Research on sex discrimination has found consistent support for the idea that women who violate gender roles by succeeding in male-dominated domains elicit hot forms of discrimination. In particular, evidence suggests that a perceivers' conservatism, which represents a preference against gender change toward greater equality, might motivate this kind of discrimination. Therefore, I hypothesized that perceiver conservatism would predict discrimination against female gender role violators. In two studies, I found evidence that conservatism predicts negative evaluations of targets (Study 1), as well as sabotage (Study 2). In addition, Study 2 revealed that the relationship between conservatism and sabotage was partially mediated by the perceivers' anxiety. However, if the discrimination that conservative perceivers direct at gender role violators is motivated by conservatives' preference against social change toward greater equality, then targets who support gender status hierarchies while they violate gender roles should experience less discrimination from conservative perceivers than those who challenge status hierarchies. Consistent with this reasoning, perceivers' conservatism was negatively related to perceived interpersonal hostility of female gender role violators who expressed support for gender hierarchy. In contrast, perceivers' conservatism was positively related to perceived interpersonal hostility of female gender role violators who expressed opposition to gender hierarchy (Study 1). However, targets' expressions of support for gender hierarchy did not have this effect on the relationship between perceivers' conservatism and perceptions of the target's ineffectuality (Study 1), respect for the target (Study 1), or sabotage of the target (Study 2). Moreover, while supporting status hierarchies reduced perceptions of interpersonal hostility from perceivers high in conservatism, it increased perceptions of hostility from those low in conservatism. Thus, supporting gender hierarchies may appear to help in some contexts, but is associated with significant costs, as well. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.

Recent studies document that covenant violations intensify the conflicts of interest between lenders and borrowers, and lead to greater restrictions on borrowing firms’ financing and investment activities (Chava and Roberts, 2008; Roberts and Sufi, 2009b). Motivated by this literature, I investigate whether accounting conservatism, specifically conditional conservatism, mitigates the adverse consequences of debt covenant violations. I argue that conservative reporting can potentially ameliorate the conflicts of interest between lenders and borrowers. Therefore, I predict that accounting conservatism reduces the adverse impact of covenant violations on borrowers’ financing and investing activities and exhibits a positive association with operating and stock market performance after covenant violations. I obtain a sample of 312 violating and 5,327 non-violating firm-quarters observations from U.S. non-financial public firms during the period of 1998 – 2007 to test my hypotheses. Using three measures of conditional conservatism and a composite measure of the three individual measures, I find that the degree of increase in borrowing firms’ conservative reporting between loan initiation and covenant violation is associated with smaller reductions in firms’ financing and investing activities in the post-violation period. Furthermore, my analyses provide some evidence that firms that increase conservative reporting exhibit better stock market performance, implying that conservative reporting is beneficial for shareholders after covenant violations. I find no evidence that increased accounting conservatism affects operating performance after covenant violations. My results continue to hold after controlling for pre-contracting unconditional and conditional conservatism. Overall, my dissertation provides evidence that conservative accounting practices followed by borrowing firms ease the adverse consequences of debt covenant violations. My dissertation contributes to the emerging literature on the effects of accounting quality on re-contracting outcomes after covenant violations.

This thesis examines the growth of organized opposition to abortion in the United States, and charts the fortunes of the right-to-life movement at a national level during the 1970s and 1980. Anti-abortionists emerged as a social movement in response to changes in the law, and after the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision they struggled to present themselves as a coherent lobby group. The 1970s were thus a time of fluidity and experimentation, as right-to-lifers contemplated different approaches and argued over how best to end legalized abortion. Activists engaged in legislative efforts, political lobbying, and education initiatives, all the while teasing out what exactly it meant to be opposed to abortion. The movement at this time rejected the ideas of absolutists and instead aimed to be as broadly representative of American society as possible. Rather than clearly aligning themselves with the Left or the Right side of politics, the movement pursued a politics of moderation. / This status quo was challenged, however, by the resurgence of conservatism in the late 1970s. As the social conservatives of the so-called “New Right” began to intervene in the abortion debate, right-to-lifers found themselves having to respond to a worldview that spoke only in terms of absolutes. After Ronald Reagan was elected to the Presidency in 1980, anti-abortionists needed to negotiate a political landscape in which they ostensibly had access to power and yet were repeatedly disappointed by the action (or inaction) that came from the White House. This thesis contends that in the 1980s, the relationship between right-to-lifers, the “New Right,” and the Reagan administration was often marked by disappointment and compromise. As the decade drew on, right-to-life leaders increasingly tempered the types of demands they made of the White House and of Republicans in general, and this climate eventually meant that the kinds of activists that rose to prominence within the movement were conservative and the ideas they espoused absolutist.

This research addresses the establishment of the 'Jiang Zemin Era' whereby Jiang Zemin, and the Chinese Communist Party, have attempted to relegitimise the Party and have attempted to make the Party meaningful to the Chinese populace. What is fundamental to this research is how Jiang Zemin, as the ‘core leader’ of the third generational leadership, incorporated the political thought of neo-conservatism (xin baoshouzhuyi) into the framework of Marxist-Leninist-Mao Zedong Thought (MLM) ideology in order to re-legitimise the CCP. The timeframe within the research is from Jiang’s appointment as the General Secretary of the CCP in 1989 until 1995. It is important that this was a time period whereby Jiang had to consolidate, and therefore legitimise, his ‘core leadership’, and provide a theoretical platform in order to bring forth his own ‘era’. The research is predominantly a historiographical narrative, utilising both primary and secondary sources, that examines the mechanisms Jiang utilised in order to create a strong government, with himself as the ‘core’, which pursued increased levels of marketisation. Indeed, after being appointed General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 1989, Jiang Zemin had to achieve two goals in order to sustain and legitimate his position as ‘the core of the third generational leadership’. First, he had to secure his position as ‘the core’ through the creation of secured networks and alliances as well as legitimise of his ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ positions in the CCP hierarchy. In order to achieve this, Jiang had to first create a sustainable power base in order to retain, and therefore legitimise, his formalized positions as General Secretary of the CCP, Chairman of the Chinese Military Commission and the Presidency. In addition, he needed to be able to create alliances with both allies and protégés as well as differing power factions, be they conservative/elder or reformist, and with other leading figures like Li Peng and Zhu Rongji. Second, in order to further reinforce and legitimize his position as ‘the core’, Jiang had to develop his own ‘theoretical framework’ for governing the country – much as Mao and Deng had done previously. Therefore, the research also examines Jiang’s usage of the neoconservatism as a means of not only legitimising the CCP’s ideological framework but also as a means of providing his own ‘guiding thought’, thus enabling him to establish his own ‘era’. Indeed, after establishing himself as the ‘core’ through the aforementioned processes, Jiang had to develop such a theoretical framework that complimented Deng’s economic reforms, especially as he was designated by Deng, yet one that retained a smattering of Mao Zedong’s ‘Thoughts’ that could be applied pragmatically during the 1990s. It can be seen that Jiang Zemin successfully incorporated the political thought of ‘neo-conservatism’ within his platform in order to achieve these ends – including the establishment of a ‘Jiang Zemin Era’. This political thought, a successor to the political theory of ‘neo-authoritarianism’, already had several adherents within the higher echelons of the CCP. Indeed, it would be Jiang’s 1995 speech, entitled ‘Stressing Politics’, that would signify the incorporation of neo-conservatism within Jiang’s platform of (self) legitimation that would initiate the successful implementation of a ‘Jiang Zemin Era’.

Based on the author's Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Kansas, 1998. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 297-325) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, May, 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Zugl.: Jena, Universiẗat, Masterarbeit, 2006.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2008. / Thesis directed by John T. McGreevy for the Department of History. "August 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 255-276).

Thesis (doctoral)--Faculté de droit et de science politique d'Aix-Marseille, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [399]-433) and index.