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AbstractThis prospective, longitudinal study examines individual differences in two conceptually related but empirically distinct domains of social‐cognitive competence (cognitive interpretive understanding and interpersonal perspective co‐ordination) as moderators of the relation between peer rejection and neglect and behavioral and emotional problems in grades 2 and 3. As expected, peer rejection and neglect increased risks for behavioral and emotional problems whereas interpretive understanding (understanding of mental states) and perspective co‐ordination (awareness of others' emotions and motives) reduced risks for aggressive, disruptive, inattentive, and anxious, sad, withdrawn behaviors. Assumptions that awareness of others' perspectives bestows consistent benefits for children experiencing peer problems were challenged. Unexpectedly, rejection and neglect increased risks for behavioral and emotional problems for children who demonstrated average and high levels of perspective co‐ordination. More advanced perspective co‐ordination may heighten children's sensitivity to peer relationship problems and result in general maladjustment, both concurrently and over time. Less advanced perspective co‐ordination may also be responsible for the 'optimistic bias' that has been noted in aggressive children.

ABSTRACTBased on observations from all three tropical continents, there is good reason to believe that poor service providers can broadly gain access to payment for environmental services (PES) schemes, and generally become better off from that participation, in both income and non-income terms. However, poverty effects need to be analysed in a conceptual framework looking not only at poor service providers, but also at poor service users and non-participants. Effects on service users are positive if environmental goals are achieved, while those on non-participants can be positive or negative. The various participation filters of a PES scheme contain both pro-poor and anti-poor selection biases. Quantitative welfare effects are bound to remain small-scale, compared to national poverty-alleviation goals. Some pro-poor interventions are possible, but increasing regulations excessively could curb PES efficiency and implementation scale, which could eventually harm the poor. Prime focus of PES should thus remain on the environment, not on poverty.

In 1994, Mexico's powerful television network, Televisa, aired a biographical telenovela, which intended to rehabilitate dictator Porfirio Díaz (1830–1915) as part of the neoliberal revision of history. Early episodes featured Díaz's relationship with a young indigenous cigarette vendor, Juana Catarina Romero (portrayed by Salma Hayek). Romero's historical role was almost completely expunged, and she appeared mainly as the exotic sexual aggressor in one of Díaz's romantic dalliances. In reality, she risked her life as a Liberal spy in the struggle against Conservative armies. In later decades, she emerged as the richest merchant, sugar refiner, and philanthropist in her region. This study argues that Romero's representation is emblematic of the treatment of women and indigenous peoples in Mexican history, the erasure of their agency not only by nineteenth–century nation builders but also twentieth–century neoliberals. While it reconstructs Romero's actual role in history, it demonstrates how this telenovela perpetuated gender, racial, class, and ethnic biases that serve neoliberal interests and the increasing social inequalities they generate.

This article reviews social neuroscience research on the experience of stigma from the target's perspective. More specifically, we discuss several research programs that employ electroencephalography, event-related potentials, or functional magnetic resonance imaging methods to examine neural correlates of stereotype and social identity threat. We present neuroimaging studies that show brain activation related to the experience of being stereotyped and ERP studies that shed light on the cognitive processes underlying social identity processes. Among these are two projects from our own lab. The first project reveals the important role of the neurocognitive conflict-detection system in stereotype threat effects, especially as it pertains to stereotype threat `spillover'. The second project examines the role of automatic ingroup evaluations as a neural mediator between social identity threats and compensatory ingroup bias. We conclude with a discussion of the benefits, limitations, and unique contributions of social neuroscience to our understanding of stigma and social identity threat.

There is a wealth of research demonstrating that agents process information with the aid of categories. In this paper we study this phenomenon in two parts. First, we build a model of how experiences are sorted into categories and how categorization affects decision making. Second, in a series of results that partly characterize an optimal categorization, we show that specific biases emerge from categorization. For instance, types of experiences and objects that are less frequent in the population tend to be more coarsely categorized and lumped together. As a result, decision makers make less accurate predictions when confronted with such objects. This can result in discrimination against minority groups even when there is no malevolent taste for discrimination. However, such comparative statics are highly sensitive to the particular situation; optimal categorizations can change in surprising ways. For instance, increasing a group's population, holding all else constant, can lead a decision maker to make less accurate predictions about that group.

The expansion of regionalism has spawned an extensive theoretical literature analysing the effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on trade flows. In this paper we focus on FTAs (also called European agreements) between the European Union (EU-15) and the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC-4, i.e. Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania) and model their effects on trade flows by treating the agreement variable as endogenous. Our theoretical framework is the gravity model, and the econometric method used to isolate and eliminate the potential endogeneity bias of the agreement variable is the fixed effect vector decomposition (FEVD) technique. Our estimation results indicate a positive and significant impact of FTAs on trade flows. This finding is robust to the inclusion in the sample of a group of control countries (specifically Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine) that did not sign an FTA. Besides, we show that trade growth after the FTA agreement with the EU was signed exceeded trade growth of the control group of countries which did not become members.

The expansion of regionalism has spawned an extensive theoretical literature analysing the effects of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) on trade flows. In this paper we focus on FTAs (also called European agreements) between the European Union (EU-15) and the Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC-4, i.e. Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Romania ) and model their effects on trade flows by treating the agreement variable as endogenous. Our theoretical framework is the gravity model, and the econometric method used to isolate and eliminate the potential endogeneity bias of the agreement variable is the fixed effect vector decomposition (FEVD) technique. Our estimation results indicate a positive and significant impact of FTAs on trade flows. This finding is robust to the inclusion in the sample of a group of control countries (specifically Belarus, the Russian Federation and Ukraine) that did not sign an FTA. Besides, we show that trade growth after the FTA agreement with the EU was signed exceeded trade growth of the control group of countries which did not become members.

This article combines the key elements of new public management theories with theories of privatisation and total quality management. The key elements identified in this review are used to establish a general model of new public management. Based on western theorising, the model is acknowledged as having a cultural bias. As a corrective, the article reviews the empirical experience of Malaysian public sector reform between 1980 and 2000, with the findings being used to identifying country-specific characteristics as a means of refining the model in a way that reflects that experience. The discussion concludes by setting out a revised model of new public management which takes account of its application in a Malaysian context. The contention is that the process of enquiry leading to this contingent model of new public management might be adapted along similar lines for the purposes of analysing the application of public sector reform in other developing countries. Adapted from the source document.

This article reports the results of an anonymous survey of researchers at a government research institution concerning their perceptions about ethical problems with journal peer review. Incompetent review was the most common ethical problem reported by the respondents, with 61.8% (SE = 3.3%) claiming to have experienced this at some point during peer review. Bias (50.5%, SE = 3.4%) was the next most common problem. About 22.7% (SE = 2.8%) of respondents said that a reviewer had required them to include unnecessary references to his/her publication(s), 17.7% (SE = 2.6%) said that comments from reviewers had included personal attacks, and 9.6% (SE = 2.0%) stated that reviewers had delayed publication to publish a paper on the same topic. Two of the most serious violations of peer review ethics, breach of confidentiality (6.8%, SE = 1.7%) and using ideas, data, or methods without permission (5%, SE = 1.5%) were perceived less often than the other problems. We recommend that other investigators follow up on our exploratory research with additional studies on the ethics of peer review.

Explores Carl Schmitt's theory of decisionism to argue that his work is permeated by a cultural & ethical conception of politics. Schmitt illustrates how culture & ethics guide human actions & shape political structures. The notion that cultural & ethical ideals are inseparable from the decisionist moment is explored, along with his idea of legitimacy; forces in the state of exception; the link between decision & the collective will; Schmitt's optimism about popular support; & decision as constitutive of law. Differences between external & internal aspects of decisionism are pointed out. In spite of certain problematic assumptions & his bias toward a nation-state perspective on the political, it is concluded that Schmitt's concept of the decision is a compelling way to understand how the "foundations of a political order begin as the manifestation in the world of a particular idea of the general good that must establish itself against competing ideas." Schmitt's decisionist framework "provides tools for approaching the contingent character of political identity in a world of conflicting cultures.". J. Lindroth

Scholars and commentators have long debated a `unilateralist' tendency in US foreign policy, but have largely neglected the question of how other states attempt to deal with the problem, particularly with increasing US opposition to multilateral treaty intiatives. This article describes and explains European responses to US unilateralism in three transatlantic conflicts over multilateral arms control agreements: the AntiPersonnel Landmines Ban, the UN Process on Small Arms, and the Biological Weapons Protocol. The article shows that European responses have varied between accommodation and resistance, and tests hypotheses about four potential determinants of European choices: expected treaty effectiveness, transatlantic rivalry, consensus norms, and the influence of non-government activists. The findings suggest that European responses reflect a strong concern for treaty effectiveness, but are also constrained by norms of consensual decision-making. Activist pressure can overcome this `compromise bias' of government diplomacy.

Japanese media coverage is popularly portrayed as being closely tied to the ruling elite through the operation of kisha clubs where access to government sources and close government—journalist—business interconnections are cultivated. Given the gravity of the Koizumi administration's decision to send Self-Defense Forces to Iraq in support of the 2003 US invasion and the fundamental constitutional question it involved, this event provides a unique opportunity to test the thesis that the Japanese media are merely the `lapdog' of government. Two models, hegemony and indexing, make different predictions about media/political elite relations in news coverage. The findings of this study reveal that coverage by journalists provided little support for either. Given this, two alternative models are created and tested, the ideological bias and populist models. These models suggest that the press takes its reporting cues from sources other than political elites. Further study to provide greater assurance of this is merited by results here.

"This article traces recent changes in Danish family policy. The current government seems focussed on maintaining state support of families with young children, but it aims at changing day care institutions into more school-like places by emphasising common curricula and trying to change the lifestyle of many children (and parents) regarding unhealthy nutrition that lead to problems of obesity and poor health. There is also a focus on children's right to two parents, both a father and a mother, which translates into discussion of issues such as custody regulation, visiting rights. During the 1990s and 2000s, Danish governments have firmly committed themselves particularly to the needs of middle-class families, but while the Social Democratic governments tried to change the gender biases (by establishing 'use or lose' elements within parental leave), the present Conservative-Liberal government is pursuing a more traditional path by introducing individualised, liberal and familistic forms of family policies." (author's abstract).