The Participation Divide? Political Participation,Trust in Government,and E‐government in Australia and New Zealand

Drawing on 438 telephone interview surveys in Australia and 500 in New Zealand, we find evidence of a 'participation divide' where those participating in politics do so using a range of means, including electronic ones. Those less likely to participate in politics, are less likely to participate across all means measured. Those with higher levels of education and income and of European ethnicity are more likely to participate. We confirm the existence of the so-called 'digital divide' with those that use e-government means and those that do not, being stratified by education, ethnicity, income, gender and age. Contrary to our expectations we find that lower levels of trust in government are associated with higher levels of some types of participation, including e-government ones.     

When corporate citizens ‘second-class’ national citizens: The antinomies of corporate-mediated social provisioning in Nigeria's oil province

This article explores the contradictions of corporate-aided social provisioning and shows how such contradictions impact on social existence in three oil- and gas-producing communities in Nigeria. It is based in part on the findings of the author's ethnographic work in the three communities. The analysis extends the growing scholarly debate that when the state abandons its developmental obligations to the citizenry, and business voluntarily steps into the centre stage of social provisioning by way of corporate citizenship, the resulting interventions could have profound counter-developmental consequences, especially at the grassroots.     

The Role of Perceived Stress and Self-Efficacy in Young People’s Life Satisfaction: A Longitudinal Study

Life satisfaction is an important indicator of successful development. However, adolescents’ life satisfaction tends to be relatively unsteady, and environmental influences play a critical role in shaping life satisfaction among adolescents in the transition to young adulthood. Given the paramount importance that education plays in adolescents’ lives, adolescents’ life satisfaction may vary as a function of school-related stress experience. At the same time, coping resources may help reduce adverse effects of stress on life satisfaction. With this in mind, we examined whether, and to what extent, perceived stress in education and general self-efficacy (a resource that facilitates coping) affect the life satisfaction of adolescents in transition to young adulthood. We distinguished between baseline levels of stress and self-efficacy and within-person change in stress and self-efficacy to determine whether life satisfaction is sensitive to fluctuations in stress and self-efficacy when person-specific levels of stress and self-efficacy are taken into account. Estimating growth curve models on data from a panel study on the life trajectories of compulsory-school leavers (n?=?5126, 55.3?% female), we found that baseline levels of stress and self-efficacy, as well as within-person change in stress and self-efficacy, affected adolescents’ life satisfaction. Moreover, our results showed that baseline self-efficacy mitigated the negative effect of baseline stress on life satisfaction. These findings improve our understanding of two major psychological determinants of adolescents’ life satisfaction and extend our knowledge of life satisfaction trajectories during the transition to young adulthood.     

Shaping the Evolution of the Information Flow: The Centralizing Mechanisms in the Evolution of the North American Tobacco Quitline Consortium

The research reported here is an analysis of the evolution of the relationships that comprise a single public health network, focusing especially on the position of the network administrative organization (Provan and Kenis 2008 Provan, K. G. and P. Kenis. 2008. “Modes of Network Governance: Structure, Management, and Effectiveness.” Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 18(2): 229–252.[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) in the flow of knowledge among a large number of organizations providing similar services. Our study examines the North American Quitline Consortium (NAQC), a multi-sector network that spans the US and Canada and whose members provide telephone-based tobacco cessation services to anyone interested in quitting smoking. Data were collected using web-based surveys at three different points of time. Implications are discussed for network organizing, for both theory and practice, focusing especially on the importance of the network administrative organization in shaping the evolution of the whole network information flow.     

Ideological Motives in Spoiler Violence: Postconflict Assam,Northeast India

Spoilers of peace agreements are normally seen as motivated by utility maximization, their actions intended to gain a larger proportion of postconflict political power or economic wealth. In this article, I examine this perspective via a comparative analysis of two cases of spoiler violence in Assam, India, one involving a spoiler excluded from the agreement and the other a spoiler central to the peace process and the postconflict political and economic milieu. Both cases suggest that some spoiling action following peace agreements is less instrumental and driven more by emotional and ideological phenomena than this leading understanding suggests.     

Flying bananas: small producer tactics and the (un)making of Philippine banana export chains

Global production network (GPN) analysts argue that workers actively contribute to the shaping of GPNs through different forms of agency. In this contribution I extend this argument to the tactical agency of small producers. By focusing on the phenomenon of side-selling among Filipino banana contract farmers, I show that these tactics have contributed to the emergence of alternative trade networks that undermined traditional lead firm behaviour and inspired new struggles over chain governance. However, as a diverse and ambiguous group of growers engages in this tactical agency, predominantly as small capital, they also contribute to the continuation of broader dynamics of capital accumulation and labour exploitation.     

Women's work in offices and the preservation of men's ‘breadwinning’ jobs in early twentieth-century Glasgow

As Britain's industrial economy matured and the volume of administrative work increased, different kinds of clerical jobs and clerical careers became possible. Using examples from a variety of small- to medium-sized enterprises in Glasgow, this article will describe how the main functions of administrative work – financial, secretarial and managerial – were divided both horizontally and vertically in order to preserve secure, well-paid, ‘breadwinning’ jobs for men, leaving routine secretarial work for women. The isolation of women in all-women enclaves carrying out shorthand and typing work and the subsequent devaluation of these as kinds of work were of primary importance in the creation of office work that was explicitly women's work