The Gift of Giving: Recognizing Donors and Revealing Donation Amounts

Publicly announcing how much individuals donate on behalf of themselves is a common fundraising strategy. For tribute gifts made on behalf of others, however, charities only reveal donor identities to the honoree with few revealing the size of their contributions. This paper examines the fundraising consequences of recognizing donors with and without information about donation amounts when notifying honorees of gifts made on their behalf. I find that revealing contribution amounts in addition to recognizing donors benefits fundraisers. I find that both the likelihood of giving on behalf of others and contribution amounts increase when honorees learn how much donors give. The results either suggest that fundraisers are leaving tribute donations on the table, or that announcing the size of these gifts may be repugnant and constrains what practices fundraisers can implement

Do Actions Speak Louder than Motives? Evaluating the Effectiveness of Image-Fundraising

Charitable giving can boost an individual’s image, and organizations can capitalize on this by engaging in “image-fundraising.” Public announcements of donations give individuals the opportunity to demonstrate their generosity and are found to increase giving. This paper evaluates whether generosity inferred from charitable giving is discounted when donations are made in response to image-fundraising. I show in an experimental study that others reward larger donations, and that image-fundraising increases giving. However, others account for the conditions under which donations are made and reduce rewards for giving in an image-fundraising environment. While image-fundraising benefits charitable organizations, individuals are not recompensed for donating more in this setting

Royalism and the Crisis of Elite Governance in Thailand: An Interview with Thongchai Winichakul and Pavin Chachavalpongpun

In May 2014, the Royal Thai Armed Forces launched a coup to establish a junta called the National Council for Peace and Order. In this interview, Social Transformations editor Lisandro Claudio (LC) speaks to historian Thongchai Winichakul (TW) of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and Political Scientist Pavin Chachavalpongpun (PC) of Kyoto University to examine the simmering tensions the undergird the military take over

Going Virtual: A Step-by-Step Guide to Taking the In-Person Experimental Lab Online

This guide provides a detailed account of procedures for conducting traditional in-person laboratory experiments in a “virtual setting.” The main objective of these procedures is to maintain the control of traditional in-person lab studies when conducting studies over the internet. Using the participant pool of the in-person lab the key procedural steps include participants having their webcams on throughout the experiment, technical screenings and attention pledges, playing pre-recorded instructions out loud, upholding clear experimenter roles and communication protocols when interacting with participants, and finally detailed and scripted procedures for managing participants throughout the session. The described procedures have been used for more than 100 sessions and have secured results that are indistinguishable from those from the in-person lab

Overcoming the Unprecedented: Southern Voters Battle Against Voter Suppression, Intimidation, and a Virus

This report describes the 2020 elections in five Southern states—Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi—with a particular emphasis on election administration problems; voter suppression; the efforts of voting rights organizations to mobilize voters and protect their votes; and the actions of extremists who sought to intimidate voters and spread disinformation.As this report shows, it is abundantly clear that our electoral system needs repair. Numerous states have erected new barriers to voting since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2013 gutted a critical component of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Many also cling to Jim Crow-era laws, such as felony disenfranchisement, that were specifically designed to suppress the Black vote—or they refuse to enact commonsense changes that would make voting easier and accessible to all citizens. At the same time, some states maintain archaic administrative systems that are woefully inadequate to meet the needs of voters today and ensure fair elections.This report provides a blueprint for reforming the electoral system. The Biden administration and Congress must act quickly to shore up the stability of the electoral process and put our democracy on a firmer footing. Passage of federal laws, including those that strengthen the Voting Rights Act, are necessary steps forward on the path to reform—toward ensuring that all Americans have easy and equal access to the ballot box

Simon Doesn’t Say: Minimal Qualitative Distortions from Experimenter Demand

Experimenter demand is a clear threat to the validity of experimental results. To understand the extent of this threat for lab studies, we apply the quantitative frame- work from de Quidt, Haushofer and Roth (2018) to explore whether experimenter demand can generate flawed qualitative inference in experimental studies, using four classic behavioral findings. In these four settings we examine the extent to which demand can alter the nature of a comparative-static conclusion, a stronger test of the potential distortions resulting from experimenter demand. Starting with the laboratory population, we demonstrate that even in a stark environment with deliberate researcher attempts to manipulate participant behavior, quantitative effects are small and experimenter demand effects are not large enough to impact the core qualitative inferences in our four experimental comparisons. This result is then extended to two commonly used online populations, Prolific and mTurk–which show larger quantitative demand effects, but again, not large enough to alter the qualitative conclusions

Sovereignty, intervention, and social order in revolutionary times

This article has been accepted for publication and will appear in a revised form, subsequent to peer review and/or editorial input by Cambridge University Press, in Review of International Studies / Volume 39 / Issue 05 / December 2013, pp 1149 - 1167 Copyright © British International Studies Association 2013 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S026021051300025

The Land Question in Amazonia: Cadastral Knowledge and Ignorance in Brazil’s Tenure Regularization Program

In the Brazilian Amazon, a quest˜ao fundi´aria (the land question) has been asked and answered in a variety of ways since the region was opened up tolarge-scale migration and development projects in the 1960s. The question of who is entitled to land and under what conditions is at the heart ofmost debates concerning the region’s future, but recent attempts to reform and simplify rural land tenure in Amazonia confront a history of contradictory land-use policies and a legacy of impunity. In response to economic and demographic pressures, the Brazilian state aims to combat the illicit occupation, sale, and transformation of lands. This article presents an ethnographic approach to the land question in Amazonia by studying the knowledgemaking practices associated with the Programa Terra Legal (Legal Land Program), Brazil’s effort to create a cadastral registry for rural holdings in the region. It argues that tenure regularization dedicated to securing smallholders’ rights and to instituting environmental regulations is being used by rural elites as a mechanism to accumulate land and power. By showing how a reform program gets remade in the thrall of local interests and vernacular dispositions of property, this article reveals how knowledge both illuminates and obscures subjects of governance

Branding Dissent: Nitirat, Thailand’s Enlightened Jurists

This article examines the political role of a group of academic lawyers based at Thammasat University who have been seeking to reform various aspects of the Thai legal and judicial system. The seven-member group started out by criticising the illegality of the 2006 coup. After the 2010 crackdown against redshirt protestors, the group named itself Nitirat and started to hold seminars, draft legal proposals, and campaign to amend various laws. Nitirat has repeatedly challenged the legal and constitutional underpinnings of three key elements of the Thai state: the judiciary, the military, and the monarchy. In doing so, the group has gained a mass following, drawn mainly from those sympathetic to the “redshirt” movement which broadly supports former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Informally led by scholar Worajet Pakeerat, Nitirat has created a popular branding which is reflected in huge audiences for public events, and the sales of souvenirs. The article aims to answer the following questions: How does Nitirat combine the roles of legal academic and political activist? How does it differ from the traditional mode of Thai public intellectuals? How significant is the Nitirat phenomenon