Shall we follow the money? Anti-mafia policies and electoral competition

Building upon the evidence that the mafia increases the degree of vote concentration, we use data on regional elections in Sicily to estimate the impact of anti-mafia policies on electoral competition. We find robust evidence that the reassignment for social purposes of property and assets seized to the mafia reduces the degree of electoral concentration. This result supports the hypothesis that policies that create social value, such as the reallocation to social-driven organizations, are more effective than those targeted to public and political institutions.     

Building relationships through websites: A content analysis of Turkish environmental non-profit organizations’ (NPO) websites

This paper provides insight into the dialogic potential of Turkish environmental NPO websites, including social media adoption. However, 23 of 50 websites examined failed to meet half the criteria for building relationships (n 35). Of 19 sites with connections to social media, 16 used new media potentialities, however only four met all social media adoption criteria.     

Assessment of Task-Centered Interventions with Families in Israel

The study describes and evaluates the effectiveness of task-centered interventions performed with families in two new neighborhoods in Jerusalem, Israel. Thirty-five low-income nondelinquent families experiencing financial, personal and family problems were treated by 11 social work trainees. Each worker performed a single-case time-series design to evaluate 2 to 4 families, using the Clinical Rating Scale and a Goal Attainment Scale. The families were interviewed at termination of treatment. Both practitioners' and families' assessments indicated improvements in the majority of clients. Improvements were associated with young age of spouses and with the application of the techniques of task assignment, focusing and guidance. The validity, generalizability, and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Chapter 5 Impacts of Profit Status of Assisted Living Facilities

Abstract

Florida is a bellwether state in terms of the need for assisted living among elderly persons and has more than 2,000 of the nation's estimated 11,459 assisted living facilities (ALFs). The authors of this article surveyed 140 ALFs in Florida in order to examine the relationship of profit status to ownership of other facilities, willingness to serve low income groups, formal policies, and persons involved in decisions about resident retention. Significant differences were found between for-profit and non-profit facilities in terms of ownership of nursing homes and resident involvement in retention decisions. A discussion of how the profit motive and formal policies can impact residents concludes the article.     

Books Received

No abstract available for this article.     

自治区自治条例研究

民族自治地方自治机关拥有法律规定的立法权。自治机关的立法权主要是制定和变动自治条例和单行条例的权力,自治条例是民族自治地方立法机关和政府行使自治权力的法律标志。自治机关制定自治条例是全面实施民族区域自治制度的需要,是自治机关行使自治权的根本体现。由于多方面原因,到目前为止我国5个自治区无一出台自治区自治条例。制定和出台自治区自治条例必须严格遵循法律规范、法定原则和法定程序,新修改的《民族区域自治法》和西部大开发战略的实施是促成自治区自治条例尽快出台的契机。     

农村社会组织参与基层民主治理能力培育

在推进社会主义新农村建设的背景下,基层民主治理已成为人们关注的焦点,培育农村社会组织参与基层民主治理的能力,对促进农村社会发展具有重要意义.基于参与式民主视角,探讨农村社会组织形成的三条路径:行政化路径、转型化路径、自主化路径,分析制约其发展的“四大不足”:公益性不足、自主性不足、新元素不足、参与度不足.从政府、农村社会组织、村民三个方面培育农村社会组织参与基层民主治理的能力,建构“多主体”治理模式促进村民自治,以求实现农村社会善治的目标.     

我国民间组织的现状、困境与对策研究

在社会转型时期,我国的民间组织获得了快速发展,但是也受到了管理制度不健全、行政化色彩较浓、社会基础较薄弱、发展较不规范、工作机制不够健全等五个方面的制约。只有在政府主导下,走"人为建构"之路,才能推动民间组织的良性发展。     

The Leverage of Protest: Market,Media, and Reputational Disruption in Social Movement Success

How do social movements gain concessions from large corporations? The ability of protests to attain leverage by imposing disruption costs on their targets is widely assumed but less often tested. In this article, we assess the ability of protests to attain concessions by disrupting three broad sources of interest to firm officials: maximizing shareholder value, gaining positive media, and fostering a well-reputed image. In contrast to the body of research on the benefits to movements from shaping media discourses and damaging the reputations of their targets, we find that only market disruption provides protests with leverage. We show this through statistical analyses of an original database of protests against large corporations in the United States over five years, 2005–2009. This study advances social movement and organizational research by demonstrating the ways in which the interests of large corporations provide insurgents with means of attaining leverage over their targets. It also speaks to the broad debate over the importance of disrupting the material versus symbolic interests of movement targets. Our results suggest that when it comes to obtaining concessions from large corporations, it is material disruption and not symbolic disruption that provides movements with leverage.     

Symbolic Compliance and Student Concerns: Legal Endogeneity and Title IX at American Colleges and Universities

This article considers how American colleges and universities responded to rapid legal change around Title IX immediately following the 2011 release of the Office for Civil Rights’ Dear Colleague Letter. By analyzing the content of 250 campus sexual harassment policies, this article finds that contrary to the predictions of the employment discrimination literature, which suggests that the largest, most visible institutions in a field are the most likely to embed markers of symbolic compliance in their formal policies, small baccalaureate colleges are more likely to include references to the law in their formal documents than their research university peers do. To understand this intriguing finding, the article then analyzes 15 interviews with campus administrators at research universities and baccalaureate colleges to uncover the distinct logics of symbolic compliance and student concerns that differentially inform how actors at different kinds of institutions inhabit their roles and endogenously interpret new Title IX regulations in their formal policies and campus practices. In doing so, this article illuminates the ways in which processes of legal endogeneity differ across institution types within the broader field of higher education.