Still a new democracy? Individual-level effects of social trust on political trust in South Korea

The social capital theory holds that there is a positive relationship between social and political trust; however, despite the prominence of this postulation, this relationship has often been disputed among political scientists. While recent studies on advanced democracies have shown a strong positive relationship between social and political trust, studies on East Asian democracies, which previously showed a weak or negative relation, remain scant, separating these countries into their own category of new democracies. The motivation of this study is based on the importance of revisiting the relationship between social and political trust using recent data from one such country—South Korea—to determine the nature of this previously studied negative or weak relationship. The results of this study indicate that generalized social trust in South Korea is positively associated with political trust. This result is in line with recent findings in advanced democracies. While this positive relationship is consistent and significant across models, a greater portion of political trust is explained by economic and political performance, including factors such as the economy, corruption, inequality, and the welfare system, making institutional performance a critical predictor of political trust.     

Religion and Misconduct in “Angola” Prison: Conversion,Congregational Participation,Religiosity, and Self-Identities*

Prior research tends to find an inverse relationship between inmates’ religion and misconduct in prison, but this relationship has lacked empirical explanation. We therefore propose the religion-misconduct relationship is mediated by inmates’ identity transformation on existential, cognitive, and emotional dimensions. To test the mediation, we conducted a survey of inmates at the Louisiana State Penitentiary (a.k.a. “Angola”). Controlling for inmates’ sociodemographic and criminal backgrounds, we estimated a latent-variable structural equation model of disciplinary convictions. Results showed that inmates’ religious conversion and, to a lesser extent, religiosity itself were positively related to existential and cognitive transformations as well as a “crystallization of discontent,” which were in turn associated with two types of emotional transformation in the expected direction. The crystallization of discontent and transformation in negative affect were related to disciplinary convictions as hypothesized, and their mediation of the effects of conversion and religiosity on misconduct were found to be significant.     

社会认同复杂性与认同管理策略探析

社会认同论作为群体间行为的解释理论是群体关系研究中最有影响的理论.由于群体地位的差异,当某一群体在认知、情感上产生对所属群体身份不承认或疏离和自卑时便产生了社会认同威胁.为应对威胁和困境,社会认同管理策略旨在通过不同的策略手段以期获得积极的社会认同,提高个体和群体自尊.社会认同复杂性与管理策略的研究有助于加强我国转型期各群体之间的和谐共生,消减个体认同的困境,促进社会不同群体之间的融入与和谐.     

Disability and support relationships: What role does policy play?

Very little is known about how relationships between people with disabilities and their paid support workers are positioned in policy. With the policy shift toward choice of provider, individualised approaches, person centredness and self‐directed funding, the nature of their relationship assumes a more prominent role in the quality of support practice. The policy analysis in this article explores the extent to which current disability policy acknowledges, promotes, or diminishes the relationships between people with disabilities and workers, in their organisational context. It uses Honneth's conditions for recognition—love (cared for), rights (respected) and solidarity or social esteem (valued)—to understand how policy positions mutuality in the relationship. The policy review applied a three‐stage process: categorisation of policies, textual analysis and content analysis to policy documents at four levels—international, Australian federal, state and organisational in two case studies. The analysis revealed that while a rights framework is explicit in most policies, the emphases on the conditions for recognition within a relationship between people with disabilities and workers are compromised in instructional policies that attempt to manage the tension between choice and risk, particularly at the organisational level.     

Voting for development? Ruling coalitions and literacy in India

Across the world, governments skew the distribution of state resources for political gain. But does such politicisation of resource allocation affect development trajectories in the long run? We focus on the long-term effects of voting for the ruling coalition on primary education in India. Using a close-election instrumental variable design and drawing on a new socio-economic dataset of India's state assembly constituencies in 1971 and 2001, we examine whether areas represented by members of ruling coalitions experienced greater increases in literacy over 30 years. We find no evidence of this being the case, in the overall data or in relevant sub-samples. The null results are precisely estimated, and are consistent across OLS and 2SLS specifications and several robustness checks. These findings suggest the politicised distribution of some funds in the short run does not affect long-term development trajectories.