Floating control: examining factors affecting the management of the civil society sector in authoritarian China

Civil society organisations can both assist and threaten autocracies’ monopoly of power. Pre-emptive measures have thus been strategically adopted by nondemocratic regimes to harness and manage the civil society sector. One tacit sanctioning strategy observable from a macro-institutional perspective is to mediate the institutional space for civil society organisations. This study explores how the Chinese authoritarian state manipulates such institutional space according to the changing internal and external environments, especially domestic crises and international movement waves. The study uses a 31 × 17 panel data-set about China’s social organisations covering 31 administrative units (excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) during the period of 1998 to 2014 to gain insight into the management pattern. The results show that economic performance, natural disaster, social instability and political instability are critical factors affecting regulatory dynamics.     

Model-based clustering of Gaussian copulas for mixed data

Clustering of mixed data is important yet challenging due to a shortage of conventional distributions for such data. In this article, we propose a mixture model of Gaussian copulas for clustering mixed data. Indeed copulas, and Gaussian copulas in particular, are powerful tools for easily modeling the distribution of multivariate variables. This model clusters data sets with continuous, integer, and ordinal variables (all having a cumulative distribution function) by considering the intra-component dependencies in a similar way to the Gaussian mixture. Indeed, each component of the Gaussian copula mixture produces a correlation coefficient for each pair of variables and its univariate margins follow standard distributions (Gaussian, Poisson, and ordered multinomial) depending on the nature of the variable (continuous, integer, or ordinal). As an interesting by-product, this model generalizes many well-known approaches and provides tools for visualization based on its parameters. The Bayesian inference is achieved with a Metropolis-within-Gibbs sampler. The numerical experiments, on simulated and real data, illustrate the benefits of the proposed model: flexible and meaningful parameterization combined with visualization features.     

How Poor Were Quebec and Canada During the 1840s?

This article uses the censuses of 1842 of Canada East (modern-day Quebec) and Canada West (modern-day Ontario) to help explain the historical differences in living standards between Canada and the United States. The wage and price data contained in the censuses suggest a gap of 42 percent between Canada East and Canada West. We argue that Canada East was substantially poorer than the rest of Canada and, as it represented such a large proportion of the total population of the initial four Canadian provinces (over 35 percent), that relative poverty weighed heavily in determining the extent of differences in living standards between Canada and the United States. These findings change the perspective on the roots of the differences between the two countries. We propose that any research agenda trying to explain those differences should focus heavily on Quebec.     

American Indian Poverty in the Contemporary United States

Little sociological attention over the last two decades has focused on the deprivation experienced by indigenous people. Fusing insights from American Indian history and the race and labor market inequality literatures, we address this gap in this article through a historically informed labor market analysis of poverty—an analysis that considers the pervasiveness of contemporary Native poverty, its potential basis in labor market opportunities, and the extent to which it has been patterned by two major demographic and economic shifts: (1) the rapid urbanization of the American Indian population and (2) the proliferation of tribally owned casinos. Findings reveal, most notably, the incredibly rigid and durable character of poverty for this population, historically and currently and across geographic space, and with little overall impact of local labor market opportunity. The presence of tribal casinos reduces such poverty, but only to a small degree and not nearly enough to compensate for sizable American Indian and white poverty differentials. Group history is key, we conclude, to shaping how space, labor markets, and economic development reduce or buttress relations of inequality.     

The family exclusion order as a harm-minimisation measure for casino gambling: the case of Singapore

Singapore is one of the first jurisdictions in the world that has implemented a harm minimization model based on third party exclusion known as the Family Exclusion Order (FEO). Unlike other forms of third party exclusion practiced in other countries, family members in Singapore are able to apply for FEOs to prevent a gambler from entering the casinos, if the family has experienced harm caused by his/her gambling. In this study, 105 applicants for the FEO were sampled from all successful FEOs granted within a five-year period. Using a qualitative approach, this study attempts to illuminate the intricate issues experienced by family members that provided the impetus for them to apply for the FEO. While the extant literature posits self-exclusion as a superior tool of restraint as it involves the gambler’s personal motivation to curb gambling, this paper reports initial evidence of benefits resulting from family-imposed restraints from the perspective of family members. In particular, positive ratings of the FEO stemmed from a sense of relief experienced by mother and wife applicants. Possible reasons behind these positive outcomes are explicated using intrinsic motivation theory, with sensitivity to gender relations within the family.     

How Parents Communicate Right and Wrong: A Study of Memorable Moral Messages Recalled by Emerging Adults

The family communication process through which emerging adults form their moral outlook is examined through the lenses of Negotiated Morality Theory and Vygotskian Developmental Theory. Analyses were performed on the context, content, and type of 470 memorable messages reported by 303 emerging adults. Results indicated that messages were spontaneously delivered rather than planned, communicated at home, and received at around 16 years of age. Messages most often concerned relational ethics, self-honoring, honesty/fraudulence, careless/harmful acts, and personal qualities. Eleven distinct forms of communication were used by parents, including forecasting the future, empathy-enhancing, virtue-prioritizing, commanding, and identity-making. As expected, the nature of the messages varied by the gender of the parent and the age of the child at the time of the message. Parental messages appear to be influential as young adults negotiate cultural, religious, and peer sources of morality. Implications for parents and moral educators are explored.     

Screening designs for model discrimination

We introduce new criteria for model discrimination and use these and existing criteria to evaluate standard orthogonal designs. We show that the capability of orthogonal designs for model discrimination is surprisingly varied. In fact, for specified sample sizes, number of factors, and model spaces, many orthogonal designs are not model discriminating by the definition given in this paper, while others in the same class of orthogonal designs are. We also use these criteria to construct optimal two-level model-discriminating designs for screening experiments. The efficacy of these designs is studied, both in terms of estimation efficiency and discrimination success. Simulation studies indicate that the constructed designs result in substantively higher likelihoods of identifying the correct model.     

Competencies and problem behaviors of children in family foster care: variations by kinship placement status and race

Formal kinship foster care is an increasingly common form of out-of-home placement, and several important distinctions between kinship care and non-relative foster care have been identified. The present study evaluated the behavior of kinship foster children in comparison to non-relative foster children and children in the general population. A geographically and ethnically diverse sample of foster children (N=240) was assessed for competence and problem behaviors using the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL: Achenbach, 1991). Kinship foster children closely resembled children in the general population but differed significantly from their counterparts in non-relative foster care, who consistently scored lower on competence and higher on problem behaviors. Substantial proportions of non-relative foster children were in the clinical range on most CBCL measures, but kinship foster children were no more likely than children from the general population to score above clinical cut-offs. Differences between kinship and non-kinship foster children became less dramatic after accounting for child race and gender, which were both associated with kinship status. Child race had a strong main effect for almost all types of problem behaviors, with children of color showing significantly less problematic behavior. Discussion of these results centers on potential explanations for the observed variations in child behavior by kinship status and race.     

Access to Childcare Services: The Role of Demand and Supply-Side Policies

Different demand-side or supply-side instruments can be used in order to encourage the use of formal childcare. With the budgetary constraints of the last two decades, some countries have changed their childcare policy leading to the implementation of demand-side rather than supply-side instruments. The introduction of demand-side subsidies to encourage the use of formal childcare services was a major change in Belgium since, until 1988, subsidies were directly granted to childcare services providers in order to reduce their running costs. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of both demand-side and supply side subsidies on the use of formal childcare by low-income families. From this perspective, we analyzed, on the one hand, the effect of the tax deduction instrument implemented in Belgium and, on the other hand, the effect of an increase in the provision of childcare places on the use of formal childcare services. We found that the choice of policy instruments is not neutral in terms of access to formal childcare for families belonging to different income groups. Indeed, while a higher supply of childcare places increases the probability of access for low-income families, the tax deduction can have a mixed outcome as far as access to childcare is concerned.     

Correction to: The 1000 Most Cited Papers on Visible Nonverbal Behavior: A Bibliometric Analysis

Journal of Nonverbal Behavior - Unfortunately, the original version of the article contained incorrect DOI listed in the abstract section.