Can process conditionality enhance aid effectiveness?

Can process conditionality enhance poverty reduction in developing countries? We address this question in a political-economic framework with political distortions on the recipient and the donor side. Process conditionality is a useful tool only if the international financial institutions hold all necessary information to assess the political situation in recipient countries and to select the true representatives of the poor into a participatory process. If they do not hold this information or if bureaucratic interests reduce their incentive to acquire this information, process conditionality loses its effectiveness.     

Political culture,xenophobia and the development of the violence of the radical right in the Federal Republic of Germany

Recently an increasing amount of violent racism has been directed at foreigners in Germany. Current theoretical explanations are deficient because they fail to recognize the historical role of the political culture. This paper argues that political elites are responsible for initiating rhetoric and policy that has created an environment where xenophobic and racist violence can flourish. Positive normalization is defined as a process for the neutralization of the violent Nazi past and the reconstruction of a German nationalist identity. Negative normalization is described as responsible for the decriminalization and trivialization of xenophobic and racist violence. It is argued that unless changes within the German political culture are taken into account, criminological perspectives on the current situation will inevitably be limited.     

The Political Economy of the Enhanced HIPC-Initiative

Only three years after its endorsement bythe World Bank and the IMF, the HeavilyIndebted Poor Country (HIPC) – Initiativewas considerably altered and enhanced. Thispolicy shift can be explained as a resultof utility maximization behavior bynational and international politicians,international bureaucrats and NGO. Apolitico-economic model suggests that theoverall rise of HIPC default risk and thesymbolic value of the year 2000 have beenthe two major determinants of changes involume, eligibility, and conditionalityrequirements.     

Setting Precedents Without Making Norms?

Law and Philosophy - Some authors argue that the rule-of-law ideal gives judges a prima facie duty to provide a determinate formulation of the precedent’s general norm in all their...     

The Association Between Parental Rearing Dimensions and Adolescent Psychopathology: A Cross-Cultural Study

Research on parental rearing dimensions faced ethnocentric criticism for mainly focusing on adolescents in Western industrialized countries. Over the past decade, the phenomenon of anxious parenting, so called “helicopter parenting”, gained attention in popular media as well as scholarly publications in addition to support and psychological control. Whether these parenting dimensions, which were associated with different health outcomes in adolescents, were only occurring in the Western world or are visible cross-culturally, has not been sufficiently studied. Therefore, it is unclear whether these links exist also for adolescents from other parts of the world. Additionally, the involvement of fathers in child rearing continues to be neglected in adolescent psychopathology research. The current cross-cultural study tested the association of maternal and paternal rearing dimensions with youth internalizing and externalizing psychopathology in a sample of 2415 adolescents (56% female, 15.33 years, SD?=?0.61) from eight countries (Argentina, France, Germany, Greece, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, and Turkey). Hierarchical regression models showed that internalizing symptomatology was associated with mothers’ support, psychological control, and anxious rearing as well as fathers’ psychological control up and above predictors like country and mother’s level of education. For predicting externalizing symptomatology, mother’s anxious rearing, mother’s psychological control, and father’s support as well as father’s psychological control were significant up and above adolescents’ gender, standard of living, and country. To conclude, across countries, anxious rearing and psychological control experienced from both parents were substantially linked with adolescent mental health.

     

Self-Efficacy,Religiosity, and Crime: Profiles of African American Youth in Urban Housing Communities

Youth reporting independently elevated levels of religiosity and self-efficacy tend to abstain from externalizing behavior. However, little is known about the ways in which religiosity and self-efficacy interrelate to impact youth externalizing. Drawing from a sample of African American youth from public housing communities (N = 236), we use latent profile analysis to identify subtypes of youth based on self-reported religiosity and self-efficacy and, in turn, examine links with crime. Compared to youth in other subgroups, those classified as both highly religious and highly self-efficacious reported less involvement in minor and severe delinquency, but not violence.     

Determinants of the U.S. wheat producer support price: Do presidential elections matter?

The paper's focus is on the determinants of the U.S. wheat producer support price. The results of the time-series analysis suggest that this price is largely determined by the previous price, the expected U.S. share in world exports, and expected program costs. Presidential elections also influence U.S. wheat price policies. All other things being equal, the support price tends to be lower in election years than in other years. This suggests that small interest groups' relative political economic power may be less pronounced in election years if they do not succeed in positioning themselves on the political economic market such that they contain the potentially decisive voter.     

Rhetoric or Reality? ‘New Governance’ in EU Environmental Policy

Abstract:  When scrutinising the literature on EU environmental policy, it becomes apparent that there has been a comprehensive transition in underlying governance ideas during the last two decades. At the core of these changes is the abolition of traditional patterns of interventionist command-and-control regulation in favour of economic instruments and 'context-oriented' governance. In view of these developments, this article has two objectives: first, it looks into which causes and factors initiated these discussions; second, it analyses the effects these reform ideas had on actual patterns of governance. As will be shown, changes in governance ideas are only partially expressed in changes in policy instruments.