Changes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union: The effects on China

The rapidly changing political, economic, and security policies in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in late 1989 and 1990 have added to the complications faced by Chinese leaders since they decided to suppress the unprecedented large-scale pro-democracy demonstrations in Chinese cities in spring 1989. These changes had an obvious “ripple effect” in China, encouraging prodemocracy forces and alarming Chinese leaders. They attracted strong positive attention from the developed countries of the West and Japan, and international financial institutions and businesses. This came at the indirect expense of China. And they accelerated changes in world politics (especially in U.S.-Soviet relations) and in the politics of government decision making in the West that promised to reduce China’s relative influence in world affairs in the 1990s. The prospect of reduced influence abroad and curbed economic contacts did not appear to be sufficient cause for Beijing leaders to markedly change existing policies. Chinese leaders in mid-1990 appeared focused on issues of internal political power at a time of leadership transition. Significant changes in policy appeared most likely to await leadership changes as Deng Xiaoping and other aged leaders die or are incapacitated.     

(Non)equivalence in a federalism: Dual tax shares, flypaper effects and Leviathan

Among the best-known theorems of fiscal federalism is the presumed allocative and distributive equivalence between a lump-sum grant to a collectivity and a set of lump sum grants to the members of a collectivity. Interestingly, the simple elegance of the theorem is at odds with observed behavior. Grants to governments produce greater public spending than does tax reduction. Explanations of this "flypaper effect" range from misspecified econometric modeling to presumed behavior based on fiscal illusion. In this paper we show that theoretical equivalence exists in a model that recognizes only one tax share, the citizen voter's local tax share. When the model is expanded to include voters' federal tax shares as well as local taxes, non-equivalence and the flypaper effect become the rule, not the exception.     

The gender gap in comparative perspective

Abstract. Although the 'gender gap' in Western democratic publics has received an increasing amount of scholarly attention, one interesting anomaly has not been addressed. At the level of many specific issues, women appear to be more liberal than men. However, at the level of general ideological orientations, women are either more conservative, or there are no significant gender differences. We explore this disjuncture between levels of cognitive abstraction through the 1984 Eurobarometer data and conclude that the left-right continuum appears to have a different meaning for men and for women. Women seem much more likely to regard the left-right space as referring to 'preservationist' values of religion and cultural homogeneity, and men conceptualize the left-right space in economic and 'New Polities' terms.     

Adolescent depression: Why more girls?

Although there has been evidence for some time of a sex difference in depression, relatively little research has examined the developmental process by which women come to be at greater risk than men for depression. In this paper, the developmental pattern of depressed affect is examined over early and middle adolescence, with a special focus on the patterns of boys as compared to girls. In addition, a developmental model for mental health in adolescence is tested for its power in explaining the emergence of gender differences in depression. Longitudinal data on 335 adolescents randomly selected from two school districts were used to test the hypotheses. Results revealed that girls are at risk for developing depressed affect by 12th grade because they experienced more challenges in early adolescence than did boys. The sex difference in depressed affect at 12th grade disappears once early adolescent challenges are considered.This research was supported in part by grants MH30252/38142 to A. Petersen. We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of study participants and staff. Portions of this material were presented in a symposium at the 1988 meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, and one at the 1989 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development.Received Ph.D. from University of Chicago in 1973. Research interest in biopsychosocial development in adolescence, with a focus on sex differences in mental health.Research interests include adolescent mental health, and parent and peer relationships.Received Ph.D. in psychology from The Pennsylvania State University. Research interests include development of affective and conduct disorders, especially sex differences in these problems.