The Same Old Song?—Stability and Change in Relationship Schemas from Adolescence to Young Adulthood

Relationship schemas are core elements of personality that guide interpersonal functioning. The aim of this study is to examine stability and change in relationship schemas across two developmental epochs—adolescence and young adulthood—in the stories that people tell about their interactions with others. Using the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme Method, relationship themes were coded from semistructured interviews conducted in adolescence and again at age 25. The sample consisted of 40 participants in a longitudinal study of adolescent and young adult psychological development. There was considerable stability in the frequency with which particular themes were expressed in the narratives of adolescents and young adults. Significant changes from adolescence to young adulthood included a decrease in the perception of others as rejecting and of the self as opposing others. Young adults saw themselves and others more positively, and used a broader repertoire of themes in their relationship narratives than they had as adolescents. The basic continuity and particular changes in relationship schemas found in this study are consistent with knowledge about the adolescent-to-young-adult transition derived from other empirical and clinical findings. Relationship schemas may be rich units of study for learning about the development of interpersonal functioning.     

Tullock's rent-seeking contest with a minimum expenditure requirement

We consider a rent-seeking contest of the kind introduced by Tullock (1980) in which two players compete for a monopoly rent. We extend the contest by requiring that if a player puts forward an effort, his expenditures must be larger than or equal to some minimum level. We show that, depending on the model parameters, the number of Nash equilibria of the extended model can be zero, one, two or four. Furthermore, it turns out that the extent of rent dissipation in a Nash equilibrium of the extended model can be larger than, equal to, or smaller than the extent of rent dissipation in the unique Nash equilibrium of the original model.     

Self-imposed term limits

In “Reconciling voters' behavior with legislative term limits,” Dick and Lott argue that since more senior representatives are better at rent-seeking, there is an inefficient tendency to re-elect incumbents. In their model, term limits are preferred collectively by constituencies, even though no constituency would independently oust its incumbent representative. However, many term limits are unilaterally self-imposed (in particular the 22nd amendment limiting presidents' terms to two), and their model cannot explain these limits. In this comment, I suggest that term limits may be self-imposed by risk-averse voters, who prefer cycling between left and right wing candidates to a once-and-for-all election that imposes a candidate of a single ideology on the entre electorate. The market failure that makes term limits helpful is that out of power minorities cannot bribe the median voter.     

Gerrymandering and the Voting Rights Act of 1982: A public choice analysis of turnover in the U.S. House of Representatives

The present paper uses various data sets and statistical techniques to examine the outcome of gerrymandering under the Voting Rights Act of 1982 on turnover rates in the U.S. House of Representatives, as well as the competitiveness in Party primaries for House seats. Evidence presented here suggests that political redistricting at the federal level (namely for U.S. House seats) has tended to favor incumbents in both the Party primaries and general elections. In fact, some results suggest that turnover rates (for 1988) are between 8.9 and 10.3 percentage points lower within states that engaged in such redistricting efforts. Our findings generally support the main tenets of the public choice view of legislator behavior.     

The Coming of Parliamentary Television: The Lords and the Senate Compared

Subscribing to a Burkean view of representation, legislators have long tended to resist constant public scrutiny. In recent years, however, they have overcome this reluctance in a large number of countries and voted to allow the televising of their proceedings. But why they did so remains a mystery. Some media theorists argue that television exposure is a 'great democratizer'. It demystifies public authority figures and obliges them to become more accountable for their actions. The experience of the British House of Lords and the United States Senate suggests instead that television was invited in by rational political actors as a means of achieving their goals in a time of change. In this view, television is best seen not as a force in its own right, but as a medium of communication that can be strategically deployed by goal-oriented political élites responding to different political circumstances and institutional incentive structures.     

The cumulation problem

Abstract After a discussion of possible components in a definition of 'cumulation' and the relative lack of cumulation in political science, a scheme for research strategies is outlined with the aim of facilitating cumulation, or at least facilitating a diagnosis of the state of political science in this respect. The scheme includes three types of studies: (1) analysis of the formal properties of theoretical approaches in political science, (2) content analyses in the form of inventories of problems, propositions and concepts in the discipline, (3) evaluational analysis, i.e. an assessment of what 'theory criteria' to use for evaluating the approaches and of the probable relations between these criteria.     

Budget Control in Virginia Public School Districts

This article examines the selection and use of a budget approval technique. Specifically, two research questions are addressed: (1) Does the use of a particular budget approval method by a governmental body impact the execution of the budget? (2) What characteristics of a local government are associated with its decision to use a particular budget approval method? Both research questions are addressed by analyzing data from public school systems in the Commonwealth of Virginia, specifically, whether using categorical budget approval differs in the accuracy of budgeting versus using a lump-sum approval method. Characteristics of Virginia school districts are also analyzed according to whether any of them are likely to be associated with school districts using a particular approval method. The remainder of this article is organized as follows: the next section describes the role of budgeting control in schools; subsequent sections review Virginia school district budgeting practices, develop the empirical model used to test the hypotheses, describe the sample, analyze the results of empirical tests and discuss implications of the findings.     

The impact of puberty and dating on eating problems among middle school girls

Puberty has been related to the onset of a variety of weight concerns and eating problems among middle school girls, including body dissatisfaction, dieting, and eating disorders. At least two models can be used to explain these relationships. The first emphasizes the timing of puberty, arguing that girls who face early puberty are particularly stressed because of the off-time nature of the event. The second focuses on synchronous events. For girls more than boys, puberty is likely to coincide with the change from elementary to middle school and/or beginning to date. Such synchronous events may create greater stress for girls. Seventy-nine girls were tested during the spring of their sixth- and eighth-grade years. Pubertal and dating status, body dissatisfaction, weight management, and eating disordered attitudes (using the Children's EAT:ChEAT) were assessed. The simple timing model (early vs. on time vs. late) was not supported. The simple synchronous model received some support in that girls with synchronous onset of menstruation and dating had higher ChEAT scores as well as greater body dissatisfaction. However, the data indicated that girls for whom puberty was early and coincidental with dating might be at unusual risk. These girls showed the highest levels of body dissatisfaction and the highest ChEAT scores.Ph.D. from Temple University. Research interest is in developmental psychology.Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa BarbaraThese authors have a joint research program in the developmental psychopathology of eating problems.The first wave of data for this report was collected as part of her undergraduate honors thesis.Earlier versions of these data were presented at the 1991 meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Seattle, Washington and the 1992 Conference on Human Development, Atlanta, Georgia.