ADAM SMITH'S RATIONAL CHOICE LINGUISTICS

Adam Smith offers an account, based on rational choice considerations, of the grammatical change experienced by languages when adults attempt to communicate across languages in such a way as to minimize transactions costs. His model predicts what is known to linguists as a "pidgin," a language learned by adults in which to make trades. His model can be extended to predict the grammatical trajectory toward pidgin experienced by dying languages. (JEL A1, B3)     

SIMULATING A MULTIPRODUCT BARTER EXCHANGE ECONOMY

We describe a multiproduct barter trading experiment in which students exchange real goods in an open market based on their own personal preference. The experiment is designed for simulating a pure exchange market in order to demonstrate the role of money and its functions in real economies by showing the limitations and inefficiencies of the traditional barter economy. In addition, the simulation is very effective in highlighting some of the key features that an object that serves as money needs to possess in order to function as an efficient medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value.     

The Methodology and Performance of Election Day Polls

Methodological details are presented of a survey research techniqueknown as exit or election day polling. Using this technique,major American news organizations collect and analyze votingand attitude data from samples of persons who have just castballots. On the basis of the 1980 elections, differences inpolling strategies and performance of the exit poll method areexamined. How election day survey data are used by journalistsis discussed.     

Opinion Leadership and Television News Uses

Current Research: This section of POQ is reserved for brief reports of researchin progress, discussions of unsolved problems, methodologicalstudies, and public opinion data not extensively analyzed orinterpreted. Succinct case histories are welcomed, as well ashypotheses and insights that may be useful to other studentsof public opinion. Usually, material in this section is shorter,more informal, and more tentative than in preceding pages     

SELF-INTEREST AND PUBLIC OPINION TOWARD SMOKING POLICIES; A REPLICATION AND EXTENSION

Numerous studies report that self-interest has a non significantinfluence upon various political and social attitudes. In contrast,a recent article by Green and Gerken (1989) reports a Californiastudy showing that cigarette smokers are significantly moreopposed than nonsmokers to public smoking restrictions and tobaccosales tax increases. The present article replicates and extendsthis analysis with data from two different states—Illinois(in 1984, N=458)—and North Carolina (in 1985, N=488)—andusing analysis techniques that differ from and expand upon theCalifornia study. Despite these methodological differ ences,self-interest is again shown to have a significant influenceon opinions concerning public smoking restrictions and taxation,as well as on several additional issues relating to smokingand tobacco.     

Executives’ Views of Factors Affecting Governance Change in a Not‐for‐Profit Setting

Knowing the factors that executives deem critical to governance change can improve our understanding of how such changes come about and can help us evaluate those changes. Interviews with business and finance executives at 11 colleges reveal the importance to governance change of chief executive and board member leadership and interactions, as well as executive communication style. Costs are clear constraints to action, particularly since benefits are not quantified and are difficult to describe. Efforts to discuss governance with internal stakeholders require persistence to overcome narrow, individualized concerns. Communication about governance to external stakeholders is rare and represents a missed opportunity for stakeholder feedback and the development of trust. Executives appear willing to adopt governance forms without considering the idiosyncrasies of their institutional field, limiting the working definition of governance and its potential. For corporations and not‐for‐profit enterprises these findings hold implications for the context in which leadership is exercised and the shape of governance structures. They also pose a fundamental ethical dilemma for leaders to address.     

Reflexive particularism and cosmopolitanization: the reconfiguration of the national

In this article we examine the cosmopolitanization of national memory cultures as a matter of reflexive particularism, referring to negotiations over ‘the national’ driven by the endogenization of European norms and discourses. Reflexive particularism emerges from a historically specific memory imperative that issues two demands – first, that national polities reckon with the Other, and second, that they engage with, critique and challenge exclusionary or heroic modes of nationalism. Our findings, based on the analysis of official discourse and 60 open group discussions conducted in Austria, Germany and Poland, suggest that reflexive particularism is manifested in an ongoing negotiation between variable modes of national belonging and cosmopolitan orientations toward the supranational or pan‐European. More specifically, reflexive particularism is expressed in co‐evolving articulations of Europeanness and shared European memory practices that include: affirmative and ambivalent perspectives; sceptical narratives about nationhood (for example those that emphasize legacies of perpetratorship); and a disposition to (ex)change perspectives and recognize the claims of Others.     

Structured Bellicosity: Was the Israeli‐Arab Conflict Originally Inevitable?

Subsequent to its inception and the conclusion of the 1948 War, Israel stood at a crossroads. It could choose either to embark on belligerency vis‐à‐vis the surrounding Arab world or pursue peaceful solutions. Israel opted for bellocisty. Why? It is argued that the political structure that gave precedence to the use of force is traceable to the Israeli type of state building with regard to the strategy the state adopted to absorb the mass Mizrachi immigration from Arab countries. The challenge was absorption without jeopardizing the dominance of the veteran Ashkenazim. The chosen track inevitably created the conditions for bellicosity. Exclusionary arrangements in the labor market by forcibly distancing the cheap Palestinian laborforce, the empowerment of the military as a nation builder, and the enabling of a high level of resource mobilization by a centralized state were all mechanisms that made bellicosity possible and even preferable.