Party identification and campaign dynamics

This paper considers the role of party identification in the 1988 Canadian General Election campaign, using data drawn mainly from a rolling cross section survey. Canadians exhibited party commitments remarkably like those we have come to expect for U.S. respondents. These commitments shaped respondents' reaction to the events of the campaign: Issue positions lined up with party identification, as did perceptions of the one leader rehabilitated by the campaign. But the campaign also cut through party groups. Such a mixture of reinforcement and displacement might well typify campaigns in Canada and elsewhere. The paper concludes by arguing that academic observers in the United States should take campaigns more seriously than they have to date and that they should consider adopting some of the measurement and analysis strategies of the 1988 Canadian study.Data in this paper are drawn from the 1988 Canadian Election Study, for which the author is the principal investigator. Coinvestigators are André Blais, Henry E. Brady, and Jean Crête. Support for the study was supplied by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Fieldwork was carried out by the Institute for Social Research, York University, under the direction of David Northrup. Henry Brady was, as usual, an invaluable sounding board and source of advice. None of these individuals or institutions can be held responsible for analyses or interpretations in this paper.     

OUTCOMES OF FAMILY COUNSELING INTERVENTIONS WITH CHILDREN WHO RESIST VISITATION: AN ADDENDUM TO FRIEDLANDER AND WALTERS (2010)

Preliminary findings on the outcomes of family-focused counseling interventions for alienated and estranged children are presented based upon data from a longitudinal study of children in chronic custody disputes who were interviewed as young adults and from the clinical records of long-term therapy with these children who were resisting visitation.     

HOPE VI: A Promising Vintage?

Public housing policies in distressed communities if they are to succeed, must be based on much more realistic assumptions than they are now. We look at HOPE VI, a public housing policy that not only changes the physical environment, but also social services, job training, work opportunities, transportation, child care and other support services. HOPE VI goes a long way to improving public housing policies for distressed communities.     

Treating International Institutions as Social Environments

Socialization theory is a neglected source of explanations for cooperation in international relations. Neorealism treats socialization (or selection, more properly) as a process by which autistic non-balancers are weeded out of the anarchical international system. Contractual institutionalists ignore or downplay the possibilities of socialization in international institutions in part because of the difficulties in observing changes in interests and preferences. For constructivists socialization is a central concept. But to date it has been undertheorized, or more precisely, the microprocesses of socialization have been generally left unexamined. This article focuses on two basic microprocesses in socialization theory—persuasion and social influence—and develops propositions about the social conditions under which one might expect to observe cooperation in institutions. Socialization theories pose questions for both the structural-functional foundations of contractual institutionalist hypotheses about institutional design and cooperation, and notions of optimal group size for collective action.     

THE ALIENATED CHILD:A Reformulation of Parental Alienation Syndrome

In this article, controversies and problems with parental alienation syndrome are discussed. A reformulation focusing on the alienated child is proposed, and these children are clearly distinguished from other children who resist or refuse contact with a parent following separation or divorce for a variety of normal, expectable reasons, including estrangement. A systemic array of contributing factors are described that can create and/or consolidate alienation in children, including intense marital conflict, a humiliating separation, parental personalities and behaviors, protracted litigation, and professional mismanagement. These factors are understood in the context of the child's capacities and vulnerabilities.     

THERAPEUTIC WORK WITH ALIENATED CHILDREN AND THEIR FAMILIES

This article describes goals and strategies for family-focused counseling and therapy when children are alienated from a parent after separation and divorce. The confidential intervention takes place within a legally defined contract and is based on a careful assessment of the dynamics of the multiple factors that contribute to the alienation and how the chilďs development is affected. Strategies for forming multiple therapeutic alliances with often reluctant, recalcitrant, and polarized parents are discussed together with ways of helping the child directly.     

Globaler Wettbewerb und Unsicherheiten beim Einstieg in den Arbeitsmarkt

Hintergrund des Beitrages ist die Beobachtung, dass sich durch zunehmenden globalen Wettbewerb die Beschäftigungsstrategien von Firmen verändern und prekäre Beschäftigung und Arbeitslosigkeit für immer mehr Erwerbstätige wahrscheinlich werden. Dabei ist aber anzunehmen, dass die konkreten Formen prekärer Beschäftigung und die differenzielle Betroffenheit bestimmter Beschäftigtengruppen vom nationalen institutionellen Kontext abhängen. Ziel des Artikels ist es, zum einen die Abhängigkeit vom institutionellen Kontext zu skizzieren und zum anderen empirisch zu untersuchen, in welchem Ausmaß bestimmte Personengruppen beim Einstieg in den Arbeitsmarkt im Deutschland der 80er und 90er Jahre von prekärer Beschäftigung und Arbeitslosigkeit betroffen sind. Es wird analysiert, inwieweit das Risiko befristeter Verträge und Arbeitslosigkeit nach Bildung, Ausbildung, Klassenlage, Geschlecht, ethnischer Herkunft und Region (Ostdeutschland vs. Westdeutschland) ungleich verteilt ist. Es zeigt sich, dass sowohl hoch wie niedrig qualifizierte Gruppen überproportional von befristeten Arbeitsverträgen betroffen sind; befristete Beschäftigung erhöht das Risiko von Arbeitslosigkeit, schließlich variiert das Arbeitslosigkeitsrisiko deutlich nach Bildungsabschluss, Klassenlage, Region und ethnischer Herkunft.     

Japan,Korea, the Philippines,China: four syndromes of corruption

Both generalizations about “Asian corruption”, and claims about greater or lesser amounts of corruption, tend to overlook the many variations existing among and within Asian societies, and among the corruption problems they experience. I suggest that deeper influences in social, political and economic development, and contrasting institutional settings, create four distinctive syndromes of corruption, each with its own set of implications for relationships between wealth and power. Japan is an example of “influence markets” in which private interests buy or rent influence over relatively specific policy outcomes within a strong state. Korea is a case of “elite cartels”, in which collusion and corrupt incentives enable several kinds of elites to cooperate in governing, enriching themselves, and resisting rising political competition. The Philippines is marked by “oligarchs and clans”, with powerful families and their entourages plundering a weak state in a climate of uncertainty and insecurity. China experiences “official mogul” corruption, in which officials abuse state power with impunity, although that process is becoming increasingly fragmented. The four syndromes may help us understand why corruption and rapid growth have coexisted in some, but not all, Asian states for long periods of time, and may also help us understand why some of those states will adapt to new global realities only with some difficulty. They also show how “consensus”-driven reforms emanating from the west may not only be ineffective, but may actually make matters worse.     

Does mobility increase the productivity of inventors?

Although labor mobility has been recognized as a key mechanism for transferring tacit knowledge, prior research on inventors has so far hardly discussed the impact of a move on inventive performance. Additionally, existing research has neglected the differences in gains from a move between high and lower performing inventors. This paper adds to the current R&D literature by presenting a jointly estimated quantile regression to compare the coefficients of the explanatory variables at different points of the performance distribution. Additionally, dummy variables are used to compare inventive performance prior and in the aftermath of a move. Results reveal that inventors at the upper end of the performance distribution are better able to benefit from a move to draw level with or to overtake non-movers in the post-move period. Whereas at the bottom of the performance distribution a higher level of education has a positive impact on inventive performance, education does not matter significantly at the upper end of the performance distribution. Data for the analysis was derived from a survey of German inventors (N = 3,049).