Adjustment, Stabilisation and the Analysis of the Employment Structure in Turkey: An Input- Output Approach

The aim of the paper is to examine the effects on employment of the large-scale structural adjustment programme undertaken by Turkey from the early 1980s onwards. In this respect, we particularly analyse how appropriate the choices of factor intensity after structural adjustment programme have been in the domestic production in comparison with the availability of domestic factor endowment. Our findings show that foreign trade in intermediate goods creates extra use of domestic labour, which can be considered as the labour cost of importing intermediate goods. This is the case in the majority of industries in the pre- and post-liberalisation period in Turkey. However, the capacity of using extra labour as a result of importing intermediate goods appeared to have decreased in the post-liberalisation period.     

How to Define Legislative Turnover? The Incidence of Measures of Renewal and Levels of Analysis

This article analyses different standard measures of legislative turnover. Two main concerns are discussed: (1) the very definition of turnover: incoming MPs versus first-term MPs; and (2) the level of analysis: the whole chamber versus political groups. To illustrate this discussion, turnover in the French lower chamber, the Assemblée Nationale, is studied. It is shown that the choice of a particular measure is not trivial since empirical results are affected by the definition adopted. If the distinction between incoming and first-term MPs does not greatly modify results, the choice of the level of analysis leads to contradictory results. It is shown that the very logic of electoral contests leads to renewal mostly among those who lost previous elections, while incumbent majorities that lose elections hardly experience renewal. As both these phenomena coexist for every single election, aggregate measures of turnover do not account for these contradictory tendencies and tend to concentrate on alternation rather than turnover.     

Prison and Democracy: Lessons Learned and Not Learned, from 1989 to 2009

Dostoevsky, Mandela, and others have long noted that prisons expose social realities, often hidden, particularly inequality and gaps between policy and practice. Prisons symbolize, mirror, and shape the communities and countries in which they exist. Although prisons informed and were intertwined with many of the defining moments of 1989, in the 20 years since, societies often failed to recognize the important role prison and punishment play in relationship to democracy. By not recognizing that “prison matters” in relationship to democracy, polities (whether in transition to democracy or established democracies) failed to adequately learn “prison lessons.” Starting with a case study of South Africa, this paper considers prisons during apartheid and under democratic governance. This case is connected to other comparative and international examples (including Russia, Brazil, and the USA) to identify five lessons learned and not learned concerning prison and democracy. First, policies and practices of imprisonment reflect social orders, especially structures of inequality and understandings of legitimate power and opposition. Second, countries transitioning to democracy seldom anticipate rising crime and invariably neglect the relevance of prisons. Third, nations do not adequately grapple with the role of prison in the past, especially the nondemocratic past. Fourth, in established and recent democracies, penal populism resulted as politicians defined prison as a solution to a host of social ills, ignoring the consequences of expanded punishment. Fifth, prisons shaped key substantive realities beyond their walls, from leadership to recidivism, scandals, fiscal deficits, and crises of legitimacy.     

Results of a curriculum intervention with seventh graders regarding violence in relationships

This research measured the effects of a violence prevention curriculum on the knowledge and attitudes of seventh grade health education students (N=239) about woman abuse using a valid and reliable inventory. Pretests, post-tests, and post-post-tests were administered to experimental and comparison groups. The experimental group received the curriculum intervention,Skills for Violence-Free Relationships. Significant differences were found between the experimental and comparison groups from pretest to post-test on both the knowledge (p=.0027) and attitude (p=.0089) sections of the inventory. This impact did not remain stable at post post-test. These results confirm those found in other studies and reinforce recommendations of the battered women’s movement to integrate violence-free principles into school curricula. Within the experimental group, significant gender differences were found only on the attitude section from post-test to post post-test (p=.0335); females showed greater change over time. Such limited change was not unexpected in a middle school population given the reported formative nature of the subjects’ gender acquisition as contrasted with those at an older age.