Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Based on interviews and other documentary sources, this paper examines the impacts of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq on the "citizen-soldiers" who comprise the U.S. National Guard. Aspects of the experience examined include the role of 9/11 in the motivation of the soldiers, their attitude toward international law and military ethics, their involvement in "hearts and minds" activities, and the implications of their experience for the future of the Global War on Terror. The paper's analysis is contextualized within the earlier work of the Feinstein International Center on the impacts of complex emergencies on humanitarian action.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores the role of the National Guard’s State Partnership Program (SPP) as a possible model for harnessing the power of the American people as a force for positive peacemaking. The SPP was developed based on NATO’s joint contact team program, which was used to help jumpstart the Partnership for Peace program. In 1993 the National Guard decided to “partner” U.S. states who were interested in engaging overseas with foreign partners who were willing to work with the U.S. The SPP has grown to over 56 partnerships in 2007. Partner nations are generally smaller, relatively weak states in need of assistance in building their capacity to stabilize their own security. For example, the first SPP partners were Maryland - Estonia and Pennsylvania - Lithuania and the most recent is New Mexico and Costa Rica. The National Guard as “citizen-soldiers” pride themselves on their ability to foster positive, long-term relationships at the civilian-military and civilian-civilian level. After all, National Guard soldiers and airmen also hold ordinary civilian jobs as police officers, businessmen, teachers, etc. One of the most remarkable results of the SPP are stories told of positive “spin-off” effects from seemingly mundane military-military contacts that result in connections made between American and partner country churches, schools, universities, and relationships fostered between governors and partner ministries, and even new business contacts. The National Guard possesses the potential to serve an important “grassroots” peacemaking role regionally as well as between foreign countries and the United States. This paper will attempt to conceptualize and articulate the role of the National Guard as grassroots organizers, and gather evidence of instances where positive peacemaking has occurred. The paper will then generate a model of peacemaking for the National Guard based on lessons learned. This will include a discussion of Guard strengths and weaknesses in the area of peacemaking. Finally, the paper will propose a way for the National Guard Bureau to foster peacemaking activities and improve coordination among the states and partner nations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Standard examinations of police strength in the United States demonstrate widely varying numbers of police depending on the jurisdiction. Most commonly, researchers employ minority threat, rational choice, or organization theory approaches to better understand the differences in police strength from community to community. Research that combines examinations of both economic threat and minority threat produced significant findings in the United States and in the International arena. The threat theories predict that as minority or economic threat increases, a corresponding increase will occur in formal social control, in the form of increased police strength. We expand on this line of inquiry, by examining both formal social and informal social control. The police represent formal social control, while private security employment represents informal social control, and together they create a measure of overall enforcement strength. Two equally plausible hypotheses guide our investigation: 1) communities with lower formal control (low police strength rates) supplement with increased informal control (private security employment); and 2) communities with more formal control also require increased informal control. Our data come from U.S. cities, and help us to better understand the dynamics of social control in the local setting.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In 1996 the British Medical Journal published guidelines on the use of race, ethnic and cultural labels in published scientific research, a few American medical journals have followed suit. Yet there remains an ongoing debate in the United States about the use of race in medical research other than in studies on access to care or bias in physician treatment. This paper argues that with the exception of access to care or bias in treatment, federally funded research on race/ethnicity not be funded unless the proposed study follows guidelines similar to those used by the British Medical Journal.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Standard socioeconomic models of participation suggest that Whites are generally more socio-politically active than African Americans. Yet, recent empirical research has also shown that when controlling for SES and other certain conditions, African Americans are more likely than Whites to participate in political and social affairs, and have greater feelings of efficacy. One such condition is when the mayor is African-American. However, the studies establishing the effect of a mayor's race on engagement and efficacy only capture a single point in time and/or the experience of a single city, which leaves several questions unanswered. Foremost, what happens during periods of change? What is the extent of African American and White participation when an African American mayor is replaced by a White challenger, or vice versa? Similarly, how does participation by race differ when the current and previous mayors are of the same race?

We explore these questions based on data from the two completed waves of the Survey of Adults and Youth (SAY), an random digit dial telephone survey conducted as part of a national longitudinal evaluation of the Urban Health Initiative (UHI), a Robert Wood Johnson-funded program that aims to bring about city-wide systems change in order to improve the health and safety of children and youth. Conducted in 1998-1999 and in 2001-2002, each wave included over 10,000 adult residents from the 100 most populous cities in the United States (as per the 1990 U.S. Census), with an oversample of adults from each of the five cities that participating in UHI (Baltimore, Detroit, Oakland, Philadelphia, and Richmond). At least once between the two survey waves, an African American mayor governed these five UHI cities. But what is more, in four of the five cities during the same time period there was a change in the race of the mayoralty: in Baltimore and Oakland, Whites replaced African American mayors; in Philadelphia and Richmond, African Americans replaced White mayors. (Detroit�s mayoralty changed individuals but remained African American.) These five cities were also distinguished by the fact that on average their racial distribution was over 50 percent- African American.

We analyze responses by race to items that cover feelings of efficacy, engagement in civic activities, and volunteering, while controlling for educational attainment, income, and length of residency. Results are presented for the entire urban sample as well as for the five UHI cities. In summary, our inquiry is an exploration into the extent to which the race of the mayoralty matters in predicting levels of participation by race, under several scenarios.