What about Financial Sustainability of Local Government!—A Critical Review of Accountability,Transparency, and Public Assurance Arrangements in England during Austerity

Austerity strained the financial sustainability of governments and ability of policy-makers to address policy challenges, and so having appropriate accountability and transparency arrangements to assure the public they were getting value for money took on renewed urgency. Comparing and contrasting findings from a critical review of policy developments in English Local Government during the Conservative led coalition central government 2010–2015 with those from related studies on accountability and transparency more generally, the article offers key themes for practitioners and policy-makers seeking to build stronger democratic systems of governance that go well beyond the UK jurisdiction.     

“Strangers in the new homeland?” Gendered citizenship among non-Jewish immigrant women in Israel

As part of the recent wave of immigration from the former Soviet Union (FSU), about 300,000 non-Jews came to Israel as spouses of Jews or partly-Jewish offspring of ethnically-mixed families. The purpose of this article is to examine the experiences of non-Jewish women, wives of Jewish husbands, who came to Israel after 1990 under the Law of Return. The study is based on the qualitative analysis of 20 semi-structured in-depth interviews with these immigrant women, aiming to explore their perceptions of religious practices, Jewish holidays, conversion (giyur), and their political views — in order to understand their constructions of Israeli citizenship. The issues of citizenship and loyalty to the Jewish state are resolved by Russian immigrant women in a variety of ways. Some women (a small minority) opt for ethno-national citizenship through religious conversion — giyur, typically for the children's sake. Others prefer to become part of Israeli society through experiences connected to the military service of their children and grandchildren, which can be seen as a version of republican citizenship. For most women in this study, the process of getting closer to the Israeli society and its traditions often occurred via embracing local culinary customs and specific holiday foods. In any case, the gender roles as wives and mothers appeared to be central in our informants' understanding of Israeli citizenship. The adoption of political views of Israeli Right and militant anti-Arab discourse also served as a venue for their ‘nationalization’ through republicanism.     

Smoke in the Looking Glass: Effects of Discordance Between Self- and Peer Rated Crowd Affiliation on Adolescent Anxiety, Depression and Self-feelings

Peer crowds serve as an identity marker for adolescents, indicating their image and status among peers; but adolescents do not always endorse peer appraisals of crowd affiliation. We report on two studies—one with 924 adolescents in grades 7–12 and a second with a more diverse population of 2,728 students in grades 9–11, followed for 2 years—that examined how congruence between peer and self-appraisals of crowd affiliation relate to self-esteem and internalizing symptoms. Analyses indicate that high-status crowd members may suffer and low-status crowd members benefit by denying their peer crowd affiliation, but effects are modest in size and not entirely consistent across the two studies. Findings underscore the value of symbolic interactionist principles concerning reflected appraisal processes in understanding how peer crowd affiliation affects adolescent self-image.