December 2008, Volume 87, Number 2

Spaghetti Politics: Local Electoral Systems and Alliance Structure in Italy, 1984-2001

Paolo Parigi, Stanford University
Peter S. Bearman, Columbia University

This article describes the impact of the Italian electoral reforms of 1993 on the structure of local political alliances. The reform, which moved Italy from a purely proportional representation system to a mixed, largely majoritarian system, was designed to increase transparency, reduce corruption, limit the number of political parties, and create the conditions for a politics of interests rather than a politics of influence. Paradoxically, moving to a mixed electoral system had the opposite effect. In this article we demonstrate this impact by modeling the structure of political alliances at multiple levels (municipal, provincial and regional) of the Italian polity from 1984 to 2001.

Unintended Consequences of Repression: Alliance Formation in South Korea’s Democracy Movement (1970-1979)

Paul Y. Chang, Singapore Management University

Research regarding the impact of repression on social movements has yielded conflicting findings; some argue that repression decreases the total quantity of protest events while others argue that it motivates protest. To move beyond this impasse, various scholars have suggested exploring how repression influences the quality of social movements. This study assesses the impact repression had on the formation of alliances between different social groups participating in South Korea’s democracy movement. Results from negative binomial regression analyses show that repression facilitated the formation of alliances between movement actors at a time when the overall number of protest events decreased. This study contributes to the literature on coercion and mobilization by pointing to the possibility of movement development during low levels of a protest cycle.

The Value of Non-Work Time in Cross-National Quality of Life Comparisons: The Case of the United States vs. the Netherlands

Ellen Verbakel, Tilburg University
Thomas A. DiPrete, Columbia University

Comparisons of wellbeing between the United States and Western Europe generally show that most Americans have higher standards of living than do Western Europeans at comparable locations in their national income distributions. These comparisons of wellbeing typically privilege disposable income and cash transfers while ignoring other aspects of welfare state and labor market structure that potentially affect the distribution of wellbeing in a society. We argue that non-work time is such a factor. In this empirical exercise involving the United States and the Netherlands, we show that reasonable estimates of the contribution to wellbeing from non-market activities such as the raising of children or longer vacations can overturn claims in the literature that the United States offers greater wellbeing to more of its citizens than do western European countries.

Interaction Domains and Suicide: A Population-based Panel Study of Suicides in Stockholm, 1991-1999

Peter Hedström, Singapore Management University and University of Oxford
Ka-Yuet Liu, Columbia University
Monica K. Nordvik, Stockholm University

This article examines how suicides influence suicide risks of others within two interaction domains: the family and the workplace. A distinction is made between dyad-based social-interaction effects and degree-based exposure effects. A unique database including all individuals who ever lived in Stockholm during the 1990s is analyzed. For about 5.6 years on average, 1.2 million individuals are observed, and 1,116 of them commit suicide. Controlling for other risk factors, men exposed to a suicide in the family (at work) are 8.3 (3.5) times more likely to commit suicide than nonexposed men. The social-interaction effect thus is larger within the family domain; yet work-domain exposure is more important for the suicide rate because individuals are more often exposed to suicides of coworkers than family members.

Choice by Contrast in Swedish Schools: How Peers’ Achievement Affects Educational Choice

Jan O. Jonsson, Swedish Institute for Social Research
Carina Mood, Swedish Institute for Social Research

We ask whether a social contrast mechanism depresses the educational aspirations of students with high-achieving peers. We study two entire cohorts of students in the final grade of the Swedish comprehensive school with matched information on social origin and achievements (160,417 students, 829 schools). Controlling for school fixed effects and observed characteristics of students and families, we find that the propensity to make a high-aspiring choice of upper-secondary school program is lower for students with high-achieving schoolmates, given own achievement. While theoretically interesting, the effect is small compared to that of own achievement: Moving an average student from an average school to a school that lies one standard deviation lower in achievement increases the probability of a high-aspiring choice by three percentage points.

Family Formation in Post-Soviet Ukraine: Changing Effects of Education in a Period of Rapid Social Change

Brienna Perelli-Harris, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Focusing on post-Soviet Ukraine, this paper examines how social transformations changed family formation, leading to the world’s lowest fertility rate. The findings show that before Ukraine gained independence, highly educated women had higher first birth rates after controlling for school enrollment and marriage. After independence, highly educated women began to delay childbearing. In contrast, second birth and marriage rates declined after independence, but the effect of education on these events did not change. Explanations for the changing effects of education on first births include the restructured educational system, shifting opportunity costs, reduction in childcare benefits, and exposure to new ideas and values. This study demonstrates how societal-level change not only alters the composition of individual-level characteristics in a population, but also affects the relationship between factors and behavior.

Opportunity for Whom?: Political Opportunity and Critical Events in Canadian Aboriginal Mobilization, 1951-2000

Howard Ramos, Dalhousie University

Many social movement researchers question the usefulness of political opportunity as a concept. However, others argue that it can be refined by disaggregating different opportunities for actors and outcomes to understand the underlying mechanisms that influence each. This research extends this analysis by asking “political opportunity for whom?” Looking at Canadian Aboriginal mobilization, it assesses how different opportunities influence a broad range of movement actors and organizations. Using data from a 50-year period it assesses how contemporaneous, lagged and change regression modeling of opportunities affect results. The article finds that structural opportunities around resources robustly influence a wide range of mobilization.

Relationship Quality in Interethnic Marriages and Cohabitations

Bryndl E. Hohmann-Marriott, University of Otago
Paul Amato, Pennsylvania State University

This study focuses on the factors underlying differences in relationship quality between interethnic and same-ethnic couples. Using the National Survey of Families and Households and the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine relationship satisfaction, interpartner conflict and subjective assessments of relationship instability in married and cohabiting couples. Partners in interethnic unions generally reported lower levels of relationship quality than did partners in same-ethnic unions. These differences held for women as well as men, and for married as well as cohabiting couples. Differences in relationship quality were largely accounted for by more complex relationship histories, more heterogamous unions, fewer shared values and less support from parents. In contrast, differences in socioeconomic resources did not appear to play an explanatory role.

Social Contacts and Race/Ethnic Job Matching

Kevin Stainback, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Scholarly literature and the media often tout “networking” as an effective route for obtaining quality employment. Some scholars, however, have cautioned that racially segregated social networks may produce racially segregated workgroups and differential opportunity structures over time. Drawing from theoretical perspectives pertaining to social closure and analyzing data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, this article analyses the role of social contacts and race/ethnic matching in employment. The findings reveal that among individuals using contacts in job searches, same-race contacts dramatically increase race/ethnic matching for all status groups. On the other hand, using a crossrace contact, while a rare event, strongly discourages this process. The results also show that race/ethnic matching is reduced with increases in educational attainment and in larger workplaces. Further analyses highlighting the quality of jobs attained through same- and cross-race social contacts show that crossrace contacts do not provide access to higher paying jobs nor jobs with authority. They do, however, increase access to lower-level supervisory positions for blacks and Hispanics.

Guarded Borders: Adolescent Interracial Romance and Peer Trouble at School

Derek A. Kreager, Pennsylvania State University

Assimilation theorists have long viewed inter-group romantic partnerships as indicators of racial equality. Although the past half-century has witnessed the erosion of anti-miscegenation laws and subsequent increases in the frequency of interracial marriages, these unions remain relatively infrequent. Low intermarriage rates may be partially explained by the informal sanctions leveled at young interracial romances. This study tests whether adolescents who interracially date are at greater risks of peer difficulties than intra-racially dating youth. Results demonstrate a positive relationship between adolescent interracial dating and peer trouble at school. As hypothesized from ethnographic research and theories of inter-group relations, results suggest that interracial romances activate peer sanctions and that these reactions are strongest when romances involve black students.

Emotional Segues and the Management of Emotion by Women and Men

Kathryn Lively, Dartmouth College

Recent studies suggest that gender may be less influential on the experience of emotion than originally believed. Most of these studies, however, have focused almost exclusively on gender differences in discrete emotional experiences, paying less attention to the ways in which emotions may co-occur within a relatively short period. Using the General Survey’s 1996 emotions module, I examine the correlational structure of nine latent emotion factors – tranquility, joy, hope, pride, self-reproach, anger, rage, fear and distress – by gender. Using the technique of shortest path analysis, I find women’s most common emotional pathways are longer, more complex, and more likely to use more positive and less powerful emotions than those most common to men. Implications for emotion management, both personal and interpersonal, are discussed.

A New Generation of Women? How Female ROTC Cadets Negotiate the Tension between Masculine Military Culture and Traditional Femininity

Jennifer M. Silva, University of Virginia

The inclusion of women in the U.S. military is generally understood as radically transforming traditional gender relations. Drawing from 38 interviews with women and men in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, I ask: how do women negotiate gender identities within the “masculine” military institution, and what types of transformations in their gender ideology and practices does this negotiation entail? I find that ROTC women’s transformative agency is limited by the cultural imperative of performing gender. That is, because their very identities as women are called into question in the military sphere, ROTC women must privilege traditionally feminine aspects of themselves in order to maintain a coherent sense of self. Through this process, these women ultimately reproduce traditional femininity and male privilege.

Social Networks and Political Participation: How Do Networks Matter?

Chaeyoon Lim, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Despite great interest in the role of social networks as channels of political mobilization, few studies have examined which types of social networks work more effectively in recruiting political activists. Using the Citizen Participation Study data, this study shows that contrary to the conventional wisdom in the literature, there is little evidence that strong ties are more effective than weak ties in recruiting activists. Ties formed in civic associations, however, are more effective than other ties in recruiting protest participants. Neighborhood ties are more effective in recruiting community activists, but not in other types of activity. I conclude that the contents of relationships and the identities shared by two people, rather than tie strength, form the basis of interpersonal influence in political activism.

A Special Section:
Disasters in the Twenty-First Century: Modern Destruction and Future Instruction

Editor David Brunsma, University of Missouri
Co-Editor J. Steven Picou, University of South Alabama

Elites and Panic: More to Fear than Fear Itself

Lee Clarke, Rutgers University
Caron Chess, Rutgers University

Attributions of panic are almost exclusively directed at members of the general public. Here, we inquire into the relationships between elites and panic. We review current research and theorizing about panic, including problems of identifying when it has occurred. We propose three relationships: elites fearing panic, elites causing panic and elites panicking. We use numerous examples, including our own research on the 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, to illustrate how these relationships operate. The argument is evocative, not definitive. However, the conceptual utility of explicitly theorizing the relationships between elites and panic shows, among other things, how power works in disasters.

Organizing Hazards, Engineering Disasters? Improving the Recognition of Political-Economic Factors in the Creation of Disasters

William R. Freudenburg, University of California, Santa Barbara
Robert Gramling, University of Louisiana, Lafayette
Shirley Laska, University of New Orleans
Kai T. Erikson, Yale University

Disaster studies have made important progress in recognizing the unequally distributed consequences of disasters, but there has been less progress in analyzing social factors that help create “natural” disasters. Even well-known patterns of hazard-creation tend to be interpreted generically – as representing “economic development” or “capitalism” – rather than through focusing on the more specific dynamics involved. We illustrate this point with two recent and well-known cases of flooding – those in the upper Mississippi River Valley and in the Katrina-related devastation of New Orleans. In the former case, damage was caused in part by building the very kinds of higher and stronger floodwalls that were shown to be inadequate in the latter. In the New Orleans case, a more important factor in the death and destruction was the excavation of a transportation canal. In both cases, and many more, the underlying causes of damage to humans as well as to the environment has involved a three-part pattern, supported by the political system – spreading the costs, concentrating the economic benefits and hiding the real risks. In very real senses, these have been floods of folly, created not just by extreme weather events, but by deadly and avoidable patterns of political-economic choices. Comparable patterns appear to deserve greater attention in other contexts, as well.

From 9/11 to 8/29: Post-Disaster Recovery and Rebuilding in New York and New Orleans

Kevin Fox Gotham, Tulane University
Miriam Greenberg, University of California, Santa Cruz

This article examines the process of post-disaster recovery and rebuilding in New York City since 9/11 and in New Orleans since the Hurricane Katrina disaster (8/29). As destabilizing events, 9/11 and 8/29 forced a rethinking of the major categories, concepts and theories that long dominated disaster research. We analyze the form, trajectory and problems of reconstruction in the two cities with special emphasis on the implementation of the Community Development Block Grant program, the Liberty Zone and the Gulf Opportunity Zone, and tax-exempt private activity bonds to finance and promote reinvestment. Drawing on a variety of data sources, we show that New York and New Orleans have become important laboratories for entrepreneurial city and state governments seeking to use post-disaster rebuilding as an opportunity to push through far-reaching neoliberal policy reforms. The emphasis on using market-centered approaches for urban recovery and rebuilding in New York and New Orleans should be seen not as coherent or sustainable responses to urban disaster but rather as deeply contradictory restructuring strategies that are intensifying the problems they seek to remedy.

A World-System Approach to Post-Catastrophe International Relief

Lynn Letukas, University of Delaware
John Barnshaw, University of Delaware

As our understanding of disaster shifts from an event concentrated in time and space to a social occasion occurring across time and space, so too must our explanations of disaster shift from theories of the middle range to broader theoretical frameworks. We explore the world-system approach in an effort to understand the upper limits of theory for disaster and offer this approach as a better understanding of how long-term development shapes social change. Utilizing media reports of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami from the United States to India, Indonesia and Thailand over a one-year period, we find perceptions of aid vary by economic zones and nation-states in the contemporary world system.

Population Composition, Migration and Inequality: The Influence of Demographic Changes on Disaster Risk and Vulnerability

William Donner, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Havidán Rodríguez, University of Delaware

The changing demographic landscape of the United States calls for a reassessment of the societal impacts and consequences of socalled “natural” and technological disasters. An increasing trend towards greater demographic and socio-economic diversity (in part due to high rates of international immigration), combined with mounting disaster losses, have brought about a more serious focus among scholars on how changing population patterns shape the vulnerability and resiliency of social systems. Recent disasters, such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami (2004) and Hurricane Katrina (2005), point to the differential impacts of disasters on certain communities, particularly those that do not have the necessary resources to cope with and recover from such events. This paper interprets these impacts within the context of economic, cultural, and social capital, as well as broader human ecological forces. The paper also makes important contributions to the social science disaster research literature by examining population growth, composition, and distribution in the context of disaster risk and vulnerability. Population dynamics (e.g., population growth, migration, and urbanization) are perhaps one of the most important factors that have increased our exposure to disasters and have contributed to the devastating impacts of these events, as the case of Hurricane Katrina illustrates. Nevertheless, the scientific literature exploring these issues is quite limited. We argue that if we fail to acknowledge and act on the mounting evidence regarding population composition, migration, inequality, and disaster vulnerability, we will continue to experience disasters with greater regularity and intensity.

Rethinking the Nature of Disaster: From Failed Instruments of Learning to a Post-Social Understanding

Stewart Williams, University of Tasmania

Recent disasters have been of such scale and complexity that both the common assumptions made about learning from them, and the traditional approaches distinguishing natural from technological disasters (and now terrorism) are thus challenged. Beck’s risk thesis likewise signals the need for a paradigmatic change. Despite sociological inflections in disaster research and management, however, an examination of the risk management practices deployed during Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami reveals attendant problems with a persistent instrumental rationality and disjuncture between society and environment. Therefore, an alternative, post-social understanding is proposed. It includes relational (rather than instrumental) approaches which reinstate the importance of nonhuman nature, but it also recognizes that disasters are postnormal problems, and that disaster research and management increasingly deal with phenomena beyond the limits of current know-how.