Voting power: an information theory approach

In recent years, there has been increasing awareness of the importance of formal measures of voting power and of the relevance of such measures to real life political issues. Nevertheless, existing measures have been criticized, especially because of their dependence on the unrealistic assumption that different coalitions have equal probabilities. In this paper we show that the classical problem of measuring voting power can be naturally embedded in information theory. This perspective on voting power allows us to extend measures of voting power to cases in which there are dependencies among voters. In doing so, we distinguish between two different notions of a given voter’s power—‘control’ and ‘informativeness’—corresponding, respectively, to the average uncertainty regarding the outcome of a vote that remains when all others have voted and the average uncertainty that is eliminated when only the given voter has voted. This distinction settles a number of well-known paradoxes and enables the study of voting power on the basis of actual political behavior at all levels.     

Isolation as a Form of Marital Violence: The South Asian Immigrant Experience

Isolation is an important factor in marital abuse among South Asian immigrant families. It lends itself to the invisibility immigrant women experience based on their ethno-gender status in the United States. Drawn from unstructured interviews with abused South Asian immigrant women, three different levels of isolation are explained. The first level involves the quality of a woman's relationship with her spouse; the second is related to the frequency and quality of social interaction with friends, relatives, and coworkers; and the third is explained in terms of the level of access to and participation in the ethnic community and other formal institutions.     

Chance Constrained Programming Approach to Empirical Analyses of Mutual Fund Investment Strategies*

Chance constrained programming concepts are used to formalize risk and return relations which are then modeled for use in an empirical study of mutual fund behavior during the period 1984 through 1988. The publicly announced strategies of individual funds are used to form ex ante risk classifications which are employed in examining ex post performance. Negative relations between risk and return held in every year of the period studied. The bearing of these negative risk-return findings for the Bowman paradox, as studied in the strategic management literature, are thus extended from the industrial firms studied by Bowman (and others) and shown to be present even in these investment oriented mutual funds in each of the years of the great bull market from 1984 through 1988. Finally, our use of chance constrained programming enables us to separate risk from return behavior and evaluate their relative strengths as sources of these negative relations, which are found to be more in the returns than the risks.     

"消经"日记《正大光明》与普洱马阿洪

普洱马阿洪,名寿清,中国伊斯兰教陕西学派云南籍著名阿洪。在清朝同治年间参加陕西回民起义期间,用“消经”撰写了一本“随军日记”———《正大光明》,简要记录和回忆了那时回民起义的起因、经过、“受抚”谈判的情况、“善后”的安置、义军的活动、开支账目、作者的感想、回民被左宗棠大肆屠杀以及义军悲壮逃难的历史等。本文以普洱马阿洪一生的历史和陕甘回民起义为轴线,以历史事实为基础,根据民间调查、口头传述和文本资料,对普洱马阿洪的生平、著述略作介绍,以期引起更多读者和研究者的关注。     

The Challenges Facing Children Reunified With Their Families From an Orphanage in Ghana

This qualitative case study explores the challenges facing children reunified with their families from an orphanage in Ghana. Eight children, their biological families, and two social workers participated in semi‐structured interviews and shared their experiences and views. The study found that challenges facing the children include educational issues, poor living conditions and social isolation within their communities. The factors causing the challenges included the financial difficulties facing caregivers due to the lack of support, limited preparation for the children and their families for the reunification and the children's limited participation in the decisions concerning such reunification.     

Culture Shock Revisited: The Social and Cultural Contingencies to Class Marginality

Existing explanations of class marginality predict similar social experiences for all lower‐income undergraduates. This article extends this literature by presenting data highlighting the cultural and social contingencies that account for differences in experiences of class marginality. The degree of cultural and social dissimilarity between one's life before and during college helps explain variation in experiences. I contrast the experiences of two groups of lower‐income, black undergraduates—the Doubly Disadvantaged and Privileged Poor. Although from comparable disadvantaged households and neighborhoods, they travel along divergent paths to college. Unlike the Doubly Disadvantaged, whose precollege experiences are localized, the Privileged Poor cross social boundaries for school. In college, the Doubly Disadvantaged report negative interactions with peers and professors and adopt isolationist strategies, while the Privileged Poor generally report positive interactions and adopt integrationist strategies. In addition to extending present conceptualizations of class marginality, this study advances our understanding of how and when class and culture matter in stratification processes in college.     

Afghan-Australians: Diasporic Tensions,Homeland Transformations and the “2014 Syndrome”

With the withdrawal of NATO-led troops from Afghanistan pending in 2014, Afghanistan and its sizeable diaspora are facing an ambiguous new beginning. As in Afghanistan itself, the 35,000-strong Afghan community in Australia is negotiating what has been labelled the “2014 Syndrome”—a chronic state of anxiety about Afghanistan's future. Drawing on data from a series of dialogues and consultations held with Afghan-Australians of different ethnicities in Melbourne in 2012 and 2013, this article contextualizes and critically examines the tensions and shared concerns of the Afghan-Australian community in light of the impending withdrawal. Our study shows that the 2014 Syndrome has exacerbated existing tensions over “Afghan” identity in Australia, which has become intertwined with tensions over the status of Hazara asylum seekers and refugees arriving in Australia. Given the widely held belief amongst Afghan-Australians that the 2014 withdrawal will prompt increased flows of asylum seekers from Afghanistan to Australia, this study argues that tensions around identity frame quite different hopes for the future of Afghanistan and the future of the Afghan-Australian community after 2014.     

The Impact of Organizational Culture on Time‐Based Manufacturing and Performance

Firms are utilizing an array of manufacturing practices in their quest for survival and success in the marketplace. The implementation of those practices has not always resulted in success stories as the focus had been mostly on technical issues, with little concern for “soft issues.” For example, the enabling role of organizational culture has often been ignored. Using Schein's conceptualization of culture as underlying assumptions, espoused values, and artifacts, we examine a framework that relates culture and manufacturing practices to performance. The underlying assumption of customer orientation is posited to affect espoused values such as beliefs on investing in facilities and equipment to leverage intellectual work and to promote creativity, beliefs on working with others, beliefs on making decisions that are global, beliefs on management control, and beliefs on integrating with suppliers. The espoused values are hypothesized to affect visible attributes of culture (behaviors) such as time‐based manufacturing practices, which firms are employing for competitive advantage. A sample of 224 firms is used for developing research instruments and testing the hypothesized relationships advanced. Results indicate that high levels of customer orientation lead to a set of managerial beliefs that are collaborative and integrative. In turn, certain espoused values support a high level of time‐based manufacturing practice, which leads to high performance.     

Humor,Aging, and Life Review: Survival Through the Use of Humor

Humor has been shown to assist in the process of aging, particularly in improving health, reducing stress, and improving psychological well-being. This article addresses the tasks of aging, or what Erickson (1963) terms, “the end stage of life,” through the lens of humor. These issues include: identity, self-esteem, heritage and culture, mortality, loss, and self-worth.