Journal Articles by Liam Swiss
Within developing countries, studies addressing the effects of maternity benefits on fertility, i... more Within developing countries, studies addressing the effects of maternity benefits on fertility, infant/child health, and women's labor force participation are limited and provide contradictory findings. Yet, knowledge regarding the implementation of maternity provisions is essential, as such policies could significantly improve women and children's well-being. We add to this literature using fixed effects panel regression from 1999 to 2012 across 121 developing countries to explore whether different types of maternity leave policies affect infant/child mortality rates, fertility, and women's labor force participation, and whether those effects are shaped by disparities in GDP per Capita and Secondary School Enrollment. Our findings demonstrate: (1) both infant and child mortality rates are expected to decline in countries that institute any leave policy, policies that last 12 weeks or longer, and policies that increase in duration and payment (as a percentage of total annual salary), (2) fertility is expected to decline in countries that have higher weekly paid compensation , (3) maternity leave provisions decrease fertility and infant/child mortality rates most in countries with lower GDP per capita and countries with middle-range secondary enrollment rates, and (4) labor force participation does not increase. Our results suggest that policy makers must consider the duration, compensation, and goals (addressing fertility versus mortality rates) of a policy alongside a country's economic development and secondary school enrollment when determining which maternity leave provisions to apply within developing-country contexts.
This article examines competing explanations for foreign aid allocation on the global level and a... more This article examines competing explanations for foreign aid allocation on the global level and argues for a new approach to understanding aid from an institutionalist perspective. Using network data on all official bilateral aid relationships between countries in the period from 1975 through 2006 and data on recipient country ties to world society, the article offers an alternative explanation for the allocation of global foreign aid. Fixed effects negative binomial regression models on a panel sample of 117 developing countries reveal that global ties to world society in the form of non-governmental memberships and treaty ratifications are strong determinants of the network centrality of recipient countries in the global foreign aid network. Countries with a higher level of adherence and connection to world society norms and organizations are shown to be the beneficiaries of an increased number of aid relationships with wealthy donor countries. The findings also suggest that prior explanations of aid allocation grounded in altruist or realist motivations are insufficient to account for the patterns of aid allocation seen globally in recent years.
Electoral quotas are a key factor in increasing women's political representation in parliaments g... more Electoral quotas are a key factor in increasing women's political representation in parliaments globally. Despite the strong effects of quotas, less attention has been paid to the factors that prompt countries to adopt electoral quotas across developing countries. This article employs event history modeling to analyze quota adoption in 134 developing countries from 1987 to 2012, focusing on quota type, transnational activism, and norm cascades. The article asks the following questions: (1) How might quota adoption differ according to quota type—nonparty versus party quotas? (2) How has the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China (Beijing 95), contributed to quota diffusion? (3) Do global, regional, or neighboring country effects contribute more to quota adoption? Results provide new evidence of how quota adoption processes differ according to quota type, the central role played by participation in Beijing 95, and how increased global counts contribute to faster nonparty quota adoption while increased neighboring country counts lead to faster to party quota adoption.
This article analyzes the relationship between foreign aid and globalization to explain developin... more This article analyzes the relationship between foreign aid and globalization to explain developing country ties to world society and argues that foreign aid can be viewed as a recursive mechanism through which donor states refine and spread international norms and organizational ties. Using network data on foreign aid relationships between countries this article analyzes the effects of aid on human rights treaty ratification and international organization memberships in a sample of 135 less developed countries from the period of 1975-2008. Results of random effects panel regression models show that increased aid network centrality brokers increased country ties to world society, supporting a novel interpretation of foreign aid as a transnational process of political globalization.
A central tenet of economic sociology is that social ties among actors can both facilitate and co... more A central tenet of economic sociology is that social ties among actors can both facilitate and constrain economic exchanges between them. Recent scholars have extended these ideas to the global system by examining how social ties formed through international organizations enable or inhibit economic exchanges between countries. Similarly, this paper examines the relationship between shared organizational memberships and bilateral aid flows between donor and recipient countries from 1978 to 2010. We propose that joint membership in international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) facilitates aid flows from donor to recipient. However, we also suggest that this relationship is contingent upon the level of development in the recipient country. Results from a multistage analysis of more than 61,000 donor-recipient dyads show that while shared memberships strongly increase the likelihood of an aid relationship between countries, they tend to predict increased volumes of aid only for recipient countries at the lowest levels of development as measured by GDP. Findings suggest that an institutional approach is needed to fully understand the relational dynamics of aid flows in the contemporary period.
This article highlights an emerging research agenda for the study of foreign aid through a World ... more This article highlights an emerging research agenda for the study of foreign aid through a World Society Theory lens. First, it briefly summarizes the social scientific literature on aid and sociologists’ earlier contributions to this research. Next, it reviews the contours of world society research and the place of aid within this body of literature. Finally, it outlines three emergent threads of research on foreign aid that comprise a new research agenda for the sociology of foreign aid and its role in world society globalization.
Third World Quarterly, vol. 36, no. 2, pp. 240-256, Feb 2015
The term ‘aid orphan’ refers to a developing country forgotten or abandoned by the development co... more The term ‘aid orphan’ refers to a developing country forgotten or abandoned by the development community. This metaphor has featured prominently in the development assistance policy and research literature over the past decade. Development practitioners, policy makers and researchers have defined aid orphans in manifold ways and often expressed concern over the potential fate or impact of such countries. In this paper we first examine the many definitions of aid orphans and then review the main concerns raised about them. Next we empirically examine more than 40 years of bilateral aid data to identify aid orphan countries and their common characteristics. Our findings suggest that very few countries meet the definition of aid orphan and fewer still raise the concerns collectively expressed about the orphan phenomenon. We conclude by suggesting researchers and practitioners abandon the orphan metaphor and instead focus on issues of equitable aid allocation.
Politics & Gender 10(1):33-61, 2014
The high percentage of women in Rwanda's parliament is well known. At 64%, it scores far above th... more The high percentage of women in Rwanda's parliament is well known. At 64%, it scores far above the world average of about 22% (IPU 2013). Rather than an anomaly, Rwanda is representative of many postconflict developing countries that feature women's political representation at above-average levels. A frequently identified correlate of this heightened representation has been the presence of electoral quotas for women (Bush 2011; Fallon, Swiss, and Viterna 2012; Paxton, Hughes, and Painter 2010). More generally, the role of societal rupture and transitions from conflict to peace or from authoritarianism to democracy have been a focus of gender and politics research in recent years (Fallon, Swiss, and Viterna 2012; Hughes 2007; 2009; Hughes and Paxton 2007; Viterna and Fallon 2008). Within such transitions, the role of women's participation has been identified as a key determinant of more beneficial posttransition outcomes for women (Viterna and Fallon 2008). Peace processes and the accords that they yield represent a mechanism through which transition and women's rights become linked and theoretically hold the potential to shape postconflict societies. However, the link between women's involvement in peace processes and the subsequent adoption of electoral quotas has not been explored. In this article, we seek to answer the question: What is the relationship between postconflict transition, peace processes, and quota adoption? To this end, we examine the role played by peace accords and, more specifically, accords with a focus on women's rights in leading countries to adopt electoral quotas for women.
Sociological Forum 29(3):571-86, 2014
This article examines the effects of gender on the leadership of bilateral development aid agenci... more This article examines the effects of gender on the leadership of bilateral development aid agencies, particularly their official development assistance (ODA) allocations toward gender-related programming. Drawing on earlier research on gendered leadership, the article tests the hypothesis that female director generals (DGs) and ministers responsible for aid agencies will allocate more ODA than their male counterparts toward gender programming. This existing literature on gendered leadership is divided: some scholars argue that women and men have distinct leadership styles on account of their gender, while others argue that the only distinguishing factor is the institutional context in which they lead. Drawing on data collected on aid flows and agency leadership within the major Western aid donors of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) over the period from 1995 through 2009, we use pooled time series analysis to examine the effects of gendered leadership on aid allocation. Our analysis reveals a tendency for female DGs and ministers to focus ODA on gender-mainstreaming programs, while male DGs focus ODA on gender-focused programs. We argue that these divergent priorities reflect the women's desire to reform gendered power structures within their respective aid agencies, and the men's desire to maintain existing gender power structures from which they benefit.
International Journal of Canadian Studies, 2013
ased on an impressive amount of quantative data, the authors discuss the consequences of Canada’s... more ased on an impressive amount of quantative data, the authors discuss the consequences of Canada’s population dynamics in great detail. They address the plunging fertility rates, changing family composition, the growing instability of marriage and their impact on family life for present and future old persons. This article is based on research presented at the International Conference, “Ageing Societies: The Dynamics of Demographic Change in Canada” organized by ICCS in 2010.
Development Policy Review, vol. 31, no. 6, pp. 737-55, Nov 2013
Since the late 1990s, a new norm has emerged among Western aid donors: recipient country concentr... more Since the late 1990s, a new norm has emerged among Western aid donors: recipient country concentration. The fragmentation of a donor’s foreign aid across too many recipient countries is widely believed to be detrimental to aid effectiveness. This article explores the origins of the norm and assesses the extent to which country concentration can be expected to improve aid effectiveness. It also examines 23 donors’ actual record of country concentration, which does not reflect their rhetoric. Though the paper provides some potential explanations for donors’ behaviour, their collective failure to implement country concentration has very little consequence in theory or in practice. Attention would be better spent on identifying and putting into practice other ways of improving aid effectiveness.
International Sociology 27(1):96-119
Growing similarity of development assistance policy and reference to emerging global consensus on... more Growing similarity of development assistance policy and reference to emerging global consensus on development issues has been a striking trend in the foreign aid community in recent years. This article uses event history techniques to undertake an exploratory analysis and test world polity effects on the spread of gender and development policies and institutional structures among 22 aid donors of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee from 1968 through 2003. Findings point to the influence of other donors, international civil society, international treaties and conferences as strong determinants of the homogenization of development assistance policy and the adoption of gender policies by donor organizations.
American Sociological Review 77(3):380-408.
Increasing levels of democratic freedoms should, in theory, improve women’s access to political p... more Increasing levels of democratic freedoms should, in theory, improve women’s access to political positions. Yet studies demonstrate that democracy does little to improve women’s legislative representation. To resolve this paradox, we investigate how variations in the democratization process—including pre-transition legacies, historical experiences with elections, the global context of transition, and post-transition democratic freedoms and quotas—affect women’s representation in developing nations. We find that democratization’s effect is curvilinear. Women in non-democratic regimes often have high levels of legislative representation but little real political power. When democratization occurs, women’s representation initially drops, but with increasing democratic freedoms and additional elections, it increases again. The historical context of transition further moderates these effects. Prior to 1995, women’s representation increased most rapidly in countries transitioning from civil strife—but only when accompanied by gender quotas. After 1995 and the Beijing Conference on Women, the effectiveness of quotas becomes more universal, with the exception of post-communist countries. In these nations, quotas continue to do little to improve women’s representation. Our results, based on pooled time series analysis from 1975 to 2009, demonstrate that it is not democracy—as measured by a nation’s level of democratic freedoms at a particular moment in time—but rather the democratization process that matters for women’s legislative representation.
Social Forces 91(2):531-58., 2012
Studies on developed countries demonstrate that an increase in women legislators leads to a prior... more Studies on developed countries demonstrate that an increase in women legislators leads to a prioritization in health, an increase in social policy spending, and a decrease in poverty. Women representatives could therefore improve development trajectories in developing countries; yet, currently, no cross-national and longitudinal studies explore this possibility. Using random effects panel regression, we examine the influence of women's representation on child health (one development indicator) across 102 developing countries from 1980 to 2005. Compared to countries with no women in parliament, countries meeting a 20-percent threshold experience increased rates of measles immunizations (10 percentage points), DPT immunizations (12 percentage points), infant survival (0.7 percentage points) and child survival (1 percentage point). Incremental increases in women's representation show that child health improves most in socially and economically disadvantaged countries, and in countries less integrated in the world polity. Our findings reveal the importance of increased women's representation, particularly in less developed and less globally embedded countries.
Qualitative Sociology 34(2):371-93, Jun 1, 2011
This paper employs a world society theoretical framework to examine the recent trend among foreig... more This paper employs a world society theoretical framework to examine the recent trend among foreign aid donors to focus on security sector reform as an aid priority. Through a comparative qualitative case study based on interview data collected from aid officials and development workers in Canada, Sweden, and the United States (n = 41) in 2006–2007, this paper finds that the extent to which the security sector reform agenda is integrated into donor policy and programs is mediated by catalytic policy processes linked to intergovernmental organizations and the degree of donor agency autonomy from the rest of government. These findings are used to illustrate how common processes of globalization in world society shape similar approaches to foreign aid among donor agencies despite disparate domestic contexts. These processes lead to convergence of donor policy around security issues and at the same time can account for decoupling of practice from world society policy models.
International Journal of Comparative Sociology 50(1):69-95., 2009
World polity explanations of the isomorphism of institutions and values among nation-states have ... more World polity explanations of the isomorphism of institutions and values among nation-states have not focused sufficient attention on explaining the decoupling or gap between granting rights and actually implementing them. This article examines the decoupling phenomenon by exploring what factors influenced the gap between granting women the right to stand for election and the eventual election of the first woman to parliament in 92 countries of the developing world from 1945 to 1990. Both the influence of the world society and concepts of state-weakness are examined as determinants of this decoupling gap. This article shows that world polity influence on the nation-state extends beyond the adoption of policy scripts to bear on the actual implementation of world cultural models.
Journal of Family Issues 30(5):623-652.
Following divorce or separation, father—child contact is deemed an important influence on child d... more Following divorce or separation, father—child contact is deemed an important influence on child development. Previous research has explored the impact of sociodemographic and attitudinal factors on the amount of contact between fathers and their children following a union dissolution. This article revisits this important question using fathers' reports on a sample of 859 children from newly available survey data. Multilevel random intercept models are used to reassess the influence of child- and father-level factors on the amount of reported contact. Results show that the amount of father—child contact following separation is the product of several factors such as the father's income, conjugal/parental trajectory, and level of satisfaction with existing arrangements.
Book Chapters by Liam Swiss
How Ottawa Spends, 2017-2018, 2017
Edited by Katherine A.H. Graham and Allan M. Maslove. Ottawa: Carleton University.
The Canadian government surprised many in 2009 with its politicized relabeling of gender equality... more The Canadian government surprised many in 2009 with its politicized relabeling of gender equality in its aid and foreign policy as “equality between women and men”. Others have thoroughly documented the politics and perceptions of this discursive shift, but the question of whether this change in language corresponded to a significant change in spending on gender equality at CIDA has yet to be investigated. This chapter analyzes CIDA’s own Open Data Historical Project Data Set and International Aid Transparency Initiative Data Set to examine the trends in spending on gender equality by Canada in the period from 2005 to 2014 – the years immediately surrounding the controversial shift away from the language of gender equality. Using a sample of over 240,000 project transactions in this period and comparing CIDA Gender Equality Marker coding to DAC Gender coding sources, this chapter examines whether the discursive shift away from gender equality was associated with any notable shift in spending on gender equality at CIDA. By examining the link between a politicized relabeling of an aid policy priority and subsequent aid spending in that area, this chapter contributes a deeper understanding of the impacts of politicization of aid policies and the potential resilience of aid agencies to such political intervention.
Pp. 188-211 in The Securitization of Foreign Aid, edited by Stephen Brown and Jörn Grävingholt. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan., 2015
This chapter examines whether the evolution of an emerging donor security agenda has contributed ... more This chapter examines whether the evolution of an emerging donor security agenda has contributed to the neglect of gender equality in aid policy and programming. Using a three country comparative case study that draws on in-depth interviews with donor officials and civil society representatives in Canada, Sweden, and the United States, the chapter identifies three primary factors contributing to how gender is being integrated in the emerging donor security agenda. These factors mediate appear to increase the space granted to gender within the security-development context and include: (1) the influence of policy coherence on aid policy; (2) donors’ mobilization of gender-specific resources; and (3) civil society’s influence over donors . By examining these three factors in the case study countries, the relative space for gender equality in the security and development agenda in each country is explained.
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Journal Articles by Liam Swiss
Book Chapters by Liam Swiss
a human-centric position and the latter focusing on animal well-being. The results showed that most local governments are not well engaged with animal welfare issues. Instead, these issues are more often dealt with by non-governmental organizations that operate on limited budgets and rely heavily on volunteer labor. Whereas federal and provincial governments are responsible for legislating companion animal welfare,
practical implementation of animal welfare has been largely the responsibility of nongovernmental organizations. Our findings demonstrated that the ways that animal welfare policy is interpreted and enacted at the local level have significant implications for animal well-being more broadly.
The book explores how global influences on aid agencies in Canada, Sweden, and the United States are mediated through micro-level processes. Using a mixed-methods approach, the book combines cross-national statistical analysis at the global level with two comparative case studies which look at the adoption of common policy priorities in the fields of gender and security. The Globalization of Foreign Aid will be useful to researchers of foreign aid, development, international relations and globalization, as well as to the aid policy community.