Moderated Commitment: Members’ Decisions Not to Give to Professional Associations

Abstract

Workers pay membership dues to professional associations, which mark their identification with a particular field. Professional associations invite additional voluntary contributions for new or expanded programs, but most members do not make these additional gifts. We advance and test a conceptual model of the forces that might interrupt an otherwise committed or engaged member’s decision to make such a voluntary contribution. We conclude that giving decisions can be displaced by member beliefs that their dues and fees are sufficient or that their disposable income is committed to other obligations. We also conclude that giving decisions intersect with weak association strategy, such as a failure to solicit gifts in ways that are informative or useful to prospective donors.     

Latin American terrorism and the Soviet connection revisited

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a number of scholars and journalists argued that the USSR was sponsoring terrorism as a means of low‐intensity conflict against the non‐communist world. This view was endorsed by the Reagan administration. This article assesses what substance there is behind such charges as they relate to Latin America. Its main argument is that sponsorship of terrorists has usually occurred as a byproduct of Soviet support of armed revolution as a tactic rather than for terrorism as such. Soviet willingness to assist armed struggle has varied over the last three decades. The article concludes that, given the current priorities of Soviet Latin American policy, Moscow's sponsorship of armed struggle, including terrorism, is decreasing and will almost certainly continue do so.     

A deadly return. Tuberculosis

Fueled by poverty, homelessness and AIDS, a disease we almost wiped out is back in a dangerous new form. Its resurgence is neither fluke nor mystery, but a tragic social failure.