Exploring the Intersection of Theory and Practice of Arts for Peacebuilding

A rising number of public and nongovernmental organisation (NGO) leaders are employing the arts in efforts aimed at encouraging social change. Meanwhile, scholars have offered a number of theories concerning the character of political agency and its exercise, and contended that effective use of the arts may result in individual and group epistemic change. Far fewer analysts, however, have married such theorisations of aesthetics with empirical investigations of how professionals actually use the arts to promote such shifts. This article addresses this concern by studying the strategies adopted by two international nongovernmental organisations (INGOs), American Voices and Bond Street Theatre, that have worked to encourage peace through music and theatre-making in light of changing conceptions of agency and the power of aesthetics to stimulate its exercise. We outline the approaches these NGOs adopt to do so and the mechanisms by which their leaders believe their work catalyses changes in values at the individual and community levels. We argue that understanding these dynamics more thoroughly and in light of conceptions of agency and aesthetics leads to a stronger theorisation of whether and how arts-based peacebuilding efforts can lead to sustainable community cultural change.     

Beyond the Message in a Bottle: The Other Critical Theory

Book reviewed in this article:
Alex Demirović, Der nonkonformistische Intellektuelle. Die Entwicklung der Kritischen Theorie zur Frankfurter Schule     

The Social Psychology of Ordinary Ethical Failures

Social Justice Research -     

Housing Voucher Take‐Up and Labor Market Impacts

Low participation rates in government assistance programs are a major policy concern in the United States. This paper studies take‐up of Section 8 housing vouchers, a program in which take‐up rates are quite low among interested and eligible households. We link 18,109 households in Chicago that were offered vouchers through a lottery to administrative data and study how baseline employment, earnings, public assistance, arrests, residential location, and children's academic performance predict take‐up. Our analysis finds mixed evidence of whether the most disadvantaged or distressed households face the largest barriers to program participation. We also study the causal impact of peer behavior on take‐up by exploiting idiosyncratic variation in the timing of voucher offers. We find that the probability of lease‐up increases with the number of neighbors who recently received voucher offers. Finally, we explore the policy implications of increasing housing voucher take‐up by applying reweighting methods to existing causal impact estimates of voucher receipt. This analysis suggests that greater utilization of vouchers may lead to larger reductions in labor market activity. Differences in take‐up rates across settings may be important to consider when assessing the external validity of studies identifying the effects of public assistance programs.     

Does group engagement with members constitute a “beneficial inefficiency”?

This article explores the role of variations in organizational form in explaining levels of group access. Specifically, we test whether group forms incorporating more extensive engagement with members receive policy advantages. We develop and test a account of beneficial inefficiencies. Our account reasons that the costs of inefficient intraorganizational processes and practices associated with enhanced engagement with members are beneficial as they generate crucial “access goods”—specifically encompassing positions—that in turn receive enhanced policy benefits. The costs of intraorganizational practices allowing members to engage more thoroughly in decision making are thus beneficial inefficiencies. We test this proposition using data on the Australian interest group system. Using the tools of cluster analysis, we identify three forms, each varying in respect of the inefficiencies they embody. Our multivariate analysis finds strong support for the account of beneficial inefficiencies: groups with the most inefficient organizational model receiving the greatest policy access.     

Bringing Rigor to the Use of Evidence in Policy Making: Translating Early Evidence

Beyond the evidence provided by randomized controlled trials, there is a need for supplementing and contextualizing efficacy findings through early evidence. This may include evidence of program costs, quality implementation processes, and impact of programs on different groups. This article considers the Quality and Impact of Component Evidence Assessment and other exemplary efforts for translating early evidence for policy making within a common framework. This framework includes processes for strategic review, development of guiding standards on the quality of evidence, and active communication with policy makers.