Toward a Viable Progressive Third Party in 2020 and Beyond1

Creating a strong, influential third party has been an abiding aspiration on the American left, and were this goal to be achieved, it could be a great boon to subordinate groups in the United States. Yet widespread doubts persist, even among progressives that this is desirable, and especially that it is possible. Here, I briefly review compelling reasons for thinking otherwise; I then consider in some depth the potential for starting to build a viable left third party leading up to and after the pivotal 2020 election. In doing so, I go beyond the existing literature on third parties, which has yet to reflect systematically on progressive third party prospects in this period. Specifically, I assess how the emerging political environment may shape left third-party building, and I evaluate ongoing and developing attempts by key groups engaged in that effort. I find a distinct tension between conditions encouraging progressives to reform versus abandon the Democratic Party, and I identify one alternative party-building tendency that seems most able to exploit the latter impulse due to its already established electoral viability. Last, I highlight relevant questions that remain for activists hoping to create an effective national left third party.     

Managers in the Global Economy: A Multilevel Analysis

We examine individual‐ and country‐level determinants of managerial employment, using data from the 1989 to 2009 waves of the World Values and European Values Surveys (n = 89,336 employed adults in 59 countries). Reflecting the rise of the transnational capitalist class, we find that factors related to globalization and international political institutions are most strongly associated with opportunities to join the managerial class relative to factors related to the business‐cycle or development. Additionally, in a subset of countries with detailed occupational information, we find that global trade has a particularly strong, positive association with the odds of being a corporate manager in a large firm.     

Moments and generating functions for the absortion distribution and its negative binomial analogue

The moments of the absorption are difficult to obtain. The generating functions are basic hypergeometric functions. This paper shows how to define two shift operators that allow elementary arguments to be used to develop recursions for the expected values of general functions. The exact moments of the distribution follow. The generating function for the negative binomial analogue gives the moments directly.     

When Precaution Creates Misunderstandings: The Unintended Effects of Precautionary Information on Perceived Risks,the EMF Case

In the past decade, growing public concern about novel technologies with uncertain potential long‐term impacts on the environment and human health has moved risk policies toward a more precautionary approach. Focusing on mobile telephony, the effects of precautionary information on risk perception were analyzed. A pooled multinational experimental study based on a 5 × 2 × 2 factorial design was conducted in nine countries. The first factor refers to whether or not information on different types of precautionary measures was present, the second factor to the framing of the precautionary information, and the third factor to the order in which cell phones and base stations were rated by the study participants. The data analysis on the country level indicates different effects. The main hypothesis that informing about precautionary measures results in increased risk perceptions found only partial support in the data. The effects are weaker, both in terms of the effect size and the frequency of significant effects, across the various precautionary information formats used in the experiment. Nevertheless, our findings do not support the assumption that informing people about implemented precautionary measures will decrease public concerns.     

Replication of Routines in Organizations: Existing Literature and New Perspectives

Replication of existing routines in new contexts is an important value‐creating strategy for organizations. This paper synthesizes the state of research on replication and organizes the literature around two broad themes: forward knowledge flows (i.e. from a replicator to a replicatee) and reverse knowledge flows. The authors show that the theoretical assumptions of existing research leave important questions around the replication of routines unaddressed. More specifically, they identify research gaps in regard to micro‐level processes of replication. Little is understood about the performance of routines in practice and, related to that, the processes through which routines change during replication. Drawing on recent theorizing on organizational routines, in particular the relationship between the ostensive and performative aspects, helps the authors to unpack the micro‐level processes of forward and reverse knowledge flows. This paper opens two new trajectories for research on replication: (1) a focus on the actions of individual actors in the enactment of organizational routines provides new possibilities for understanding how replication is an inherently political process; (2) conceptualizing change as endogenous within the performance of routines offers a route to a more nuanced understanding of change and deviation in the process of replication. The paper closes with a summary of major theoretical arguments, questions for further research and implications for practitioners.     

Shocks,Stocks, and Socks: Smoothing Consumption Over a Temporary Income Loss

We investigate how households in temporarily straitened circumstances due to an unemployment spell cut back on expenditures and how they spend marginal dollars of unemployment insurance (UI) benefit. Our theoretical and empirical analyses emphasize the importance of allowing for the fact that households buy durable as well as non‐durable goods. The theoretical analysis shows that in the short run households can cut back significantly on total expenditures without a significant fall in welfare if they concentrate their budget reductions on durables. We then present an empirical analysis based on a Canadian survey of workers who experienced a job separation. Exploiting changes in the unemployment insurance system over our sample period we show that cuts in UI benefits lead to reductions in total expenditure with a stronger impact on clothing than on food expenditures. Our empirical strategy allows that these expenditures may be non‐separable from employment status. The effects we find are particularly strong for households with no liquid assets before the spell started. These qualitative findings are in precise agreement with the theoretical predictions. (JEL: D11, D12, D91, J65)     

Estimating Consumer Exposure to PFOS and PFOA

Perfluorinated compounds have been used for more than 50 years as process aids, surfactants, and for surface protection. This study is a comprehensive assessment of consumer exposure to perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) from a variety of environmental and product-related sources. To identify relevant pathways leading to consumer exposure to PFOS and PFOA a scenario-based approach has been applied. Scenarios represent realistic situations where age- and gender-specific exposure occurs in the everyday life of consumers. We find that North American and European consumers are likely to experience ubiquitous and long-term uptake doses of PFOS and PFOA in the range of 3 to 220 ng per kg body weight per day (ng/kg_bw/day) and 1 to 130 ng/kg_bw/day, respectively. The greatest portion of the chronic exposure to PFOS and PFOA is likely to result from the intake of contaminated foods, including drinking water. Consumer products cause a minor portion of the consumer exposure to PFOS and PFOA. Of these, it is mainly impregnation sprays, treated carpets in homes, and coated food contact materials that may lead to consumer exposure to PFOS and PFOA. Children tend to experience higher total uptake doses (on a body weight basis) than teenagers and adults because of higher relative uptake via food consumption and hand-to-mouth transfer of chemical from treated carpets and ingestion of dust. The uptake estimates based on scenarios are within the range of values derived from blood serum data by applying a one-compartment pharmacokinetic model.     

To Leave an Area After Disaster: How Evacuees from the WTC Buildings Left the WTC Area Following the Attacks

How people leave a devastated area after a disaster is critical to understanding their ability to cope with risks they face while evacuating. Knowledge of their needs for communications about these risks is particularly crucial in planning for emergency responses. A convenience sample of 1,444 persons who survived the World Trade Center (WTC) attacks on September 11, 2001 were surveyed to ascertain their initial and ultimate destinations once they had left the buildings, how they arrived there, the role of types of obstacles they encountered, and the need for information and the seeking of other people as potential factors in influencing the process of leaving immediately. This survey was part of a larger, original survey. Results showed differences in how people traveled by mode to initial and ultimate destinations, how immediately they left the area, and factors associated with when they left. How they traveled and when they left were associated with where people lived, their tendency in times of stress to seek out other people including who they knew in the immediate area (e.g., co‐workers or friends), the physical conditions surrounding them, and the importance to some of waiting for more information. Many people indicated they did not leave immediately because they had no information about where to go or what services would be available to them. Perceptions and communications about risks they were facing were reflected in the choices they considered in how and when to leave the area. These findings have numerous ramifications for understanding and guiding personal behavior in catastrophic situations.     

Reports of Conferences,Institutes, and Seminars

In the span of four weeks, from late March to early April 2008, three important technical services conferences were held: the Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference, the New England Technical Services Librarians Conference, and the North Carolina Serials Conference.