Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study investigates a long-term effect of growing up in public housing on economic self-sufficiency and asset ownership of offspring among low-income families. With the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 data matched with the state level public housing information, the author employs propensity score matching estimations to address selection problems that are often encountered when evaluating the impact of welfare program. The findings indicate some evidence for a long-term negative effect of project residence on housing self-sufficiency and car ownership of offspring as young adults but no effect on the receipt of AFDC or food stamps, employment status or homeownership. Hence, the study finds little evidence for welfare trap among project children that other studies have previously argued. The separate analyses by race show a stronger detrimental effect of project residence among blacks but no effect among whites. The study suggests that non-automobile ownership as well as intergenerational transmission of dependency in housing assistance may imply a “spatial trap” of black young adults who grew up in the projects.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Courtroom dynamics literature has studied the interactions within the 'courtroom workgroup' - prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges, attributing legal practices in the courtroom to the effects of power struggles amd professional interest conflicts between the actors. This paper reintroduces into the picture the important factor of formal law and legal indoctrination, claiming that much of the actors' opinions and behaviors can be attributed to their inability to introduce external perceptions of the problems they address into the legal framework within which they operate. The paper is based on 40 in-depth interviews with prosecutors, defense attorneys and ex-judges in the Israeli military justice system about cases involving disobedience to military service - desertion, unauthorized absences and conscientious objection. The interviews reveal the overpowering effect of legal indoctrination on the perception of these problems and their solutions. Almost all interviewees use the doctrinal legal categorization as the main definition of the problems they deal with, despite their understanding of the political and socio-economic dimensions of the problems. Their policy suggestions are equally limited. Almost all interviewees perceive a tension between their perception and the broader, social definitions of the problem, and have different ways of resolving it: loyalism, bureaucratic thinking, idealism, cynicism and limited innovation. The findings shed light on the impact of legal communications and disciplinary discourse on individual perceptions, and support the usage of discursive theory - focusing on Luhmann and Teubner's autopoiesis - as a strong explanation of professional behavior and interaction, even at the individual level.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper proposes a theory of post-civil war institution building. Its central argument is that there is a trade-off between ending civil wars through a power-sharing agreement and establishing a democratic government in countries emerging from deadly internal conflicts. Power-sharing arrangements, directly drawn from consociational theory of peace and democracy for deeply divided societies, have been conceived by the international community as the only feasible institutional solution for ending civil wars as quickly as possible. However, the short-term benefits from peacemaking and the long-term interests in democracy promotion do not always coincide and in fact often conflict, depending upon the time horizons held by key actors in the processes of post-civil war reconstruction. This time inconsistency in creating post-conflict institutions arises when civil war adversaries have reached a mutually destructive stalemate. To resolve the stalemate, power sharing is proposed to provide a security guarantee and a strong incentive for warring parties to initiate negotiations, sign a bargain for peace, and implement the terms of peace settlement. Yet the institutional rigidity of elite-level power-sharing pacts actually delays the development of post-civil war democratic governance in the long run, thereby increasing the risk of conflict recurrence as well. Using a newly collected dataset on post-civil war political institutions, I test this dynamics of post-civil war institution building by an event history analysis of 75 countries that have experienced civil wars in 1946-2002.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Political institutions and economic inequality draws conspicuous attention in the social trust literature in line with the claim about the beneficial effect of universal welfare system on trust in Scandinavian societies. This study examines how political institutions shape social trust level through the interaction with the income inequality levels. Are system characteristics that are regarded as more consensual than majoritarian likely to engender more trustful societies through the interaction with the income inequality? Using data from the fourth wave of the World Values Survey (WVS) for the social trust measure, I identify consensual institution such as PR electoral rules, higher district magnitudes, more proportional votes, federal systems, parliamentary systems, and multiparty systems and then test for institutional variations in engendering trust and for the impact of institutional arrangements and inequality and their interaction on social trust. I use a variety of methods including using OLS regression and two-level hierarchical modeling. I can find consistent evidence that more consensual institutions evoke more social trust, especially in equal societies.