Nathan D. Martin

Workers of the Less Developed World Unite? A Multilevel Analysis of Unionization in Less Developed Countries

Past scholars of unionization have offered exemplary cross-national studies of affluent democracies and case studies of less developed countries (LDCs). What has been lacking is cross-national research on unionization across LDCs. We conduct a multilevel analysis of the likelihood that a worker is unionized with the late-1990s World Values surveys of 39 LDCs. We propose that unionization in LDCs can be explained by the individual characteristics of workers as well as the country-level factors of institutions, industrialization, and globalization. Our analyses yield several conclusions. First, owing to the legacy of state socialism, ex-communist countries have much higher unionization. Second, our analyses show that class very effectively explains union membership across LDCs. Although skilled manual workers are more unionized than most, educated professionals stand out for their distinctively high unionization. Third, the debt crisis significantly undermined unionization through the institutional influence of International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreements and the globalization pressure of debt service. Despite being the focus of much research, industrialization, democratization, the size of the state, International Labour Organization conventions, and international trade and investment are surprisingly insignificant. Decomposing the sample by communist legacy, signing an IMF agreement is significant in ex-communist countries, and debt service is significant in countries without a communist legacy. Overall, we conclude that the debt crisis has undermined unionization and class remains a powerful basis of mobilization across LDCs.

Social Capital, Academic Achievement, and Postgraduation Plans at an Elite, Private University

Many studies have explored how social capital influences the academic experiences of secondary school students. A distinct literature has demonstrated the beneficial effects of social contacts on occupational attainment and the job search process. However, few studies have explored the effects of social capital at the postsecondary level. This study bridges this gap in the literature by examining the effects of campus social networks on college academic achievement and postgraduation education and occupation plans, using detailed panel data from an elite, private university. Results indicate that campus social networks have little effect on early college outcomes, although students with extensive networks are more likely to graduate with honors and continue on to graduate school. Students with extensive campus networks and extracurricular memberships are more likely to aspire to high-status professional occupations, especially as medical doctors, while family or personal networks are more important for aspiring lawyers.

Free will beliefs predict attitudes toward unethical behavior and criminal punishment

Significance Understanding the bases of moral judgment has been a longstanding goal of social science. Factors undergirding morality are argued to be both globally uniform and regionally variable. The current study found evidence of both. For residents of countries with low levels of corruption and transparent systems of governance, free will beliefs predicted greater support for harsh criminal punishment and an intolerance of unethical behavior. For residents of countries beset with corruption and obfuscation, free will beliefs predicted greater support for criminal punishment but were decoupled from judgments of unethical behavior. These findings confirm causal conclusions from experimental research about the influence of free will beliefs on moral judgments and demonstrate variation by sociopolitical context. Do free will beliefs influence moral judgments? Answers to this question from theoretical and empirical perspectives are controversial. This study attempted to replicate past research and offer theoretical insights by analyzing World Values Survey data from residents of 46 countries (n = 65,111 persons). Corroborating experimental findings, free will beliefs predicted intolerance of unethical behaviors and support for severe criminal punishment. Further, the link between free will beliefs and intolerance of unethical behavior was moderated by variations in countries’ institutional integrity, defined as the degree to which countries had accountable, corruption-free public sectors. Free will beliefs predicted intolerance of unethical behaviors for residents of countries with high and moderate institutional integrity, but this correlation was not seen for countries with low institutional integrity. Free will beliefs predicted support for criminal punishment regardless of countries’ institutional integrity. Results were robust across different operationalizations of institutional integrity and with or without statistical control variables.

Lost in Transition: College Resources and the Unequal Early-Career Trajectories of Arts Alumni:

This article considers how college resources (academic abilities, social engagement, and career skills) affect the likelihood of a successful post-graduation job search. Using survey data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (N = 16,659 alumni who graduated between 1976 and 2015), we find that arts graduates are increasingly likely to be lost in transition. Over recent decades, the likelihood of experiencing a prolonged job search after graduation or initial employment in an unrelated field has increased. Yet, we find that higher levels of social engagement and career skills, but not academic abilities gained through traditional instruction, are predictive of labor market success. Female and non-White alumni report lower levels of college resources, longer initial job searches, and are more likely to find work in an unrelated field. Furthermore, gender moderates the relationship between career skills and job search length such that career skill development is associated with stronger gains for men than for women.

Interracial Friendships Across the College Years: Evidence from a Longitudinal Case Study

Today, the student bodies of our leading colleges and universities are more diverse than ever. However, college students are increasingly selfsegregating by race or ethnicity (Saenz, Ngai, & Hurtado, 2007). A burgeoning literature documents the benefits of campus diversity and shows that having friends of a different race predicts greater acceptance and awareness of other groups as well as higher levels of academic self-confidence and learning outcomes (e.g., Antonio, 2004; Hu & Kuh, 2003). For many young adults, the college years serve as the first opportunity to interact with a large number of peers from different backgrounds. Yet, in order to fully realize the benefits of structural diversity on campus, it is important to understand how interracial friendships are formed and maintained across the college years. In this study we explored factors that influence the degree to which students’ campus friends are of a different race or ethnicity. We focused on relationships that are more sustained and involve greater trust than routine interactions on campus (e.g., Chang, Denson, Sáenz, & Misa, 2006), but are less intimate than best or closest friends (e.g., Antonio, 2004). Recent studies show that high school experiences are associated with having friendships that cross racial-ethnic boundaries in college (Fischer, 2008), and that having a different-race roommate can provide opportunities to form interracial friendships (Camargo, Stinebrickner, & Stinebrickner, 2010; Stearns, Buchmann, & Bonneau, 2009). Additionally, Stearns and colleagues (2009) found that fraternity or sorority membership is associated with fewer interracial friendships for White students. These studies make a valuable contribution to our understanding of interracial friendship formation, although the existing literature has been limited by focusing attention on the early college years or by considering White and Black students only. Using survey data from the Campus Life & Learning Project—a prospective panel study of students at a selective, private university in the Southeastern United States—we extend the existing literature by considering the experiences of White, Black, Latino, and Asian students, and by examining a broad range of college activities. Our results indicate that students’ friendships become less diverse from the first to the fourth years, and that aspects of the residential environment, interactions with faculty, types of extracurricular participation, and the presence of alcohol at social events are significant predictors of having interracial campus friendships.

Managers in the Global Economy: A Multilevel Analysis

We examine individual- and country-level determinants of managerial employment, using data from the 1989 to 2009 waves of the World Values and European Values Surveys (n = 89,336 employed adults in 59 countries). Reflecting the rise of the transnational capitalist class, we find that factors related to globalization and international political institutions are most strongly associated with opportunities to join the managerial class relative to factors related to the business-cycle or development. Additionally, in a subset of countries with detailed occupational information, we find that global trade has a particularly strong, positive association with the odds of being a corporate manager in a large firm.

Secularization or Socialization? A Study of Student Religiosity at an Elite University

Abstract In this study, the author analyzed panel data on elite university students to test prominent explanations for how college attendance affects religious identities and behaviors. Results from random-effects logistic regression showed that in-college religiosity was primarily a function of pre-college religious background. While the secularization hypothesis received no support, aspects of the campus social environment were reliably linked to patterns of religiosity across the college years. Although increasing racial-ethnic diversity in recent decades has coincided with rising aggregate levels of student religiosity on campus, the presence of interracial friendships and roommates predicted significantly lower levels of religious identification and involvement.