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Scholars interested in the link between economic and military interests have asked whether trade follows the flag. Studies in this vein tend to examine the causal relationship between trade flows and diplomatic relations as measured through conflict or alliances. While informative, this formulation of economic interests neglects a vital--and extremely significant--aspect of US economic power: financial capital. In this paper we analyze the relationship between overseas asset flows and diplomatic relations, as estimated through US troop deployment. As both US financial flows and US military presence spread throughout the world, it is quite timely to untangle the causal arrow and illuminate whether economics guides politics or vice versa. In this paper, we explore the nature of the relationship between troop deployment and asset flows. Are financial flows and US military presence substitutes, as both serve to protect and expand the US national interest? Or, in contrast, does the US military ?stand guard? over vital economic interests, ensuring both economic and political stability within a state? This paper tests each hypothesis, utilizing both granger causality as well as an instrumental variable technique to determine not only the direction of causality between these economic and political variables, but also whether or not diverse financial flows similarly impact US troop deployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, an increasing number of scholars have reintroduced religion into the study of American politics. Included in this new wave of research is research focused on ‘social capital’ in the United States. The social capital line of research has become interested in religion in part as it is manifest in the rise of Faith Based Organizations (FBOs). While increased scholarly interest in FBOs can serve to invigorate the discussions of how religious Americans shape politics and society, we must carefully note how religion is treated in these emerging social capital studies. What role do religion and Faith play in the social capital framework? What are religion and Faith credited with doing? When are religion and Faith no longer included in the analysis? This paper will attempt to address such questions by presenting a close-reading of Mark R. Warren’s Dry Bones Rattling. The paper makes two central arguments. First, the paper argues that Warren places too much separation between the religious and the political, when in fact the political becomes religious for Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) participants. Second, and building on this distinction between what constitutes the political and religious spheres, it will be argued that although Warren readily acknowledges the role of religion in the IAF, in the final analysis he writes Faith out of the picture. The paper is organized into three sections. Section I provides an introduction to the issues at hand, attempting to address several prominent objections to the paper’s premise. Section II provides the bulk of the analysis, a detailed reading of Dry Bones Rattling text. Section II answers the question, ‘How exactly does Warren write about religion?’ Section III presents a discussion of the implications of the findings in Section II, addressing the question, ‘Why does it matter that Warren treats religion in this way?’ Section II highlights three patterns of note. First, it will be argued that Warren consistently presents a story of social activism that is ‘based’ in Faith, but eventually moves toward a more secular purpose. In one sense, this is the difference between a ‘Faith-based’ vs. ‘Faith-centered’ description of FBOs. Warren treats the idea of ‘Faith-based’ as meaning primariliy that an FBO has its foundation and origin in Faith traditions. He does not give adequate attention to the notion that FBOs are also Faith-centered organizations - always and everywhere aware of God’s presence in their lives and work. Second, and related to the first point, the paper will argue that Warren repeatedly downplays or ignores comments from his research subjects that would point toward a more central role for Faith and God in the IAF’s story. Taking a close look at the way Warren treats these God-centered quotes reveals that although Warren is willing to put the quotes in front of the reader, he is not willing to dwell on the theological content the quotes contain. Third, the paper will suggest that Warren’s references to Sacred Scripture strip the Scriptures of much of what makes them unique to the Faith traditions from which they come. In Section III, the paper will address three important implications of these three patterns in the text. First, because the IAF is not considered as a Faith-centered organization, a false dichotomy is created between the work of the IAF and the Christian Right. The theology of the IAF is not deeply probed, and the theology of the Christian Right remains unchallenged. Second, it will be argued that forcing the IAF into the social capital framework prevents the author from witnessing the whole IAF story. A brief comparison will be made between Warren’s work and Rogers (1990) Cold Anger. Third, the paper will conclude with a brief discussion of the public policy implications of Warren’s analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is theoretically guided by Sharing the Journey (1994). A key finding of Robert Wuthnow’s (1994) work, besides small groups being enclaves of social capital, was the illustration that ‘community is what people say they are seeking when they join small group.’ Reflecting on this scholarship, this paper, qualitatively, through 50 personal interviews with members of small religious groups in the Greater Washington DC area, illustrates that today, in the post-Mosaic digital world, while small groups remain enclaves of social capital, small group participants’ usage of ICTs in recent years- notably email, and to a lesser degree instant messaging and cell phones- has resulted in the drying up of the fluidity in group memberships Wuthnow found in the late 1980s. This is especially true for America’s youngest, and more technologically adept, adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines why people ?violate? rationality and take part in their communities, differentiating by types of participation, particularly political versus other, more communal, types of participation. We argue that trust plays an important role in participation levels, but contrary to more traditional models, the causal relationship runs from trust to participation. In addition, we posit that trust is strongly affected by economic inequality. Using aggregated American state level data for the 1970s, 80s and 90s, we present a series of two-stage least-squares models on the effects of inequality and trust on participation, controlling for other related factors. Findings indicate that inequality is the strongest determinant of trust, and that trust has a greater effect on communal participation than on political participation. Check author’s web site for an updated version of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the complexities of the intersection of racial and gender construction(s) with respect to the public sphere and private sphere dichotomy. Through the analysis of black women’s social conditions, this paper argues that the historical constructions of race and gender and the historical period of analysis affect the applicability of the "public-private dichotomy" to black women’s experiences. Consequently, racial exclusion and gender discrimination induced black women’s consciousness and their socio-political development. Although social capital theory accounts for the importance of social networks, norms, and trust in building social relations, we need a conceptualization of social capital theory that accounts for the complexities of racial and gender construction(s) and their effect on racially "divided publics," racio-gendered spheres, and racial uncertainty. Therefore, this paper presents black socio-political capital and racio-sexual social capital as frameworks most appropriate for analyzing black women’s conditions during this era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines three recent efforts to harmonize accounting standards across borders. Contrary to leading explanations that point to the pivotal role of US authorities and global market forces, my argument highlights the independent effects of EU politics and argues that harmonization processes vary primarily with European regional developments. Using insights from historical institutionalism and constructivism, I contend that conflicts over accounting standards, whether at the national or supranational level, are likely to be extensions of distributional contests. Cross-border harmonization is no less dependent on politics than purely domestic cases. The most relevant context for European or transatlantic harmonization is the politics of EU integration. The argument points to the inadequacies of statist models for explaining the origins of and change in the rules governing the global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the ?EU-US Financial Markets Regulatory Dialogue? of May 2002, the Norwalk Agreement of September 2002 and other related new cooperative efforts are products of a fundamental shift in the relative market power of US and European regulators. Contrary to standard approaches emphasizing US financial dominance, the primary cause of the new more balanced transatlantic relations is the creation of an EU regulatory system for financial services, which is transferring authority from the national to the European level. This regional development has increased the relative market power of EU regulators. The more accommodative US regulatory stance came in reaction to pressure from American companies that operated in Europe and had much at stake in the shape of new EU financial regulations. The construction of a European-level regulatory regime thus triggered new private sector political behavior and US regulatory positions and altered transatlantic relations in financial services. The argument challenges statist assumptions and standard conceptions of market power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years there has been a resurgence of attention to the concept of culture in analyses of urban politics ? a resurgence that is an important development in studies of identity politics, morality issue politics, progressive development politics and other important matters in the urban sub-field. That resurgence has taken a different path from the religion, race, and ethnicity-dominated approach of Elazar?s (1970, 1984) classic formulation and Lieske?s (1993) reformulation of Elazar. Instead, a variety of scholars have conceptualized and measured subculture in terms of trends alleged to be at the heart of a post-industrial, cultural divide in the U.S. Focusing on change in women?s social roles, greater prevalence of post-secondary education, increases in non-traditional household arrangements, the decline in traditional religious attachments, and the growing importance of high-tech and ?creative-class? occupations (Florida, 2000), writers such as Rosdil (1991), Sharp (2002; in press), and Clark and Inglehart (1998) have identified an emergent ?unconventional? or ?new political culture? that can be differentiated from a traditional or conventional subculture. Most recently, Sharp (2002; in press) has developed an Index of Unconventional Culture based on Census Bureau data and applied it to analyses of 10 cities? handling of morality issues. Meanwhile, DeLeon and Naff (2003) have used the surveys conducted by Putnam and colleagues in roughly 30 Social Capital Benchmark Communities to create a New Political Culture Index based conceptually on much of this work. The emergence of different measures of local subculture that share a very similar (but not identical) conceptual foundation calls for the kind of measurement validation study that Adcock and Collier have recommended more generally (2001). In part, this paper tackles this matter of measurement validation. However, the existence of different methods of operationalizing the emergent unconventional or new political culture also provides an important opportunity to determine whether measurement of local sub-culture using Census Bureau data yields results consistent with the measurement of local sub-culture using survey data. Urban scholars almost never have resources for random sample surveys on the same topic in many different cities ? the Social Capital Benchmark survey is highly exceptional in this regard. But if it can be shown that the measurement of unconventional or new political subculture using Census Bureau data corresponds to the measurement of unconventional or new political culture using SCBS data and that both meet other tests of validity, then urban scholars will be able to conduct research on many samples of cities using this important measure. The analysis here shows that there is substantial correspondence between the Census Bureau-based and the SCBS survey-based measures of the degree to which a community exhibits unconventional, or new political culture. The survey-based index does have measurement reliability advantages. But both measures are about equally strong on construct validation, even when the criterion variables for construct validation are drawn from the Social Capital Benchmark Survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to our understanding of two important puzzles: the causal mechanism linking social capital to government performance, and the role of institutions as compared to the cultural variables explaining performance. In order to tackle these puzzles, the concept of government performance is disaggregated into two dimensions: policy responsiveness and administrative effectiveness. The effect of social capital vs. institutional variables on either of these variables is then assessed. Empirical tests with data from the U.S. and German sub-national governments provide support for the linkage between social capital and the policy responsiveness attribute of government performance. This finding supports the causal argument that social capital increases the level of political sophistication and facilitates the cooperation within society, helping people to voice their policy demands better. Further, the analysis finds no empirical link between the level of social capital and administrative effectiveness. The variance on this dimension is explained by institutional and socio-economic variables. The implication of the latter finding is that a competing causal argument linking social capital to government performance via the behavior of bureaucratic elites is incomplete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars theorize that social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups. Robert Putnam claims to have found support for this theory in his studies of Italy and the United States. In each case he concludes that the presence of social capital - generalized norms of trust and reciprocity - is sufficient to predict progress on a variety of social indicators. Using demographic and public opinion data collected at the state level in the U.S, Putnam links the performance of schools to his measure of social capital. Schools perform best where social capital is found in greater abundance. This paper attempts to replicate Putnam’s finding using data from local communities in North Carolina. Since social contacts and social capital occur at the local level between individuals and groups in a community, a logical extension of Putnam’s work is to verify that these relationships exist locally. I propose and test the following two hypotheses using data from the 100 counties of North Carolina: 1) Students score higher on statewide tests in school districts where social contact is greater among residents; 2) Students drop out of school at lower rates in school districts where social contact is greater among residents. If local evidence exists to support the claim that social contacts matter, then what programs governments fund in the name of social progress may need to be reconsidered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do different communities volunteer for different types of organizations? Why do some communities have much higher rates of volunteer participation than other, similarly situated communities? The author develops a new conceptualization of civil society that classifies civic organizations continually rather than categorically. This conceptualization serves as the basis of the Community Volunteerism Model, which utilizes a state-in-society approach to explain the types and rates of volunteering found in communities. Citizen images of state and individual responsibility for caring for society determine the type of organizations (community-based or issue-based) prevalent in that community. The practices of state and social institutions (how well they legitimize, organize, and fund volunteers and their organizations) determine the rate of participation in that community. The model is tested using the cases of the United States and Japan, and the paper concludes with some implications of this model for the study of comparative civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines whether popular militarism is shaped by basic punitive values and beliefs. Assuming that punitiveness influences opinions about both criminal punishment and war, I infer hypotheses about relationships between death penalty support and support for war and military spending. I test these with 1990-92 American National Election Studies panel data and find death penalty support to be an important predictor of opinions about U.S. involvement in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War. Death penalty supporters disproportionately favored destroying Saddam’s regime rather than just containing it, and showed less sympathy for the Iraqi people, including enemy civilians caught in the crossfire. Death penalty support is also related, though less strongly, to general support for the acquisition and utility of military power. These findings help explain public enthusiasm for punitive wars, and the efforts of political leaders to demonize enemy ‘evildoers.’ [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do areas with higher levels of social capital have stronger economies? Robert Putnam’s concept of social capital is said to provide widespread benefits, not the least of which are vibrant, productive economies. Putnam presents a logical, compelling case for the salutary effects of social capital, but what he does not present is any coherent data -- beyond anecdotal evidence -- to show that there is a consistent correlation, let alone a causal connection, between social capital and economic performance in the US. This paper will thus present an empirical analysis of social capital and economic performance for the American states. The 14-variable state-level social capital index presented by Putnam in Bowling Alone will be used to gauge variations in social capital across states. This is compared against state-level output data, measures of physical capital and measures of human capital. The results show a mild but statistically significant correlation between social capital and economic performance, but only when social capital is combined with other predictors of economic performance. Furthermore, social capital is shown to be a far less significant factor than more traditional economic indicators. In sum, although there may be an economic payoff to higher levels of social capital, it is relatively small and only accrues if other drivers of economic performance are already secure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 70 years since the US government began gathering annual capital punishment data, over four and a half thousand Americans have died at the hands of the State. This purpose of this paper is to utilize quantitative regression analysis to examine the extent to which democratic politics in the US may affect the impartiality of the American judicial system in the administration of capital punishment. The expectation is that, in those US states where the judiciary is more closely tied to the electorate - through initial elections, retention elections, shorter term limits or partisan competition - the death penalty will be invoked more frequently. The assumption here is that where judges are more vulnerable to the impact of public opinion, they will be more likely to act in accordance with that opinion, and in terms of capital punishment, the American public have demonstrated consistent support for the utilization of the death penalty. Ultimately, in examining the role of democratic politics in choosing and acting upon the decision to terminate life, the hope is that this research will draw attention to the often unrecognized tension that exists between democracy and justice, and question the extent to which free elections really do equate to free people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we contrast our proposal for stakeholding with Philippe Van Parijs’ proposal for a universal basic income. In our 1999 book, The Stakeholder Society, we propose that the federal government should give to every citizen of the United States, at age 21, a grant of $80,000. The revenue cost of the program would be funded by an annual wealth tax of 2 percent and by a "payback" requirement at death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital theory, particularly the work of Robert Putnam, has received a great deal of scholarly and popular attention. We argue that Putnam?s formulation ignores the ways in which race is fundamental and constitutive to the structure and function of social capital in the United States. We suggest an alternative framework, one that focuses on the effects of social relations. Such a framework: (1) treats race as more than an independent variable; (2) addresses the structural factors underlying social capital development; and (3) includes the role of gatekeepers in the process. This approach would allow us to have a more accurate, and nuanced, understanding of how social capital operates in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes issues related to the deregulation of death by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1970s and 1980s. Role of common sense in rationalizing Court sentences; Background of the implementation of capital punishment system in the country; Assessment of informal regulation of death sentences in the nation.

Abstract Bridging Social Capital and An Investment Theory of Collective Action: Evidence from The Concord Project Barbara J. Nelson Linda Kaboolian Kathryn A. Carver The question we posed in our research was how do cross-community organizations with their potential to generate bridging social capital form? More specifically, how do concord organizations start against the odds of daily conflict among racial, ethnic, and religious groups defined by too much particularistic history and too little common future? Concord organizations bring together people with fundamentally opposing views or identities for the purpose of promoting civil society while recognizing group differences. After investigating over 100 concord organizations in the US, Northern Ireland, South Africa, and Palestinian and Israeli groups working in the US, our answer is that concord organizations form because potential collective actors see their actions as worthy long-term investments rather than short-term high prices. They are primarily investors rather than consumers. Each person who decides to work to create a concord organization calculates a net pro-social interest rate. This return on investment includes consideration of the danger, the pleasures, the obstacles, the immediate costs, the opportunity costs, and the benefits of action. In particular, investors are attentive to the opportunity costs of the status quo, that is, of not acting, which they considered to have a high and enduring price. Collective action to create concord organizations is an example of thick rationality, the kind of considerations made by people embedded in social systems with multiple personal, organizational, and communal values. Becoming an investor, especially with people who belong to disfavored groups, requires a special micromobilizing frame?a balancing frame. This frame balances an overarching shared value with the enduring opposing values of participants. Because concord organizations never solve the conflicts of values they embody, they are always to some extent in formation mode. Our research determined the ten design principles and necessary practices that allow a balancing frame to endure. Without adherence to principles and practices, antagonistic group values overwhelm shared values, and the organization fails to form or to continue to function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do policies sustain the legitimacy endowed (ostensibly) by original legislative mandate? An explanation depending on the political system to bolster or diminish policy legitimacy through electoral choice encounters obstacles, not least the contention that the dialogic (as opposed to monologic) communication implicit in such a ‘feedback loop’ fails: the argument made by Fox and Miller’s (1995) Postmodern Public Administration. Borrowing their assessment of the American polity, but setting aside prescriptions, I pursue an explanation for the dissensus that Fox and Miller identify by examining the journey of Social Security from New Deal experiment, to mainstay of American social policy, to, most recently, broken program due for reform. Explaining the relevance of a program of this scale, which defies many of the usual metrics for determining public need/appreciation for a governmental function, employs the Social Security Advisory Councils (Councils), citizen groups that have look into the program’s structure, financing, benefits, and role in social policy for more than fifty years. Social/psychological theory provides the basis for assessing the functioning of the Council as a barometer of the sustained relevance of Social Security over the same period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT. We assess the link between a program’s volunteer support and state social capital in the case of the joint implementation of the federal Long-Term Care (LTC) Ombudsman Program by state and federal authorities. This program, which is designed to prevent elder abuse and ensure quality care in long-term facilities, is implemented at the state and local levels and relies heavily on volunteer staff. First, we find that volunteerism is vital to the efficacy of the program’s monitoring and investigative functions. Second, we find that volunteerism in this program is tied to broader level conditions of a state’s social capital. Last, we discuss the implications of our findings for volunteer-based programs devolved to the states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary scholars often reminisce about the 1950s as a "golden era" of civic engagement, a time when men and women alike were more likely to bowl together, attend PTA meetings, go to church, belong to the Masons or the Eastern Star, and participate in labor unions and political parties. But, does civic engagement affect politics? Under what circumstances will civic engagement lead to political activity? Why do some groups flourish when others do not? The status of women during the 1950s in particular raises important questions about the relationship between civic groups and political opportunities. Although women's participation in civic groups reached record levels in the 1950s, popular wisdom suggests that women possessed a weak political voice and were more often constrained by a conservative culture than they were political actors in their own right. Did women's voluntary groups during the mid-20th century politicize and empower women, or encourage their quiescence or regress? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the study describing the high-skilled immigration (HSI) policies of Great Britain and the U.S. It cites the differences in their policies that are caused by varying coalitions between sectors of high-skilled labor, low-skilled labor, and capital. The study shows that Great Britain is fairly open towards HSI which is described by an organized capital, and the U.S. has become more restrictive due to increased lobbying efforts of professional associations.

This research undertakes a specific-factors analysis of trade politics in a world of cross-border capital mobility and finds that inter-sectoral goods market relationships and labor mobility do influence the patterns of industry lobbying for trade protection when foreign capital flows into the US. This finding confirms the superior explanatory power of sectoral models over factoral models of policy outcome in trade politics. Inter-sectoral goods market relationships imply input-output sales connections between manufacturing sectors. Each sector has two goods market relationships with other sectors: sale and purchase dependencies. This research argues that inter-sectoral business connections affect a given sector's lobbying for trade protection when its business partner sectors receive foreign direct investment (FDI) and expand production. I pay attention to inter-sectoral labor mobility because FDI-receiving sectors usually pull labor from other sectors as shown in Hiscox's (2004) model, in which labor is treated as a uniformly mobile factor. Unlike Hiscox, I allow a given sector's level of labor mobility to differ from that of another sector. Statistical results confirm the following: (1) when a seller sector has no competitiveness, the more the sector sells goods to a given sector, the more likely it is to lobby for protection when the buying sector receives FDI and expands production, all else equal; (2) the more a sector buys goods from a given sector, the less likely it is to lobby for protection when the selling sector receives FDI and expands production, all else constant; (3) a sector with a high level of labor mobility tends to lobby for protection more when another sector receives FDI and expands production, all else equal. Industry lobbying for trade protection is measured by (1) financial contributions to the political campaigns of members of Congress who vote for a protectionist bill; and (2) petitions filed with the US International Trade Commission (USITC) requesting anti-dumping or countervailing duties during the five Congressional periods (1981 - 1990). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]