Inclusive ideologies and passive performances: exploring masculinities and attitudes toward gay peers among boys in an elite youth football academy

Abstract

Drawing on data generated from semi-structured, one-to-one interviews in 2012, this article focuses on the attitudinal disposition toward homosexuality of 12 English academy level football players aged 14–15. Results highlight the presence of progressive attitudes toward homosexuality even though some of the youth feel they lack the agency to contest homophobia when espoused in their schools. Using a blend of two dominating masculinities theories, we use these interviews to highlight that boys in this setting are best understood as a complex imbrication of inclusivity yet socially-passive acceptance. We suggest that boys of this age are now primed for learning agency to contest the social marginalization of others.     

Candidate and Party Strategies in Two-Stage Elections Beginning with a Primary

In the United States and Latin America, candidates for national and state-level office frequently must win primary elections in order to advance to the general election. We model policy and valence issues for office-seeking candidates facing such two-stage elections. We determine a Nash equilibrium for the candidates' optimal strategies, and we find that holding a primary is likely to increase a party's chances of winning the general election, particularly in situations where valence issues that involve the candidates' campaigning skills and that are not known prior to the campaign are more salient than policy issues. Furthermore, we find that primary elections are especially likely to benefit parties that expect to be underdogs in the general election. Our conclusions are directly relevant to U.S. politics and by extension to the strategic decisions that many Latin American parties currently confront, about whether it is strategically desirable to hold primaries.     

Government supported industry-university research centers: Issues for successful technology transfer

In order to increase the use of federally supported research and development to increase U.S. industrial competitiveness, new partnerships are being developed among the research producers, users, and funders. This paper summarizes the evolution of federal technology transfer models with particular attention to university-industry cooperative research centers sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The advantages and potential problems associated with such centers are presented and the implications for technology and innovation are discussed.     

Industrial R&D Laboratories: Windows on Black Boxes?

This paper provides an overview of the survey-based literature on industrial Research and Development (R&D) laboratories, beginning with the work of Edwin Mansfield. Topics covered include R&D projects, new products, and new processes; the appropriability of intellectual property; the limits of the firm in R&D; and spillovers of knowledge from other firms and universities into the laboratories. I discuss the value of collecting information from industrial R&D managers, who participate in a wide range of R&D decisions and are the natural best source of information on these decisions. I also emphasize gaps in our knowledge concerning R&D from past studies, such as the private and social returns to R&D, the nature of firms' R&D portfolios, and other topics. The paper closes with a discussion of the benefits from building a national database on R&D laboratories that could be shared among researchers and that could take this area of research to a new and higher level of achievement.     

The effect of evidentiary factors on charge reduction

The practice by prosecutors of basing guilty plea concessions on evidentiary considerations is highly controversial. Observational field studies suggest that this is a common practice and that there is a strong inverse relationship between the strength of the prosecution's case and concessions that a defendant is offered. However, there has yet to be an explicit test of this hypothesis. This study examines the relationship of evidentiary factors to charge reduction using data from the Prosecutor's Management Information System (PROMIS) for the District of Columbia. The analysis indicates that the expected relationship does exist but is not as strong as some suggest and varies by the type of offense. It also suggests that this practice is part of a routine adjudicatory procedure, particularly for property crimes, and that there is a need to scrutinize more closely the fact-finding function of the guilty plea.