Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: A central question for political economists has been whether or not economic globalization has played a significant role in fostering neoliberal reforms of the welfare state in developed capitalist democracies. In the present paper, I provide a synopsis of a decade or more of theoretical arguments and empirical evidence about the international sources of contemporary trajectories of social protection. I then offer new tests of international sources of policy changes in programmatic features in core areas of social protection. The central contributions of the paper are to (1) articulate and test the role of international diffusion of neoliberal reforms along side tests of direct trade openness and capital market pressures on the maintenance of social welfare provision; (2) offer simultaneous tests of key domestic political economic pressures on, and supports of, social welfare protection; and (3) base such tests on newly available data on programmatic features of welfare states that extends into the 21st Century. The evidence suggests that social welfare provision, itself highly resilient to significant change in the short-term, has been negatively pressured by the competition-driven international diffusion of neoliberalism, international financial liberalization and rises in levels of domestic unemployment; evidence also suggests that the generosity of social protection has been simultaneously buoyed by insurance and compensation consequences of economic openness and by social corporatism.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper, I focus in the embodiment and experiences of women that were direct victims of repression, survived torture and persecution and/or were murdered/disappeared during Argentina's bloodiest military regime (1976-1983). Particularly, I look at testimonies of female survivors of this case of necropolitics -following Mbembe's conceptualization (2003)- with the intention of contesting Argentina's historiography and policy-making, which have been highly institutionalized, with little regard to gender, ethnic, religious and class issues. Based on personal accounts found in the Nunca Más (1984) report by the Comisión Nacional sobre la Desaparición de Personas - CONADEP (National Committee of Disappeared People), and Pájaros sin luz. Testimonios de mujeres de desaparecidos by Noemi Ciollaro (1999), I explore the effects of institutional hierarchies and filters in the construction of personal accounts and official discourses of political events, the suppression, omission and inclusion of emotions in testimonies, the criteria of selection of voices both spoken and silenced, and the underpinning issues of gender, class, ethnicity, religion, motherhood and citizenship as crucial aspects of repression. This paper is the initial phase of my dissertation project towards building a feminist sociological account from below of one of the darkest phases of Argentine history.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Several studies have examined trends in whites’ racial attitudes in the United States. Most of these studies have found trends toward greater racial tolerance. Although much of this positive change has been attributed to the replacement of older, less tolerant whites by younger, more tolerant cohorts of whites in the U.S. population, there have been few empirical investigations of young whites’ racial attitudes. The lack of investigation of recent white youths’ racial attitudes is somewhat surprising given that there is some reason to believe they may not follow past trends towards liberalization. Young whites today “came of age” during an increasingly conservative era that many have speculated has had a negative effect on their racial attitudes. Yet despite widespread speculation, little systematic research bears on young whites’ racial attitudes per se. This study explores these issues by examining changes in young whites’ racial attitudes as well as changes in the social determinants of their racial attitudes using both traditional and contemporary measures of racial attitudes. Data are drawn from a nationwide, longitudinal survey of white high school seniors (i.e., Monitoring the Future Survey, 1976-1998). Although I find a liberalizing trend for traditional measures of racial attitudes I do not find a similar pattern for contemporary forms of racial antipathy. In addition, I find that the social determinants of young whites’ traditional racial attitudes have been remarkably consistent over time, whereas the influence of the theoretically relevant social determinants on contemporary racial attitudes has diminished over time.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: We explore the influence of regional industrial identity on the decisions of entrepreneurs, diversifying firms and capital investors about where to locate their organizations and investments. Regional industrial identity is defined as the shared understandings of audiences, especially external audiences, about the types of businesses that are most likely to thrive in a metropolitan region. Assuming uncertainty about the location of superior resources and bounded rationality on the part of economic actors, we argue that regional industrial identity is a salient and differentiating signal of the suitability of regions for particular kinds of businesses and thus affects the movement and concentration of industry resources. Empirical analyses of the location and relocation of U.S. biotherapeutics firms and venture capital investments over the period, 1976 through 2004, confirm that regional industrial identity significantly increases (1) the number of venture capitalists who invest in a region, and (2) the entry rates of firms in the region that are started by entrepreneurs who migrated from other regions. This research contributes to our understanding of the spatial evolution of industries especially in situations where multiple regions compete, implicitly or explicitly, to become hosts for particular industry clusters.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the interrelation between Israeli Law and the socio-political status of the Arab-Palestinian Minority in the period between the "Land Day" (1976) and the "October events" (2000).

In the first three decades since the creation of Israel, the mode of inter-communal relationship between Arabs and Jews in Israel was that of a "control" system (Lustick, 1980). The paper explores the involvement of the Israeli Law in the dynamics that have occurred in this relationship, namely, its movement to a system termed by sociologist Sami Smooha "ethnic democracy" (Smooha, 1990).

My main argument is that several legal developments helped strengthen two socio-political processes. First, Law contributed to the appearance of more liberal aspects in the Israeli reality (in Israel proper, namely, within the green-line). Secondly, certain legal developments eroded important mechanisms that used to stabilize the control policy and thus pushed for a new and more moderate equilibrium. The main purpose of the paper is to analyze Law's contribution to this erosion of the "control" system.

An important caveat is in need here. The Arab minority status has improved, but it is far from being enviable. A more comprehensive analysis thus demands to unfold, simultaneously, the darker side of the Israeli Law in this context.