The Corporatist Regime,Welfare State Employment,and Gender Pay Inequity

Mainstream economics conceptualizes wages as determined by market forces and reflecting productivity and investments in human capital made by individuals. These views, which have become taken-for-granted explanations of what wages are, hide the underlying dynamics of the gender pay gap and place responsibility on individuals instead of gendered social structures. This article proposes viewing gender pay inequity through a sociological lens, which implies acknowledging the complex societal dynamics and roles of institutions and actors in shaping wages. The Nordic welfare states are often considered women-friendly, providing female citizens with social policies and services that have enabled their extensive participation in paid employment. Simultaneously, the Finnish welfare state has relied heavily on inexpensive labour provided by women, thus actively contributing to the formation of a secondary female-dominated labour market. The secondary status of reproductive work conducted within the public sector has been further strengthened and institutionalized by the Finnish corporatist system via collective agreements. In policy-making, the central actors defend their vested interests through non-decision-making, limiting the scope of decision-making to non-threatening issues. This article discusses the dynamics of the Finnish corporatist regime, welfare-state employment, and the impact of both on gender pay equity in Finnish society.     

Putting a price on drugs: An economic sociological study of price formation in illegal drug markets

Prices in illegal drug markets are difficult to predict. Based on qualitative interviews with 68 incarcerated drug dealers in Norway, we explore dealers’ perspectives on fair prices and the processes that influence their pricing decisions. Synthesized through economic sociology, we draw on perspectives from traditions as different as behavioral economics and cultural analysis to demonstrate how participants in illicit drug distribution base their pricing decisions on institutional context, social networks, and drug market cultures. We find that dealers take institutional constraints into consideration and search for niches with high earnings and low risks. The use of transactions embedded in social networks promotes a trusting form of governance, which enables strategic network management and expedient distribution but also uncompetitive pricing. Finally, dealers’ pricing decisions are embedded in three different cultures narratives: business, friendship, and street cultural stories, with widely varying implications for prices. Our findings demonstrate how an economic sociology of illicit drug distribution can extend insights from behavioral economics and cultural studies into a coherent criminology of illegal drug markets.     

History,regionalism, and CARICOM trade: A gravity model analysis

Abstract

A gravity model is fitted to 17 annual cross sections, 1980–1996, of bilateral trade data (imports and exports) between CARICOM member states and selected trading partners. Specifically, the paper investigates the effects of regional integration, colonial legacies and linguistic ties on CARICOM bilateral trade flows between member states and between member states and North American and European Union countries. The empirical results indicate that history and regionalism have had significant and strong effects on CARICOM trade. Additionally, two traditional explanatory variables in gravity models, income per capita and population, have significant and positive effects on CARICOM trade while the distance between trading partners exerts the expected negative effect.     

The Collective Nature of Lone Wolf Terrorism: Anders Behring Breivik and the Anti-Islamic Social Movement

Anders Behring Breivik, a lone wolf terrorist, killed 77 people in two terrorist attacks in Norway in 2011. This study uses framing theory from social movement studies to compare his Manifesto with the rhetoric of the anti-Islamic movement that inspired him. The anti-Islamic movement has a dual, and sometimes inconsistent, collective action framing. On the one hand, they portray Islam as an existential threat to the West and a warlike enemy; on the other, they promote peaceful and democratic opposition. The potential for radicalization is thus immanent. This case study reveals the importance of seeing lone wolf terrorists as acting from rhetoric embedded in larger social movements. It further demonstrates, in detail, the subtle and complex ways in which political narratives rejecting terrorism and political violence still end up inspiring such acts.     

Gender Differences in Initiation of Negotiation: Does the Gender of the Negotiation Counterpart Matter?

In this study, we investigated if and how gender differences in the propensity to initiate a negotiation are affected by the gender of the counterpart in the negotiation. We enlisted 204 Swedish students to take part in an experiment in which they had to decide whether to initiate a negotiation for higher compensation. In line with previous research, we found that men were more likely than women to initiate a negotiation: 42 percent of the male and 28 percent of the female participants initiated a negotiation. The gender difference, however, was only large and statistically significant when the negotiation counterpart was a woman. With a female negotiation counterpart, women were less likely than men to initiate a negotiation by 24 percentage points, while with a male negotiation counterpart, the gender difference was only 5 percentage points and not statistically significant. This result suggests that the gender of the negotiation counterpart should be taken into consideration when analyzing gender differences in initiation of negotiation.