Social identities and political cleavages: the role of political context

Summary. Using a novel method, the paper investigates the influence of social group identities on attitudes and on voting in a variety of political contexts. Examining the major regions of Britain, Canada and the USA, we find considerable national and regional diversity in the nature of social cleavages. For example, social class and race had widely different effects across societies, but within societies their effects on attitudes and on voting were very similar. However, despite that, age and religion had a similar effect on attitudes across societies; the effects on voting varied considerably. The significant within-country differences underline the importance of using region, rather than country, as the unit of analysis. More importantly, these results highlight the role of political context, especially competing cleavages and the structure of party competition, in the establishment of politically relevant social cleavages.     

增权：受虐待老人社会工作新理念

针对不断增加的虐待老年人这一社会问题,将增权理论及理念运用于老年人社会工作中,结合对老年人受虐待现状和困境的考察与分析,探讨了帮助受虐待老年人维护自身合法权益的有效工作方法。     

Herd behavior and the quality of opinions

This paper analyzes a decentralized decision model by adding some inertia in the social leaning process. Before making a decision, an agent can observe the group opinion in a society. Social learning can result in a variety of equilibrium behavioral patterns. For insufficient ranges of quality (precision) of opinions, the chosen stationary state is unique and globally accessible, in which all agents adopt the superior action. Sufficient quality of opinions gives rise to multiple stationary states. One of them will be characterized by inefficient herding. The confidence in the majority opinion then has serious welfare consequences.     

Male Adolescents: Sexual Victimization and Subsequent Sexual Abuse

Veneziano, Veneziano and LeGrand (2000) found support for the victim to victimizer hypothesis of sexual aggression with 74 sexually abusive youth. This project, a further step in examining this theory (Burton, 2000, Burton, Miller, & Shill, 2002) builds on their ideas with data from 179 adolescent sexual abusers, and supports their findings. In an examination of relationships, gender, modus operandi, and acts, the sexually abused youth were likely to repeat what was done to them. This project also offers a further analysis of how victimization accounts for a significant portion of the variance in perpetration by these youth. Implications for research and practice are offered.     

Sifting the wheat from the chaff—the organization of telephone intake and the selection of social assistance inquirers in Sweden

In Sweden, the initial contact between help-seeking people and a social welfare office normally takes place over the telephone, with designated intake officers handling those aiming to apply for social assistance. Citizens seeking help are here sorted according to various eligibility criteria as well as according to different intake routines. The outcome of the sorting process is that some receive an appointment for a further assessment while others are sent away. This article describes and classifies the degree of selection at seven telephone intakes, discusses relations between the degrees of selection and reasons for selection and distinguishes several selection strategies.     

现代性的反叛与理论社会学的前景

现代性又一次显示了自己的永新特征:它不断脱出既有的形貌,日益变得轻盈、灵巧、液化、流变,它的经验结果也更为不确定和难以预料。这造成了现代叙事和想像的“衰败”,也使社会学的批判和反思走向亢奋。然而,在西方社会学“新三圣”的现代性理论中,激进具象下隐匿的深沉困惑和焦虑表明,这无以挽回旧式现代性的总体颓落之势。与此同时,现代性在中国正面对着一种新生。“社会互构”理论指出了新型现代性的大趋势,即以人为本而不是以资本为本的实践选择,正在促使资本从目的性意义向手段性位置回归。这一理论还阐释了,通过多元社会主体的“互构谐变”,推进社会沟通、对话、协商以及论坛和听证的制度化,实现我们对于和谐社会的共同期待。正是这一来自实践的理路,使理论社会学拥有了一个赢得未来的起点。     

Estimating rating transition probabilites with missing data

In this article we provide a rigorous treatment of one of the central statistical issues of credit risk management. GivenK-1 rating categories, the rating of a corporate bond over a certain horizon may either stay the same or change to one of the remainingK-2 categories; in addition, it is usually the case that the rating of some bonds is withdrawn during the time interval considered in the analysis. When estimating transition probabilities, we have thus to consider aK-th category, called withdrawal, which contains (partially) missing data. We show how maximum likelihood estimation can be performed in this setup; whereas in discrete time our solution gives rigorous support to a solution often used in applications, in continuous time the maximum likelihood estimator of the transition matrix computed by means of the EM algorithm represents a significant improvement over existing methods.     

从“积极”到“稳健”——中国财政政策的适时转型

稳健性财政政策的科学内涵是:控制赤字、调整结构、推进改革、增收节支。当前提高稳健性财政政策的有效性,在税收方面,推进税制改革,加强税收征管;在支出方面,调整支出方向,做到有保有控;在国债方面,应逐步减少需发国债资金和数额;在财政政策的功能方面,完善公共财政体制。