College Socialization and the Economic Views of Affluent Americans

Affluent Americans support more conservative economic policies than the nonaffluent, and government responds disproportionately to these views. Yet little is known about the emergence of these consequential views. We develop, test, and find support for a theory of class cultural norms: These preferences are partly traceable to socialization that occurs on predominantly affluent college campuses, especially those with norms of financial gain, and especially among socially embedded students. The economic views of the student's cohort also matter, in part independently of affluence. We use a large panel data set with a high response rate and more rigorous causal inference strategies than previous socialization studies. The affluent campus effect holds with matching, among students with limited school choice, and in a natural experiment; and it passes placebo tests. College socialization partly explains why affluent Americans support economically conservative policies.     

Front‐Door Difference‐in‐Differences Estimators

We develop front‐door difference‐in‐differences estimators as an extension of front‐door estimators. Under one‐sided noncompliance, an exclusion restriction, and assumptions analogous to parallel trends assumptions, this extension allows identification when the front‐door criterion does not hold. Even if the assumptions are relaxed, we show that the front‐door and front‐door difference‐in‐differences estimators may be combined to form bounds. Finally, we show that under one‐sided noncompliance, these techniques do not require the use of control units. We illustrate these points with an application to a job training study and with an application to Florida's early in‐person voting program. For the job training study, we show that these techniques can recover an experimental benchmark. For the Florida program, we find some evidence that early in‐person voting had small positive effects on turnout in 2008. This provides a counterpoint to recent claims that early voting had a negative effect on turnout in 2008.     

Russo–Iranian Relations in the Post-Soviet Era

The West has shunned the Islamic Republic of Iran for most of the past 38 years. To neutralise the very negative impact that this situation has had on the country’s economy and political isolation, Iran has turned to the East, in particular to China and Russia, a change in orientation despite Iran’s traditional preference for the West. Since the Soviet Union’s demise, Iran and Russia have steadily been expanding co-operation in trade, regional security, nuclear technology, military issues, and oil and natural gas exploration and marketing. Yet both Powers have cautiously approached one other. The degree of expansion or contraction in co-operation has depended considerably on whether relations between the West and Russia have been amicable or hostile. Historically speaking, Great Power rivalry over Iran has worked better for Tehran than when these Powers have taken a unified policy, as in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.     

Empire in Question: Reading,Writing, and Teaching British Imperialism,Antoinette Burton

Hawthorne and Women: Engendering and Expanding the Hawthorne Tradition, by John L. Idol, Jr. and Melinda M. Ponder. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1999.

Regions of Identity: The Construction of America in Women's Fiction, 1885–1914, by Kate McCullough. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1999.

Golden Cables of Sympathy: The Transatlantic Sources of Nineteenth‐Century Feminism, by Margaret H. McFadden. Lexington: The UP of Kentucky, 1999.

Unruly Tongue: Identity and Voice in American Women's Writing, 1850–1930, by Martha J. Cutter. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 1999.

Toni Morrison: A Critical Companion, by Missy Dehn Kubitschek. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.

Contentions Traditions: The Debate On Sati in Colonial India, by Lata Mani. Berkeley: U of California P, 1998.

The Victorian Spinster and Colonial Emigration: Contested Subjects, by Rita S. Kranidis. New York: St. Martin's P, 1999.

Strange Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness, by Carole G. Silver. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999.

Performing Gender and Comedy: Theories, Texts and Contexts, edited by Shannon Hengen. Studies in Humor and Gender. 4. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, 1998.

Transforming Shakespeare: Contemporary Women's Re‐Visions in Literature and Performance, edited by Marianne Novy. New York: St. Martin's P, 1999.

Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800, edited by Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1999.     

Non-Suicidal Self-Injury and Depressive Symptoms During Middle Adolescence: A Longitudinal Analysis

Previous research has shown a consistent positive association between non-suicidal self-injury and depressive symptoms. However, the direction of the effects has not been examined. To understand whether non-suicidal self-injury predicts depressive symptoms or vice versa, we examined the relations between non-suicidal self-injury and depressive symptoms across three waves of self-report data collected 1 year apart from 506 Swedish adolescents (47 % girls; M age = 13.21; SD = .57) who were attending 7th grade at the onset of the study. The results suggest that depressive symptoms predict increases in non-suicidal self-injury 1 year later between the first and second waves of the study. Between the second and third waves of the study depressive symptoms and non-suicidal self-injury were significantly correlated indicating co-occurrence with no direction of effect rather than depressive symptoms predicting non-suicidal self-injury or vice versa. Group comparisons revealed no differences for boys and girls. The findings help clarify the relationships between non-suicidal self-injury and depressive symptoms during middle adolescence.     

Varieties of capitalism in Eastern Europe (with special emphasis on Estonia and Slovenia)

The authors proceed from the assumption that the institutional and economic efficiency of a particular country (or society) depends on its historic legacy or ‘path-dependence’, strategic interactions of the elite and the impact of the international environment. Estonia and Slovenia are both – not only economically, but also institutionally – perceived as relatively successful and prominent post-communist countries and new members of the EU. Yet they have developed completely different – in some aspects even diametrically opposite – regulative settings and socio-political arrangements. The main emphasis is on the connection between the dynamics and ideological preferences of political actors and the pace of reforms as well as institutional regulations. One can argue that the political elite in Estonia encouraged the shaping of the state in a direction close to the liberal-market model, whereas Slovenia is closer to the corporatist social welfare-state model. In both cases, some dysfunctional effects are evident that represent a new challenge to the elites and, at the same time, a test of their credibility and competence.     

Mapping the Ideological Marketplace

I develop a method to measure the ideology of candidates and contributors using campaign finance data. Combined with a data set of over 100 million contribution records from state and federal elections, the method estimates ideal points for an expansive range of political actors. The common pool of contributors who give across institutions and levels of politics makes it possible to recover a unified set of ideological measures for members of Congress, the president and executive branch, state legislators, governors, and other state officials, as well as the interest groups and individuals who make political donations. Since candidates fundraise regardless of incumbency status, the method estimates ideal points for both incumbents and nonincumbents. After establishing measure validity and addressing issues concerning strategic behavior, I present results for a variety of political actors and discuss several promising avenues of research made possible by the new measures.     

Divided We Stand? Democracy as a Method of Processing Conflicts1

Conflicts, liberty and peace do not coexist easily. Through most of history, civil peace was maintained by the threat of force. Contemporary ideologues of authoritarian regimes maintain that political conflicts inevitably result in violence, and the founders of modern representative institutions in the West have shared this view. Yet we now know that political institutions can cope with conflicts, that conflicts can be structured, regulated and contained, and that purely procedural rules can be effective in processing conflicts. Most importantly, we have come to realise that choosing governments through competitive elections is the only way to foster political freedom in divided societies. Competitive elections support social peace by enabling political forces to think in inter‐temporal terms. In turn, civil peace is maintained between elections when when opposition groups expect to be reasonably successful within the halls of representative institutions.