A Cross‐Atlantic Dialogue: The Progress of Research and Theory in the Study of International Migration

The articles included in this issue were originally presented at a conference on Conceptual and Methodological Developments in the Study of International Migration held at Princeton University in May 2003. The conference was jointly sponsored by the Committee on International Migration of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), the Center for Migration and Development (CMD) at Princeton, and this journal. Its purpose was to review recent innovations in this field, both in theory and empirical research, across both sides of the Atlantic. The conference was deliberately organized as a sequel to a similar event convened by the SSRC on Sanibel Island in January 1996 in order to assess the state of international migration studies within the United States from an inter‐disciplinary perspective. A selection of articles from that conference was published as a special issue of International Migration Review (Vol. 31, No. 4, Winter), and the full set of articles was published as the Handbook of International Migration: The American Experience (Hirschman, Kasinitz and DeWind, 1999).     

Status Inconsistency and Lower-Class Leftist Radicalism*

The hypothesis of status inconsistency predicts greater leftism as an interaction effect of discrepant status dimensions. Inconsistent individuals are objectively low in some dimensions and subjectively insecure in those where they hold a high position. Ensuing anxiety and frustration are likely to be translated into political opposition to the status quo. Though theoretically plausible, empirical investigations of the hypothesis report mixed results. Employing data collected among a sample of 382 lower-class Chilean slum dwellers, a new test of the hypothesis is conducted. Dummy-variable regressions are employed to isolate status additive effects on leftism from inconsistency interaction effects. Neither education-occupation nor education-income discrepancies are found to produce significant changes in the dependent variable. Identical results are obtained when age is controlled for. Limitations of these findings and their theoretical implications, as they add to a growing body of research, are discussed.     

Syllabus review: procedures for strengthening racial,ethnic, and gender-related curriculum content

The issue of how one school of social work in the United States approached the systematic incorporation of racial/ethnic and gender-related content in its curriculum is the subject of this paper. American accreditation standards on curriculum content of the above issues are discussed, as are the impact of this process on the school's curriculum as well as increased faculty awareness.     

VOLATILITY,LABOR MARKET FLEXIBILITY,AND THE PATTERN OF COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE

This paper studies the link between volatility, labor market flexibility, and international trade. International differences in labor market regulations affect how firms can adjust to idiosyncratic shocks. These institutional differences interact with sector specific differences in volatility (the variance of the firm‐specific shocks in a sector) to generate a new source of comparative advantage. Other things equal, countries with more flexible labor markets specialize in sectors with higher volatility. Empirical evidence for a large sample of countries strongly supports this theory: the exports of countries with more flexible labor markets are biased towards high‐volatility sectors. We show how differences in labor market institutions can be parsimoniously integrated into the workhorse model of Ricardian comparative advantage of Dornbusch, Fischer, and Samuelson (1977, American Economic Review, 67, 823–839). We also show how our model can be extended to multiple factors of production.     

CEO satisfaction and intended strategic changes: The moderating role of performance cues

How do CEOs react to attainment discrepancies in their organizations' performance? Scholars have generally argued that (only) when performance falls below a certain aspiration level do CEOs intend to change the organization's strategy. However, empirical evidence on this issue is ambiguous and inconclusive. We address this puzzle directly by studying how CEOs' cognitive interpretations of performance (their satisfaction with the firm's performance) affect the magnitude of intended strategic changes, and we explore the moderating effect of the context (performance compared to the industry) on this relationship. Using a sample of medium-sized organizations, we find that CEOs' satisfaction with performance is negatively related to intended strategic changes, as expected, but only in contexts of poor performance compared to the industry. The negative relationship becomes less pronounced when performance compared to the industry reaches a certain threshold and even appears to reverse when the latter is extremely high. Moreover, exploratory post hoc analyses tentatively suggest the existence of two alternative intended change trajectories: contractive as a reaction to dissatisfaction and poor performance, and expansive as a response to satisfaction and high performance. These findings help to contextualize the effects of attainment discrepancies in light of conventional performance feedback theory and alternative theoretical perspectives.     

CYCLICAL TAX ENFORCEMENT

We wonder whether tax enforcement varies along the economic cycle and aim at answering that question from a positive perspective by means of survey data for the Spanish case (1994–2015). According to a fiscal capacity argument, tax enforcement might be stronger in times of crisis (counter-cyclical), but if the tax administration prioritizes taxpayers' welfare over public revenue, enforcement might be slacker (procyclical). We find tax enforcement is not immune to the state of the economy. In particular, it presents a prevailing counter-cyclical trend, but in presence of a severe economic crisis it turns out to be procyclical. (JEL D78, H12, H26, H83)     

A Hundred Years from Weber: Science as Vocation and the Resurgence of National Populism1

It has been 100 years since the death of Max Weber and 102 years since the publication of his classic essay “Science as a Vocation.” I review here several of the main ideas advanced in the essay. I then seek to apply a Weberian perspective to the analysis of the rise of national populism by considering first the historical-structural origins of the present situation and second the meaning that it has for supporters of this movement. The evolution of world capitalism has had consequences that bear directly on the situation of the middle and working-classes in the advanced countries and in their subsequent political reactions. Applying interpretive perspectives and using recent sociological field studies of the populist grass roots, I seek to understand the meaning that the situation has for supporters of the movement and its political implications. This understanding has direct consequences for current attempts to reverse a movement that has changed the course of recent history in the United States and elsewhere in the developed world.     

Validity evidence of the Portuguese adaptation of the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory / Evidencias de validez de la adaptación portuguesa de la Escala de Sexismo Ambivalente

Abstract

Modern forms of sexism have promoted the development of new scales and evaluation tools. The Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI) (Glick & Fiske, 1996) aims to assess sexism along two dimensions: hostile sexism and benevolent sexism. The aim of this study is to present evidence of the validity of the factor structure of the Portuguese version of the ASI by analysing its structure and its relationships with neosexism and social dominance. The sample consisted of 446 Portuguese participants (68.6% female) between 17 and 77 years old. Results confirmed the two-factor structure; however, the best fit was registered with a four-factor structure: one hostile factor and three benevolent factors. Both hostile and benevolent sexism were correlated with neosexism and social dominance orientation. Future research should explore the dimensionality of the scale based on a four-dimension structure and its relationship to others sexism issues.     

Urban Governance Reform Index: An Alignment of Traditional Reform and Public Choice Propositions

The persistent debate on the consolidation versus fragmentation model of government is a result of a dualist conceptualization of governance reform by two competing theories—public choice and traditional reform. Both argue for reform, but their definitions of reform are diametrically opposed and there is no appropriate instrument to measure government reform. We propose an alignment of the traditional reform and public choice traditions and an instrument to measure governance reform by an index comprised of 1) form of government, 2) home-rule status, 3) methods of election, 4) number of elected officials, and 5) number of jurisdictions. The alignment of the two theoretical camps is supported by the selection of the five reform components and their particular operationalizations.