Gender Differences in Policy Preferences: A Summary of Trends from the 1960s to the 1980s

Using 267 repeated policy questions (962 time points), we examinegender differences in policy choices and how they have changedfrom the 1960s to the 1980s. The average gender difference inpreferences toward policies involving the use of force haveconsistently been moderately large. Sex differences in opiniontoward other policies—regulation and public protection,"compassion" issues, traditional values—have been approximatelyhalf as large but they also warrant more attention than in thepast. Our analysis suggests that the salience of issues hasincreased greatly for women, and as a result differences inpreferences have increased in ways consistent with the interestsof women and the intentions of the women's movement.     

The Ossification of American Labor Law and the Decline of Self-governance in the Workplace

This article argues that the ineffectuality of American labor law and the shrinking scope of collective representation and collective bargaining are partly traceable to the law’s “ossification”—to its having been essentially sealed off for several decades from democratic revision and renewal and from local experimentation and innovation. The elements of this process of ossification, once assembled, make up an imposing set of barriers to innovation. The basic law has been cut off from legislative revision at the national level by Congress; from “market”-driven competition by employers; from the entrepreneurial and creative energies of private litigation; from variation at the state or local level by representative or judicial bodies; from changing constitutional doctrine; and from emerging transnational legal norms. Moreover, the National Labor Relations Board—the designated institutional vehicle for adjusting the labor laws to modern conditions—is increasingly hemmed in by the age of the text and the large body of judicial interpretations that has grown up over the years. The resulting statutory scheme is drastically out of date and out of sync with the needs of 21st century workers and labor markets.

The Place of Framing: Multiple Audiences and Antiwar Protests near Fort Bragg

Social movement leaders regularly invoke geographic places—such as cities, parks, and monuments—as symbols in strategic efforts to frame social movement activity. This article examines how place affects framing processes inside a movement and counterprotester responses with an ethnography of anti-Iraq War protests in Fayetteville, North Carolina. We show how place attracts the attention of movement leaders, creates opportunities for local community members to assert their interests, suppresses some frames within the movement, and encourages opponents to co-opt the meaning of place for their own ends. The multiple meanings of place can broaden the scope of conflict and reduce a movement leader’s ability unilaterally to define a movement’s agenda and public image.

Games,Pastimes, and Leisure Pursuits

In studies ranging from oracular practices and court proceedings to alternative philosophies, reality disjunctures, and a family’s work in maintaining the normality of a severely retarded child, Mel Pollner put together something like a cabinet of curiosities exhibiting the social character of reasoning’s worldly enterprises. At the same time, he felt that ethnomethodology—and, in particular, ethnomethodological studies of work—had taken a wrong direction, turning away from disciplinary sociology’s sociological project. This paper, by examining the play of bridge, soccer, checkers, and chess, reconsiders this position and illustrates some of the peculiarities of a sociology of the witnessable social order.     

"Coloured Power" or "Coloured Bourgeoisie"? Political Attitudes among South African Coloureds

Why have Coloureds in South Africa—people of mixed racialdescent—voiced less opposition to white minority rulethan have black Africans? A theoretical analysis suggests thatColoureds feel both "relatively deprived" in comparison withwhites and "relatively gratified" in comparison with Africans,that they believe they may eventually be accepted by whites,and that individually they have difficulty identifying withthe broader Coloured community; in short, seemingly ideal conditionsfor the emergence of a "Coloured Bourgeoisie" rather than a"Coloured Power" ideology.     

Sociology,narrative, and the quality versus quantity debate (Goethe versus Newton): Can computer-assisted story grammars help us understand the rise of Italian fascism (1919–1922)?

At the heart of this article is a structural approach to narrative, based on the work of Propp, Labov, van Dijk, Halliday, and others. The article highlights the structural features of narrative—basically, the organization of the genre around the semantic template actor-action-actor (syntactically rendered as subject-verb-object but where, in narrative, the subject is typically a social actor and the verb a social action) and the modifiers of each element of this triplet, such as time and space of action—and shows how to implement this structure in a computer environment and how to use this methodological tool in socio-historical research (namely, the rise of Italian fascism, 1919–22). But, taking a cue from Halliday’s cover jacket of his An Introduction to Functional Grammar, with its representation of a color circle, the paper takes the reader on an intellectual journey from Newton to Goethe—and the quality versus quantity debate—to Goethe and Propp, to end, back home, with Simmel and Weber.     

Breaking silence: Some fieldwork strategies in cloistered and non-cloistered communities

This paper deals with some of the linguistic difficulties I encountered during fieldwork conducted among cloistered and non-cloistered communities of Roman Catholic nuns. I illustrate here the necessity for taking both active and passive research modes—that is, moving from observer to participant and back—in order to counteract problems related to interaction styles, lack of language, meaning inversions, and silence as a mode of communication. These problems represent a continuum—a progression from least to most problematical in terms of the connection between researcher and researched. I argue that by adopting a stance appropriate to the groups being studied—that is, by using both active and passive research strategies with equal rigor—many linguistic barriers can not only be overcome, but usedas sources of important data.     

A Measure of Justice: The Rabinal Human Rights Movement in Post-War Guatemala

This article explores one region’s struggle for human rights and legal justice in post-war Guatemala. Rabinal—a target of state-directed genocide in the 1980s—suffered one of the highest fatality levels of the war. In the post-war era, Rabinal human rights activists have led the struggle to demand exhumations of mass graves, build memorials, and push for criminal investigations and trials. Despite some important local victories, few of those responsible for the violence have received punishment. But that does not mean this movement is a failure. Instead, this article highlights the cultural, expressive and inprocess benefits of mobilization. Rabinal activists have restored their sense of agency and confirmed their collective identity as fighters for legal justice. Meanwhile, this local mobilization has contributed to Guatemala’s uneven process of democratization.

A semiparametric analysis of the rising breadwinner role of women in the UK

This paper describes the changes in the relative position of women in the family—as measured by their share of household labour income—in the UK between 1994 and 2004. Using a methodology that borrows from DiNardo et al. (Econometrica 64:1001–44, 1996), it assesses the contribution of changes in men’s and women’s characteristics, the market returns to these characteristics and the role of assortative mating. The main factor which accounts for the increase in the relative female earnings share is the rising female labour force participation across the whole distribution of the female breadwinner index. Changes in assortative mating have a modest positive impact on the index at the mean, 25th and 75th percentiles of the distribution. This is explained by increasing positive assortative mating between 1994 and 2004.     

Do Yuppies Matter? Competing Explanations of Their Political Distinctiveness

"Yuppies"—young urban professionals—have often beenportrayed as an important new political force. Using data fromthe 1972–1985 cumulative General Social Survey data file,this article tests various explanations of the political distinctivenessof yuppies. The findings call into question the assumption thatyouth, urbanity, and professional status combine to form a distinctyuppie political culture above and beyond what would be expectedon the basis of an additive combination of these factors. Forthis and other reasons, the political importance of the yuppiephenomenon appears to have been overstated.     

The impact of unionization on labor’s share of income

This study examines the effect of unions on labor’s share of income. Because economic conditions within each industry are important in addressing this issue, this analysis incorporates a more disaggregated approach than has been previously used. Cross-sectional data for the 1950s — a period of more stable unionization — permit an examination of the long-run effect of wage increases on labor’s share. The empirical analysis suggests that higher labor prices have no long-run impact on labor’s share in manufacturing.     

The Costs of Speaking Truth to Power: How Professionalism Facilitates Credible Communication

This article examines how information or policy analysis canbe credibly communicated between the bureaucracy and Congress.To investigate this issue, I develop a signaling model whichshows that under certain circumstances—specifically whenprofessionalized bureaucrats can impose observable costs onthemselves that their politically inclined counterparts areunwilling to incur—credible communication between thebureaucracy and Congress is possible. A contribution of thisarticle is that it provides a theoretical underpinning for theimportance of professionalism and neutral competence in thebureaucracy as a means of promoting good governance.

A promiseunderlies public policy: if the actions we recommend are undertaken,good ... consequences rather than bad ... ones actually willcome about. (Wildavsky 1979, 35) The "political master" findshimself in the position of the "dilettante" who stands oppositethe "expert," facing the trained official who stands withinthe management of administration. (Weber, as quoted in Gerth and Mills 1958,232).

     

Knowledge Sharing is Power

Nowadays we can talk about a “Knowledge Revolution” because managing of information plays a crucial role in our society, both in public and private sphere. After a brief introduction—aimed at underling the main points we will debate on—the first part of the article focus on Knowledge Management techniques and knowledge-based government (k-Government) and the great potential in respect to the public sector transformation. The second part takes into account the social dimension of knowledge managing and the ethical relevance that social networking is progressively acquiring. After that, we have chosen to focus on global warming, indeed, the last session is a detailed analysis of a real case study related to China’s energy security. In the end, a wise use of Knowledge resources, trough the comparison with past experiences, turn out to be the powerful device that will let us provide some useful suggestion for a significant public action.

Medicaid physician fees and the quality of medical care of Medicaid patients in the USA

When enacted in 1965, the original Medicaid legislation sought to finance access to mainstream medical care for the poor. I use data on visits to office-based physicians from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey in four years—1989, 1993, 1998 and 2003—to test the extent to which this goal has been achieved. Specifically, I test whether this goal has been achieved more in states that pay higher fees to physicians who treat Medicaid patients compared to states that pay lower fees. By comparing the treatment of Medicaid patients to that of privately-insured patients and by using state fixed effects, I am able to estimate the effects of changes in the generosity of Medicaid physician payment within a state on changes in access to care for Medicaid patients, therefore separating Medicaid’s effect on access to health care from any correlation between the Medicaid fee and other attributes of the state in which a patient lives. Using this method, I examine the effect of Medicaid fees on whether or not an office-based physician accepts Medicaid patients, on the fraction of a physician’s practice that is accounted for by Medicaid, and on the length of visit times with physicians. Results imply that higher Medicaid fees increase the number of private physicians, especially in medical and surgical specialties, who see Medicaid patients. Higher fees also lead to visit times with physicians that are more comparable to visit times with private pay patients.

Philosophy on the Ground: An Appreciation of a “Spirit Master”

This essay is an appreciation of Melvin Pollner’s distinctive sociological approach to topics that are usually associated with philosophy. Pollner’s dissertation and early writings took up the theme of “mundane reason,” which he defined as an incorrigible presumption of a real world that is implicit in everyday conduct. Pollner addressed mundane reason, and the reciprocal idea of “reality disjunctures”—momentary divergences between perceptual accounts of the “same” mundane reality—by describing routine exchanges in traffic court and confrontations between doctors and patients in psychiatric settings. Pollner’s work anticipated current enthusiasms for developing novel “ontologies” in social and cultural studies of science, medicine, and other subjects. Although he did attempt to locate metaphysics in the midst of everyday experience, this essay suggests that his “philosophy on the ground” radically transformed philosophical ontology into an original and imaginative way to investigate constitutive activities.     

LITTLE WHITE LIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE MODELS CORRELATED RESPONSE ERRORS IN A PANEL STUDY OF VOTING

One interpretation for the common survey finding that the backgroundcharacteristics of vote overreporters resemble those of actualvoters is that misreporters usually vote. This hypothesis—thatmisreporters regularly voted in earlier elections—is testedwith data from the 1972–74–76 Michigan ElectionPanel. It receives no support: the 1972 and 1974 validated turnoutof the 1976 misreporters was very low. Moreover, misreportingwas a fairly stable respondent characteristic: misreportingabout an election in one interview was correlated with misreportingabout the remaining elections in each of the other two interviews.A comparison of regressions predicting turnout using the validatedreports versus the self-reports shows that the respondent errorscan distort conclusions about the correlates of voting. Forexample, controlling for three other variables, education wasrelated to self-reported voting but not to validated voting.Here, as well as in surveys of other socially desirable or undesirableissues, respondent self-reports may bias survey data in favorof commonsense models of the world.     

EXPERIMENTS WITH THE MIDDLE RESPONSE ALTERNATIVE IN SURVEY QUESTIONS

A series of experiments shows (1) that people are significantlymore likely to select the middle response alternative on anissue when it is explicitly offered to them as part of the questionthan when it is omitted; (2) that merely mentioning that thereis a middle alternative, in the preface to the question, makesit more likely that respondents will select it, even thoughit is not offered to them as an explicit choice; (3) that theorder in which the middle alternative is presented in the question—inthe middle or last position—can make a significant differencein the results, but that a "recency bias" does not occur invariably,or consistently; and (4) that people who select a middle responsealternative when it is offered would not necessarily answerthe question in the same way as other respondents if forcedto choose sides on the issue.     

Effective Adolescent Substance Abuse Treatment in Juvenile Justice Settings: Practice and Policy Recommendations

Juvenile justice—increasingly the service delivery point for adolescents with substance abuse and co-occurring problems lacking resources for other assistance—can be a model for improved and expanded, yet cost-effective, adolescent substance abuse treatment. An emergent standard of care challenges systemic inequities; a new service array facilitates dialogue among justice and treatment professionals, families, and the youth themselves. Such evidence-based practice—and the policy to implement it—have the power to transform disconnected laws, programs and professionals into an effective, efficient and successful community of responders, helping youth reclaim their lives while improving public health and public safety.

Charles Tilly as a Theorist of Nationalism

This paper considers Charles Tilly as an important but underappreciated theorist of nationalism. Tilly’s theory of nationalism emerged from the “bellicist” strand of his earlier work on state-formation and later incorporated a concern with performance, stories, and cultural modeling. Yet despite the turn to culture in Tilly’s later work, his theory of nationalism remained state-centered, materialist, and instrumentalist—a source of both its power and its limitations.     

Public Sociology or Partisan Sociology? The Curious Case of Whiteness Studies

This paper identifies the common themes in 245-plus refereed articles on whiteness studies that were published in academic journals after 1992 in an attempt to assess the implications of whiteness studies for the discipline of sociology. Of special interest is the relationship between whiteness studies and Michael Burawoy’s call for public sociology. I argue that the emerging field of whiteness studies identifies itself as a public sociology that is infused by the moral vision of critical sociology. Nevertheless, the field does not accept professional sociology as Burawoy defined it. The ontological, epistemological, and soteriological foundations of whiteness studies encourage the field to pander to one segment of the public—the marginalized—and condemn another segment of the public—“privileged whites,” thus rendering impossible a democratic dialogue on one of the most basic social issues of our time. Conflating Western epistemology with whiteness encourages a misreading of American social scientific work on race relations, thus opening the door to a so-called hermeneutics of suspicion. The result is not an innocuous “pop” sociology, but a partisan sociology, whose implications should caution sociologists against an uncritical embracing of public sociology.