Disconnect in the Hollow State: The Pivotal Role of Organizational Capacity in Community-Based Development Organizations

Partnerships between government and community-based development organizations (CBDOs) have proven to be central to long-term neighborhood revitalization in many settings. These successes, coupled with the political popularity of community-driven projects, have stimulated further reliance on this approach. Unfortunately, scant research has been done on the organizational capacity of local community-based development organizations to administer these projects. It may be that many of them do not have the capacity to do the job.
This article examines elements of organizational capacity in CBDOs developing affordable housing in a United States-Mexico border community. Evidence of capacity was limited, raising serious questions about the implementation of public policy in the hollow state. In their haste to contract with not-for-profits to create affordable housing, government officials may not be considering the serious possibility that CBDOs do not have the capacity to deliver services or effectively administer projects over time.     

Revolution's Legacy: Residual Effects on Nicaraguan Participation and Attitudes in Comparative Context

A longstanding scholarly debate asks what lasting changes revolution makes in political attitudes and behaviors. Scholars generally regard revolution as transformative, but research on revolution's behavioral and cultural legacies after transfers of state power has been limited. This study explores revolution's residual impact on individuals' electoral participation, civil society engagement, and social capital by comparing postrevolutionary Nicaraguans to their Central American neighbors. Using survey data on comparable samples of urban Central Americans, the research found higher electoral engagement in Nicaragua than in the other nations in the region that experienced major insurgencies but not revolution. It also found among Nicaraguans greater support for civil disobedience, greater school and union activism, and more frequent leftist political identification. Although revolution did leave residual effects in Nicaragua, more significant influence appears to have decayed rapidly.     

The ‘Good’ Attached Mother: An Analysis of Postmaternal and Postracial Thinking in Birth and Breastfeeding Policy in Neoliberal Britain

ABSTRACT

In the last 20 years, a new parenting philosophy has garnered increasing attention and popularity. Coined by William Sears in the early 1980s, attachment parenting (AP) proposes that secure attachment between parent and child is necessary for optimal development and therefore ‘good’ parenting. Simultaneously, neoliberalism, a socio-political context defined by market logic, has emerged as the dominant global trend. In this article, I examine the correspondence between AP, and the broader ideology of intensive mothering it expresses, and the parenting-related policies advanced by the neoliberal state. Specifically, I focus on how birth and breastfeeding policy in Britain aligns with AP, contextualising the emergence of AP and its appearance in contemporary state policy as the result of two features of neoliberalism: postmaternal and post-racial thinking. I draw attention to the experiences of black mothers and, through this lens, reveal the raced, gendered and classed dimensions of ‘good’ parenting. In my examination of these policies, I argue that postmaternal and postracial thinking have enabled the emergence of AP, an approach that individualises child-rearing and relies upon an uncritical appropriation of the so-called traditional practices of racialised women.     

“Mad Agnes” Ebbsmith: Revolutionary Roles and Reconfigured Relationships in A. W. Pinero's the Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith

In The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith, Arthur Pinero's use of the “fallen woman” plot is an unusual one, with implications for the 1890s “New Women's” agenda that have continuing relevance today. Linking gender issues to national, religious, and class issues, Pinero examines the limitations of advocacy rhetoric and personal exemplification in promoting social change, and he uses the often puzzling action of the play to explore the possibility of viable alternatives.