Are universities left-wing bastions? The political orientation of professors,professionals, and managers in Europe

Universities are accused of being left-wing bastions, unwelcoming to conservative and right-wing professors. However, we know little about the political orientation of professors in comparison to other professionals, which would be the right comparison group if we want to know whether universities are potentially hostile environments to conservatives. Examining culturally and economically oriented political orientations in Europe, it is demonstrated that professors are more liberal and left-leaning than other professionals. However, there is no greater homogeneity of political orientations among the professoriate relative to other specific professions, suggesting that there is a diversity of opinions which is similar to what professionals would find in other occupations. One exception concerns attitudes towards immigration, on which professors have more liberal orientations and comparatively low residual variance around that more liberal mean. Importantly, the difference between professors and other professionals is not so clear within graduates from the social sciences, but emerges more clearly among graduates with a medical, STEM, economics or law degree. An important political cleavage exists between professionals and managers, a group of similar social standing.     

Specification of household engel curves by nonparametric regression

This paper demonstrates the usefulness of nonparametric regression analysis for functional specfication of houshold Engel curves.

After a brief review in section 2 of the literature on demand functions and equivalence scales and the functional specifications used, we first discuss in section 3 the issues of using income versus total expenditure, the origin and nature of the error terms in the light of utility theroy, and the interpretation of empirical demand functions. we shall reach the unorthodox view that household demand functions should be interpreted as conditional expectations relative to prices, household composition and either income or the conditional expectation of total expenditure (rather that total expenditure itself), where the latter conditional expectation is taken relative to income, prices and household composition. these two forms appear to be equivalent. this result also solves the simultaneity problem: the error variance matrix is no longer singular. Moreover, the errors are in general heteroskedastic.

In section 4 we discuss the model and the data, and in section 5 we review the nonparametric kernal regression approach.

In section 6 we derive the functional form of our household engel curves from nonparametric regression results, using the 1980 budget survey for the netherlands, in order to avoid model misspecification. thus the modl is derived directly from the data, without restricting its functional form. the nonparametric regression results are then translated to suitable parametric functional specifications, i.e., we choose parametric functional forms in accordance with the nanparametric regression results. these parametric specification are estimated by least squares, and various parameter restrictions are tested in order to simplify the models. this yields very simple final specifications of the household engel curves involved, namely linear functions of income and the number of children in two age groups.     

Econometric Reviews

This paper considers the problem of estimating a nonlinear statistical model subject to stochastic linear constraints among unknown parameters. These constraints represent prior information which originates from a previous estimation of the same model using an alternative database. One feature of this specification allows for the disign matrix of stochastic linear restrictions to be estimated. The mixed regression technique and the maximum likelihood approach are used to derive the estimator for both the model coefficients and the unknown elements of this design matrix. The proposed estimator whose asymptotic properties are studied, contains as a special case the conventional mixed regression estimator based on a fixed design matrix. A new test of compatibility between prior and sample information is also introduced. Thesuggested estimator is tested empirically with both simulated and actual marketing data.     

A neural' network applied to tlie calculation of lyapunov exponents 1

Chaotic deterministics systems are characterised by the instability of orbits on an attractor. The largest Lyapunov exponent measures on average the exponential growth rate of small deviations along an orbit and gives as such an indication whether or not the dynamic generating process is unstable. The direct method for calculation of the Lyapunov exponent, based on finite differences as formulated by the so-called Wolf-algorithm,fails on medium sized data sets. Alternatively, one can use a neural network with backpropagation to estimate a data generating function. This so-calletl indirect method enables us to recover the theoretical value of the largest Lyapunov exponent in several examples.     

Age differences in the decoding of affect authenticity and intensity

Second and sixth grade primary school children and adults were tested to determine their ability to: (1) detect maskings, inhibitions and simulations of feelings of like and dislike and (2) discriminate intensity differences in spontaneous facial expressions of these affects. Adults scored at chance level with respect to detecting negative simulations, while their detection scores for the other forms of pretense were above chance and did not differ from each other. The children did as well as the adults in detecting the maskings and inhibitions of negative emotions. It is assumed that the theatricality of the reactions was the deception cue. The children did worse than the adults, and even scored below chance, in detecting the maskings and inhibitions of positive feelings and the simulations of negative feelings. This was explained as the consequence of a positivity bias. Adults did significantly better in discriminating the intensity of expressions than did the two groups of children. In addition, the sixth graders outperformed the second graders. In none of the age groups were there any significant correlations, either between the deception detection scores and the ability to discriminate intensity differences, or among the detection scores for the three types of deception.I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Frens Vonken in the collection and analysis of the data, and of the reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts, and of Marianne Sanders in the preparation of the final text.     

Role enactment: A social work method for inducing behavior change

Conclusion This paper has gathered empirical evidence in favor of a notion that our prepsychoanalytic predecessors knew intuitively: role enactment is a germinal social work means for producing behavioral change. In another paper the writer (Borenzweig, 1971) analyzes why the profession joined the exclusive psychoanalytic bandwagon and forsook its social psychological birthirght. The social workers of the social psychiatry era were concerned about issues contemporary social workers and psychiatrists are readdressing: how does the disturbed person perform pathological and socially requisite roles? How much more therapeutic leverage is obtained by encouraging the patient to enact roles in a milieu approximating the normal, in his normal milieu, or in both? The social psychiatry psychiatrists recognized their predominantly physico-psychic interest in the patient, depended on social workers for those aspects of diagnosis which entailed social functioning, and held the social worker responsible for the patient's post-discharge role performance. It is largely social work's influence upon psychiatry which concerns the latter profession with role. Recent psychiatric, diagnostic, and post-treatment evaluative instruments (Spitzer, 1963; Katz and Lyerly, 1963) incorporate the evaluation of role performance as asine qua non for psychic measurement.Social work has been the traditional ombudsman between society and its deviants. If Mead was correct when he said the psyche reflects the meaning the institutions of society have for a particular individual, then social work has always been grounded in the social psychological interstice between self and society. Role enactment, a social psychological construct, traditionally yet implicitly an almost unique social work technique for inducing behavior change, deserves to be explicitly canonized as one of social work's core behavior change techniques.     

Critical theory and electronic media

The revolution in the method of production in industry and agriculture, likewise necessitated a revolution in the general conditions of the social process of production, that is to say in the means of communication and transport. In a society whose pivots ... were, first, small-scale àgriculture, with its subsidiary home industries, and, secondly, urban handicraft, the means of communication and transport were utterly inadequate to the requirements of the manufacturing period, with its extended division of social labor, its concentration of the means of labor and of the workers, and its colonial markets; communications and transport, therefore had to be revolutionized, and were in fact revolutionized.

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The positive consequences of stigma: Two case studies in mental and physical disability

This paper adds to the literature on labeling and stigma by focusing on the positive effects, benefits and rewards of possessing a stigma or identity mark. Through an examination of chronic and non-chronic ex-psychiatric patients and involuntarily childless females, we illustrate that such positive responses include: the legitimation of deviant behavior and the deviant role; exemption from normal social roles and obligations; provision of interpersonal and social opportunities; strengthening of familial relationships; opportunities for career growth and change; and personal growth experiences. These specific responses are divided into three generic categories of positive responses to negative labeling: therapeutic opportunities, personal growth experiences, and interpersonal opportunities. We also develop a typology of labeling which incorporates positive and negative labeling and the positive and negative consequences which follow.This is a revision of a paper presented at the 1988 annual meetings of the North Central Sociological Association, Pittsburgh, PA. The research was supported by grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and from the Government of Ontario, Canada. Correspondence should be directed to Dr. Nancy J. Herman, Department of Sociology, Central Michigan University, Anspach/140, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, U.S.A. 48859; or Dr. Charlene E. Miall, Department of Sociology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M4. We wish to thank Dr. Harry Mika and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.     

The Policy Outputs and Conflicts of Large Communities from an Interorganizational Viewpoint

Abstract

An interorganizational framework is employed to merge elitist, pluralist, and dialectic perspectives on the community in this pilot study of 36 large United States cities.

An interorganizational framework is employed to merge elitist, pluralist, and dialectic perspectives on the community in this pilot study of 36 large United States cities.

Where organizations fail to abound, power may be wielded by an organized elite over an unorganized mass, thereby creating the conditions of polarized conflict, undampened by the crosscutting and issue-specific lines of coalition and conflict existing in organizationally richer environments. The indicators of community decentralization did indeed have independent effects upon the absence of conflict, measured by flouridation of the municipal water supply.

Decision by coalition lends special significance to linkage-providing organizations, such as large-scale and diversified municipal government. The idea of organizations with plural interests and values suggests that centralized governments either are weak or exist in organizationally barren communities; neither alternative is conducive to collective community action. The finding follows that seven different community outposts, each one requiring interorganizational cooperation, were positively affected by the scale and diversification of municipal government and/or by its decentralization.

All of this suggests that various small conflicts serve to prevent large ones in the multiorganizational setting and that the power of organizations, even government agencies, depends upon their capacity for coalition-formation, whatever the degree of their political autonomy.