Taking Foreign Policy Personally: Personal Values and Foreign Policy Attitudes

Previous research has shown that on issues of foreign policy, individuals have “general stances,” “postures,” “dispositions” or “orientations” that inform their beliefs toward more discrete issues in international relations. While these approaches delineate the proximate sources of public opinion in the foreign policy domain, they evade an even more important question: what gives rise to these foreign policy orientations in the first place? Combining an original survey on a nationally representative sample of Americans with Schwartz’s theory of values from political psychology, we show that people take foreign policy personally: the same basic values we know people use to guide choices in their daily lives also travel to the domain of foreign affairs, offering one potential explanation why people who are otherwise uninformed about world politics nonetheless express coherent foreign policy beliefs

Italy’s Path to Very Low Fertility: The Adequacy of Economic and Second Demographic Transition Theories: Le cheminement de l’Italie vers les très basses fécondités: Adéquation des théories économique et de seconde transition démographique

The deep drop of the fertility rate in Italy to among the lowest in the world challenges contemporary theories of childbearing and family building. Among high-income countries, Italy was presumed to have characteristics of family values and female labor force participation that would favor higher fertility than its European neighbors to the north. We test competing economic and cultural explanations, drawing on new nationally representative, longitudinal data to examine first union, first birth, and second birth. Our event history analysis finds some support for economic determinants of family formation and fertility, but the clear importance of regional differences and of secularization suggests that such an explanation is at best incomplete and that cultural and ideational factors must be considered

From colonial categories to local culture: Evolving state practices of ethnic enumeration in Oceania, 1965-2014

Numerous scholars have examined how governments in particular times and places have classified their populations by ethnicity, but studies that are both cross-national and longitudinal are rare. Using a unique database of census questionnaires, we examine state practices of ethnic enumeration over a 50-year period (1965–2014) in the 24 countries and areas that comprise Oceania. The region’s extraordinary linguistic and cultural diversity, combined with its complex colonial history and indigenous politics, make it an ideal site for comparative analyses. We find a shift from biological conceptions of difference to a more cultural understanding of group identity, exemplified by a sharp rise in language questions and the decline of race-based inquiries. While local identity labels have largely displaced colonial categories, the imprimatur of previous regimes still lingers, particularly in Melanesia. These shifts in official constructions of ethnoracial differences reflect a gradual lessening of colonial influences on demographic practices

The economics and politics of women's rights

Women’s rights and economic development are highly correlated. Today, the discrepancy between the legal rights of women and men is much larger in developing compared to developed countries. Historically, even in countries that are now rich women had few rights before economic development took off. Is development the cause of expanding women’s rights, or conversely, do women’s rights facilitate development? We argue that there is truth to both hypotheses. The literature on the economic consequences of women’s rights documents that more rights for women lead to more spending on health and children, which should benefit development. The politicaleconomy literature on the evolution of women’s rights finds that technological change increased the costs of patriarchy for men, and thus contributed to expanding women’s rights. Combining these perspectives, we discuss the theory of Doepke and Tertilt (2009), where an increase in the return to human capital induces men to vote for women’s rights, which in turn promotes growth in human capital and income per capita

Population Objects: Interpassive Subjects

While Foucault described population as the object of biopower he did not investigate the practices that make it possible to know population. Rather, he tended to naturalise it as an object on which power can act. However, population is not an object awaiting discovery, but is represented and enacted by specific devices such as censuses and what I call population metrics. The latter enact populations by assembling different categories and measurements of subjects (biographical, biometric and transactional) in myriad ways to identify and measure the performance of populations. I account for both the object and subject by thinking about how devices consist of agencements, that is, specific arrangements of humans and technologies whose mediations and interactions not only enact populations but also produce subjects. I suggest that population metrics render subjects interpassive whereby other beings or objects take up the role and act in place of the subject

Feeling older and wanting to be younger

Two samples of middle-aged women were compared using a questionnaire adapted from Rossi (1980). One sample ( N = 20) consisted of women who felt older than and desired to be younger than their own age. The second sample ( N = 19) was comprised of women who felt and desired to be their own age. Statistically significant differences between the groups were that women who felt older reported more physical changes of aging, less satisfaction with their life context, and more worries than the women who felt their chronological age. Results of this study suggest that current life stress contributes to middle-aged women's perceptions of feeling older and desiring to be younger than their own age.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/42987/1/10823_2004_Article_BF00116678.pd