Social Media Social Capital,Offline Social Capital,and Citizenship: Exploring Asymmetrical Social Capital Effects

In pursuit of a healthier and participatory democracy, scholars have long established the positive effects of social capital, values derived from resources embedded in social ties with others which characterize the structure of opportunity and action in communities. Today, social media afford members of digital communities the ability to relate in new ways. In these contexts, the question that arises is whether new forms of social capital associated with the use of social media are a mere extension of traditional social capital or if they are in fact a different construct with a unique and distinct palette of attributes and effects. This study introduces social media social capital as a new conceptual and empirical construct to complement face-to-face social capital. Based on a two-wave panel data set collected in the United States, this study tests whether social capital in social media and offline settings are indeed two distinct empirical constructs. Then, the article examines how these two modes of social capital may relate to different types of citizenship online and offline. Results show that social media social capital is empirically distinct from face-to-face social capital. In addition, the two constructs exhibit different patterns of effects over online and offline political participatory behaviors. Results are discussed in light of theoretical developments in the area of social capital and pro-democratic political engagement.     

A Critical Evaluation of Australian Mineral Resources Rent Tax

An embryonic literature exists on policy failures by the Australian Government, which has examined inter alia the Home Insulation Program, the Green Loans Program, the Building the Education Revolution, and the macroeconomic stimulus package following the global financial crisis. This article contributes to this literature by considering the introduction of the Mineral Resources Rent Tax (MRRT) and its subsequent performance in terms of revenue. We evaluate the implementation of the MRRT using theoretical insights from the policy analysis literature and attempt to draw some broader public policy “lessons”.     

Self-legitimation in the face of politicization: Why international organizations centralized public communication

International organizations (I0) have centralized their public communication to a large extent over recent decades by undertaking a broader codification of communication tasks as well as a departmentalization of these tasks within units of IO bureaucracies. The paper provides the first systematic analysis of this important development in institutional design using a novel data set on the organization of public communication in 48 IOs between 1950 and 2015. It identifies self-legitimation as a key driver of centralization in the face of increased levels of politicization, that is, public awareness and activism directed at IOs. Empirically, the study suggests that the centralization of public communication significantly increases as transnational civil society organizes and gains access to IO decision-making. Further, politicization in terms of contentious activism and public scandals substantially accounts for varying levels of centralization across IOs.     

Buffer or Brake? The Role of Sexuality-Specific Parenting in Adolescents’ Sexualized Media Consumption and Sexual Development

One main source of sexual socialization lies within family interactions. Especially sexuality-specific parenting may determine adolescents’ sexual development—adolescents’ sexual behavior and sexual risk behavior, sexualized media consumption and permissive sexual attitudes—to a significant extent, but different ideas exist about how this works. In this longitudinal study, we examined two hypotheses on how sexuality-specific parenting—parenting aimed specifically at children’s sexual attitudes and behaviors—relates to adolescents’ sexual development. A first buffer hypothesis states that parents’ instructive media discussions with their children—called instructive mediation—buffers the effect of sexualized media consumption on adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behavior and, vice versa, the effect of adolescents’ sexual attitudes and behavior on sexualized media consumption. A second brake hypothesis states that parents, by communicating love-and-respect oriented sexual norms, slow down adolescents’ development toward increased sexualized media use, permissive sexual attitudes, and sexual behavior and sexual risk behavior. Using four-wave longitudinal data from 514 Dutch adolescents aged 13–16 years (49.8% female), we found evidence to support a brake effect. More frequent parental communication of love-and-respect oriented sexual norms was associated with less permissive sexual attitudes and, for boys, with less advanced sexual behavior and a less rapid increase in sexual risk behavior. Parents’ instructive mediation regarding adolescents’ sexualized media consumption was associated with less permissive sexual attitudes at baseline, but only for girls. No systematic evidence emerged for a buffer effect of parents’ instructive mediation. In conclusion, although our data seem to suggest that parent–child communication about sex is oftentimes “after the fact”, we also find that more directive parental communication that conveys love-and-respect oriented sexual norms brake adolescents’ move toward sexual maturity.     

Promoting the Utilization of Performance Measures in Public Organizations: An Empirical Study of Factors Affecting Adoption and Implementation

Despite its appeal for improving government, many state and local governments have not developed performance-measurement systems, and even fewer use these systems to improve decision making. This study examines the factors that affect the utilization of performance measurement, based on the results of a national survey of state and local government officials. The goals of the study were to provide better information on the patterns of usage of performance measurement and to use this information to develop an elaborated model of the factors presumed to affect utilization. Using distinctions from the policy and evaluation literature, hypotheses were tested and confirmed: Policy adoption is driven more heavily by factors from rational and technocratic theory, whereas actual implementation is influenced by factors addressed by political and cultural considerations.     

Supplier behaviour and public contracting in the English agency nursing market

The worldwide expansion in the use of private firms to deliver public services and infrastructure has promoted a substantial literature on public sector contract and relationship management. This literature is currently dominated by the notion that supplier relationships should be based upon trust. Less prominent are more sceptical approaches that emphasize the need to assiduously manage potential supplier exploitation and opportunism. This article addresses this imbalance by focusing upon the recent experience of the English National Health Service (NHS) in its dealings with its nursing agencies. Between 1997 and 2001, the NHS was subjected to considerable exploitation and opportunism. This forced managers to adopt a supply strategy based upon an assiduous use of e-auctions, framework agreements and quality audits. The article assesses the effectiveness of this strategy and reflects upon whether a more defensive approach to contract and relationship management offers a viable alternative to one based upon trust.     

Attachment and the Development of Depressive Symptoms in Adolescence: The Role of Regulating Positive and Negative Affect

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Although widely accepted, attachment theory’s hypothesis that insecure attachment is associated with the development of depressive symptoms through emotion...     

Evaluating competitiveness impacts of regulatory reforms in the Brazilian cashew industry

This work evaluates regulatory impacts on the Brazilian cashew industry through the pilot use of CIBER, a value-chain-based approach, to identify and measure regulatory constraints and to enact regulatory reforms in donor-funded development projects. Drawing from secondary sources complemented by primary field research, all the CIBER-suggested steps are followed. The results reveal that tax and credit regulations should be priorities to improve the competitiveness of the cashew business in Brazil, and that CIBER can be an effective tool to expand industry analysis and to design reform strategies towards improved competitiveness.     

Anticorruption Commissions: The “Hong Kong Model” Revisited

The international donor community has, in the last few years, discouraged the use of specialised anticorruption bodies as the spearhead of the attack on corruption, for reasons that have never been sufficiently explained or critically examined.

The academic objections to replicating the Hong Kong solution in other countries are first, that the context in which corruption occurs in Hong Kong is unique and for that reason the solution cannot be exported; second, that the remedy is too strong, too dangerous to be applied elsewhere. The risk of an anticorruption body like the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) becoming an instrument of political oppression is simply too great to warrant its use; third, establishing and maintaining an anticorruption body at the strength required to deal with corruption is said to be inordinately costly. The fourth objection is a frontal assault on the very concept of an anticorruption body as a means of tackling corruption. The answer, according to this view, lies in governance and policy reform.

These objections have been adopted by the international donor institutions, apparently for reasons that have little to do with any in-depth analysis of the effectiveness of successful anticorruption bodies.

Over the past decade numerous alternative methods of tackling corruption have been proposed and attempted. The results have been disappointing.

By contrast, Hong Kong remains firmly on top of its corruption problem, the ICAC continues to enjoy a public support of 98–99% and this special administrative region of China continues to improve its standing in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), one of the few places in the world to do so. In Botswana where the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) was modelled on the ICAC with modifications, the country is rated the least corrupt in Africa by a considerable margin and is in the top 25% of countries worldwide. Madagascar which modelled its Bureau Indépendant Anti-Corruption (BIANCO) even more closely on the HK ICAC has made good progress in the short time it has been operational.

Is it not time to reconsider the rejection by the donor community of the “Hong Kong model?” Should we not be examining more profoundly than previously how Hong Kong managed to get and stay on top of corruption? Should the donor community not be helping those countries that have decided they want a separate anticorruption body get the design and the operational policies and practices right?