America, and my work analyzed developments in Ukraine through the
corporatist prism. My dissertation on Ukrainian interest associations
will be published this year by University of Michigan Press.IBS Newsletter
October 1998
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado
Delbert S. Elliott was a guest expert on "Dateline NBC". The two-hour special on youth violence aired September 25. Elliott spoke on prevention and the benefits of being able to identify effective violence prevention programs. Elliott was also a guest speaker at the Student Assistance Team Fall Workshop of the Douglas County School District in Englewood, Colorado, September 14. Elliott presented "Violence in Society: Trends & Solutions."
Jane M. Grady, Sharon F. Mihalic, and Tiffany Shaw attended the National Prevention Network Conference, "Joining Forces to Advance Prevention." The conference, which highlighted prevention programs such as Life Skills Training (a CSPV Blueprint program), was held in San Antonio, Texas, August 30-September 2. Grady and Mihalic also delivered a presentation on "Blueprints for Violence Prevention," to the Violence Prevention Education Committee in Denver on September 22. They provided detailed information on the CSPV's Blueprints project to Colorado researchers and practitioners.
Miriam F. Jebe attended "Promise Colorado: A Summit on Youth and Volunteerism," on September 10-12 at the Denver Performing Arts Center, Denver, Colorado.
Tonya Aultman-Bettridge gave two presentations at the "Recreating Justice in the Community" conference which was Colorado's first statewide restorative justice conference. Her presentations were about the roots of violence. The conference, sponsored by the Colorado Forum on Restorative Justice, was held in Keystone, Colorado on September 8-10.
Fred C. Pampel attended a Work, Employment, and Society meeting in Cambridge, England on September 13-15. He presented the paper "Work, Retirement, and Inequality." With the increasing shift from work to retirement and from dependence on market income to public transfers during old age, the ability of welfare states to reduce the class and gender-based market inequality brought into old age and retirement becomes increasingly important. While some suggest that the transition preserves existing class and gender income differences, others argue that old age and the increased dependence on public transfers moderate class and gender differences, and still others argue that they exacerbate class and gender inequalities. To evaluate these arguments, the author examines within-cohort changes in income inequality during the work and retirement years using micro-level data from the Luxembourg Income Study. Based on data from five high income nations (Canada, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States) over a 15-20 year period from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s, the results reveal similarities across nations in age and sex differences in inequality. The findings best support theories specifying the maintenance of inequality during old age.
The SSDAC also has two part-time advisors available from 12:00 to 4:00 pm weekdays to assist CU students, faculty, and staff with statistical, computing, and data analysis problems. Nizam Khan is a graduate student in Sociology and David Lai has a Ph.D. in Political Science from CU and is a Continuing Education instructor.
See http://www.colorado.edu/IBS/DAC/news.html at the SSDAC Web site for more computing news. If you have computing problems, questions, or comments send e-mail to SSDAC@Colorado.EDU.
Post-Doctoral Fellowship, sponsored by the Research Program on Political
and Economic Change. He received his Ph.D. in political science from
the University of Michigan in 1995, and spent from 1995 to 1998 as an
assistant professor at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. He
joined IBS this fall as a Research Associate to participate in the
Globalization and Democracy
program and is an Instructor in the International Affairs Program..
My research interests focus on a variety of questions concerning the transition to democracy and the market in the post-communist world. In particular, I have written on the problems in forming interest associations and civil society, mass support for political and economic reforms, problems of nationalism, and international relations and economic dependency among Soviet successor states.
My initial research centered on the politics of reform in Ukraine. I
spent 1992-1993 as a
lecturer in L'viv, Ukraine, in conjunction with
the Civic Education Project, and returned in the summer of 1994 to
finish fieldwork for my dissertation. What struck me about Ukraine (and
continues to strike me) is the lack of progress in moving away from
communism as compared to many post-communist states. Thus rather than
posing my research question in the traditional "transition to democracy"
garb, I instead sought reasons why the reform project in Ukraine had
stalled. A significant factor, I thought, was the lack of a truly
independent civil society of interest associations. Politics continued
to be dominated by Soviet-style groups (particularly business
associations) that inhibited any reform from below or at the top. I
found this analogous to "state corporatist" structures in parts of Latin
America, and my work analyzed developments in Ukraine through the
corporatist prism. My dissertation on Ukrainian interest associations
will be published this year by University of Michigan Press.
My sojourn to Turkey helped diversify my research interests to include Central Asia, Russian foreign policy, and the on-going Kurdish conflict in Turkey. I conducted research in Bishkek and Almaty in the summer of 1996, and have published several papers on emerging political institutions in the region and problems of nationalism and development. I have also written on the relevance of Turkey's experience as a developmental model, and this fall will participate in a symposium on Turkey and Europe at the University of Michigan.
Presently, I hope to return to some of my earlier work on interest associations, particularly organized labor, in post-communist countries. Trade unions, which in many cases played a leading role in the collapse of communism, have found themselves politically marginalized, often at the expense of business associations dominated by the old nomenklatura. Some argue that this is a passing phenomenon, that labor will somehow "find itself" and adjust to new conditions. I am not so sanguine, and in particular, believe that marketization and globalization will erode the basis for organized labor, just as it has done in many Western countries. What this portends for the political development of these countries and the public's evaluation of the market and democracy will be central questions in my research this year.
I will also be working with John O'Loughlin and James Bell on a previously-funded research grant to study processes of political and economic change in post-Soviet Ukraine, particularly the persistence of regional cleavages in the Ukrainian state.
There is an online listing of upcoming and recent colloquia.
(303) 492-8147
IBS@Colorado.EDU