in terms of either ‘good governance’, on one hand, or ‘fragility’ and ‘failure’, on the other. This conceptual vocabulary and analytical approach has become entrenched within the public imagination more broadly, and is reproduced in academic analysis, largely without serious questioning or critique. Some scholars, however, have argued that the entire discourse of ‘state failure’ should be rejected as a valid approach to understanding, analysis and explanation of social and political conditions in Africa. This position seeks both to demonstrate the analytical and explanatory emptiness of the conceptual framework of ‘state failure’, and to reject the uncritical adoption of strands of imperial discourse by academic scholars. This article contributes to this position by examining the failed state discourse as a modern form of racialized international thought. It argues that the discourse must be recognized as a contemporary successor to a much longer genealogy of imperial discourse about Africa and other non-European societies.     

Budgetary Control in a Decentralized System: Meeting the Criteria for Fiscal Stability in the European Union

This article provides a set of measures that are recommended to the leadership of the European Union to enhance budgetary balance and control within a highly decentralized system, one that requires the coordination of budgetary policy in more than a dozen nations. These measures are intended to be relevant to European budgetary coordination efforts but also appear to apply to U.S. federal initiatives to reduce the annual budget deficit and total debt. The individual measures recommended include holding increases in expenditures at or below the rate of GDP growth, establishing envelopes for major accounts, placing all entitlement on a pay-as-you-go basis, means testing of entitlements and elimination of automatic entitlement indexing, considering the option of marginal reductions in some entitlement programs, and voting on budgets as single, omnibus packages. The proposal to establish executive line-item budget authority also is evaluated-and rejected.     

Books in review

She has written widely on sociological and cultural aspects of psychoanalysis. Her most recent book, Feminists and Freudians: A Comparative Perspective,has just been published in German and is forthcoming in English.     

Maternal employment and adolescent sexual behavior

This study investigated whether maternal employment would be associated with teenage sexual attitudes and behaviors likely to increase the probability of teenage pregnancy. Female subjects whose mothers were employed outside the home during the high school years (a) had a greater tendency to begin sexual relations before age 19, (b) expressed less concern regarding the risk of unintended pregnancy, and (c) scored lower on an objective test of their practical knowledge about contraception.Received Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Washington. Research interests include personality and environmental influences on adjustment.Received Ph.D. from University of Georgia. Current research interests are in behavioral teratology.Received Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University. Research interests are in loneliness and adjustment.Received Ph.D. from North Carolina State University. Research interests are in population and urban sociology.     

Adolescent egocentrism: Exploration into possible contributions of parent-child relations

A family relations model for the study of adolescent egocentrism was tested in an exploratory study of the relationship between parental socialization styles and adolescents' imaginary audience behavior. A sample of adolescent boys (n=58) and girls (n=57) responded to Heilbrun's Parent-Child Interaction Rating Scale and Schaefer's Parent-Behavior Inventory and completed Elkind and Bowen's Imaginary Audience Scale. As hypothesized, rejection-control was associated with increased imaginary audience behavior, while physical affect was negatively related to self-consciousness. Sex differences were noted, with rejection-control being most important in predicting self-consciousness for boys and physical affect being the best predictor of girls' egocentrism behavior. The data provide an alternative model to a cognitive developmental perspective of adolescent egocentrism development.Research was partially supported through the Western Regional Research Project W-144, Development of Social Competency in Children, with funding in part from the Science and Education Administration/Cooperative Research of USDA, and the Utah State University Agricultural Experiment Station.Received his M.A. in psychology from the University of Nebraska at Omaha and Ph.D. in human development from the Pennsylvania State University. Current research interest is personality and social development of children and adolescents.Completed his M.S. Degree in family and human development at Utah State University. Current research interests include the study of interpersonal perception and attraction and human socialization.