Social capital determinants and labor market networks

We explore the links between determinants of social capital and labor market networks at the neighborhood level. We harness rich data taken from multiple sources, including matched employer–employee data with which we measure the strength of labor market networks, data on neighborhood homogeneity that has previously been tied to social capital, and new data—not previously used in the study of social capital—on the number and location of nonprofit sector establishments at the neighborhood level. We use a machine learning algorithm to identify the potential determinants of social capital that best predict neighborhood‐level variation in labor market networks. We find evidence suggesting that smaller and less centralized schools, and schools with fewer poor students, foster social capital that builds local labor market networks, as does a larger Republican vote share. The presence of establishments in a number of nonprofit‐oriented industries are identified as predictive of strong labor market networks, likely because they either provide public goods or facilitate social contacts. These industries include, for example, churches and other religious institutions, fire and rescue services including volunteer fire departments, country clubs and golf courses, labor unions, chamber music groups, hobby clubs, and schools.     

现代中国城市居住空间分异机制的理论研究

通过住宅市场空间分异研究体系的建立,认为城市居住空间分异是社会阶(层)级分化结果通过市场宏观控制、个体择居行为心理的局部调整而实现的空间化过程。因此,居住空间分异机制可以从对住房市场空间分化及个体择居行为机制两个方面来理解。从五个方面具体分析影响城市住宅市场分化的机构、各种机构对城市居住空间、社会空间分异的影响力:(1)政府作为土地所有者及其作用形态;(2)城市建筑商、地产开发商的发展方式;(3)金融信贷业对社会空间和物质空间的空间非均衡的影响;(4)地产物业机构对邻里的操纵和强化;(5)城市规划思想与方法的影响。并认为影响我国城市社会地理空间分异的宏观背景是:(1)国内自1978年以来的政治经济体制改革,它确定我们的主要研究框架;(2)自80年代末期开始强化的经济全球化与区域集团造就的新国际劳动分工;(3)信息技术革命为核心的知识经济及其影响下的经济结构变化。     

Neighborhoods and Fertility in Accra, Ghana: An AMOEBA-based Approach

Fertility levels remain high in most of sub-Saharan Africa, despite recent declines, and even in a large capital city such as Accra, Ghana, women are having children at a pace that is well above replacement level and this will contribute to significant levels of future population growth in the city. Our purpose in this paper is to evaluate the way in which neighborhood context may shape reproductive behavior in Accra. In the process, we introduce several important innovations to the understanding of intra-urban fertility levels in a sub-Saharan African city: (1) despite the near explosion of work on neighborhoods as a spatial unit of analysis, very little of this research has been conducted outside of the richer countries; (2) we characterize neighborhoods on the basis of local knowledge of what we call "vernacular neighborhoods"; (3) we then define what we call "organic neighborhoods" using a new clustering tool-the AMOEBA algorithm-to create these neighborhoods; and then (4) we evaluate and explain which of the neighborhood concepts has the largest measurable contextual effect on an individual woman's reproductive behavior. Multi-level regression analysis suggests that vernacular neighborhoods are more influential on a woman's decision to delay marriage, whereas the organic neighborhoods based on socioeconomic status better capture the factors that shape fertility decisions after marriage.     

Forecasting Australian elections: 1993, and all that

The link between economic conditions and election outcomes is a pillar of social science. Voters prefer ‘better times’ to worse and reward or punish incumbents accordingly. We investigate the extent to which this truism holds in the Australian context, with particular emphasis on the 1993 result. While Australian election outcomes are generally not well predicted by prevailing economic conditions, we are impressed by the extent to which the 1993 election outcome is at odds with the state of the economy. In particular, we find Labor performed up to five percentage points better than expected in 1993, making this result one of the most exceptional election results ever observed in Australia. The sizeable electoral penalty typically accompanying large increases in unemployment was effectively nullified in 1993. We accurately predict the 1993 result (ex post) only if unemployment is considered electorally irrelevant. We conclude by suggesting a research agenda for better understanding the link between economic context and election outcomes in the Australian setting.     

District Voter Turnout and Dyadic Representation in Congress

One of the most important tools by which citizens can influence their elected officials' behavior is through voting—the electoral connection. Previous studies demonstrate that the opinions of voters are better represented than the opinions of nonvoters within an electoral jurisdiction, but we do not know whether jurisdictions with higher levels of aggregate voter turnout are better represented by their elected officials compared to those with lower levels of turnout. Using data compiled across five congressional sessions (2003–2013), this article investigates whether congressional districts with higher voter turnout are better represented by their member of Congress (MC). We find evidence that district voter turnout positively conditions the relationship between district opinion and MC voting behavior even after accounting for the possible effects of electoral competition and district income and racial demographics. In addition, we uncover evidence that partisan differences exist in this conditioning effect such that higher voter turnout enhances roll call voting responsiveness among Democratic MCs but not among Republican MCs. These findings suggest that congressional districts as a whole benefit from a political responsiveness standpoint when more of their constituents turn out to vote and contribute to literatures on political representation, political participation, democratic accountability, and the U.S. Congress.     

嵌入、认同、责任：地方社区中的旅游小企业

围绕旅游小企业根植于地方社区的社会理性本质,本文借助嵌入理论探讨旅游小企业经济活动背后社会责任行为的成因。研究发现：①旅游小企业主的地方认同对企业社会责任行为有着显著的正向影响;②旅游小企业主的社区嵌入对地方认同有着显著的正向影响;③旅游小企业主的地方认同在社区嵌入对企业社会责任影响中扮演着显著的中介作用;④旅游小企业主的地方身份特征在社区嵌入对地方认同的影响中起着显著的调节作用,社区嵌入中获得更多社会资源的外来小企业主比本地小企业主对地方认同的影响更强。本文揭示了旅游小企业社会责任的地方空间特征,形成了地理学人—地关系研究的新方向,并为社区嵌入管理和商业环境塑造等工作提供了实践启示和建议。     

The relationship between neighborhood design and social capital as measured by carpooling

This paper examines whether social capital in a neighborhood is influenced by its design, taking the cul‐de‐sac as a special case. It offers two contributions: using carpooling to school as a proxy for social capital and a precise definition of the neighborhood using geo‐coded survey data from California. Living in a cul‐de‐sac neighborhood is found to increase the probability of carpooling, but the effect loses statistical significance when residential self‐selection is accounted for. The analysis reveals competing insights about the self‐selection behavior that must be resolved before neighborhood design can be considered an effective policy tool for enhancing social capital.     

Smart Growth Policy Choice: A Resource Dependency and Local Governance Explanation

Smart growth is a planning and land use policy objective that generally focuses on where development should occur and how best to protect natural resources. What explains the adoption of smart growth policy by local government? This study focuses on a cooperative intergovernmental program that seeks to enhance local government abilities to work toward achieving state goals on sustainability. Extant research suggests that local interest group preferences shape policy decisions. However, much of the evidence on the influence of local interest groups on smart growth policy is presented within the coercive intergovernmental context. This article argues that resource dependency influences local decisions in pursuing a smart growth agenda when state incentives are provided. The findings suggest that fiscal capacity and the characteristics of local governing institutions are significant predictors in the decision to take part in an intergovernmental program. Business and neighborhood interest groups have a significant effect on policy adoption, as do local characteristics depending on the smart growth functional area.     

Why and how electoral systems matter in autocracies

This study uses a nearly comprehensive set of the world’s electoral democracies and authoritarian regimes, comprising 185 country-level observations, in order to examine the effects of electoral institutions upon party system nationalisation. Party system nationalisation is defined as the achievement of substantial electoral support for major political parties on a national basis. I hypothesise that while largely inconsequential from the perspective of alternation in power, authoritarian electoral institutions are highly consequential in that they affect party system properties in consistent, theoretically predictable ways. The empirical test confirms this hypothesis by demonstrating that in democracies and authoritarian regimes, the effects of electoral systems on party system nationalisation are similar in strength and direction. These findings imply that conventional electoral engineering can be used to enable the survival of modern autocracies.     

Pollapese Catholicism as Strategy

Indigenous groups creatively incorporate outside institutions, including Christianity, for local purposes. Furthermore, people who see themselves as observing tradition may also construe themselves as being Christian and citizens of a nation. Despite the original external origins of Christianity, meaning becomes locally constructed and asserted for local purposes so that religion as practiced is about local, regional, or national concerns rather than commitment to particular dogmas, institutions, and hierarchy. A case in point are the people of Pollap in the Caroline Islands of Micronesia, who converted to Christianity in the middle of the twentieth century through the efforts of a Catholic catechist. Today the islanders practice a vibrant version of Catholicism in which local symbols and beliefs infuse imported Catholic ritual, and in which biblical verses and imagery support secular, political strategies. Pollapese seem less concerned with theology and more with behavior that demonstrates good character. As they attempt to exploit and reconcile potentially conflicting guides for behavior from the realms of religion, tradition, and government, they make strategic use of their understandings of Catholicism's dictates for political and social purposes.     

西方选举地理学的研究进展

选举地理学是政治地理学的重要研究领域之一。本文以Web of Science中选举地理学的学术论文为依据,借助科学计量工具,系统回顾了1982-2018年选举地理学的发展脉络,归纳了西方选举地理学的主要研究领域和研究范式。研究表明：选举地理学主要包括投票地理、选举制度、选区划分、选票转化四个领域;与此相应,西方学界对选举地理的研究范式可归纳为空间分析、地理制图、政治经济学、后结构主义。展望未来,选举地理学在解释中国的地方政治、基层选举、社区自治,以及推动中国政治地理学的学科发展方面将值得期待。     

A Tale of Two Poll Books – Wareham 1702 and Dorchester 1705

The politics of Queen Anne's reign are characterised as the rage of party; Whigs and Tories contended over religion, the constitution and the succession, and foreign policy. This struggle was taken to the electorate in five elections during Anne's reign, and these raise a question concerning electors’ motivations, the answer to which remains elusive: were they acting according to principle, or reflecting the electoral interests to which they were subject? This article analyses the two surviving poll books for Dorset elections in the age of Anne, those at Wareham in 1702 and at Dorchester in 1705. It focuses principally on the voting behaviour of those engaged in the towns’ governance structures: corporation members, councils of freemen and local parishes. However, it also considers the behaviour of other categories of voter: politicians, the clergy and non-conformists. The analysis shows how electoral interest was mediated through the towns’ governing institutions and suggests that (at least in these two cases) negotiation between the parties had a greater role in the outcome than has sometimes been suggested. It also demonstrates the limits of the electoral influence of the boroughs’ elites: significant numbers of voters were simply not prepared to be led.     

The aftermath of an election crisis: Kenyan attitudes and the influence of individual-level and locality violence

How does violent conflict affect social and political attitudes? To answer this question I pair Kenyan survey and violence data for the time period following the country's December 27th 2007 national election. I find that respondents who personally experienced electoral violence are less likely to express certain forms of inter-personal and institutional trust than those individuals who did not. The association is not universally powerful, however. First, noteworthy differences emerge between populations who relocated as a result of post-election conflict and those who did not. Differences between these groups suggest that internal migration in the wake of tragedy influenced the Kenyan social landscape. In addition to personal exposure to electoral conflict, I test how local level violence may indirectly condition Kenyan political attitudes. Across all models, individual-level exposure to violence has the most consistent influence upon opinions, although district level effects emerge in analyses without survey respondent ethnicity controls. This finding suggests that living in a setting of regional insecurity does not have as important an effect on certain political views as personal victimization.     

单位社区杂化过程与城市性的构建

单位社区作为中国城市重要的传统社区之一,曾经是以单位制度作为组织形态和行为规范而形成的"准乡土性"社区。而在转型期,随着城市空间重构、单位制度解体与个人生活方式的转变,单位社区出现了以社区杂化过程为显著特征的制度-空间-社会的全面转型。单位社区杂化从广义上包括居民构成、社会交往、行为模式和社区认同四个维度的变化,导致了单位社区"准乡土性"的消失和"城市性"的构建。本文从城市性作为一种城市生活方式的经典理论出发,从不同维度理解单位社区杂化中城市性构建的现象与机制。     

Forging political entrepreneurs: Civil war effects on post-conflict politics in Italy

How does violent mobilization affect post-conflict elections? This article studies the impact that violent collective mobilization has on local electoral behavior after domestic conflict. We argue that post-conflict democratic politics at the local level can be dramatically affected by local experience of civil war. The use of violence during the war and especially local political entrepreneurs who have emerged from the conflict can influence post-violent politics. We use as case-study the civil war that took place in Italy during the last phase of World War II. Using new spatially disaggregated data on armed groups' location and violent episodes, we assess the impact of the violent mobilization on the 1946 elections, which took place after the conflict. We find that partisans' mobilization and, more weakly, Nazi-Fascist violent acts influenced local politics, shifting votes towards more radical positions. Our findings hold across numerous robustness checks.     

The challenges to democracy and citizenship surrounding the vote to Italians overseas

In 2003, a presidential decree enacted legislation guaranteeing Italian voters overseas the right to postal voting as well as parliamentary representation within their respective electoral constituency. The electoral weight of the overseas-based constituent had a remarkable effect on the 2006 election results. In the tightest vote in the Republic's history, the vote of overseas Italians, which was one of the decisive features of the election, helped provide the winning centre-left coalition with a slender majority in the Senate. Election results notwithstanding, the question of whether to grant the vote to Italians overseas has faced challenges of a procedural, normative and political nature. What may have been initially seen as a democratic right may well be cast aside as it poses challenges to overseas electoral relationships with the Italian national polity, Italian citizenship and multinational allegiances, diasporic identity, electoral participation and political representation in homeland political institutions. The overseas vote for Italians may be contested further in the near future, which could translate into a radical rethink of its validity and democratic global extension.     

劳工地理研究新进展评述

在经济地理学的研究中,劳工常常被看作是与自然资源、资金、技术等同类的经济要素,只重视劳动成本,忽视了劳工作为社会活动主要参与者的角色。近年来,劳工地理研究取得了长足的进展,弥补了传统地理学研究的不足。全球化背景下的工人运动、劳工组织和地方劳工控制体制,劳工市场的空间分割,不同政治、经济和文化背景下的农区劳工地方化逐渐成为劳工地理的重要研究方向。     

Voter migration as a source of electoral change in the Rocky Mountain West

Examining county-level voting patterns since 1992, this paper describes the rising strength of the Democratic Party in the Rocky Mountain West and explores domestic migration (voter mobility) as a cause of the electoral change. Other theories of electoral change (voter conversion, voter mobilization and generational replacement) are analyzed and found less significant than a voter migration theory. A spatial autoregressive model also presents evidence of significant contextual “neighborhood effects” contributing to electoral change in the region. Relying on IRS tax-filer migration data, Census data and voting results for all Western counties since 1992, this work finds a significant correlation between growing Democratic strength and in-migration of new voters who generally hail from more Democratic environments than the Western counties into which they are emigrating. The strongest correlations emerge in counties where the share of creative class occupations is also growing quickly. Migrating voters are building a new Western community – a community of creative classes, childless households and urban professionals who are more likely to vote Democrat than the rural conservatives they are increasingly outnumbering.     

Decentralised Institutions and Electoral Authoritarianism: The Case of Town Councils in Singapore

Singapore’s electoral autocracy is well known for its innovative use of political institutions such as Parliament and elections to enhance its durability, but relatively little attention has been paid to decentralised subnational institutions such as Town Councils, which require elected Members of Parliament to manage public housing estates in their constituencies. This paper focuses on Town Councils by examining the motives behind their formation and exploring how they serve as institutions to support authoritarianism. Based on analysis of a range of primary and secondary sources such as parliamentary Hansard, government documents and newspaper articles, this paper argues that the formation of Town Councils was politically motivated and specifically designed to thwart opposition growth. It also argues that Town Councils support authoritarianism in three ways. First, they create extra hurdles and disadvantages for the opposition. Second, they give the ruling party an additional election issue on which to attack the weaknesses of the opposition and allow it to shift the focus of elections in its favour. Lastly, they facilitate more effective and targeted material distribution and create more opportunities for elite co-optation. The implications of the study for Singapore politics and the role of decentralisation in electoral autocracies are discussed.     

Electoral salience and the costs of voting at national, sub-national and supra-national elections in the UK: a case study of Brent, UK

This paper considers the impact of distance to polling station upon electoral turnout. Using polling station level data from a London borough, it examines three types of election – parliamentary, European and local elections – over a twenty year period. The UK is notable among western liberal democracies for its relatively large turnout gap – the percentage point difference between turnout at elections for the Westminster parliament compared to that for other institutions, including local councils and the supra-national European parliament. This research considers the hypothesis that in high information, high salience elections for the national parliament the costs of voting associated with travelling to a polling station to vote in person are perceived as either low or insignificant but that in low information, low salience elections, those costs are perceived as higher and may act as a deterrent upon voting. A series of multi-level models consider the relationships between the dependent variable, percentage turnout, and a range of independent variables, including socio-economic characteristics, marginality as well as the spatial context. We show that there is indeed a relationship between distance and voter turnout, and other spatial and contextual variables, which are stronger for the lower salience European and local elections than for the higher salience national elections. Hence we conclude that the local geography of the polling station can have a significant impact on voter turnout and that there should be a more strategic approach to the siting of polling stations.