Public opinion during a presidential campaign: Distinguishing the effects of environmental evolution and attitude change

This paper develops a spatial model which distinguishes between different sources of temporal variability in public opinion over the course of an election campaign. Candidates and citizens are shown as points within a space. The candidate points are fixed, but their relative positions can change as a result of change over time in the dimension weights. If this occurs, it represents environmental evolution. The individual citizens' points also can move within the space, independently of the external environment. To the extent this occurs, it represents attitude change. The model is tested with data from the CPS 1980 National Election Study. The empirical results show that much of the variability in public evaluations of the candidates is due to evolutionary changes in the electoral environment, rather than individual-level attitude changes. Furthermore, that attitudinal change which does occur is strongly delimited by factors like partisan strength, interest in the campaign, and political participation.     

Bankruptcy During Foreclosure: Home Preservation Through Chapters 7 and 13

Filing for bankruptcy is the primary legal mechanism by which homeowners in foreclosure can exert control over ownership of their home, yet little is known about the interplay among bankruptcy types, mortgage servicers, state foreclosure laws, and home foreclosure auctions. We analyze 4,280 lower-income homeowners in the United States who were more than 90 days late paying their 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. Two dozen organizations serviced these mortgages and initiated foreclosure between 2003 and 2012. We identify wide variation between mortgage servicers in their likelihood of bringing a property to auction. We also show that when homeowners in foreclosure filed for bankruptcy, foreclosure auctions were 70% less likely. Chapters 7 and 13 filings both reduce the hazard of auction, but the effect is 5 times greater for Chapter 13, which contains enhanced tools to preserve homeownership. Bankruptcy's effects are strongest in states that permit power-of-sale foreclosure or withdraw homeowners' right-of-redemption at the time of auction.     

Different cases,different faces: Chinese investment in Central and Eastern Europe

Chinese investment in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is booming. As China’s investment pattern has emerged so far, it appears to have little to do with Chinese firms’ preferences for liberal policy regimes, tolerance for corruption, or reliance on communist-era networks. This article documents the current size and shape of Chinese firms’ efforts to internationalize in this economic space, demonstrating an important difference between Chinese investment behavior in CEE and in the EU-15, namely the region’s much more active use of greenfield activity (and lighter use of M&A and strategic alliances). Case studies of each mode (greenfield, M&A, and strategic alliances) reveal little evidence of a “China, Inc.” approach and much evidence that Chinese firms are more motivated by market access than by technology or management assistance.     

Book reviews

Michael Mann's interpretation of imperial rule is deployed here to theorise state formation during the era of Ottoman expansion and contraction. His five-part taxonomy of ‘compulsory co-operation’–namely military pacification, the military multiplier effect, the correlation of authority with economic power, labour intensification and the coerced diffusion of cultural norms – is applied to the Ottoman context in order to cast light on the relationship of the state with its agents and the peasantry. In doing so, it also seeks to reconsider an older debate regarding the ‘decline’ of imperial Ottoman rule and Istanbul's response to social change.     

Jihadi brides at the intersections of contemporary feminism

Abstract

Contemporary feminism has reached a difficult crossroads, both in its theory and practical application. Feminist commitment to diversity and inclusion has opened space for women not traditionally considered in feminism’s domain and prompted new understandings of the forms of power against which women struggle. However, the very inclusivity of contemporary feminism now raises a series of unresolved issues. What does it mean to be a feminist today? What are the criteria for integration within a feminist agenda? And who determines the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion? This article uses the case of Jihadi brides, women who travel to join the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, to test the limits of feminist boundaries. That these women have embarked on a radical political campaign against the West prompts further revisioning of the relationship between women, gender, and feminism. In place of a unified feminist politics, women are involved today on both sides of the global conflict between Western industrialized democracy (and its allies) and violent jihadism. In this context, should feminism include all women, even those who fight against Western values and thus the rights of other women? Should feminism tolerate the intolerant? Against the background of debates about intersectionality, identity politics, and post-structuralism, this article raises the specter of a feminism that is not only non-Western but, importantly, anti-Western and considers its implications for a feminist reconstructive agenda.     

金融与劳工:风险、不平等和民主的视角

金融发展和在劳动市场表现出的风险与不平等之间并不存在直接的关联。这种关联在国家和公司的层面由政治加以调和。政治鼓励金融发展,从而对金融所产生的不平等和风险的限制努力产生克减之效。这一结论来自于历史的、比较的和当代证据的经验分析。本文重点关注美国新近发生的事件:当代金融发展的政治起源;有组织劳工及其同盟对金融的再监管和重塑公司治理的努力。     

Nietzsche, Historiography and Yugoslav Nationalism

In The Use and Abuse of History Friedrich Nietzsche warned of the dangers of separating history from the irrationality of nature and establishing it as a science. Increasingly individualised, spiritually adrift and soulless, Man, he suggests, will become a prisoner of an excess of history imposed upon, and external to, life itself. This article will argue that contained within Nietzsche's polemic, particularly his elaboration of an alternative effective methodology, is a useful framework for the analysis of historiography's construction of the past. The development of nationalist mythologies within the politics of the former Yugoslavia is then discussed in light of this interpretation of Nietzsche's position.