Globalization and Labor in Four Developing Regions: An Institutional Approach

This paper is the introduction to a SCID special issue on “Global Pressures, National Response, and Labor Rights in Developing Countries.” We focus on the potentially conflicting demands that developing countries face from international institutions for better labor standards versus more labor flexibility. This is studied through a comparative analysis of four regions: Eastern Europe, Latin America, East Asia, and the Middle East. The major international institutions we examine are the International Labor Organization, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, bilateral and plurilateral trade agreements, and multinational corporations. This introductory paper presents a review of existing literature on labor standards and labor flexibility with particular focus on the role of international institutions in promoting the two processes and their impact on labor market outcomes. It also describes our project and its contribution to the debates, including a discussion of our main methodological innovation, namely, the construction of new indices for labor standards and flexibility. In empirical terms, it compares the indices across the four regions and provides an analysis of the impact of the indices on labor market outcomes.     

The Ethical Implications of Altering Public Sector Accountability Models: The Case of the Atlanta Cheating Scandal

ABSTRACT

Outcome based policies promote the use performance accountability models. However, the impact these policies have on the ethical culture of public sector organizations has not been adequately assessed. This research examines performance accountability reforms by examining the City of Atlanta’s implementation of federal and state performance policies. The analysis reveals the use of performance models in vulnerable organizations negatively impact employees’ ethical behavior. Teachers and administrators altered test results, delivered threats, misled parents and students about performance outcomes, and were dishonest with state investigators to give the illusion that performance goals had been met or exceeded.     

Patterns of Bullying and Sexual Harassment: Connections with Parents and Teachers as Direct Protective Factors

Involvement in bullying and sexual harassment in adolescence is associated with a variety of internalizing, externalizing, and health-risk behaviors. Yet, the two behaviors are often studied independently. The current study examined how bullying and sexual harassment co-occur and whether social connections protected youth from risk patterns. The data for this study come from the 2013 Minnesota Student Survey (N?=?121,311; 50% female, 74% White, 26% received free or reduced-price lunch; M _age?=?14.9, SD?=?1.3). Students reported on bullying and sexual harassment victimization and perpetration. Using latent class analysis, youth were classified into five patterns: High-Risk of All Forms of Victimization and Perpetration (7%), Relational and Cyberbullying Victimization (17%), Sexual Harassment Victimization and Perpetration (8%), Physical Bullying Perpetration (6%), and Low-Risk (62%). Compared to the low-risk class, the four other classes had lower levels of social connections, particularly with teachers and parents. Older youth (9th and 11th grade students) were at greater risk for the sexual harassment pattern, while younger youth (8th grade students) were at greater risk for bullying patterns. The results indicate that efforts to reduce bullying should also address sexual harassment and social connections with adults.     

Explaining the number of rebel groups in civil wars

Why do multiple rebel groups form in some civil wars but not others? Since 1946, only half of all civil wars were fought by a single rebel group; the rest were fought by multiple groups. This article argues that this variation is determined by the incentives political entrepreneurs have to enter a war. The higher the demand for political change and the lower the costs of fighting, the more incentives entrepreneurs have to form their own group. Analyzing UCDP data for all civil wars between 1946 and 2015 I find that the two measures of demand – the number of identifiable ethnic or religious groups in a country and the size of the disgruntled population – have the most consistent effects, but that key measures of costs such as the size of the government military also matter. A detailed analysis of the Ethiopian case further reveals the influence of external intervention on the formation of rebel groups. These results suggest that rebel groups emerge in civil wars in rational, predictable ways related to the ease by which rebel elites can mobilize separate groups for fighting.     

Book reviews

The following books are reviewed.

The Hammonds: a marriage in history STEWART A. WEAVER, 1999 Stanford: Stanford University Press viii + 349 pp., ISBN 08047 3242 6, hardback, £30 (US$49.50)

Centering Women: gender discourses in Caribbean slave society HILARY McD. BECKLES, 1999 Oxford: James Currey; Kingston: Ian Randle; Princeton: Markus Wiener. xxv + 211 pp., ISBN 976 8123 78 8, £15.95

Women and Society in Greek and Roman Egypt: a sourcebook JANE ROWLANDSON (Ed.), 1998 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. xviii + 406 pp., ISBN 0 521 58212 1, hardback, 0 521 58814 4, paperback

Contesting Politics: women in Ireland, north and south YVONNE GALLIGAN, EILIS WARD & RICK WILFORD (Eds), 1999 Boulder: Westview Press. xv + 278 pp., ISBN 0 8133 3417 9, £17.50

Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: women on Texas cotton farms, 1900–1940 REBECCA SHARPLESS, 1999 Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. xxiii + 319 pp., ISBN 0 8078 2456 9, hardback, 0 8078 4760 7, paperback, $19.95

Cato's Tears and the Making of Anglo-American Emotion JULIE ELLISON, 1999 Chicago: University of Chicago Press. xi + 229 pp., ISBN 0 226 20595 9, hardback, $28, 0 226 20596 7, paperback, £11.50

Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the powerful women of early Hollywood CARI BEAUCHAMP, 1997 Berkeley: University of California Press. 475 pp., ISBN 0 520 21492 7, paperback, £11.50

Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies: two women's travel narratives of the 1790s DEIRDRE COLEMAN, 1999 London: Leicester University Press. xviii + 247 pp., ISBN 0 7185 0150 0, £17.99

With Women';s Eyes: visitors to the New World, 1775–1918 MARION TINLING, 1999 Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. xvii + 207 pp., ISBN 0 8061 3050 4, £24.50

Broken Silence: voices of Japanese feminism SANDRA BUCKLEY, 1997 Berkeley: University of California Press. xix + 382 pp. ISBN 0 520 08513 2, hardback, 0 520 08514 0, paperback

Conversations in Cold Rooms: women, work and poverty in nineteenth-century Northumberland JANE LONG, 1999 Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Royal Historical Society, Boydell Press. xii +241 pp., ISBN 0 86193 340 4, £40.00

Women in Espionage: a biographical dictionary M.H. MAHONEY, 1993 Santa Barbara: ABC–CLIO. xiii + 253 pp., ISBN 0 87436 743 3, £24.95

In Obedience to Instructions: FANY in the SOE in the Mediterranean MARGARET PAWLEY, 1999 Barnsley: Leo Cooper. xiii + 178 pp., ISBN 0 85052 633 7, £19.95

Enslaved Daughters: colonialism, law and women's rights SUDHIR CHANDRA, 1998 Delhi: Oxford University Press. xi + 249 pp.

English Sexualities, 1700–1800 TIM HITCHCOCK, 1997 Basingstoke: Macmillan. ix + 172 pp., ISBN 0 312 165373–0, hardback, 0 312 16574 9, paperback.

Secret Sexualities: a sourcebook of seventeenth and eighteenth century writing IAN McCORMICK (Ed.), 1997 London: Routledge. ix + 262 pp., ISBN 0 415 13953 8, hardback, £45, 0 415 13954 6, paperback.

Tradition and Liberation: the Hindu tradition in the Indian women's movement CATHERINE A. ROBINSON, 1999 Richmond: Curzon. x + 230 pp., ISBN 0 7007 1143 0.     

The making of Catherine Cookson's autobiography

Catherine Cookson's Our Kate, is undoubtedly one of the most widely read English language autobiographies ever written. It is loved by her fans and has also been drawn on quite frequently by historians seeking details of early-twentieth-century life amongst the very poor, and especially by those concerned with the fate of illegitimate children. The production of this work was complicated and lengthy, however. It took Cookson twelve years to write Our Kate, and she discarded many drafts before settling on the final version of her story and of her depiction of herself. This article explores the process Cookson went through in writing her autobiography and the ways in which she managed ultimately both to create a very distinctive persona and to use it to develop and expound her social, religious and moral values and beliefs in their most authoritative form.     

Feminising Empire? British Women's Activist Networks in Defending and Challenging Empire from 1918 to Decolonisation

ABSTRACT

This article addresses female activism spanning the Empire and creating interconnected networks linking the local and global dimensions of Britain's imperial mission in an era of increasing uncertainty. The transition from empire to commonwealth and, ultimately, independence was marked by anti-colonial challenges from within Britain and in the colonies and threats to empire from international developments post-1918. This era also witnessed a more proactive role for women as both defenders and critics of empire who had an influence on shaping a new discourse of welfare and development, purportedly a ‘feminisation’ of empire. Continuities existed between female activism pre- and post-1918 but also significant differences as the late imperial era witnessed more nuanced and diverse interventions into empire affairs than the ‘maternalist imperial feminism’ of the era before the First World War.