Measuring Political Competence: An Analysis with Reference to the Gender Gap*

Political alienation has been an important concept in theories of participation and democratic policies. Subjective political competence (‘internal political efficacy’) is considered to be a main element within the broader concept of political alienation, and an important determinant of political participation. The main purpose of this article is to test statistically the assumption of similarity in model structure for men and women, i. e. the relation between political competence and voting turnout. Our findings, generated on the basis of a common survey questionnaire item, show that subjective competence has different significance for men and women. For men, it has an expected substantive meaning. For women, it seems to be irrelevant with respect to expected sources and consequences. Given this apparent incomparability in measurement, we conclude that it is inappropriate to use identical models for men and women. It is also argued that political competence should be conceived of as containing a cognitive element, ‘objective political competence’. Empirical analysis shows that this concept is gender neutral with respect to political involvement.     

Lost in Aggregation: Improving Event Analysis with Report‐Level Data

Most measures of social conflict processes are derived from primary and secondary source reports. In many cases, reports are used to create event‐level data sets by aggregating information from multiple, and often conflicting, reports to single event observations. We argue that this pre‐aggregation is less innocuous than it seems, costing applied researchers opportunities for improved inference. First, researchers cannot evaluate the consequences of different methods of report aggregation. Second, aggregation discards report‐level information (i.e., variation across reports) that is useful in addressing measurement error inherent in event data. Therefore, we advocate that data should be supplied and analyzed at the report level. We demonstrate the consequences of using aggregated event data as a predictor or outcome variable, and how analysis can be improved using report‐level information directly. These gains are demonstrated with simulated‐data experiments and in the analysis of real‐world data, using the newly available Mass Mobilization in Autocracies Database (MMAD).     

New Insights into Coalition Negotiations—The Case of German Government Formation

Research on coalition negotiations after general elections in parliamentary systems usually focuses on the parties’ utility maximization as corporate actors. However, the most recent process of government formation after the German general election in 2017 followed a different type of logic and led to an outcome unlike that of other coalition negotiations. Regarding policy seeking, office seeking, and vote seeking, the outcomes of both the exploratory talks between Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU)/Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU), Freie Demokratische Partei, and the Greens and the negotiations between CDU/CSU and Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands are at least partly irrational from a cost–benefit analysis. This article examines the formation of Germany’s government in 2017–2018 and reveals the paradoxical outcomes of each phase of the negotiations. Empirical data to underpin the argument stem from interviews with negotiators and statements of direct participants in the formation of the coalition. Instead of the parties’ utility maximization, negotiations were largely dominated by intraparty conflicts, in which individual interests and personal trust rather than partisan unitary programs were most relevant to the negotiation process and outcome. Our work answers the question of why the grand coalition was unexpectedly renewed in the end—contrary to what might be predicted based on established theories of coalition building. The observations and conclusions set forth are of general interest not only for future coalition negotiations in Germany but also for other European parliamentary democracies facing increasing party fragmentation. Most importantly, the analysis yields insights into negotiations undertaken in the absence of rationalist behavior.     

Psychosocial Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Exposure in Maltreated Adolescents: Assessing More than IPV Occurrence

The majority of research on the psychosocial impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure for children has focused on IPV occurrence. The current study extended this research by examining three dimensions of IPV exposure: frequency, proximity, and severity, and tested whether these dimensions predicted variance in adolescents’ psychosocial problems over-and-above that accounted for by IPV occurrence. Participants included 140 adolescents and their caregivers, who were recruited for an intervention involving maltreated youth placed in out-of-home care. After controlling for IPV occurrence, exposure to community violence, and severity of maltreatment, results indicated a positive association between the multidimensional IPV index and youth report of psychosocial problems. There was also a trend for a positive association between the IPV index and caregiver report of psychosocial problems for boys. The study’s results are discussed in terms of their implications for prevention researchers and child welfare agencies.     

Citizens Differ from Organizations: Modeling a Specific Citizen-Centered Collaborative Capacity

This article discusses the various challenges that public organizations face resulting from collaboration with different types of actors. Building on studies from the public and private sector, the characteristics of collaboration between citizens and public organizations are discussed and measures to address these characteristics are proposed. Based on these findings, different dimensions of an organizational citizen-centered collaborative capacity are identified. The result of this study is a conceptualization of such a collaborative capacity, which includes the dimensions of structuring, motivating, applying, and assessing. It is further argued that the ability to motivate external participants is especially important for citizen-centered collaborative capacity.     

Mediated territoriality: rural workers and the efforts to scale out agroecology in Nicaragua

The Spanish word formación can be translated as ‘training’ or ‘education’, but Latin American social movements use it as inspired by Che Guevara’s notion of ‘molding’ the values of the new woman and new man for egalitarian, cooperative social relations in the construction of a ‘new society’. This contribution presents findings on the dialectical linkages between the formación processes led by the Rural Workers’ Association (ATC) and the gradual transformation of the Nicaraguan countryside by peasant families choosing to grow food using agroecological practices. We use Vygotsky’s sociocultural historical theory to explore the developmental processes of formación subjects and the pedagogical mediators of their transformation into movement cadre. The motivations of active learners to develop new senses and collective understandings about their material reality become a counterhegemonic process of internalization and socialization of agroecological knowledges and senses. In this paper, we further explore the formación process by identifying territorial mediators: culturally significant elements within and outside of individuals that facilitate the rooting of agroecological social processes in a given territory where the social movement is active. By placing the territory, rather than the individual, at the center of popular education processes, new synergies are emerging in the construction of socially mobilizing methods for producing and spreading agroecological knowledge.     

The Comparative Study of Jokes

Jokes can only properly be studied comparatively and in relation to differences in the social structure and culture of the two or more countries where they are told. This is best done by looking at how joke cycles, large aggregates of jokes, change as they move between two countries that have the same language. American stupidity jokes about Poles and blondes changed significantly when they came to be told in Britain about the Irish and about Essex Girls, even though the same themes were employed. The changes can be related to the greater British willingness openly to acknowledge and to joke about class distinctions and to their not sharing the American obsession with hygiene, purity and physical perfection. American lawyer jokes are told in Britain not as local jokes about lawyers but as specifically American jokes about American lawyers. In Britain power and decision making lie with Parliament not judges and lawyers, a utilitarian not a rights political philosophy prevails and there is no sacred written constitution. In America there is far more respect for ‘the law’ and lawyers can not possibly live up to these expectations. In Britain to be a lawyer is just one more job and the lawyers do it honestly and unremarkably.     

Building Social Cohesion Through Intergroup Contact: Evaluation of a Large-Scale Intervention to Improve Intergroup Relations Among Adolescents

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Past research has found intergroup contact to be a promising intervention to reduce prejudice and has identified adolescence as the developmental period during...