Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We assess the effects of regime type and democratic constitutional structures on economic sustainability. Sustainability requires at the very least that stocks of capital do not decline overtime. The World Bank gauges the rate of depreciation of natural, human, and physical capital stocks, a unified indicator of economic sustainability (the genuine savings rate). Three of four indicators of democracy we examine show that freer societies have higher chances of sustainability because they invest more in human capital, create less CO2 damage, and extract fewer natural resources per economic unit produced, even if they show lower net physical capital savings. Democracies trade off immediate welfare gains for future pay offs. This finding justifies why scholars should assess the effects of regime type on more than just immediate growth. Among the democracies, we find that parliamentary and mixed systems, rather than strong presidential ones spend more on education, but they perform worse on CO2 pollution. PR electoral systems, compared to plurality and mixed ones only affect resource depletion. High government fractionalization, net of other variables, has little effect on sustainability and its components. The results taken together show that different democratic institutions allow for different trade-offs reflected in spending decisions. In short, democracy is good for sustainability, and parliamentary systems rather than strong presidential ones benefit future generations through higher spending on human capital. The results are robust to a host of controls, estimating techniques, and sub-samples.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Six Dutch time use surveys (1975-2000) are used to analyze generational changes in media dominance. The most recent Time Budget Survey (2000) serves to assess both people’s employment of media types for a variety of information topics and determinants of their topical interest. Logistic regression analysis shows that audiences of the (nine) media are quite distinct. This is due to the fact that the forte of each medium lies in different topics. But even within each topic, education, political involvement, gender, and age have a major effect on the selection of a medium as well as on the interest shown in particular topics.
Results are evaluated in light of Dutch media policy the main focus of which has stealthily shifted from public service to technology, thus jeopardizing the age-old and multi-facetted policy aim of pluralism. Medium and topic have to be regarded as a twofold entity since each medium has its own mode of presenting information. Knowing that people want to be informed on a certain topic through TV rather than print media simultaneously reveals another media preference, another way of shaping news (both from the perspective of the producer and the consumer), and another processing mode. It is suggested that measures aimed at reinforcing the information function of public broadcasting and the Internet may compensate for the continuous decline in readership of newspapers especially among younger generations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The central questions of this paper are: (1) to what extent has the growth of Internet use gone hand in hand with a decline in the use of print and broadcast media in the Netherlands?; and more specifically (2) to what extent has the Internet been adopted by users as an information medium? We first of all discuss in some detail the methodology of the Time Use Survey (§ 2). A description is then provided of the diffusion of the pc and Internet in the Netherlands (§ 3) and of the time use of these new media (§ 4). In the next paragraph (§ 5) the relationship between the use of new and old media (printed media, radio and television) is discussed. Subsequently the attention is focused on the use of media as a source of information and differences between educational groups with respect to the use of these sources (§ 6).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The existing literature on defense and security policy often asserts that in developing nations threats are primarily internal rather than external in origin. However, previous scholarship on the determinants of Third World defense spending has relied largely upon indirect indicators of domestic threat such as levels of military deployment. This analysis seeks to develop a direct measure of intrastate threats that accounts for the influence of socio-political instability (SPI) on national security policy in developing countries. The theoretical model draws from assumptions in positive political economy that social unrest and political violence result from the interaction of economic disparity with institutions that are highly fractionalized among competing interests. Ordinary least squares regression is applied to a sample of fifty non-OECD countries for the period 1975 to 2000 in order to determine their impact on annual military expenditures as a percentage of GDP.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In the last 6 years in Colombia, a vibrant women's peace movement has developed against the domestic war, yet it has received almost no scholarly attention. This paper examines the movement's organizing and discursive strategies, comparing them to other women's human rights and anti-war movements in the region, to build theory on how and why such movements have changed over time as well as to identify successful strategies.The paper proposed here builds upon the theory developed in the Nicaraguan case and is based on fieldwork in Colombia, during which interviews and participant observation were conducted, plus extensive archival work in primary documents (movement literature, guerrilla/paramilitary communiques, speeches and pronouncements by government officials, and newspaper archives). This research was funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Institute of Peace.