Developing the new socialist Czechoslovak state: abortion,eugenics, and the politics of choice between 1945 and 1962

ABSTRACT

The author analyzes the political and medical discourses surrounding the legalization of abortion in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s and the establishment of the institution of abortion commissions to approve women’s demands. Through a genealogical intersectional lens, she explores the continuity of this rationality, which started to fear the degeneration of the collective more than its depopulation. As the Cold War commenced, for the first time in history Czechoslovak women obtained reproductive rights, particularly when a pregnancy was recognized as a threat to women’s and children’s health. Drawing on biopolitical theories and other critical feminist scholarship that have problematized the liberal underpinnings of choice and autonomy, the author demonstrates how eugenics trespassed from expert circles into politics, and, with the help of planned parenthood, recreated a complex system of socio-biological classes, determining who should reproduce and whose life was worth living, and worth protecting. The text defies the classic totalitarian thesis that divides peoples and society into two types, the totalitarian subject and its liberal counterpart. The author argues that, regardless of the political system, abortion rights operate as a regulatory strategy of power aimed at maintaining a certain population optimum by re-defining women’s responsibilities to deliver a healthy child into a healthy environment.     

Philanthropy by Decree

This article investigates the relationship among nonprofit foundations’ choice of philanthropic strategy (expressive, receptive, proactive, and collaborative) and sound governance, as measured by board capital (competencies and networks), board processes (planning, control, evaluation, and so on), and chairman power (entrenchment and tenure). Using a sample of fifty‐one Italian foundations of banking origins, this article shows that high levels of board capital, complete board processes, and chairman long tenure are positively associated with proactive and collaborative philanthropic strategies.     

Quorum and Turnout in Referenda

We analyze the effect of turnout requirements in referenda in the context of a group turnout model. We show that a participation quorum requirement may reduce the turnout so severely that it generates a “quorum paradox”: In equilibrium, the expected turnout exceeds the participation quorum only if this requirement is not imposed. Furthermore, a participation quorum does not necessarily imply a bias for the status quo. We also show that in order to induce a given expected turnout and avoid the quorum paradox, the quorum should be set at a level that is lower than half the target. Finally, we argue that a super majority requirement to overturn the status quo is never equivalent to a participation quorum. (JEL: D72)     

The Over‐Scheduling Hypothesis Revisited: Intensity of Organized Activity Participation During Adolescence and Young Adult Outcomes

Concern exists that youth who spend a lot of time participating in organized out‐of‐school activities (e.g., sports) are at‐risk for poor developmental outcomes. This concern—called the over‐scheduling hypothesis—has primarily been assessed in terms of adolescent adjustment. This longitudinal study of a nationally representative sample of 1,115 youth (ages 12–18) assessed long‐term relations between intensity of participation during adolescence and adjustment at young adulthood (ages 18–24). Time diaries measured intensity as hours per week of participation. Results showed that, controlling for demographic factors and baseline adjustment, intensity was a significant predictor of positive outcomes (e.g., psychological flourishing, civic engagement, and educational attainment) and unrelated to indicators of problematic adjustment (e.g., psychological distress, substance use, and antisocial behavior) at young adulthood.     

Strategy and Structure in High-Performing Nonprofits: Insights from Iberoamerican Cases

Some nonprofits evolve from small into large international organizations. For years, “structure follows strategy” (Chandler) has been the dictum to explain organizational strategic changes like the ones in nonprofits. But scholars also recognized organization structure to be a precondition to carry out certain strategies. Nevertheless, research on structure and strategy in nonprofits is limited. This paper explores the mutual influence of organization structure and strategy in high-performing nonprofits in Iberoamerica based on a secondary analysis of 20 unpublished research cases of the Social Enterprise Knowledge Network. It follows the research question: Which organizations’ strategies and structures characterize high-performing nonprofits over time? Four types of organizing patterns emerged: starting-up, professionalizing, decentralizing, and conglomerating.     

Der lange Arm der Bildungsexpansion: Die Bedeutung zunehmender elterlicher Bildungsressourcen für die Bildungsbeteiligung von Frauen in Deutschland

The study combines survey data from the German General Social Survey (ALLBUS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (GS?O?E?P) to address the role of changing parental resources in explaining the long-run historical trend of women’s rising educational attainment in Germany. For West German cohorts, the analysis suggests a distinction between two historical periods: a first one for birth cohorts up until the mid-1960s, when daughters’ educational attainment increased uniformly across all social strata, and a second period among women from younger birth cohorts, for whom all observable change in educational attainment can be explained as a pure compositional effect due to rising levels of parental resources. Rising educational attainment among East German cohorts has followed a more complex historical pattern, however, as women first benefitted from rapid educational expansion and the equalization of educational opportunity during the first two decades of the GDR. With educational policies reversed since the 1970s, East German women saw their educational progress stalled, and class-specific educational attainment actually in decline up until the point of German reunification. With reunification, women’s educational attainment increased sharply, but, as among Western cohorts, mostly as a reflection of the growth of parents’ private resources. In both parts of Germany, parental education rather than class has been the key factor at the family level, and increasingly so the rising education of mothers.     

LIMITED ASSET MARKET PARTICIPATION,STICKY WAGES,AND MONETARY POLICY

A small amount of nominal wage stickiness makes limited asset market participation (LAMP) irrelevant for the design of monetary policy. Recent research argues that LAMP could invert the slope of the IS curve in otherwise standard New Keynesian models. This, in turn, implies that optimal monetary policy rules should be passive. We show that the so‐called inverted aggregate demand logic (IADL) relies on nominal wage flexibility. Outside of extreme parameterizations, wage stickiness prevents the inversion of the slope of the IS curve. Hence, LAMP does not generally alter the trade‐offs faced by a welfare maximizing Central Bank, and for this reason it does not fundamentally affect the design of optimal simple rules and optimal monetary policy. (JEL E21, E52)