(Neo-)evolutionäre Wahlverwandtschaften

Max Webers ambivalente Haltung gegenüber der Anwendung der Konzepte Selektion und Adaption auf die Untersuchung der kulturellen und sozialen Evolution ist leicht verständlich angesichts seiner Skepsis hinsichtlich der Reduzierbarkeit der Soziologie auf die Biologie und in Anbetracht seines Argwohns, dass sich die selektionstheoretischen Erklärungen bei genauem Hinsehen als wertegeladen oder zirkulär erweisen würden. Seine Bedenken lassen sich unter Zuhilfenahme von Entwicklungen in der Evolutionstheorie zerstreuen, die für ihn zu Lebzeiten nicht vorhersehbar waren, es jedoch möglich machen, die grundlegenden Vorstellungen seiner Religionssoziologie auf überzeugende Weise zu reformulieren. Dies macht es allerdings notwendig, seine Metapher der ?Wahlverwandtschaft“ zwischen religiösen Vorstellungen und dem Verhalten idealtypischer Akteure durch empirisch überprüfbare Hypothesen zu ersetzen, die die Anpassungsfähigkeit bestimmter religiöser Meme mit der Anpassungsfähigkeit bestimmter ökonomischer Praktiken in Verbindung bringen.     

Distributive justice and willingness to pay for municipality child care

With the aim of investigating factors affecting willingness to pay for municipality child care, a survey was undertaken in Sweden of 1840 parents living in five municipalities of different sizes. On the basis of the greed-efficiency-fairness hypothesis (Wilke, 1991) which is supported by results from experimental social dilemma research, it was hypothesized that perceived fairness of how the quality of child care is distributed (equal, proportional to need, or proportional to payment) as well as of method of payment (collectively by taxes or proportional to use by fees) would be important determinants of willingness to pay. Results showed that perceived fairness of how quality of child care is distributed played some role but that other factors had stronger effects. Perhaps also reflecting fairness considerations, willingness to pay by fees was on average higher than willingness to pay by taxes. Predicted from previous research, willingness to pay by taxes was furthermore found to increase with income and degree of use. However, willingness to pay by taxes showed an increase rather than the predicted decrease with municipality size.     

Public Sector Reform Knowledge Production: Validation and Evidence as 'Agreement'

In this article I draw on public sector reform knowledge in the United States, New Zealand and Australia. I argue that we, as practitioners, do not need to immerse ourselves in academic debates about 'positivism' or 'post-positivism'. These are frameworks for examining knowledge capable of validation. Instead, we are now engaged in using diverse forms of knowledge to spread the word on what works and does not work to deliver outcomes. Such knowledge is not above reproach; it is not acceptable merely because it exists but nor is it unacceptable because it cannot be rigorously validated in a positivist way.     

Creating impressions: An experimental investigation of political advertising on television

Using an experimental design, this paper addresses a few basic, but important, questions about the influence of televised political advertising. How effective are different kinds of political spots in creating impressions of a candidate among viewers? Do negative ads work better than positive ads in creating favorable impressions? Do spots that focus on issues create more favorable impressions that spots that stress the traits of a candidate? Do two ads work better than one ad in creating impressions? Can the effects of a spot be undercut by a follow-up advertisement from the opposition? This paper offers some tentative answers to these questions.

     

PARENTS BEYOND CONFLICT WORKSHOP

This article reviews a program designed in response to high-conflict parents who have protracted family law cases and have been referred to dependency court due to child abuse allegations.