Development and pollution in the Middle East and North Africa: Democracy matters

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries are among the world’s top emitters of CO₂ and SO₂ in per capita terms. The objective of this paper is to analyze whether investing in the democratic development of these countries is an effective tool to make the economic development in this region more environmentally compatible. Using panel data on the income-emission-democracy nexus in 17 MENA countries from 1980 to 2005, we find evidence that improvements in the democratic development of the MENA countries help to mitigate environmental problems. Our results clearly show that the quality of democratic institutions has a greater influence on local environmental problems than on global environmental issues in the MENA region.     

The Social Development Summit and the developing countries

This article discusses some concerns of the 1996 UN Summit on Social Development. Conference organizers identified the three key conference issues as poverty alleviation, social integration of the marginalized and disadvantaged, and expansion of productive employment. The goal of a "society for all" means dealing with the increasing differences between rich and poor countries, the survival of weaker economies in a competitive market system, wide variations in consumption patterns between countries, attainment of political stability while respecting ethnic identity, the rise in social problems among countries with a high human development index, and increasing joblessness. The Human Development Report for 1994 emphasizes human security. Social development is not the equivalent of human resource development nor a side issue of economic growth. The integration of ethnic groups poses social and political problems. There remains a question about what political system and culture would be best for social integration. Developed countries define poverty as the inability of people and government to provide resources and necessary services for people's productive activity. Poverty in developing countries is blamed on colonialism. Globally, developed countries control 71% of world trade. Sharing resources to meet basic needs throughout the world is not an operational ideal. The highest 20% of income earners receive 83% of the world income. The culture of poverty is the strategy used by the poor to survive. Welfare is not an end in itself but does enable the poor to improve their conditions. Development that focuses on productive employment is uncertain. Developed and developing countries do not share similar perceptions of human rights. There is a question as to who should set the priorities for social development. Sustainable social development is related to preservation of natural resources, control of population growth, and promotion of social security.     

Developments in and prospects for external debt position and burden of developing countries: The case of Korea

The delay of strong economic recovery by industrialized nations, slowed world export growth, and higher interest rates have worsened the financial situation of a number of developing countries which have relied on external borrowings to sustain current account deficits and protect economic development. Recently, well-publicized concerns over the ability to these countries to repay their considerable debt burden have been raised. To shed light on these concerns, the paper focuses on Korea—one of the heavier debt-holding countries. It describes the process through which Korea has acquired its external debt over the past decade, assesses the trends in its debt burden, and presents prospects for the period 1982–1986. Using the Korean experience, the paper shows that the most common indicators used for evaluating foreign debt burden, such as the long-term service ratio, need to be supplemented by other measurements. In a world economy characterized by short-term debts with variable interest rates, the paper suggests that an important tool in analyzing the external debt burden should be the short-term debt burden.     

A Global Review of New Social Risks and Responses for Children and their Families

Given global demographic and social trends, the need for new policy and program responses is essential. This article identifies and describes new and traditional social risks affecting children and their families in both industrialized and developing countries by region. Traditional risks continue in the developing as well as the industrialized countries but the extent and scale are very different and the problems are far more severe in developing countries. In addition, new risks are now evident and new policy responses are emerging. Attention to the new risks is increasing, with growing investment in services and policies facilitating the reconciliation of work and family life and non-traditional families. The citizens of many developing countries experience new risks as well, but their capacity to confront and address these risks is also more limited.     

National Identity Crisis in Developing Countries in the Global Age and Its Causes

After the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, great changes have occurred in the world scenario, with ethnic clashes and national conflicts becoming all the more salient, making national identity a hot topic in reality and the academia. To address the issue of national identity in the age of globalization, a deep-going theoretical discussion of the logic behind it is necessary, a discussion that covers the nature of both ethno-cultural identity and national identity, the superiority of national identity to ethno-cultural identity and the logic behind national identity crisis. In terms of the need for social identity, globalization, while changing the power structure of the world, weakens the autonomy of developing countries, especially that of those which are still in the process of modernization and are confronted with risks inherent in social transformation and where a resultant structural imbalance undermines the state’s integrity and control, making national identity less appealing to ethnic groups. As a result, regional ethnic identity comes to the fore, leading to national identity crises in developing countries.     

SPECIAL ISSUE： NATIONAL IDENTITY IN THE COURSE OF GLOBALIZATION National Identity Crisis in Developing Countries in the Global Age and Its Causes

20世纪90年代以后,随着冷战的结束,世界图景发生了巨大变化,全球性族裔冲突和民族矛盾更加凸显,这使得国家认同成为现实和学术关注的重点M题。在全球化时代,要较好地处理国家认同问题,需要在基础理论层面对国家认同发生的逻辑,即民族认同的性质、国家认同的性质、陶家认同对地方民族认同以及国家认同危机发生的逻辑等进行彻底的分析。从社会认同需求的角度分析,全球化对现代世界权力结构的改变削弱了发展中国家的自主性,特别是发展中国家的现代化尚未完成,面临着社会转型的风险,呈现出结构性失衡,从而降低了国家整合治理能力,使得国家认问对民族成员的意义进一步被削弱,并引起了地方民族认同的兴起,进而导致了发展中因家的国家认同危机的发生。     

The Transnational Organization of Production and Environmental Degradation: A Cross‐National Study of the Effects of Foreign Capital Penetration on Water Pollution Intensity, 1980–1995*

Objective. This study attempts to increase our understanding of the environmental impacts of the transnational organization of production in the context of foreign capital penetration. Methods. With a sample of 53 countries, panel analyses using OLS and robust regression are conducted to assess the effects of foreign direct investment in the manufacturing sector on growth in organic water pollution intensity, 1980–1995. Slope‐dummy interaction variables are used to compare the effects in developed countries and less‐developed countries. The tested models include a variety of relevant controls, such as domestic investment, state environmentalism, size of the manufacturing sector, and level of economic development. Results. Findings for the analyses indicate that foreign direct investment in manufacturing positively affects growth in organic water pollution intensity in less‐developed countries, while the effect in developed countries is nonsignificant. Conclusions. This research illustrates the need for social scientists to investigate the environmental impacts of both the transnational organization of production and the overall scale of production in different sectors.     

Understanding Leaders of Repressive Social Movements

Researchers studying right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) have discussed the need to distinguish authoritarian followers from leaders. Altemeyer's (2003) studies raise several issues about political leadership in the real world. First, are most leaders of authoritarian social movements high on both RWA and social dominance (SDO)? Second, is it possible to be an authoritarian leader of a repressive social movement without being high on SDO? Third, it would be useful to develop techniques to assess SDO at a distance. Fourth, what roles do the psychological motives of need for power, need for affiliation and intimacy, and need for responsibility play in motivating leadership behavior in high SDO leaders? Finally, does social dominance exist in countries with non–Western value systems? Understanding the psychology of leaders of repressive social movements may help us develop ways to limit access to the power they crave and to mitigate the damage that they do.     

Does social media promote democracy? Some empirical evidence

This study explores the relationship between social media and democracy in a cross-section of over 125 countries around the world. We find the evidence of a strong, positive correlation between Facebook penetration (a proxy for social media) and democracy. We further show that the correlation between social media and democracy is stronger for low-income countries than high-income countries. Our lowest point estimates indicate that a one-standard deviation (about 18 percentage point) increase in Facebook penetration is associated with an improvement in the democracy index by about 8-point (on a scale of 0–100) for the world sample and over 11 points for the sample of low-income countries.     

Regulating product markets: a growing challenge for open economies – with special references to agro-food product markets

In the present phase of internationalisation, processes of social construction of product markets are under stress. On one hand, the internationalisation of production processes gives more room for manoeuvre to the producers. On the other hand, the development of scientific technologies, embedded with new risks and uncertainties, makes it difficult to control the quality of products and production processes. The drive for competitiveness in a world where only free trade arguments seem to be heard limits the willingness of individual countries to take action. International institutions have been unable to launch the international co-ordination that could have helped countries to get out of this deadlock, though they need to fight climate change and pollution as well as the pressing new environmental hazards, which are illustrated with the case of the agro-food product markets in Europe. They should foster international processes of social construction of product markets to learn how to strike a better balance between free trade and safe trade principles before it is too late.     

Ageing and the changing role of the family and the community: An African perspective

Global ageing, the major social issue of the twenty-first century, will have greater social repercussions for developing countries. The fastest increase of older persons in terms of ratio in relation to younger people is happening in developing countries, and in Africa segregation of older people in rural areas will become manifest. While beneficial changes for women have accompanied modernization in many of the developing countries, the situation of older women appears to be particularly precarious. Social changes brought about by modernization are also profoundly affecting the traditional systems of care for older people. Even though most older people requiring care are still looked after within the informal structures of the family, this can no longer be taken for granted as we move into the new century. This paper critically reviews social protection systems and the resource constraints which characterize developing countries and warns against blind development of social security systems based on those of the industrialized countries. The paper argues for the design of intergenerational support back into mainstream social relations so that older persons are not marginalized and put at risk through social protection programmes which reinforce physical vulnerability stereotypes and stress welfare needs over and above older people's social and economic contributions to society     

The Psychology of Environmentally Sustainable Behavior: Fitting Together Pieces of the Puzzle

This paper considers the main features of four general psychological approaches to the analysis of environmentally sustainable behavior (rational–economic, social dilemmas, attitude–behavior models, and applied behavioral analysis), and focuses on the problems inherent in applying each approach to this issue. It also details the utility of a holistic Social–Ecological Framework that I believe is useful for analyzing environmentally sustainable behavior. This approach draws on concepts from ecological psychology such as Gibson's (1979) notion of "affordances," and shows how such a method can account for and help us understand the limitations of traditional psychological approaches to environmentally sustainable behavior, and provides a general guiding framework for the formulation of environmental policy decisions and intervention programs.     

The transfer of arms and the diffusion of democracy: do arms promote or undermine the “third wave”?

The post–Cold War world has witnessed a proliferation of countries governed by democratic rule. Consequently, optimism has arisen about the prospects for the spread of freedom along with democratic peace and prosperity. Along these lines, many democratic countries have made the active promotion of democracy an explicit goal and a condition for third world countries’ assistance. However, such intentions may be threatened by the ever-present arms trade. Not only do arms transfers play a key role in the foreign policies of many democratic countries, but many developing countries continue to purchase arms from abroad at a steady rate. From the perspective of the developing recipients, this study seeks to empirically assess the impact of the arms trade on democratization. To this end, this paper utilizes an exploratory data technique, locally weighted scatterplot smoother (LOWESS) to examine data for developing countries between 1982 and 1992. By exploring graphically the patterns and distributions revealed by these indicators, the implications of the international arms trade for the spread of democracy are assessed.     

科学发展观与中国社会发展模式

科学发展观是转型期中国所必需的一种新的执政理念,是全求面临的共同课题。科学发展观的核心内容是以人为本。贯彻以人为本,需要公民素质的整体提高、社会的整体发展和新的文化理念作引导。国家最根本的任务是要培育公民性社会。唯此,才能在分享改革开放三十年成就的同时,逐步解决发展中出现的新问题。和发达国家进入现代化的进程相比。我国是后发式、滞后型、外力推动型的发展模式。政府如何担当自己的责任,正确处理好人与自然、人与社会、人与人的关系,合理调整经济结构,建设政治民主与法治社会,发展政治文化等,都直接影响着中国特色社会主义道路的进程。     

Economic support in old age: The role of social insurance in developing countries

The origins of social insurance in industrialized and developing countries are discussed. In recent years social insurance programmes in many developing countries have come under sharp attack. Major issues have been raised with regard to how these programmes are operating, especially with regard to problems of inadequate coverage, adequacy and equity, shortfalls in financing, and administrative mismanagement. In addition to discussing these problem areas, the article reviews the major social insurance options: the family, social assistance, employer sponsored pensions, and savings plans encouraged or operated by governments.     

The welfare state in liquidation?

This paper is about the most recent reforms of cash benefit systems and the sociopolitical debate in eight European countries. The welfare state and the social security system rank high on the political agenda. After many years of economic crisis, with increasingly widespread unemployment and changed family patterns, the welfare system that developed in most western European countries since the end of the Second World War is the focus of attention. In a world of increasing international trade, with competition from countries — in eastern Europe and Asia as well as the United States — which have not developed such comprehensive systems of social security, one of the main issues in the debate is whether western Europe can afford to maintain welfare at the existing level, or whether it is necessary to make fundamental changes. But the discussion also centres on what can be called the welfare state's own internal problems.     

PRIMARY PREVENTION OF ADOLESCENT PREGNANCY

The scope and problems of adolescent pregnancy are far reaching. Social workers need strategies to help teenagers avoid early, unwanted pregnancy. This paper gives a promising approach to such primary prevention. Delivered in small groups, the cognitive-behavioral prevention strategy taps theory and empirical data on adolescent sexuality, contraception, and social work group methods. Prevention training incorporates facts about human reproduction and birth control, problem solving, decision making, and interpersonal skills. Results from two field studies describe short-term and longitudinal benefits of the prevention strategy. The paper discusses its benefits and how other social workers can advance cognitive-behavioral prevention.     

对我国土地行政管理体制的思考

目前中国正处在经济高速发展、城市化和工业化突飞猛进的时期，非农用地的需求不可避免将进一步增长。不仅国家粮食安全、生态安全、保证建设用地需求与耕地有关，其他一系列社会问题也在耕地转移的过程中反映出来。面对诸如此类的问题．土地行政管理如不能统筹各种关系，就会陷入顾此失彼的境地，一切症结也正在于此。这里主要谈一下“统筹城乡协调发展”和“统筹一要吃饭，二要建设”两个关键问题。     

Applying Psychology to Help Save the World: Reflections on a Career in Psychology

This reflective personal account traces phases of the author's career where he saw psychology as relevant to major world problems. Chronologically, these problems included issues of international conflict, waste of energy and natural resources, human behaviors that caused environmental destruction, and the paramount threat of global climate change. Psychologists can make valuable contributions to describing, evaluating, and resolving these problems, and their vital importance should motivate the research and teaching of many psychologists. Our generation's success in achieving sustainable patterns of living on the Earth will determine whether the Earth will retain a livable environment for future generations. Brief suggestions are offered for approaches that may lead to more effective research and advocacy on crucial social issues.     

Preparing Social Work Students for Working with Disaster Survivors

This paper is an overview of disaster social work and preparing social work students for working with disaster survivors. Disaster has common immediate, and medium‐ and long‐term problems and needs. Experiences from various countries throughout the world suggest a range of helping roles and tasks that social work is suited for. A social work professional has particular expertise in understanding and addressing the immediate, and medium‐ and longer term effects of loss on individuals, families, and communities affected by a disaster. In preparing social work students for working with disaster survivors, social work programs do not introduce enough subject matter or course work about disasters. Practice training, field work, collaboration work, and community service in disaster relief are important academic environments for social work students when learning and practising in disaster settings.