Invited Commentary: Positive Youth Development and Human Complexity

The process of positive development for adolescents includes struggling to address a wide variety of complex, often unstated bio-psycho-social-cultural challenges. These include formulating workable values, learning self-regulation, preparation for adult work roles—and innumerable other un-tidy puzzles. Variable-based research can only scratch the surface of how youth go about these processes; nonetheless, systematic longitudinal research like this can provide valuable information about developmental pathways and directions of change. Highlights from these papers include the finding that older youth report more goals aimed at meaningful connection with others and contributing to society; yet also that moral character did not differ by age. The papers suggest that relationships adults, hope, school engagement, participation in out-of-school programs, and intentional self-regulation can serve as mediators of positive development. Yet, a striking finding was that comparatively few youth in the study manifest a pattern of change marked by the coupling of increases in positive youth development and decreases in risk/problem behavior. We believe there is much beneath the surface to be uncovered.     

The impact of unification on German industrial relations

This paper analyses the stability of the German collective bargaining system by utilising a framework based on the concept of bargaining inclusiveness and exclusiveness. Examining collective bargaining developments in the metalworking industry, the adaptability of the west German bargaining system in the 1970s and 1980s is contrasted with the problems experienced in the new Lander, where institutional transfer and economic collapse, by substantially weakening IG Metall at establishment level and presenting employers with the opportunity to exit from the multi‐employer bargaining system, limited the prospects for organised decentralisation. The result has been the undermining of the inclusive German bargaining system in the east, as measured by collective bargaining coverage, which by creating labour market dualism, also threatens the stability of collective bargaining across Germany.     

German expellee organisations in the enlarged EU

This article examines German expellees (Vertriebene) as an interest group in domestic and enlarged European Union contexts. While their background and motivations may be unique, they have similarities to other non-party actors aiming to influence political and/or legal processes. German governments have made rhetorical and financial expressions of support but privileged foreign policy considerations over core expellee demands and sought to contain them as an internal issue. EU enlargement and accession by CEE states to its legal bases has been interpreted as opening new possibilities. A ‘Europeanising’ of ‘justice’ may have unintended implications for relations among European states and peoples.     

Revolution and the Rand Corporation

Abstract

H.A. Averch, F.H. Denton, and J.E. Koeler, A Crisis of Ambiguity: Political and Economic Development in the Philippines, Rand Corporation for the Agency for International Development, R-473-AID, January 1970, 314 pp.     

Understanding Support for Internet Censorship in China: An Elaboration of the Theory of Reasoned Action

This study investigates young people’s support for Internet censorship in China within the broad conceptual approach of the theory of reasoned action (TRA). Two concepts, authoritarian personality and third-person perception, were scrutinized as part of our extension of the elaboration of the TRA model. We also closely examined dimensions pertinent to the unique social context of China such as party membership, Confucianism tradition, and one-child policy. A sample of 266 college students in a large metropolitan was surveyed and Structural Equation Modeling was employed in data analyses. Support for censorship based on TRA received general empirical evidence. So did the submissive dimension of authoritarian personality. Mixed findings were discussed and future research directions were suggested.