Transparency and Accountability Practices of Local Government Units in the Philippines: a Measurement from the Ground

Public Organization Review - The organizational practices of government personnel are indispensable components of building public trust and confidence. The 56 department heads and 662 personnel...     

UNMARRIED PARENTHOOD AND REDISTRIBUTIVE POLITICS

Political survey data for nine West European countries show that women have become increasingly left‐wing compared to men, and that this trend is positively correlated with the rise of nonmarriage in these countries. This pattern is mirrored in German longitudinal data (GSOEP), where transitions out of marriage make women, but not men, significantly more left‐leaning. Analysis of public spending data for high‐income OECD countries (1980–1998) suggests that the political impact of nonmarriage extends to the allocation of State resources with increases in nonmarriage first reducing, and then increasing, State redistribution towards children. (JEL: H31, H42, J12, J13)     

Voluntary work in the Norwegian long-term care sector: complementing or substituting formal services?

ABSTRACT

Across Europe, governments call for increased involvement of volunteers to shoulder some of the welfare burden. Nevertheless, there is little research into what kind of work and how much volunteers currently contribute in the long-term care services and whether this has the potential to substitute formal services. Drawing on findings from a survey of employees in Norwegian nursing homes and home care districts, we examine the nature and volume of voluntary, unpaid work in the long-term care services in Norway. Our data suggest that volunteers to a very limited degree carry out work that has traditionally been considered the formal system’s domain: personal care and practical help. Nearly all the voluntary, unpaid contributions in our data takes place within cultural, social and other activities aimed at promoting mental stimulation and well-being, indicating a classic specialisation of tasks between volunteers and professionals. However, there has been an expansion of the formal care system to include activities aimed at promoting well-being in recent decades. This may indicate that there is a certain level of task sharing between voluntary and formal care. Thus, social workers need to consider voluntary service provision when assessing the needs of clients.     

Habitat- and matrix-related differences in species diversity and trait richness of vascular plants,Orthoptera and Lepidoptera in an urban landscape

Urban growth is considered to be a major driver of environmental change. Urbanisation can affect urban biodiversity in different ways. So far, most studies focused on the impact of urbanisation on single taxa in one habitat type. In this study, we used data of species inventories and GIS-based landscape elements to examine the effects of habitat size and landscape composition on the species diversity of three taxonomic groups (vascular plants, Orthoptera and Lepidoptera) in meadows and ruderal sites in the urban region of Basel, Switzerland. We also related the responses of three species traits (body size, dispersal ability and food specialisation) to habitat size in Orthoptera and Lepidoptera. We found that species of the different taxonomic groups differed in their response to habitat size and landscape composition both in meadows and ruderal sites depending on the traits examined. The species richness of Orthoptera and Lepidoptera was positively related to meadow size but not to the size of ruderal sites, while the opposite was true for plants. For Lepidoptera in ruderal sites, the percentage cover of ruderal area in the closer surroundings was a better predictor of species richness than habitat size per se. To sustain high levels of urban biodiversity, we recommend that urban planners develop adequate management strategies to satisfy the different requirements of various taxonomic groups and to increase the quality of green sites surrounding the target habitat.     

The estimation of Unwanted Fertility

The estimation of unwanted fertility is a major objective of demographic surveys, including DHS surveys conducted in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Levels and trends in unwanted fertility are important input to the formulation of population policy and the evaluation of family planning programs. Yet existing methods for estimating unwanted fertility are known to be defective, among other reasons because they rely on subjective data whose validity and reliability are questionable. In this article, we propose a new estimator of unwanted fertility-the "aggregate prospective estimator"--so named because it depends on the stated preference for another child at the time of the survey, the fertility-desires item consistently shown to possess the highest validity and reliability. Under reasonable assumptions, the aggregate prospective estimator produces less biased estimates of unwanted fertility than the most widely used existing methods. The new estimator has the limitation of generating only aggregate-level estimates, but such estimates are the primary data for policy formulation and program evaluation. The new estimator is presented in this article, along with an evaluation of its underlying assumptions and its sensitivity to several sources of error. In an illustrative application to recent DHS data from six countries, the new estimator yields substantially higher estimates of unwanted fertility than existing methods in all six countries.     

Risk Communication for Empowerment: Interventions in a Rohingya Refugee Settlement

There are many reasons that people, when warned of an impending extreme event, do not take proactive, self-defensive action. We focus on one possible reason, which is that, sometimes, people lack a sense of agency or even experience disempowerment, which can lead to passivity. This article takes up one situation where the possibility of disempowerment is salient, that of Rohingya refugees who were evicted from their homes in Myanmar and forced to cross the border into neighboring Bangladesh. In their plight, we see the twin elements of marginalization and displacement acting jointly to produce heightened vulnerability to the risks from extreme weather. Building on a relational model of risk communication, a consortium of researchers and practitioners designed a risk communication training workshop that featured elements of empowerment-based practice. The program was implemented in two refugee camps. Evaluation suggests that the workshop may have had an appreciable effect in increasing participants' sense of agency and hope, while decreasing their level of fatalism. The outcomes were considerably more positive for female than male participants, which has important implications. This work underscores the potential for participatory modes of risk communication to empower the more marginalized, and thus more vulnerable, members of society.     

Everyday life of persons with intellectual disability living in residential settings: a systematic review of qualitative studies

This article presents a systematic review of studies published between November 2010 and November 2014 about the everyday life of adults with intellectual disability as viewed from their own perspective. Everyday life refers to an interdisciplinary concept including approaches attentive to the mundane and to ordinary routines of social relations and practices. Twelve studies met the inclusion criteria. The review was carried out as an interpretive synthesis. Findings from the included studies revealed neglect of participation regarding the wishes, self-determination, choice and control of persons with intellectual disability in their everyday lives. This neglect demonstrates the limitations persons with intellectual disability face as agents and adult citizens in their everyday life, and shows violation of fundamental human rights.     

Biodiversity conservation in the Brazilian social sciences: an analysis of epistemological paths and conditions of possibility

This article aims to present the analysis of a carefully chosen literature in social sciences on the subject of biodiversity conservation. The purpose was to recognize some of the methods and epistemological conceptions which underlie the arguments published in the main academic journals of Sociology, Anthropology and Political Sciences. The analysis is based on a confrontation of Foucault’s concept of “conditions of possibility” with the discursive practices present in the survey. This exercise enabled us to demonstrate that even though we specifically targeted the social sciences, it is possible to recognize the presence of different conditions possibility that are not necessarily compatible and can be critic of each other. These criticisms arise in a context in which the objectivist view was widely accessed in order to corroborate restrictive and punitive actions on biodiversity conservation. This mapping can thus contribute to problematize the dialogue between disciplines in a scenario where each science has a particular political weight.