Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Islamic clerics have both supported and undermined regimes in the Middle East. This disparity in clerical behavior raises the question: What determines the likelihood of cooperation or conflict between Islamic clerics and Middle Eastern regimes? The dominant hypothesis in the scholarly literature suggests that clerical behavior derives from the doctrine of political authority endorsed by its sect. This hypothesis predicts passivity from Sunni clerics who maintain that tyranny is preferable to civil strife, and defiance from Shi??i clerics who proclaim all worldly government to be illegitimate.
Yet, numerous examples of regime-clerical relations contradict the doctrinal thesis. Egypt??s Sunni clerics have at times led protests against the regime and Sunni clerics in Syria helped fomented out-right rebellion against President Assad in 1980. Iran??s history includes long periods of cooperation between its Shi??i clerics and its various monarchial dynasties, and in Lebanon, the Shi??i clerical establishment was quietest until the rise of Amal and the Hezbollah. In this paper, I argue that patterns of conflict and cooperation are not determined by the ideological disposition of the clerics, but rather, by the mutual interaction between the clerics and the regime as each pursues their independent interests.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: FOR INCLUSION IN PANEL #30922, Religion, Culture, and
Theory: Christianity and American Politics, Past and Present
Between January and June 2002, television and newspaper dailies
featured a series of startling revelations about sexual abuse of minors
by American Catholic clergy. The media reported on countless lawsuits
filed by victims in all parts of the United States. Depositions in
these lawsuits revealed that many bishops, archbishops, and cardinals
had reassigned offending priests to different parishes and schools
where they continued to abuse children and teenagers. Catholic lay
people learned that protection of children was a distant second to
episcopal protection of priest-abusers engaged in criminal behavior.
This paper discusses the implications of this scandal for the American
church's public agenda. With its hospitals, orphanages, shelters and
other agencies, the church is the largest provider of social services
in the United States. However, as church leaders struggle to deal with
internal disarray, energy and resources mayl be diverted from the
provision of social services. The loss of episcopal credibility may
undermine the efforts of the church to shape public policy on matters
such as abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research and cloning, school
vouchers, and the death penalty, as well as broader issues of just war
and economic justice for the poor. For example, in Massachusetts the
church is campaigning heavily against the state's possible
legalization of same-sex marriage. However, Catholics and non-Catholics
alike tend to dismiss what church officials say because of the
hierarchy's internal mishandling of clerical sex abuse. The United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops invoked just war theory to
criticize the government's buildup to the war in Iraq. But such
official statements of the American Catholic bishops received little
public attention as the nation went to war. The proposed paper explores
examples such as these in an attempt to determine the impact of the
scandal on Catholic political infuence in the United States.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The aging of federal Baby Boomers and the disappearance of federal clerical employees have been re-shaping the civil service for the past quarter-century, presenting challenges to the quality and diversity of the federal work force. Using a a 1 percent- sample of federal personnel records for 1976-2001, I show that the age distribution of federal employees has shifted radically, raising experience levels and lowering turnover and promotion rates and that the civil service has cut its clerical workforce by two-thirds, decreasing the hiring of women but also raising the educational levels of new hires, especially women. I then place these changes in the context of continuing concerns about a “quiet crisis” of competence and morale in the federal service. Despite the possibilities that the aging of boomers could be hiding a rising propensity to quit federal service and that the increasing professionalization of federal jobs could be hiding decreasing qualifications within jobs, my analysis finds no evidence of decreasing morale or qualifications among federal employees.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In interwar Europe there were three distinct forms of fascism: Italian economic corporatist fascism, German racial nationalist Nazism, and clerical fascism. Clerical fascism consisted of religiously based nationalist movements in Croatia, Romania, Slovakia, Lithuania, Hungary, and the Ukraine, among others. Analysts of neofascism are debating which contemporary extreme right social movements should be labeled as forms of clerical fascism. This paper explores the Christian Identity and Christian constructionist movements in the United States, and The Taliban in Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda networks based in the Middle
East. It concludes that all are forms of clerical fascism.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In fields like clerical and janitorial work, increasingly more
workers are employed indirectly, through contractors, even when they
work on-site, at the contractor's client. On-site outsourcing is
growing rapidly, as firms increase service purchases more quickly
than direct hires. Even though outsourced clerical workers are more
educated and reside in more urban areas, they earn more than a
dollar less per hour than their directly employed counterparts and
have one-third the odds of getting pension benefits. As outsourcing
diffuses unequally across the economic landscape, concentrated in
satellite cities, the trend towards outsourcing could
disproportionately affect workers living in these areas.