NGOs, Global Governance and the UN: NGOs as “Guardians of the Reform of the International System”

The role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the United Nations (UN), as well as in world politics in general, is increasingly gaining the attention of scholars of international law, political science and social anthropology. Using extensive earlier research on NGO-UN relations and on the concept of global governance, it is concluded that although NGOs are becoming increasingly influential actors on the international arena, several problems impede their influence from growing within the UN. Once the inefficiencies of NGOs participation in United Nations’ bodies and institutions have been described, we propose some modalities of reform of this Organization, with the purpose of improving the involvement of world civil society in UN decision-making processes, and increasing its democratic profile. Finally, the study suggests several areas that require future research and more in-depth study in order to make predictions about how NGO-UN relations will evolve in the coming decades.

Mainstreaming Nutrition for Better Development Outcomes

Even though the millennium development goals (MDGs) tackle the main economic and social problems in developing countries, nutrition is not addressed adequately despite its important role in achieving the MDGs. It is therefore crucial to mainstream nutrition by strengthening public-private partnerships, increased political and technical capacity and by achieving food security. The paper aims to discuss how strong partnerships bringing public and private efforts together are important to the success of increasing nutritional programs by providing a redesign and marketing of products and services, other services, and funding. The report explores the need to assess the setting of pertinent nutritional policies and to increase technical capacity. The study found that the relation between agriculture and nutrition is a key component for achieving food safety in order to mainstream nutrition into the MDGs. The three main topics considered in this analysis are biotechnology, food trade policies, and bioenergy products as they have a strong impact on prices. Mainstreaming Nutrition for better development outcomes.

FDI Determinants: Case of Romania

Even if the FDI is important for all host countries, for those in the process of transition to a market economy the FDI presence is critical under many respects. Not all transition countries benefited from the very beginning from the FDI presence. Several determinant factors explain the differences. Romania was lagging behind regarding the interest of foreign investors during the first 9–10 years of transition. The situation has improved greatly. The aim of this paper is to identify the main factors determining the evolution in the FDI/GDP (%) as proxy for the FDI evolution. To this end, we used the method of factors analyses. The four resulted determinant factors are: Market size and potential, Reform progress, Business liberalization, and Labor cost. A linear regression model expresses the connections between dependent variable and the four determinant factors. The paper concludes with certain policy implications.

Fatalism and Well-Being Across Hispanic Cultures: The Social Fatalism Scales (SFS)

Social Indicators Research - Fatalism has been a core construct in the study of psychological and social processes related to well-being and life quality in social sciences. The objective of the...     

The Regulation of Infant Negative Emotions: The Role of Maternal Sensitivity and Infant‐Directed Speech Prosody

This study explored the role of maternal sensitivity and infant‐directed speech (IDS) prosody in infants’ expression and regulation of negative emotion. Seventy mothers and their 3‐month‐old infants were observed during the Still‐Face Paradigm (SFP). Maternal sensitivity and IDS prosody were assessed at baseline and infant negative affect in the baseline, still‐face, and reunion episodes. Results showed that prototypical IDS prosody characterized by wider fundamental frequency (F0) variability was related to decreases in infant's negative affect, but only if accompanied by maternal sensitivity. Infants of sensitive mothers who spoke with more prototypical IDS prosody showed better abilities to regulate negative affect during the SFP. When prototypical IDS prosody was accompanied by low maternal sensitivity, infants showed lower regulation of negative emotions. In conclusion, infant negative affect regulation in a dyadic setting is facilitated by an optimal combination of both more prototypical maternal IDS prosody and maternal sensitive responsiveness. Implications for the study of mother–infant interaction are discussed.     

College Students’ Perceptions of Media Portrayals of Divorce

This study takes an exploratory, qualitative approach to examine college students’ perceptions about divorce in the media. Findings suggest that participants perceived both positive and negative representations of divorced families in the media they consume, highlighting the complex nature of navigating and communicating through a divorce. Specifically, college students reported on aspects of the ex-spousal relationship, how children are affected, and the contrast between life pre- and postdivorce. An inductive theme analysis revealed several positive and negative media representations of divorce. Largely, college students perceive media messages about divorce to be accurate portrayals and impactful representations.     

Family violence in gambling help-seeking populations

Elevated rates of family violence among treatment-seeking problem gamblers compared to general population estimates have been reported in Spain, Canada and Australia. This study examined the occurrence of family violence among 454 problem gambling help-seeking clients (370 gamblers, 84 affected others) recruited through 3 national gambling treatment services in New Zealand. Measures used were the Problem Gambling Severity Index, and a modified version of the HITS Scale which assessed physical, emotional, verbal and sexual abuse. Past-year family violence among gamblers in this sample was 46.8% for victimization, 41.2% for perpetration and 55.0% for any form of family violence. Among affected others the occurrence was 65.5% for victimization, 57.1% for perpetration and 71.4% for any form of violence. The most common type of violence was verbal intimate partner violence. Affected others and women gamblers reported higher rates of violence victimization and perpetration. These findings underscore the importance of screening gambling help-seeking clients for family violence, and the development of prevention and treatment programmes to address violence in this population, with particular attention to affected others and women gamblers. Future research should assess coercive control and the gendered nature of family violence among problem gambling help-seekers.     

Networks for Welfare Provision: Getting a Grip on Processes of Social Exclusion by Evaluating Network Effectiveness

It has been repeatedly stated that the topic of network effectiveness has often been neglected. This has led to a situation of ‘network euphoria’ amongst practitioners and policymakers with regard to the creation of networks as a means to (re‐)organize welfare provision. Starting from a case study of networks for welfare provision in two Belgian cities, this article focuses on the effectiveness of service delivering networks at the client level, which is understood as the contribution of the network in improving the conditions of life of those being served or targeted by the network. Therefore, we focused on the collective efforts via these networks (e.g. by creating a night shelter or by conducting case consultations) to look after a population of homeless people who face multiple problems and are not able yet to benefit from welfare provision. Our findings revealed that these networks were able to realize a ‘collaborative advantage’ by filling in service gaps and by overcoming fragmentation of care. Nevertheless, these networks equally maintained criteria that restricted the accessibility or usefulness of welfare services provided to homeless people. In the concluding section, we highlight some of the factors that could help us to explain our findings and highlight the tension between the effectiveness of networks at the client level and the effectiveness at the organizational level.     

Agreement and discrepancy between children,parents, and social workers on school‐based effort avoidance in child welfare services

A multiperspective approach is beneficial for obtaining reliable and multifaceted pictures of child behaviour problems. The goal of the present study is to examine interrater agreement on school‐based effort avoidance between children receiving child welfare services, parents, and social workers. Given previous findings, interrater agreement is expected to be low. Self‐reported data on school‐based effort avoidance were gathered for children and adolescents in child welfare services. Additionally, social workers (using the Teacher‐Report Checklist for social and learning behaviour) and parents (using the parallel version of the self‐rating questionnaire on school‐based effort avoidance) were asked to complete an external assessment tool to compare children's perspectives with the ratings of significant adults. The results confirmed significant discrepancies between parents' and children's ratings on effort avoidance tendencies. Furthermore, there were only small to moderate correlations between children's self‐ratings and the adults' assessments; however, the consensus between adults was higher than the interrater agreement between children and social workers. Discrepancies in ratings from multiple informants underline the importance of integrating multiple perspectives, especially children's perspectives, in the diagnostic process in order to plan and adapt appropriate care and treatment.