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By 2025, one quarter of the world's population aged 60 and over will be living in China. Therefore, the success or failure of China to reform its old-age pension system will affect a major proportion of the world's population. This paper explores old-age pension reforms in Latin America in an effort to obtain insights about the potential consequences of reforms in China. While numerous Western countries first experienced a cultural rationalization, then economic modernization, and after that faced the challenges of population aging, both Latin America and China are dealing with pension system reforms in the context of much less developed economies and stronger traditional cultures. The analysis presented in this paper suggests that these distinctive characteristics will shape the consequences of the reforms being implemented in China. First, financing the reform could be hard in a low income country and non-rationalized society prone to evasion and corruption problems. Second, China is likely going to be a traditional society where the traditional formulas to secure old-age income security are becoming stressed. Accordingly, China needs to improve the coverage of its old-age social pension system to provide alternative sources of income at older ages to the traditional family arrangements. However, there is no evidence in Latin American old-age pension reform suggesting that coverage of the Chinese system could become close to universal in the following decades. Therefore, family arrangements seem likely to continue being important sources of well-being at older ages. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative efforts commonly used in the social sciences has framed the Mediterranean as a region characterized by convergence. In Western Mediterranean societies, the existing division between North and South along with the differences in socio-economic changes of Southern Europe compared to Northern and Eastern Europe make comparative agendas problematic. The Mediterranean age continues to be a space in constant transformation, as it had already been characterized by Ferdinand Braudel (1985) many years ago. This paper presents a comparative effort that enables an analysis of the Mediterranean in the context of globalization that is further elaborated in the recently published book The Mediterranean in the Age of Globalization (Transaction Publishers). This effort is developed using the case of globalization and migration across several countries across Western Mediterranean societies. The aim of this paper is to reflect the problems around comparative work taking various settings as examples: the sociological tradition, the migration axis as an interpretative key, as finally, the Mediterranean as the background for unity and comparative studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe is hardly homogenous on any count of labour market regulation or on any measure of labour market performance. This basic point seems to have been missed by most research as the majority of scholars have rather concentrated on the unilateral analysis of the factors accountable for fractures in the old evolutionary logics-globalization, technological change, demographic ageing, post-industrialization and tertiarization- while neglecting the systematic analysis of the different reforms paths that have been taken up in different countries. The objective of this paper is thus to explore the factors that lay behind the different ways in which common reform pressure are refracted differently across national contest according to pre-existent institutional arrangements and strategic interaction between relevant actors. Among the set of alternative explanations for national variation this paper will focus on path dependencies in labour market reforms that stem from the pre-existent welfare regime, firms' main competitive strategy and characteristics of the political process of reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diffusion is a topic currently of interest to social movement scholars, since social movements diffuse in many forms and directions. This paper analyzes more than 1000 protests which occurred since 1970 in the two countries. It suggests that different modes of diffusion are operating in the US and Canada and explains the differences by the patterns of success the protests have had in each country as well as by the different social structural conditions relating to disability in each country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an empirical assessment to what extent and in what ways literary anthologies and literary history books classify ethnic minority fiction writers in the United States and the Netherlands from 1979 until 2006. By analyzing the amount of ethnic discourse used the introductory texts and numerical representation of ethnic minority writers in selected anthologies and literary history books I found that a high degree of competition (as in the American case) leads to more attention and a canonization of ethnic diversity that a lack of competition on the educational market (as in the Netherlands. To hypothesize how ethnic minority authors have been classified and how ethnicity as a discursive strategy 'interacts' with the emphasis on literary quality, I have distinguished between three kinds of categorizations: ethnic themes, ethnic literary genres and ethnic background. By researching the layout and the ethnic discourse contained in the description of specific authors in these books, I find that ethnic minority authors are not classified as such in the Netherlands, while in the United States they are embedded in embedded in ethnic literary genres. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why given their remarkably similar class and state structures in the late nineteenth century did Spain and Italy produce strikingly different associational spheres? While in Italy associationism, especially cooperatives, chambers of labor and employers' organizations was highly developed, in Spain associationism was both weak and fragmented. This paper argues that these differences were rooted in the timing of state formation and associational revolution. In Italy the formation of the unified state and the modern associational sphere were concurrent historical processes. Thus state actors were deeply involved in a project of civil society development. In Spain in contrast the associational revolution occurred within the context of a pre-existing state. Associational development was thus driven primarily by non-state actors, and thus tended to be both weaker, and more regionally fragmented than its Italian counterpart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper approaches the conceptual question how cultural ideas and material interests can be linked for explaining political processes of institution-building. The answer will be developed along a historical case study on the interest formation processes that led to the introduction of the first American unemployment insurance as part of the Social Security Act in 1935. It is argued that power resource and structuralist explanatory approaches have the common problem of pursuing an objectivist concept of interest when they deduce actors´ interests from fixed socio-economic and political structures. This leaves open explanatory gaps concerning the timing and direction of interest shifts. It is argued that these expplanatory gaps can be closed by a more idea-related approach: Following the Weberian notion of worldviews functioning as "switchmen" for the dynamics of political interests it can be shown that the historical interest formation in the field of labor market policy was not a question of economic structures alone but also a question of the cultural evolution of a specific social knowledge. When the Great Depression made older interest positions obsolete for labor market policy actors a window of opportunity for the adoption of new perspectives opened up. The "Wisconsin School of Thought" led by economist John Roger Commons offered the possibility of re-formulating interest positions in the field of labor market policy in a time of crisis. It is shown that ideas which had become dominant in the academic debate between 1914 and 1935 heavily influenced the creation of unemployment insurance by influencing actors´ perception of their material interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the life circumstances of blacks living in the United States and the United Kingdom have improved over the last several decades, declining marriage rates in both countries indicate fragile family relations. Research has begun to explore explanations for this trend, but much work has focused on the experiences of economically disadvantaged blacks. This paper examines the romantic relationship experiences of college-educated black women living in the U.S. and the U.K. Specifically, the study examines the criteria these women use to assess romantic partners and their perceptions of the availability of desirable romantic partners. In-depth interviews were conducted with 17 women living in Boston and 20 women living in London. Results show that women have strong preferences for partners that are black and college educated. However, respondents reported that low achievement levels for black men in both countries as well as tensions between black men and women surrounding gender roles created a shortage of available romantic partners. These findings may shed light on declining marriage rates for blacks in both countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the future of marriage? There has been much public and scholarly debate about the state and in particular the future of marriage in the United States. However, to understand the future a closer and broader look at the past is necessary. In this paper, I examine marriage rates over the past 40 years in 26 western countries, including the United States, with the goal of better understanding how changes in the demographic and economic context have affected the trajectory of marriage rates. I use country level data, primarily from sources from the Statistical office of the European Communities, Eurostat, and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Based on graphical evidence and results from multivariate analyses, I find that macro level factors are useful in understanding changes in marriage rates. The results suggest that male unemployment is a barrier to marriage, which can be interpreted as a sign that the availability of "marriageable" men is crucial in understanding developments in marriage rates. Moreover, I find that higher GDP is negatively associated with marriage rates, indicating that under better overall economic conditions women may be able to forgo marriage. The results highlight the need for addition comparative work that examines changes over time, to better understand the role context plays in shaping marriage rates. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No human being can live without water. Yet over one billion people do not have adequate access to this vital resource. With globalization has come a set of policy prescriptions for addressing these shortcomings, yet few clear policy lessons have emerged. Though the private sector participation in water sectors promoted by international financial institutions has had some success in expanding the state capacity in specific contexts, the rush to implement these "best practices" under the Washington Consensus has led to spectacular failures as well. Under what circumstances are proposed solutions most promising? Our findings indicate that successes and failures of state-led reform, private contracting and concessions, and decentralization depend on preexisting state structures and social relations in determinate ways. In this paper, we present the theoretical framework for examining these contextual considerations, with reference to a larger empirical study of water sector reform in three countries. The results offer a cautionary tale regarding the wholesale transfer of public goods models from one context to another, as well as a roadmap regarding which policies and practices might be better suited to dealing with the complexity inherent to the essential task of improving water provision in developing countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on public support for the death penalty has neglected comparative analysis. It is not clear if the results of past research based disproportionately on the US, will replicate in other nations with varied institutional and cultural frameworks. The present article has two central aims: (1) to replicate American-based findings, based on the theoretical perspectives of instrumentalism(crimecenteredness) and broader, noncrime-centered symbolic orientations, for a set of 17 nations, and (2) to partially test the elite leadership thesis. The latter refers to the notion that legal abolition of the death penalty will substantially delegitimate capital punishment in a nation's cultural system, and lead to a steady decline in death penalty support. Individual level data are from the International Social Science Program and refer 17,725 respondents in 17 nations. A multiple logistic regression analysis largely confirmed American-based research. In particular, indicators from an instrumental approach that were significant included individuals' punitiveness, and a nation's homicide rate. Measures of symbolic orientations that were significant predictors of death penalty support included authoritarianism and fundamentalism. Some support was found for the elite leadership hypothesis. Residents of abolitionist nations, especially if they resided in nations with a long history of abolitionism, were significantly less supportive of the death penalty than those of retentionist nations. The full model explained 25% of the variance in support for capital punishment, providing systematic crossnational evidence for American-based theories of death penalty support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Competition over scarce resources is frequently argued to lie at the heart of ethnic mobilization. Often embedded in this assertion is the belief that increased competition alters the instrumentality of group membership and can strengthen identification within an ethnic group when individuals perceive the group as an effective means for accessing goods. Collective identification then provides the solidarity necessary for its organization and mobilization. Despite the prevalence of instrumentalist approaches in the literature on ethnicity, little analytic attention has focused on whether, in fact, perceptions of group instrumentality do influence ethnic identifications. Using survey data from the multiethnic country of Mauritius, I address this issue by examining the relationship between political and economic instrumentalism and ethnic identification across ethnic groups. I find limited support for an instrumentalist approach as this approach explains only a modest amount of variance in ethnic identification. Moreover, significant differences emerge in forms and extent to which instrumentalism affects ethnic identification across ethnic groups. These results suggest a number of deficiencies in instrumentalist approaches to ethnicity and in approaches to ethnic mobilization that build on an instrumentalist premise. Possible amendments that may address these deficiencies and advance understanding of ethnic identification are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the consequences of familialist policies on the reproductive and sexual lives of the citizens of Nicaragua. In recent years, feminist scholars have examined the relations between the state, politics and the family. The Nicaraguan state has changed very fast in a short period of time. Social policies on a wide range of issues have influenced the everyday lives of Nicaraguans. Familialist discourses about reproduction and sexuality that are included in Nicaraguan state policies have long-term implications for gender relations. New laws have upgraded women's status within the family. These laws have given them the right to divorce as well as to inherit property.

The paper comparatively examines social-science studies of immigration and ethnicity in Europe and the United States. The European countries included in this assessment are Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy (the selection based on the author’s familiarity with the literature of the subject in these countries). Considered in the comparison are three aspects of immigration studies: (1) research agendas (and non-agendas); (2) most common explanatory strategies; and (3) most common (if any) interdisciplinary collaborations. Each of these issues is examined in the context of the actual "immigrant situation" (sociodemographics, ethnoreligious composition, economic position, and political status of immigrants, and immigration politics and the civic-political climate of their reception) in the compared countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Men often receive fatherhood earnings bonuses, the size of which differs among men. Stratification also differs across countries, so we compare pre- and post-tax fatherhood premia in the Netherlands, West Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The countries differ in their institutional supports for market wage inequality, as well as the extent to which tax systems reduce or sustain earnings inequalities. Wave 6 (2004) LIS data and regressions of the recentered influence function are used to estimate the unconditional quantile partial effects of children at different percentiles of men's absolute earnings distribution in each country. The size of the fatherhood premium varies most among men in the less-regulated labor markets of the two English-speaking countries. The lowest-earning UK and US men with three or more children are predicted to incur significant penalties. Fatherhood premia emerge in the upper half of the earnings distribution that increase as UK and US men's earnings increase. Premia also increase as West German men's earnings increase, but all German fathers are predicted to earn some premium. All Dutch fathers earn a small premium that is of similar magnitude at each percentile of the gross earnings distribution. The German, UK, and US tax systems have little redistributive effect, although the US (but not UK) penalty for the lowest-earning fathers disappears after taking taxes into account. The Dutch tax system further equalizes the already similar premia among men. Findings highlight the importance of state-market arrangements in structuring family-related earnings equality among men. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparative media analysis, despite some recent progress thanks notably to Hallin and Mancini (2004), remains in relative infancy compared to, for example, comparative sociology and political science. Comparative media analysis tends to draw on a most similar systems design (MSSD) and suffers from the problems of overestimation of the importance of the independent variable, unrealistic claims about the constancy of other variables, and a lack of flexibility in extending comparative work beyond similar societies. Most different systems design, the most common alternative to MSSD, also has methodological problems. This means that comparative media analysis is not very good at explaining why we have the media we have and will not be very good at explaining until we adopt different comparative methods. Fuzzy set theory, developed first in mathematics but then extended to social sciences, can help us address these problems. Fuzzy set designs have been used in recent years in comparative small-n sociology, social policy, history, and political analysis but not in media analysis. Fuzzy sets may also help us overcome unfortunate quantitative and qualitative methodological divides that continue to dog media analysis. This paper will review some recent comparative media analysis highlighting the problems with method; discuss the development of fuzzy set methods in social sciences; illustrate how it may be used in comparative media analysis and why it is better than existing methods. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use data from the 2002 International Social Survey Programme, with roughly 42,000 individuals nested within 29 countries, to examine the determinants of happiness in a comparative perspective. We hypothesize that social democratic welfare states redistribute happiness among policy-targeted demographic groups in these countries. The redistributive properties of the social democratic welfare states generate an alternate form of "happiness inequality" in which winners and losers are defined by marital status, presence of children and income. We apply multi-level modeling and focus on public social expenditures (as percentage of GDP) as proxy measures of state intervention at the macro-level, and happiness as the specific measure of welfare outcome at the micro-level. We find that aggregate happiness is not greater in the social democratic welfare states, but happiness closely reflects the redistribution of resources in these countries. Happiness is redistributed from low-risk to high-risk individuals. For example, women with small children are significantly happier, but single persons are significantly less happy in the welfare states. This suggests that pro-family ideology of the social democratic welfare states protects families from social risk and improves their well-being at the cost of single persons. Further, we find that the happiness gap between high versus low-income earners is considerably smaller in the social democratic welfare states, suggesting that happiness is redistributed from the privileged to the less privileged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the ethnic composition - and related identity politics - have also impacted on one of the most widely studied federal organizations in the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts. Similar developments have been taking place in Europe as well, albeit less dramatic and more recent. Using content analysis, this study addresses the cross-national differences in the extent and ways in which ethnicity has been part of American, Dutch and German national literary policy organizations from 1965 until 2005. It shows that the National Endowment for the Art's legitimacy has been challenged more severely than that of its European counterparts. As a result ethnic discourse and the ethnic composition of the literature panels have been used to regain legitimacy in periods of extreme crisis. However, ethnic boundaries have not all disappeared, considering the relatively low number of ethnic minorities that have received literature grants. Although the ethnic minority population in the Netherlands and Germany is of comparable size, the principal German literary policy organization has not dealt with the increasing ethnic diversity whatsoever. The main Dutch literary policy organization has made some small steps towards incorporating ethnic diversity, primarily by initiating an intercultural literary policy. Nevertheless, ethnic boundaries - especially with regard to ethnic representation in the literary panels - are somewhat stronger in the Netherlands than in the United States, albeit not nearly as strong as in Germany, where hardly any ethnic minorities have been part of federal literary policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current trends in comparative sociology have examined the effects of export concentration, foreign direct investment, and debt service on health in the developing world. The health effects of structural adjustment programs however, have yet to be examined cross-nationally. Dependency theory suggests that International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs should be associated with high levels of child mortality rates in developing nations. Yet modern neoliberal economic theory contends that these programs lead to increased economic growth and transfer of advanced medical technology from core to periphery nations, thereby increasing public health and lowering levels of child mortality. To adjudicate these claims I construct generalized least squares fixed-effects models of child mortality rates in eighty developing nations from 1990 to 2005. Along with structural adjustment, I consider the impact of gross domestic product per capita, debt service, multinational corporate investment, international trade, democracy, as well as gross and female secondary school enrollments. I find that IMF structural adjustment is associated with higher levels of child mortality, while democracy and both gross and female school enrollments are associated with lower rates of child mortality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]