民间立法何以被称为法律

民间立法在社会上广泛存在,它不仅仅是些默示规则,而且在某种意义上也是强制性规则,尽管它是由民间团体制定的,但由于它并非只约束制定规则的团体,而是约束制定者以外更多的人,因而具有普遍的适用性,主权者不应忽视其存在。诚然,民间立法可以被公共立法修改或代替,诚如国家法也会被修改或代替,这并不能否定民间立法的法律属性。     

Quality of life perceptions in two cultures

This paper reports and analyzes the quality of life perceptions held by the inhabitants of two culturally different but demographically similar cities: Springfield, Illinois and Aix-en-Provence, France. Although the Springfielders expressed greater satisfaction than the Aixois in virtually all the life domains covered by the research, the areas of relative satisfaction and dissatisfaction were remarkably similar in the two cities; furthermore, the domains in which the French indicated the least satisfaction were generally ones where their objective quality of life conditions were inferior to those of their American counterparts. Multiple regression techniques are used to trace the relative contribution of domain satisfactions and demographic characteristics in explaining respondents' comparative life enjoyment and reported levels of happiness.     

Working "Off the Books": Patterns of Informal Market Participation within New York's East Village

Most research on the informal economy concentrates on how the informal economy operates at the international and regional levels along with the formal economy and the state. This article departs from current research on the informal economy by looking at how the informal economy operates within the lives of its participants. It considers how informal workers use informal work as both an economic and an identity resource. Informal workers create informal careers and informal work environments in accordance with financial and identity goals and needs. The intersection of informal work as an identity resource and as an economic resource creates a typology of informal market participation types. Among a group of self-employed workers in New York City's East Village neighborhood, four patterns of informal market participation emerge: Entrepreneur, Occupier, Avocationalist, and Allowance Seeker.     

Political geography and interest-group power

The relationship between the distribution of an interest group's members (i.e., voters) across legislative districts and the group's ability to influence government policy is not well understood. We propose a simple model of interest groups and legislative decisionmaking to characterize this relationship formally, and analyze the model for the case of three competing interest groups. We find that an interest group's expected power is maximized when its members are evently divided across (m+1)/2 of the m districts, except when the group is somewhat small, in which case its expected power is maximized when it is evenly divided across all m districts. Expected power decreases sharply as a group's members become concentrated in fewer than (m+1)/2 districts.The author would like to thank the participants of the Workshop in Applications of Economics at the University of chicago fpr their helpful comments, and the Center for the Study of the Economy and the State for its financial support.     

A comment on Schnaiberg's measure of fertility and child dependency

Abstract This comment discusses some potential difficulties in the construction and use of a new fertility variable proposed in a recent issue of Population Studies, and considers one possible remedy.     

PREDICTING DEPRESSION FROM MARITAL DISTRESS AND ATTRIBUTIONAL PROCESSES*

This study examined the interaction between marital distress and spouses' attributions and expectancies regarding the marital relationship in predicting depressive symptoms in a mixed sample of 59 clinic and nonclinic couples. The best single predictor of depression for both sexes was a measure of disaffection, reflecting emotional distance and alienation in the marriage. However, prediction of wives' depression in multiple regression analyses was enhanced by measures of overt marital disharmony, attribution of causality for relationship difficulties to their own behavior, and failure to attribute difficulties to their husbands' behavior. Regression analyses accounted for 55% of the variance in wives' depression, in contrast to only 32% for husbands. Treatment implications are discussed.     

When staff are assaulted. A nursing consultation support service

Increasing patient to staff assaults led to the development of a Nursing Consultation Service, which can respond to the needs of assault victims and set the tone for institutional attitudes of nonblaming concern. A member of the consultation service meets with each known assault victim to review the incident, offer support, and provide assistance in addressing issues aroused by the incident. Implementation of this service and the use of a continuous monitor to track assault incidents is vital to highlight problem areas and develop assault prevention strategies.     

THERE'S MORE TO COUNTING THAN MEETS THE EYE: COMMENT ON SHORTZ ET AL.

Surveys of the literature may facilitate future scholarship by identifying important conceptual developments or recent advances in empirical research. However, we suggest that Shortz, Worthington, McCollugh, DeVries, and Morrow's (1994) conclusions regarding prominent trends in marital therapy and research suffer serious limitations based on the authors' failure to consider objective indices of either journals' influence or authors' actual impact, in addition to their exclusion of nonjournal sources and use of an arbitrary method of weighting authorship. We identify alternativeapproaches to evaluating published scholarship for use in future surveys.