A precarious hegemony: neo-liberalism,social struggles,and the end of Lulismo in Brazil

ABSTRACT

Analysis of Brazil’s political and economic crisis tends to emphasize the economic ‘errors’ that President Dilma Rousseff’s Workers’ Party (PT) government inherited from her predecessor Luíz Inácio Lula da Silva. It is clear, however, that political regulation is too narrow a focus to understand the current crisis. Such an explanation is unable to reveal the changes in class structure that took place during the Lula era as well as the effects of the international economic crisis. This article identifies the limits of the Brazilian development model and the main features of Lula’s mode of regulation; analyses the conflicts produced by the neo-liberal regime of accumulation and the Lulista mode of regulation, emphasizing the role of precarious work in the current historical cycle of strikes and popular struggles in Brazil; and, finally, interprets the palace coup promoted by the social forces behind the impeachment of President Rousseff.     

An adjusted likelihood ratio test for separability in unbalanced multivariate repeated measures data

We propose an adjusted likelihood ratio test of two-factor separability (Kronecker product structure) for unbalanced multivariate repeated measures data. Here we address the particular case where the within subject correlation is believed to decrease exponentially in both dimensions (e.g., temporal and spatial dimensions). However, the test can be easily generalized to factor specific matrices of any structure. A simulation study is conducted to assess the inference accuracy of the proposed test. Longitudinal medical imaging data concerning schizophrenia and caudate morphology illustrate the methodology.     

Legislative Pay and Legislator Quality

This study extends previous work by Mixon and Wilkinson (1999, Public Finance Review 27: 418–433) and Palia (2000, RAND Journal of Economics 31: 165–179) suggesting that formal human capital attainment is lower in political and managerial roles wherein expected compensation is less. The present study constructs a cumulative probability distribution function for years of education attained for both branches of the 109th US Congress and finds that the distribution of years of education attainment in the US Senate second‐order dominates that in the US House due to differences in the expected compensation levels favoring the former congressional branch. The stochastic dominance test results are supported by findings of significant differences in education attainment (favoring senators) at different quantiles of the joint education attainment distribution. Finally, goodness‐of‐fit tests also indicate that the distribution of education attainment quality in the US Senate, as measured by various academic institution quality indicators, is significantly different from that in the US House, again owing to the differences in expected compensation.     

Invisible Whispering: Restructuring Collaborative Decision Making with Instant Messaging

Organizational decision making is dominated by teams. When an important decision is required, a team is often formed to make it or to advise the individual decision maker, because a team has more resources, knowledge, and political insight than any one individual working alone. As teams have become geographically distributed, collaboration technology has come to play an important role in such collective decision making efforts. Instant messaging (IM) is an increasingly prevalent workplace collaboration technology that enables near‐synchronous text exchanges on a variety of devices. We examined the use of IM during face‐to‐face, telephone, and computer‐mediated team meetings, a practice we call “invisible whispering.” We introduce Goffman's characterization of social interaction as dramatic performance, differentiable into “front stage” and “backstage” exchanges, to analyze how invisible whispering alters the socio‐spatial and temporal boundaries of team decision making. Using IM, workers were able to influence front stage decision making through backstage conversations, often participating in multiple backstage conversations simultaneously. This type of interaction would be either physically impossible or socially constrained without the use of IM. We examine how invisible whispering changes the processes of collaborative decision making and how these new processes may affect the efficiency and effectiveness of collaborative decision making, as well as participation, satisfaction, relationships among team members, and individual attention.     

A framework for examining leadership in extreme contexts

In this review, we develop a framework to guide future research and to examine the execution of leadership in extreme contexts. We start by defining and distinguishing extreme contexts from crisis and other contexts. A five component typology is developed comprised of magnitude of consequences, form of threat, probability of consequences, location in time and physical or psychological–social proximity. We discuss the unique influences these components have on leadership processes in extreme contexts examining the relevance of organization types such as critical action and high reliability organizations. Further, we present a set of factors that may attenuate or intensify the dimensions comprising an extreme context, thus influencing either a team or organization's ability for adaptive leadership response. Ultimately this framework seeks to develop a richer understanding of extreme contexts to advance the future development of contextualized theories of leadership for extreme contexts.     

How beliefs about substance use differ by socio-demographic characteristics,individual experiences,and neighborhood environments among urban adolescents

In this article, we tested a series of Item Response Theory (IRT) models to examine the individual and neighborhood variation in perceived risk along dimensions of substance use (alcohol, marijuana, and hard drugs) and usage patterns (light/experimental use, moderate use, heavy/regular use). Data were gathered from 2266 adolescents aged 9, 12, and 15 residing in 79 Chicago neighborhoods. Developmental patterns for age and amount of use were observed whereby older respondents rated alcohol and marijuana as less harmful compared to the younger respondents, but rated hard drugs as more harmful. Risk perceptions were found to be more closely tied to one's direct experience with drugs rather than a general constellation of beliefs. Neighborhood variation in risk perceptions was also observed for hard drugs and three patterns of use, controlling for characteristics of individual residents. Neighborhoods did not vary in risk perceptions toward alcohol use. Individual-level factors rather than characteristics of the neighborhoods explained the observed neighborhood variation in perceptions toward marijuana use. These findings illustrate the complex links between individual and contextual factors in the development of beliefs about the health risks associated with substance use.     

Comparison of web and mail surveys in collecting illicit drug use data: a randomized experiment

This randomized experiment examined survey mode effects for self-reporting illicit drug use by comparing prevalence estimates between a Web-based survey and a mail-based survey. A random sample of 7,000 traditional-aged undergraduate students attending a large public university in the United States was selected to participate in the spring of 2001. Students were randomly assigned to self-administer a survey via the Web or U.S. mail. The Web survey produced a significantly higher response rate than the U.S. mail survey. The prevalence estimates of illicit drug use (lifetime and past year) did not differ significantly between the two survey modes. The findings provide preliminary evidence that Web and U.S. mail surveys produce similar results regarding illicit drug use among undergraduate students. Although additional research is needed involving more diverse samples, these findings bode well for using Web surveys in college-based research.