Post‐Hurricane Katrina Employment Recovery: The Interaction of Race and Place*

Objective. The mass migrations, infrastructure decimation, and widespread impact zone make Hurricane Katrina an especially difficult disaster from which to recover. Employment is an important aspect of effective disaster recovery. The purpose of this article is to examine determinants of employment recovery approximately one month and one year after Hurricane Katrina. Methods. The data are from a two‐stage survey of Hurricane Katrina survivors conducted by the Gallup Organization in September/October 2005 and August 2006. A series of logistic regression models were preformed on data from the two time points. Results. The results suggest a complexity to inequality where race and place interact to determine employment recovery. Displacement, gender, income, and homeownership were also significant. Conclusions. Recovery efforts and future research need to incorporate more complex understandings of vulnerability, with particular attention paid to the issues of employment and reemployment.     

Sources of Support for Mandatory Military Service in the Context of the War on Terrorism: Survey Evidence Pre‐ and Post‐September 11, 2001*

Objectives. The advent of the War on Terrorism raises the question of the short‐term impacts on public opinion of terrorist attacks with respect to the idea of universal military service in the United States. Previous studies indicate that international crises tend to produce a polarizing effect on public opinion with respect to military service. Methods. Multinomial logistic regression analysis is used here to analyze an archival data set featuring survey data collected among 18,000+ citizens in 18 major U.S. metropolitan areas in 2000, 2001, and 2002. Results and Conclusions. This article offers further support for previous analyses into the principal sources of support for military service. However, the analysis also indicates that the initial impact of the War on Terrorism may have been to produce a decline in support for mandatory military service and a mild unifying effect on the distribution of attitudes rather than the expected polarization. Attitudes toward military service were more polarized in 2000 and 2001 than in the post‐9/11 2002 studies.     

Party and Personal Preference in Post‐Soviet Legislatures*

Objective. Initial studies of post‐Soviet legislative behavior have concluded that parties can affect legislative behavior; however, the methods used by these studies failed to distinguish between the effects of party and personal preferences. Evidence of party effects would be surprising given not only the perceived weaknesses of post‐Soviet political parties, but also the debate on the existence of party effects in the U.S. Congress literature. Methods. The data are electronically recorded roll‐call data from both the Ukrainian Rada and Russian Duma. I employ an OLS residualization technique to construct deputy preference measures. Then, I use multivariate analysis (tobit) to measure the impact of deputy preference and partisanship on support for government legislation. Results. In both the Rada and Duma, party and personal preferences impacted deputy voting behavior. Conclusion. Parties are an important determinant of legislative behavior, even in weak party systems of post‐Soviet Ukraine and Russia.     

Dilemmas of Environmental Planning in Post‐Urban New Jersey*

Objective. New Jersey's state land‐use plan, designed to preserve open space by directing growth to urban centers, rests on the assumption that nature (the “environment”) and the urban constitute separate objective spheres, such that nature can be preserved as an end in itself. Through a spatial transformation that de‐populated the cities and suburbanized the countryside, however, the urban and the environmental have become overlapping discursive categories, each expressing the absence of the other, and raising serious dilemmas for environmental planning. Methods. This article uses Census data to document the extent of New Jersey's urban and racial transformation over more than half a century, and examines county and municipal reviews of the state's proposed land‐use plan to document the resulting contradictory interpretations of nature articulated in political debate over state‐plan implementation. Results. The attempt to forge a statewide consensus on environmental and open‐space preservation has been stymied by the contradictory perspectives of urban and suburban constituencies, whose responses focus on the urban rather than the environmental implications of proposed land‐use controls. State planners seeking political support for environmental protection find themselves embroiled in often vitriolic debates about urban and suburban lifestyles, with implicit racial subtexts, and about the legitimacy of state intervention perceived as supporting antithetical values. Conclusions. Contrary to the state's attempt to separate the urban and the environmental, the route to environmental protection in New Jersey may lie through urban revitalization.     

The New Economy and the Forest: Rural Development in the Post‐Industrial Spaces of the Rural Alleghenies*

Objective. Government policy has long linked resource production with economic development in surrounding rural communities. The purpose of this article is to examine how the USDA Forest Service 's (USFS) resource‐based, rural development policies have shifted due to economic restructuring and environmental challenges to the “management” of nature. Methods. Historical data was gathered on USFS timber harvests and policies toward forest‐dependent communities. Data was also gathered through interviews and participant‐observation on a USFS‐supported, locally planned ecotourism project. Results. USFS rural development policies have shifted from predominantly providing federally determined, sustained timber harvests in the industrial era to increasingly emphasizing local, amenity‐based entrepreneurship and economic diversification in the post‐industrial era. Conclusions. USFS rural development policies and resource production have been de‐coupled. However, amenity‐based development may depend both on amenity migrants and sustained commitment from external sources to support local initiative, given limited entrepreneurship in rural areas long dependent on high‐wage extraction and manufacturing.     

Causes of Civil War in Asia and Sub‐Saharan Africa: A Comparison*

Objectives. This article explores the extent to which economic development, ethnic and religious fractionalization, domestic governance, and international trade openness affect civil war in postcolonial Asia and Sub‐Saharan Africa (SSA) from 1950 through 1992. Methods. We estimate a set of multivariate logit models with the generalized estimating equation (GEE) method for time‐series cross‐sectional (TSCS) data. Results. Both in Asia and in SSA, civil war is less likely with increased economic development and trade openness, while mixed autocratic‐democratic regimes raise the likelihood that states will experience civil war. Although neither ethnic nor religious fractionalization has any statistically significant effect on civil war in SSA, civil war in Asia is more likely with greater ethnic fractionalization. Conclusions. Despite cross‐regional variation in causes of civil war, economic development and trade openness seem to play a consistent role in reducing civil war.     

Mobilized by Direct Democracy: Short‐Term Versus Long‐Term Effects and the Geography of Turnout in Ballot Measure Elections*

Objectives. A number of recent studies find that direct democracy increases voter turnout. In this article, we ask: Who does direct democracy mobilize to vote and how are they mobilized? We distinguish between long‐term and short‐term effects on voter turnout, noting that much of the current literature has focused on participatory theory. Methods. Our research design harnesses the power of geographic information systems and examines turnout in special initiative‐only elections using registered voter lists. Our model draws on individual and Census tract data, incorporated using a hierarchical generalized linear model. Results. The findings demonstrate how partisan context mitigates the potential for direct democracy to mobilize from the middle, and clarifies the dominance of short‐term as opposed to long‐term effects in increasing voter participation in ballot initiative elections. Conclusion. Mobilization via direct legislation occurs mostly because voters are actively mobilized by partisan campaigns, not because of an increase in participatory fervor.     

The Context for Political Corruption: A Cross‐National Analysis*

Objective. How do we explain variations across nations in the incidence of political corruption? Recent theoretical work locates the causes for corruption in a combination of institutional conditions: monopoly power, little accountability, and wide discretion. This focus on the form of political institutions clarifies the micro‐scale causes of political corruption, but it leaves unanswered questions about the macro‐scale causes of corruption. Methods. This article addresses these questions about the macro scale through an analysis of perceived levels of corruption across nations. Results. Our work identifies poverty, large populations, and small public sectors as contextual causes of corruption. Historically‐based differences in political cultures across broad geographical regions also affect the perceived incidence of corruption in nations. Conclusion. Further research should attempt to link micro‐ and macro‐scale causes together in a single, multi‐scalar model of corruption.     

Post‐secondary transitions of youth emancipated from foster care

This study investigated the extent to which KnowHow2Go (KH2Go), a national college access campaign developed for first‐generation students in the USA, would resonate with youth who had aged out of foster care. Interviews were conducted with 27 youth who were enrolled in a post‐secondary programme following emancipation from foster care. We found KH2Go to have a close fit with the experiences of youth who had been in foster care. Four topics emerged as particularly important for youth in our study: money management, work, parenting and transportation. Finally, the study identified attributes these youth demonstrated that contributed to their resilience during the transition process. This study and the data presented pertain to youth living in the south‐eastern USA.     

The Association of Suicide Rates with Individual‐Level Suicide Attitudes: A Cross‐National Analysis*

Objective. Research on the predictors of individual‐level attitudes toward suicide has neglected the possible role of contextual‐level predictors. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by assessing the association between suicide rates and the attitudes of individuals. Based on social learning theory, it is argued that persons socialized in nations with relatively high rates of suicide are more likely to be exposed to suicidal role models, which provide positive definitions of suicide. Methods. Data refer to 40,873 adults in 31 nations, and are taken from the World Health Organization and World Values Surveys. Given the bi‐level nature of the data, hierarchical linear modeling techniques (HLM) are utilized. Additional predictor variables are incorporated from previous research and include religious participation and political orientation from social learning theory, marital status and life satisfaction from control theory, and basic demographics such as age and gender. Results. The results of the HLM indicate that controlling for individual‐level predictors, as well as other Level 2 variables, persons residing in nations with relatively high suicide rates are more approving of suicide than their counterparts. The model was replicated for the prediction of support for euthanasia. A social learning perspective was further supported by results linking 1970 suicide rates with suicide acceptability among older adults in 1990. Conclusion. National suicide rates are predictive of individual‐level suicide acceptability. However, the main predictors of suicide acceptability included a measure from social learning theory, religiosity, and a neglected measure of control theory, life satisfaction.     

Bottom Up and Top Down? Community Development in Post‐Soviet Armenia: The Social Fund Model

The main objective of this article is to discuss the effectiveness of bottom‐up, community‐driven approaches in promoting community participation and building local capacity within the post‐Soviet social, institutional and political context of Armenia. In exploring this issue, the article examines the nature of local participation and social relations in rural communities in Armenia and the impact of the World Bank‐supported Armenia Social Investment Fund (ASIF) project on the existing forms of local social organization. One of the objectives of the ASIF project was to promote the participation of local communities in their own economic and social development. The research finds that the project did not change the existing patterns of local social organization and had no significant impact on the nature of participation in the beneficiary communities. Bottom‐up, capacity‐building interventions that mainly focus on changing patterns of interpersonal social relations may not be effective in fostering sustainable civic institutions without changes in the nature of a country's governance.