From Market to State Networking: The Case of a Norwegian Voluntary Organization

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate and explain how a Norwegian voluntary, faith-based organization—the Gospel Centre of Norway (Pinsevennenes Evangeliesenter)—successfully substituted a “network” for “market” strategy vis-à-vis the public sector in order to obtain organizational legitimacy and financial security. During the first decade of its existence it obtained a unique position in its relationship with the state, as a separate item in the budget of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. The organization operates in the field of substance abuse rehabilitation, i.e., in a situation where instrumental effectiveness is difficult to assess. In such a situation ritual or other institutional criteria may replace effectiveness criteria and impression management is shown to be a successful strategy. Attention is paid to the relevant environmental conditions under which this organizational change of strategy was successful.

Disparate Juvenile Court Outcomes for Disabled Delinquent Youth: A Social Work Call to Action

Current service delivery for at-risk youth is through four separate systems: special education; mental health and substance abuse; juvenile justice; and child welfare. Many youth (and their families) are involved with more than one of these systems, making early disability identification and subsequent systems coordination paramount in leading to more successful juvenile court outcomes. This coordination is an important and prioritized public policy concern because a majority of youth (disproportionately minority) within juvenile justice populations has been identified with mental health disorders, special education disabilities, or maltreatment histories. This study of a unique sample of probation-supervised delinquent youths (n = 397) identifies these disabilities and their corresponding court supervision, detention, and incarceration outcomes for a 48-month period in Cuyahoga County, Ohio (greater Cleveland). Within this youth sample over 32% had a special education disability, over 39% had a mental health disorder, over 32% had a substance abuse disorder, and over 56% were victims of maltreatment. Even higher disability rates were found for those youth who were subsequently detained or incarcerated. Many of these youth had multiple disabilities (and subsequently poorer juvenile court outcomes) and were concurrently involved in more than one disability service system. Policy and client services implications are reviewed and discussed.

Fighting Corruption on the Transdnistrian Border: Lessons from Failed and New Successful Anti-Corruption Programmes

In 2007, both Moldovan and Ukrainian authorities took firm steps to reduce corruption along the Transdnistrian border. This paper—aimed mainly at anti-corruption practitioners and scholars in public administration—discusses the background and underlying principles guiding the anti-corruption work being adopted by both governments in order to facilitate discussion about optimal anti-corruption programme design. This paper presents a set of tools used during the planning phase of the anti-corruption programme—outlining the methodology used to assess the extent of corruption on the Transdnistrian border, the problems of legislative transplants, a “contract test” for defining corruption offenses, a method of risk analysis, and a model of optimal anti-corruption programme organizational design.

Victims of the Genocidal Mind: Societal Indicators and Individual Case Treatment Considerations

This paper uses the theoretical lens of object relations and takes the position that the paranoid-schizoid position and the related mechanism of projective identification—cornerstone pathology found in the phenomenon of fascism and totalitarianism—are not atypical, but rather live within the seemingly normal individual. Using Rwanda as a case example, the author illustrates the continuum of beliefs and actions that can result in genocide, and then describes some of the treatment considerations facing the clinician dealing with victims of genocide.

Hidden Consumer Loans: An Analysis of Implicit Interest Rates on Bounced Checks

Payday lending attracts attention for its high interest rates, but bounce protection loans are much more expensive. Bounce protection is a program where consumers overdraft—write checks in excess of the checking account balance—and the bank pays the check allowing the account balance to be negative. For this service/loan, banks charge the standard non-sufficient funds (NSF) fee. When the amount borrowed is low and the time outstanding is short, the effective interest rate paid on this loan can be quite high. Using a unique data set we were able to quantify how high the interest rate is. We found that the median implicit interest paid by consumers is over 4,000%.

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.

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.

Do Professional Sports Unions Fit the Standard Model of Traditional Unionism?

Current literature generally highlights the unique differences between sports and traditional unions. In particular, the contrast between the two types of unions’ approaches to the free market when it comes to wage determination—sports unions fought the “reserve clause” to obtain free market outcomes while traditional unions fought to circumvent the market for wages—has been widely cited. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the hitherto neglected comparisons between sports and traditional unions. With respect to both economic and non-economic issues, professional sports unions share far more in common with their traditional counterparts than the labor and sports economics literatures would lead one to believe.

Appropriating the city: space,theory, and bike messengers

Over the last 30 years, social theorists have increasingly emphasized the importance of space. However, in empirical research, the dialectical relationship between social interaction and the physical environment is still a largely neglected issue. Using the theory of structuration, I provide a concrete example of why and how space matters in the cultural analysis of an urban social world. I argue that bike messengers—individuals who deliver time-sensitive materials in downtown cores of major cities—cannot be understood outside an analysis of space. Specifically, I connect the cultural significance of messenger practices to the emplacement of those practices inside the urban environment.

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Religion and high-school graduation: a comparative analysis of patterns for white and black young women

This paper examines how two dimensions of childhood religion—affiliation and participation—are related to the probability of graduating from high school. Hypotheses derived from a human capital model are tested with data on non-Hispanic white and black women from the 1995 National Survey of Family Growth. The empirical findings are generally consistent with the hypotheses, revealing sizeable differentials in the likelihood of obtaining a high-school diploma by affiliation and participation. The results suggest that the convergence of Catholics to the mainline Protestant pattern for non-Hispanic whites found here, and supported by many previous studies, has not taken place in the black population. In other respects, the relationships between religion and high-school graduation are similar for the two racial groups.

Strategy and Sentiment: Mobilizing Heritage in Defense of Place

This paper examines the processes through which notions of heritage confer historic significance upon places—particularly young sites and structures. Using data drawn from observations of public meetings, media accounts, planning documents and interviews with key activists, I show how a forty-year-old equestrian showground in Santa Barbara, California was defended using claims of history and heritage common to historic preservation struggles. The case suggests that the conceptual fluidity of heritage allows actors to attach its powerful meanings to sites that are not particularly old. Conclusions also discuss the role of ritual in forging links between heritage and place, and the viability of heritage claims in varying locales and for groups of differing statuses.

Ethnic Identity Development Among Adolescents in Foster Care

Because past research indicates that stronger ethnic identity is related to better outcomes in areas such as academic achievement and mental health, it is important to provide youth in foster care with opportunities to develop their ethnic identity. Using data from in-person interviews with 188 youth aged 14–17 in foster care (88.7% response rate), this paper explores two areas related to ethnic identity: (1) youth perceptions about their own ethnic identity, and (2) attitudes about ethnic identity development specific to the experience of being in foster care. Results suggest that black youth and Hispanic/Latino youth have a stronger sense of ethnic identity than white youth. Most youth are interested in learning more about their ethnic background. Understanding how youth in foster care identify ethnically and understanding their beliefs related to ethnic identity may lead to the enhancement of services provided to youth across child welfare, education, and mental health systems.

A Calmly Disruptive Insider: The Case of an Institutionalized Advocacy Organization at Work

Through a case study of a leading service provider organization in Philadelphia, this paper explores the advocacy work of a publicly funded, professionalized, institutionalized nonprofit organization. In this article I relate how in the spring of 2002, staff at the organization responded to a recurring political issue: local business groups were again calling for official action against “aggressive panhandlers” in the downtown district. I use ethnographic and historical data to show that the organization’s institutionalization and ties to the public sector have allowed staff to develop resources and skills for being both contentious claim-makers and influential actors in the institutional political arena.

Reduced prizes and increased effort in contests

We study the general class of two-player public-policy contests and specify the asymmetry condition under which a more restrained government intervention that reduces the contestants’ prizes has the “perverse” effect of increasing their aggregate lobbying efforts.

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Failures in the Development of Potential Space in a Group

In this paper I shall use Winnicott’s concept of potential space to discuss the impasses, which arises when failures occur in the development of group potential space. Because clinical social work is a service usually provided by public bodies with limited economic resources, unstable social and political realities are driving many social workers to search for methods of responding to the needs of many without compromising the quality of the service provided. This requires the acquisition of increasing knowledge in the field of group therapy, in order to help our clients, who often suffer from disabling conditions, to become functioning community members. The paper reviews Winnicott’s concept of potential space and Ogden’s formulation of the psychopathology of potential space, and describes various manifestations of impasses in group work and group development. Three clinical examples describing therapeutic groups led by clinicians in various public frameworks, are used to illustrate three different forms of group collapse following a failure in the formation of potential space. A fourth type of collapse is also discussed.

Marriage migration: just another case of positive assortative matching?

It is a stylized fact that marriage formation involves positive assortative matching on education. We also find this in the case of immigrants, even when they tend to “import” their spouses and potentially trade off education for other favorable characteristics. For Pakistanis, we find positive compensating differentials in terms of high education to youth having adopted host country norms, when marrying a marriage migrant. This indicates that Pakistani marriage migrants pay a premium to be able to marry and live in Denmark. For Turks, individuals having source country norms pay a premium in order to import a partner, indicating that unspoiled traditional norms are traded off for education.

The Role of Affect Regulation in a Case of Attempted Maternal-Filicide Suicide: Commentary on an Act of Despair

A case of attempted maternal-filial suicide is discussed from the perspective of trauma, emotional regulation and defense mechanisms. Case details which include childhood sexual abuse, observed parental violence and emotional neglect allow for an illustration of the impact of childhood family experiences on adult intimacy and coping patterns. Domestic violence and the perception of protection are also explored. Emotional regulation in the experience of despair is approached from an object relations perspective. Based on this, implications for prevention and treatment are presented.

Black Gold and Blue Gold: The Importance of Energy in the New Power Policy of the Russian Federation

After having been forced to face a decade of economic and political difficulties, the Russian Federation is regaining a position of prestige on the international stage thanks to an astute utilization of its huge reserves of oil and natural gas. With the coming to power of Vladimir Putin—and in particular from 2004—the State has changed its policy in the energy field, aiming to come back to exert a strict control over the main companies and assets. One of the most significant consequences of this change has been the outbreak of disputes with Ukraine and Belarus about the selling price of gas, which caused fears among the entire Europe about the reliability of Russia as a supplier of that resource. Moreover, the quarrels forced many Western analysts to condemn the way Moscow is acting to try and become an “energy superpower”.

Top-Down Civic Projects Are Not Grassroots Associations: How The Differences Matter in Everyday Life

Research on civic associations blurs an important distinction between the unfunded, informal, ongoing associations that theorists like de Tocqueville described versus current participatory democracy projects that are funded by the state and large nongovernmental organizations, are open to all, and are usually short-term. Based on a long-term ethnography of youth programs in the United States, this paper shows that entities like these, which participants and researchers alike often called “volunteer” or “civic” groups, operate very differently from traditional civic groups. The ethnography systematically details prevalent tensions that actors face when they try to cultivate the civic spirit in these increasingly typical organizations.