Civil Organizations in Mexico: Recent Evolution and Prospects

This paper begins by identifying how, as a result of the confluence of a number of factors, civil organizations (COs) in Mexico have shown an exponential development in the past 15 years. However, it is argued that COs are suffering a fiscal crisis and, in some sense, an economic one, provoked by the political reaction of the government toward this growth. At the same time, there is no crisis of legitimacy; their increasing levels of social support suggests a trend in the reverse direction. However, the legitimacy attributable by the population to nonprofits seems to be due to the novelty of this sociopolitical actor in the context of a disappointment with more traditional ones including government and political parties—as opposed to an endorsement of their proven capacity or efficiency in solving the problems of development. To take advantage of what seems to be a golden opportunity for its positive development, in addition to changing the unfavorable economic environment, it is argued that the sector has to face the challenge of thinking in its long-term interest and making sure that it is positioned to act as capably efficient.     

An Index of Child Health in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Africa

In this article we present a new composite index of child health, applied to the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Africa, one of the areas of the planet most castigated by poverty. Our index has been constructed attending to the variables defined in the Goals of the Millennium Declaration. For this purpose we will use the P₂ distance method for the year 2008, the last year for which data are available. This index integrates variables of child health that permit a territorial ordering of the LDCs of Africa, in terms of those partial indicators.     

Editor's Choice: An Interview with Hans Joas

The interview explores multiple aspects of social theory, most of them directly related to Joas's theory and others to symbolic interactionism and Goffman. The first part delves into Joas's theory in three respects. First, a clarifying note on a common misunderstanding about his book The Creativity of Action. Second, a clarification on the scope of his theoretical endeavor, and third, a look into his coming books to have a better grasp of the course that his theory is taking. The second part is dedicated to symbolic interactionism and Goffman. Firstly, Joas's opinion about the theoretical relationship between symbolic interactionism and macrosociology is emphasized, secondly, his opinion about the pertinence of locating Goffman within symbolic interactionism is stated, and thirdly, a brief commentary about the relationship between Joas's theory and Goffman's is introduced.     

Internal migration and the politics of place: a comparative analysis of China and Indonesia

Spontaneous and organized population movements have long been used as a means of promoting a country's goals of development and national integration. At the local level, on the other hand, these movements have frequently done the opposite, fueling local grievances, sharpening group distinctions, and at times creating ‘sons-of-the-soil’ conflicts. In this paper, I explore this apparent tension between the national political rationale for internal migration and the political impact such migration has had locally, in four minority regions of China and Indonesia. I argue that the specific manner in which migration affects local politics is influenced by a country's political regime. In Indonesia, the impact of migration is observed in electoral politics, where ‘politics of place’ have been allowed to emerge. In China, it is perceived in the curbing of national minorities’ territorial autonomy. The role played by local elites and group competition between indigenous people and migrants are also reviewed.     

QUALITY‐ADJUSTED HUMAN CAPITAL AND PRODUCTIVITY GROWTH

This article examines the influence of quality‐adjusted educational attainment on growth and tests whether it facilitates the transfer of technology developed at the frontier for a panel of 60 countries. Using outcomes of pathogen stress as instruments, the results show that quality‐adjusted educational attainment and its interaction with distance to the frontier play important roles for growth. (JEL I20, O30, O40)     

Race,Gender, and Class in the Persistence of the Mariel Stigma Twenty Years after the Exodus from Cuba

The study examines the mediating effects of gender, race, and class in the Mariel Cuban immigrant adaptation process. It explores the significance of the Mariel identity by comparing the experiences of pre‐1980 arrivals with those of the Mariel cohort (1980–1981) and post‐Mariel arrivals (1982–1990, 1990–2000). The central question of the study is the extent to which the Marielitos’ experience as a group with stigmatization and being labeled as “different” and pathological has persisted in having a different effect on their adaptation to the U.S. from that of other Cuban arrivals before and after Mariel. This study bases its definition of stigma on sociologically grounded theoretical orientation of the construction of a social identity in which a dominant group(s) attribute an undesired difference from what was anticipated to an out‐group such that it leads to varieties of discrimination that reduce one's life chances.     

Characterization of stochastic orders by L-functionals

Random variables may be compared with respect to their location by comparing certain functionals ad hoc, such as the mean or median, or by means of stochastic ordering based directly on the properties of the corresponding distribution functions. These alternative approaches are brought together in this paper. We focus on the class of L-functionals discussed by Bickel and Lehmann (1975) and characterize the comparison of random variables in terms of these measures by means of several stochastic orders based on iterated integrals, including the increasing convex order.     

Designed for Patience: The Significance of Internal Factors in the Ukrainian and Belarusian Transitions

This paper focuses on Belarus in order to find explanation as to why Alexander Lukashenko was able remain the authoritarian leader of Belarus, while in Ukraine the position of the political elite had proved less stable and collapsed in 2004. We seek to determine whether the internal factors (macroeconomic conditions, standard of living, the oppressive nature of the political system) play a significant role in the operation of the domino effect. This article emphasises the determining role of immanent internal factors, thus the political stability in Belarus can be explained by the role of the suppressing political regime, the hindrance of democratic rights and the relatively good living conditions that followed the transformational recession. Whilst in Ukraine, the markedly different circumstances brought forth the success of the Orange Revolution.      

An Extension of a Measure of Polarization, with an application to the income distribution of five OECD countries

We introduce an extension of the Esteban and Ray [Econometrica, 62:819–851 1994] measure of polarization that can be applied to density functions. As a by-product we also derive the Wolfson [Am. Econ. Rev., 84:353–358 1994] measure as a special case. This derivation has the virtue of casting both measures in the context of a (statistically) unified framework. We study the polarization of the distribution of household income for five OECD countries (LIS database): US, UK, Canada, Germany and Sweden. The present paper is essentially based on Esteban, Gradín and Ray [9], published as #218 in the working papers series of the Luxembourg Income Study. Changes have been kept to a minimum. We have provided a brief reference to the literature on polarization measurement that has appeared since then and have updated the data of our application.     

Communicating during times of crises: An analysis of news releases from the federal government before,during, and after hurricanes Katrina and Rita

This paper examines the framing of crisis communication strategies before, during, and after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita by analyzing news releases from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Homeland Security, and U.S. Senators and Governors from Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. A qualitative content analysis found that all entities analyzed did not acknowledge their parts in the crises, placed blame on others, and tried to distance themselves from the crises. State leadership also used a unifying approach where they included themselves in the hardships affected residents were experiencing.