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The conventional view of corruption emphasizes its detrimental impact on the evaluations of public institutions. This view implies that in corruption-intense environments, the public should exert strong pressure on relevant authorities to combat corruption. Yet, multiple historical accounts suggest that in such contexts, corruption tends to thrive even despite extensive state-imposed anti-corruption measures. In this letter, we address this puzzle by studying the context-dependent effects of individual experiences of petty corrupt exchanges on the popular evaluation of public institutions. Drawing on the literature on the functionality of informal exchanges and normalization of corruption, we posit that negative effects of such experiences will be attenuated by the presence of institutional corruption among public service providers. In contexts permeated by corruption, corrupt exchanges will become routine, with limited effect on citizens' perceptions of street-level bureaucracy. Our empirical test, relying on a unique cross-national survey dataset from Central-Eastern Europe and a fine-grained ecological (municipality-level) indicator of corruption, largely supports these conjectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provision of public goods by agriculture and forestry has been a major topic of the agricultural policy debate in the EU. The objective of this paper is to investigate local stakeholder perceptions regarding the cause-effect relations between agriculture and forestry activities and a broad set of public goods and bads, and hence to contribute to the identification of improved policy options for a more efficient delivery of public goods from rural areas. The study presents an assessment based on 71 stakeholder questionnaires collected from seven case study regions in different EU countries. The survey was based on a list of the most relevant public goods and bads developed with the local stakeholders, and aimed to collect stakeholder perception of positive and negative impacts of agriculture and forestry on a range of environmental assets and their relationship with local drivers, socio-economic and cultural features, and policy mechanisms. The analysis shows that the role of agriculture and forestry in the provision of public goods is perceived as generally positive across the selected case study regions. Stakeholder opinions concerning the negative impacts on the environment were more divergent. In particular, differences regarding the impact of different socio-economic and cultural features, and policy mechanisms are evidenced. The results outline the importance of regulations. Also, payments for environmental services are considered relevant in particular for biodiversity, landscape, and water quality. Beside that, aspects such as expectations of society and the attitude of farmers towards the environment resulted noteworthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00692.x Byline: Natalia Letki (1) Abstract: The debate on causes and consequences of social capital has recently been complemented by an investigation into factors that erode it. Various scholars concluded that diversity, and racial heterogeneity in particular, is damaging for the sense of community, interpersonal trust and formal and informal interactions. However, most of this research does not adequately account for the negative effect of a community's low socio-economic status on neighbourhood interactions and attitudes. This article is to date the first empirical examination of the impact of racial context on various dimensions of social capital in British neighbourhoods. Findings show that low neighbourhood status is the key element undermining all dimensions of social capital, while the eroding effect of racial diversity is limited. Author Affiliation: (1)Collegium Civitas, Warsaw Article History: (Accepted: 22 January 2007)

One of the key reasons for the scholarly and policy concern about the rising levels of ethnic diversity is its apparently detrimental effect on the production of public goods. Although numerous studies have tackled that issue, there is still much ambiguity as to the precise micro‐level mechanisms underpinning this relationship. In this article, a novel theoretical explanation for this relationship is proposed, building on the social resistance framework. This proposition is tested using a new cross‐sectional public opinion survey covering 14,536 respondents in 817 neighbourhoods across 11 Central Eastern European countries. Analysing national minorities defined by postwar border changes means one can overcome the endogeneity problem faced by research based on immigrant groups. The findings show that it is the combination of a minority group's discrimination and its spatial clustering that makes minorities reluctant to contribute to public goods. The article constitutes a novel theoretical and methodological contribution to the research on the effects of diversity on public goods provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]