Publication Type: Invited Paper

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Sociological research on stratification/inequality has historically focused on the dual issues of (1) who gets what in the distribution of rewards such as pay, and (2) why people get the rewards they receive. At least as important from a sociological perspective, however, are public views of who should get what and why. Research has begun to examine the first part of this equation—views of who should get what. But virtually no work has explored views of why people should get the rewards they receive. Put differently, research has yet to adequately explore views of what should matter in determining the pay a person receives. Peoples’ views of what should matter in pay lie at the heart of their beliefs concerning distributive justice. Moreover, cross-national variations in these views may be causally related to the legitimation of inequality, and, thus, the actual distribution of rewards within different societies. As such, there is a serious void in the stratification/ inequality literature that needs to be filled.
In this study, we fill this important void using data for over 50,000 respondents from thirty-one nations, we empirically examine peoples’ answers to questions concerning the legitimate bases of rewards. We examine how individuals vary in their views based on demographic characteristics, such as their age, gender, education, occupational status, class, income, as well as structural factors such as the country they live in, via multi-level modeling. Our findings lend insights into this new realm of stratification beliefs, highlighting interesting similarities and differences worldwide.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Abstract: A significant body of literature has attempted to measure what impact, if any, human rights have on development aid allocation. The results of these studies have been inconclusive, with some arguing that increases in human rights provision are rewarded with increases in aid, and others arguing that these findings are the result of methodological inadequacies. In contrast to the existing literature, I argue that in order to understand whether human rights matter in aid allocation, the question of how they might matter must first be addressed. While the literature implicitly assumes that aid donors will reward and punish human rights protection by making aid conditional on a good human rights record, I argue for a second mechanism, in which donor states use some types of aid as assistance to improve human rights and use other types of aid as a coercive tool to influence recipient state behavior. I test this theory using a dataset of bilateral and multilateral aid received by over 100 developing countries from 1981-2000. The results show that aid donors do in fact give different types of aid to countries that abuse human rights, in a pattern consistent with my hypotheses, thus suggesting a solution to a persistent problem in the aid literature.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Trust in the national government has declined greatly over the last fifty years, and over the past decade citizens have taken direct action to limit the actions of their politicians at both the national and state levels. Might negative feelings about national-level political actors be driving some of the punitive actions taken against state politicians? Research has long shown that governors benefit from a popular President of their party, and recent preliminary research suggests that state legislators may be rewarded when feelings about the U.S. Congress improve.

This paper extends earlier research investigating whether the public’s punitive actions against state legislatures are the result of actual state-level conditions or whether the public’s negative feelings about Congress are driving these actions. Here we investigate another possible connection between attitudes about national and state actors.

Using an augmented set of available public opinion, policy, and institutional measures, we test to see whether gubernatorial approval is affected by feelings about a state’s U.S. Senators. Controlling for many factors known to impact gubernatorial ratings, we find that the public’s feelings about their U.S. Senators (junior Senators specifically) are linked to state governor approval. In addition, this study also uncovered some interesting findings concerning state level forces. One of the more interesting findings concerned lame duck governor status. This status alone leads to a substantial decrease in gubernatorial approval. However, when combined with incumbency this effect reverses.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Distinct demographic changes in the labor force such as increased female labor force participation and educational attainment and structural changes such as movement towards managerial, professional and service occupations, greater complexity requirements for work, along with institutional shifts in organizational practices have had an impact on the job rewards of American workers. Intrinsic job rewards are under-studied job rewards that have changed as a result of these macro-level changes at work. Intrinsic job rewards remain an important concern for American workers because they may offset economic rewards, and serve as important covariates with outcomes such as job satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to empirically test how structural and demographic changes in the workplace over the 1980s and 1990s have provided workers with more intrinsic job rewards at work. These trends are examined by using the Quality of Employment Survey of 1977, and the National Study of the Changing Workforce of 1997 and 2002, all nationally representative studies of the American labor force. The results indicate that workers improved their intrinsic job rewards from 1977 to 2002 due to the rising complexity of work, movement towards professional occupations, and possibly through more post-Fordist organizational working conditions.