Cultural Theory and Democratizing Functional Domains, the Case of Danish Housing

In the last decade experiments with decentralized democratic governance and citizen involvement have been launched throughout Europe in functional domains as varied as housing, environmental planning, primary schools and care for the elderly. This article analyses such democratization processes through the lense of cultural theory as formulated by Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky (1990). It argues that cultural theory provides a framework for understanding why formal democratic rights and rules are not necessarily matched by democratic images among actors. It draws on empirical material from the Danish social housing sector, which is widely recognized for its decentralized governance system and extensive tenant involvement.     

Constraining a Shadowy Future: Enacting APAs in Parliamentary Systems

Single‐party parliamentary governments often have no institutional checks on their authority. Such governments can pass and implement policies constrained only by the need to maintain party loyalty and win elections. Literature on delegation suggests that such governments would never adopt reforms such as Administrative Procedures Acts (APAs) that are designed to constrain this freedom. Nevertheless, such governments do pass APAs: Greece, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and Sweden have all done so in the past 30 years. We argue that the possibility of losing power motivates parliamentary governments, both single‐party and coalition, to trade current policy loss for future gain with APAs.     

Cultural dimensions of South African employees and internal organisational communication satisfaction

Abstract

This article aims to help communication practitioners know which cultural dimensions are associated with communication satisfaction. The meta-theoretical framework is the Excellence Theory of Public Relations and Communication Management (Dozier, Grunig and Grunig 1995, 35). The conceptual theoretical framework; cultural dimensions by Geert Hofstede (Hofstede and Hofstede 2005, 39) and communication satisfaction by Downs and Hazen (1977, 68) and Gray and Laidlaw (2004, 427) fit into the Excellence Theory of Public Relations and Communication Management. The research design was a quantitative survey with an online questionnaire as a data collection method distributed among a random sample. Validity was improved through pilot tests and the sampling technique. In terms of reliability this survey's scores sufficed as accurate and consistent, scoring above the acceptable score of 0.7 (Van Heerden 2001); 0.72 for national culture and 0.83 for communication satisfaction. Regression analysis was used to analyse the relationship between cultural dimensions (independent variables) and communication satisfaction (dependent variable). The findings clearly showed that national cultural dimensions have significant relationships with communication satisfaction. The implication was that internal communication practitioners could now be informed about the dynamics of the interaction between the cultural dimensions prevalent amongst South African employees and internal organisational communication satisfaction.     

Expressive Logic: A New Premise in Arts Advocacy

This article traces the origins of cultural management education in Europe and explores trends in the development of educational and training programs in the field. The article then assesses the role of international organizations and networks active in the sphere of culture and education and in stimulating growth of the sector. Finally, the article outlines current EU policies that affect the way education and training or cultural management may develop in European countries.     

Global commodity chain analysis and the French filière approach: comparison and critique

This article reviews two approaches to the study of economic restructuring which focus on commodity-specific dynamics of change. The first is the global commodity chain (GCC) approach, which has been developed primarily for the analysis of industrial commodities.The second is the francophone filière tradition, which has been applied mostly to agricultural commodities originating from former French colonies. The article finds that the GCC approach has a more coherent framework than the filière approach, although it is still far from constituting a fully fledged 'theory'. The authors provide a number of suggestions for improving some of its key concepts. They also suggest that the GCC approach can be enriched by some of the insights gained in filière work, especially in terms of improving historical coverage and depth, enlarging the analysis to agricultural commodities, better handling of regulation issues, and including quality convention issues in analysing commodity chain structure and restructuring.     

Democratization and the size of government: evidence from the long 19th century

We study the consequences of franchise extension and ballot reform for the size of government in Western Europe between 1820 and 1913. We find that franchise extension exhibits a U-shaped association with revenue per capita and a positive association with spending per capita. Instrumental variables estimates, however, suggest that the U-shaped relationship may be non-causal and our fixed effects estimates point to substantial cross-country heterogeneity. Further, we find that the secret ballot did not matter for tax revenues per capita but might have expanded the size of government relative to GDP.     

Competing Expectations in an Index-Based Livestock Insurance Project

Despite donor enthusiasm for index-based microinsurance, globally, pilots have struggled to realise its promises. This paper considers the Kenyan Index-Based Livestock Insurance pilot, investigating the competing expectations held by actors including (re)insurers, researchers, donors, NGOs, and pastoralists. We explore expectations’ impacts on partner involvement, project outcomes, sales, and the future outlook for Kenyan livestock insurance. Quantitative analysis suggests early demand and subsequent backlash were not results of systematic mis-selling, but rather stemmed from clients’ unfulfilled expectations of patron-like relationships with insurance partners. We caution against exaggerated expectations of profitability and call for reflection and transparency amidst the embrace of insurance tools.     

Incarceration and Recidivism among Sexual Offenders

The relationship between incarceration and recidivism was investigated in a sample of 627 adult male sexual offenders. Incarceration for the index offense was unrelated to sexual or violent recidivism. This was the case whether incarceration was examined as a dichotomous variable (incarceration vs. community sentence) or as a continuous variable (length of incarceration). Risk for sexual recidivism was assessed with a modified version of the Rapid Risk Assessment for Sexual Offense Recidivism. There was no evidence that the relationship between incarceration and recidivism was confounded or moderated by risk or that length of incarceration and recidivism were non-linearly associated. Sentencing sexual offenders to terms of incarceration appears to have little, if any, impact on sexual and violent recidivism following release.     

More Than a Just a Game: Video Game and Internet Use During Emerging Adulthood

The purpose of this study was to gain a clearer understanding of the pattern of video game and internet use among college students and to examine how electronic leisure was related to risk behaviors (i.e., drinking, drug use, sex), perceptions of the self (i.e., self worth and social acceptance), and relationships with others (i.e., relationship quality with parents and friends). Participants included 813 undergraduate students (500 young women, 313 young men, M age = 20, SD = 1.87) who were mainly European American (79%), unmarried (100%) and living outside their parents’ home (90%). Results suggested that (a) video game use was linked to negative outcomes for men and women, (b) different patterns of video game and internet use existed for men and women and (c) there were different relations to risk behaviors, feelings about the self, and relationship quality based on the type of internet use, and based on gender. The discussion focuses on the implications of electronic leisure on the overall health and development of young people as they transition to adulthood.     

Similarities and Differences in Adolescent Siblings’ Alcohol-Related Attitudes,Use, and Delinquency: Evidence for Convergent and Divergent Influence Processes

A growing body of research indicates that siblings influence each other’s risky and deviant behaviors during adolescence. Guided by research and theory on sibling similarities and differences, this study examined the operation and implications of three different influence processes—social learning, shared friends, and sibling differentiation—during adolescence. Participants included one parent and two adolescent siblings (earlier born age: M = 17.17 years, SD = 0.94; later born age: M = 14.52 years, SD = 1.27) from 326 families. Data were collected via telephone interviews. Using reports from both older and younger siblings, two-stage cluster analyses revealed three influence profiles: mutual modeling and shared friends, younger sibling admiration, and differentiation. Additional analyses revealed that mutual modeling and shared friends as well as younger sibling admiration were linked to similarities in brothers’ and sisters’ health-risk behaviors and attitudes, whereas differentiation processes were associated with divergence in siblings’ characteristics. The discussion focuses on refining the study of sibling influence, with particular attention paid to the operation and implications of both convergent and divergent influence processes.