Cumulative Neighborhood Risk and Subsequent Internalizing Behavior among Asian American Adolescents

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Neighborhood disadvantage is a developmental context that may contribute to Asian American adolescent internalizing problems, yet there is a dearth of...     

State-building and patronage networks: how political parties embezzled the bureaucracy in post-war Kosovo

ABSTRACT

Why has the internationally promoted Weberian-style bureaucracy failed to replace patronage as the dominant principle of state organization in post-war Kosovo? This article explores how international actors’ rule-promotion activities and local actors’ strategies of resistance play out and interact to explain the failure. The empirical analysis focuses on rules of recruitment in the civil service system in the period 2000–2016. The analysis juxtaposes two consecutive stages of the state-building process, which are marked by different degrees and forms of international involvement: the pre-independence period, 1999–2008; and post-independence period, 2008–2016. Evidence from the case suggests that during the pre-independence period, legal inconsistencies embedded in the internationally promulgated legislation enabled local actors’ formal and informal strategies to recruit political cronies in the newly created civil service system. The transfer of authority from international administrators to elected local authorities, especially after Kosovo’s declaration of independence in 2008, did not solve the problem of legal inconsistencies, and instead, served to consolidate governing parties’ strategies of control over recruitment in the state bureaucracy. More often than not, patron–client relationships that thrive at the borderline between formality and informality of political behaviour, continued to undermine external rule transfers.     

The Real Exchange Rate,Foreign Aid and Macroeconomic Transmission Mechanisms in Tanzania and Ghana

Abstract

A recent study of 36 sub-Saharan African countries found a positive impact of aid in the majority of these countries. However, for Tanzania and Ghana, two major aid recipients, aid did not seem to have been equally beneficial. This study singles out these two countries for a more detailed empirical investigation. The focus is on the effect of aid when allowing external and nominal factors to play a role in the macroeconomic transmission mechanism. We conclude that when monetary and external factors are properly accounted for, then aid has been pivotal to growth in both real GDP and investment.     

The Role of Public Service Motivation in Employee Work Engagement: A Test of the Job Demands-Resources Model

The study investigates the nature of public service motivation’s (PSM) relationship to employee work engagement. Using the Job Demands-Resource Model, the authors compare whether PSM as a resource is an antecedent to employee work engagement or has a buffering effect on job hindrances of perceived red tape in explaining employee work engagement. They surveyed 388 supervisors and managers in a public-sector organization in the United States. The findings support PSM as an antecedent along with perceived job influence and perceived procurement red tape to employee work engagement.     

The Conflicting Interests of Women's Organizations and the League of Nations on the Question of Married Women's Nationality in the 1930s

This article investigates the question of legal equality in citizenship and nationality in the inter-war years. The first conference for the codification of international law was hosted by the League of Nations in The Hague in 1930. One of the topics of the conference was married women's nationality, and international women's organizations did everything in their power to persuade the conference that married women deserved to be treated equally to non-married women and to men. Women lobbied the League, but they were ultimately unsuccessful. The study highlights the conflicting aims of a movement struggling for social and political change and the official aims of an international organization. Whereas previous research has focused on the actions of the women's organizations, this article directs its interest towards the interaction between the League of Nations and the women's organizations. In questions regarding women's rights and claims for equality the League of Nations adapted an overly cautious, even conservative, position. However, the article shows that the international discourse provided arguments and documents useful in national struggles. This will be illustrated by the debate on independent nationality in the Swedish feminist press.     

Doctors Doing Gender at Eye Clinics—Gender Constructions in Relation to Waiting Times for Cataract Extractions in Sweden

Why do eye clinics differ in their waiting times for women’s and men’s access to cataract extraction (CE)/“grå starroperation”? Taking a doing-gender perspective as the starting point, this study explores how gender constructions embedded in Swedish eye clinics contribute to longer waiting times for women than for men. Focus group interviews were conducted with doctors at two Swedish eye clinics: one with a larger and another with a smaller than average gender difference in waiting times for CE. Several differences were found between the clinics regarding how gender was constructed: Women and men were constructed as different with respect to ascribed traits such as assertiveness and care-seeking behaviour. Their need for visual acuity in working life was perceived as different by the doctors, and the study indicates differences between the clinics regarding their interest and awareness concerning issues related to inequity, reflected in the dissimilar prevalence of jokes with racist and misogynist connotations at the two clinics.     

Offender characteristics in lethal violence with special reference to antisocial and autistic personality traits

The objective of the study is to assess the relationships between personality traits, lifetime psychosocial functioning, and crime scene behavior. Thirty-five male offenders referred for forensic psychiatric assessment in Sweden (1996-2001) and assigned a main diagnosis of either antisocial personality disorder (APD) or autism spectrum disorder (AUT) were retrospectively studied. APD were subcategorized into impulsive (APDi) and controlled (APDc). Those in the AUT group were less intoxicated at the time of the crime and did not often use knives or guns compared to the APD group. Males in the APDi group were older and had a higher proportion of abuse of alcohol and drugs in biological parents, physical abuse during childhood, psychiatric contacts, and suicide attempts compared to the APDc group. In the APDi group, knives were used in the homicide compared to the use of guns in the APDc group. The results suggest differences in psychosocial functioning and crime scene characteristics related to personality traits.