Parental Demandingness and Executive Functioning in Predicting Anxiety among Children in a Longitudinal Community Study

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Theoretical models and empirical studies of anxiety have predominately focused on the main effects of various predictors such as executive functioning deficits on...     

Being Mum’s Confidant,a Boon or Bane? Examining Gender Differences in the Association of Maternal Disclosure with Adolescents’ Depressive Feelings

This article reports on a longitudinal study investigating gender differences in the association between maternal disclosure and adolescents’ depressive symptoms. Little research has examined the relationship of parental disclosure to adolescents’ depressive symptoms and research on sex differences is particularly lacking. In a sample of 428 families with a mean age of 13.36 (52% female) of the target adolescents, maternal and children’s disclosure and depressive symptoms were assessed twice with an interval of 4 years. Controlling for the quality of the parent–child relationship and levels of maternal depressive symptoms, the analyses revealed an interaction effect for child’s gender, moderating the effect of maternal disclosure on adolescents’ depressive symptoms. Higher levels of maternal disclosure were accompanied by lower levels of depressive symptoms in girls and higher levels of depressive symptoms in boys. Gender differences in socialization, communication, individuation and social networks might explain why daughters and sons are differently affected by maternal disclosure.     

A Quiet Revolution or a Flashy Blip? The Real ID Act and U.S. National Identification System Reform

In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act despite decades of stalemate in reforming the U.S. national ID system. Using John Kingdon’s policy streams framework, the authors examine the development of reform ideas, the opening of a policy window and the shift in the national mood after the 9/11 attacks, and the legislative tactics by the George W. Bush administration that led to the passage of the act. The analysis illustrates the significance of policy entrepreneurship in national crises but also raises questions about the permanency of policy reforms and the ethical responsibilities of public administrators in such times.     

The Prospective Associations between Self-Efficacy and Depressive Symptoms from Early to Middle Adolescence: A Cross-Lagged Model

Over the course of adolescence, an increasing number of adolescents experience depression. In order to effectively target depression, identifying risk factors for depressive symptoms is pivotal. Since low levels of self-efficacy were associated with higher levels of depressive symptoms in previous studies, the current study investigated the bidirectional and prospective associations between depressive symptoms and academic, social and emotional self-efficacy from early to mid adolescence in a cross-lagged path model. The sample consisted of 1,341 adolescents (47?% girls) with a mean age of 14 years, SD?=?0.56. Depressive symptoms and self-efficacy levels were assessed every 6 months over a period of 2.5 years. Depressive symptoms predicted subsequent levels of academic and emotional self-efficacy on all time points, and social self-efficacy on one time point. Self-efficacy did not predict subsequent levels of depressive symptoms. There was no evidence of sex differences in the cross-lagged associations between depressive symptoms and self-efficacy levels. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Democracy over power? The democratic decision-making process in the case of the attempted privatization of Estonia's power production

The suspense-filled attempted partial privatization of the Narva Power Plants in the neo-liberal darling Estonia involved a rich cast, from trade unions and local scientists, via Estonian courts and ombudsmen to international consulting firms, major global banks and the US government. More important, a detailed single case study on the democratic decision-making process in this privatization case makes it possible to go beyond common generalizations regarding the consequences of neo-liberalism for democratic processes. It shows that purported proponents of economic neo-liberalism such as the US government sometimes use their arguments to advance the narrow business interests of politically well-connected firms. Established private firms can behave in a more rent-seeking manner than publicly owned, ex-communist companies. Liberal economic principles of open competition and a level playing-field are at times used by actors in the democratic process to question top-down, opaque economic decisions.     

Evaluating the Impacts of an Enhanced Family Self-Sufficiency Program

We conduct an impact analysis of the Denver, Colorado, Housing Authority’s Home Ownership Program (HOP) employing quasi experimental methodologies (i.e., nearest-neighbor matching, inverse probability weighting with regression adjustment) that permit causal inferences of program impacts with substantial confidence. HOP is an unusual, enhanced variant of the Family Self-Sufficiency program that incentivizes and assists participants’ purchase of a home. We analyze whether, compared with the control group, HOP participants exhibited significantly greater earnings growth during the program, enhanced economic security, and rates of home buying. We find that participants with a high intensity of treatment showed significant improvement in all outcomes. Results are robust to model specification and insensitive to omitted variable bias typically found in the social sciences. We conclude that a well-conceived and well-executed public housing authority program aimed at building the financial, human and social assets of low-income households receiving housing assistance can yield substantial benefits to participants.     

Collective learning and regime dynamics under uncertainty: labour reform and the way to autocracy in Russia

The article questions the structural approach to autocratic transition that sees government as knowingly and purposely building autocracy, and contributes to the tradition emphasizing the plurality of possible regime developments and the role of contingency therein, by providing a more systematic treatment of such contingency. We offer a path-dependent theory of political change and use insights from cognitive institutionalism to show how ad hoc policy reform practices become accepted as a trusted way of interaction by political actors and how they “learn” their way into autocracy. This intuition is substantiated with a case-study of the labour reform in Putin’s Russia. The early 2000s marked a surge in uncertainty in Russian politics caused by the succession crisis and the profound political turnover it triggered. This uncertainty could have resolved in a number of ways, each leading to a different political development. We trace the actual way out of this uncertainty and show that the major factor to condition further regime trajectory was the way social reforms were conducted. The course of these reforms determined the ruling coalition and the institutions that ensure credible commitment within its ranks (the dominant party), and contributed to crowding out the political market and opposition decay.     

Systematic review of randomised controlled trials:Probiotics for functional constipation

AIM:To systematically evaluate and update evidence on the efficacy and safety of probiotic supplementation for the treatment of constipation. METHODS:The MEDLINE,EMBASE,CINAHL,and Cochrane Library databases were searched in May 2009 for randomised controlled trials(RCTs)performed in paediatric or adult populations related to the study aim. RESULTS:We included five RCTs with a total of 377 subjects(194 in the experimental group and 183 in the control group).The participants were adults (three RCTs,n=266)and ...     

The Effects of Global Policy Networks on Peacebuilding: Framework of Evaluation

International organisations and non-governmental organisations involved in peacebuilding often form networks with one another and transplant themselves into war-torn territories with divided communities, weak governments, and little trust between the public and the government. This study examines how this network mechanism of governance orchestrated by international actors can have a political effect on the institutional development of the post-conflict state. The article argues that, superiority in mobilising resources and organisational flexibility notwithstanding, networks pose unique challenges to peacebuilding initiatives: because of the diversity of their members, networks tend to link up to various sectors within the post-conflict entity, thereby perpetuating often pre-existing schisms between the post-conflict government and the society. The study cautions that networks can be prone to parochial political influences from local and international actors, thereby fragmenting the state and the society in a given post-conflict country. But it also highlights that networks can effectively mobilise resources while maintaining political autonomy and independence from their donors, elites from the post-conflict state and the grassroots communities. The enhanced political autonomy is a measure of enhanced problem solving and bureaucratic prowess of the network, which is associated with networks with particular institutional attributes, discussed in the paper.