Wesley Longhofer
Biographic Data
| ID | 3590748 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wesley Longhofer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wesley |
| FAMILY NAME | Longhofer |
| SIGNATURE | LONGHOFER W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Emory University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9829-3777 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 327 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The Long Shadow of Partisan Hostility: How Affective Polarization Hinders Democracies’ Ability to Mitigate Climate Change
Sociologists and others have studied whether democracies are becoming more ideologically polarized over climate change. However, research has yet to investigate if a newer form of division—affective polarization, or citizens’ hostility toward opposing party members—shapes major polluters’ carbon (CO 2 ) emissions. Building on the Advocacy Coalition Framework, integrated with neo-institutional and stakeholder perspectives, we argue that high level…
How Civic Action Works: Fighting for Housing in Los Angeles
Social Theory Re-Wired: New Connections to Classical and Contemporary Perspectives
Women's participation and challenges to the liberal script: A global perspective
Existing scholarship documents large worldwide increases in women's participation in the public sphere over recent decades, for example, in education, politics, and the labor force. Some scholars have argued that these changes follow broader trends in world society, especially its growing liberalism, which increasingly has reconfigured social life around the choices of empowered and rights-bearing individuals, regardless of gender. Very recently,…
The Multi-method Comprehensive Review: Synthesis and Analysis when Scholarship is International, Interdisciplinary, and Immense
This article presents a new strategy for reviewing large, multidisciplinary academic literatures: a multi-method comprehensive review (MCR). We present this approach and demonstrate its use by the NGO Knowledge Collective, which aims to aggregate knowledge on NGOs in international development. We explain the process by which scholars can identify, analyze, and synthesize a population of hundreds or thousands of articles. MCRs facilitate cross-dis…
Contentions over World Culture: The Rise of Legal Restrictions on Foreign Funding to NGOs, 1994–2015
The last two decades have witnessed an unprecedented rise in government restrictions on foreign funding to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Often in the name of defending the nation from outside influences, over 60 countries have implemented laws limiting foreign funding to NGOs. We use event history analyses to evaluate domestic and global explanations for the adoption of these policies over the period 1994–2015. Prior work has argued that …
Marketcraft: How Governments Make Markets Work
World Society, Legal Formalism, and Execution of Legal Procedures
World society scholars have focused on how international organizations lead nation-states to adopt similar policies, procedures, and programs in order to signal compliance to prevailing rules and norms. In this study, the authors propose that integration into world society is associated with higher levels of legal formalism, which in turn can result in lengthening the execution of legal procedures. The empirical analysis of the study combines a d…
NGOs and international development: A review of thirty-five years of scholarship
Pathways to Carbon Pollution: The Interactive Effects of Global, Political, and Organizational Factors on Power Plants’ CO2 Emissions
Climate change is arguably the greatest threat to society as power plants, the single largest human source of heat-trapping pollution, continue to emit massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Sociologists have identified several possible structural determinants of electricity-based CO2 emissions, including international trade and global normative regimes, national political–legal systems, and organizational size and age. But because they t…
Organizing for Education: A Cross-National, Longitudinal Study of Civil Society Organizations and Education Outcomes
We address two views from organization theory to consider the expansion and effects of nonprofits in education: first, a functional view emphasizing the direct effect of work of civil society organizations (CSOs) and, second, a phenomenological neoinstitutional view focusing on the cultural meaning of education CSOs as indicators of a rationalized, liberal world society. We use panel regression models with country fixed effects to analyze the cro…
The Third Sector: Community Organizations, NGOs, and Nonprofits
The effects of economic and political integration on power plants’ carbon emissions in the post-soviet transition nations
The combustion of fossil fuels for electricity generation, which accounts for a significant share of the world’s CO2 emissions, varies by macro-regional context. Here we use multilevel regression modeling techniques to analyze CO2 emissions levels in the year 2009 for 1360 fossil-fuel power plants in the 25 post-Soviet transition nations in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia. We find that various facility-level factors are positively associat…
World society and the natural environment
We review the world society approach to explaining macrohistorical change generally and as it relates to the natural environment specifically. Our review includes work describing the rise of the environmental world society as well as empirical evidence of the consequences of national ties to world society for policy adoption, practices, and individual attitudes at the national level. Additionally, we suggest the application of world society theor…
Decoupling reconsidered: Does world society integration influence the relationship between the environment and economic development
Social Theory Re-Wired: New Connections to Classical and Contemporary Perspectives
This social theory text combines the structure of a print reader with the ability to tailor the course via an extensive interactive website. Readings from important classical and contemporary theorists are placed in conversation with one another through core themes—the puzzle of social order, the dark side of modernity, identity, etc. The website includes videos, interactive commentaries, summaries of key concepts, exams and quizzes, annotated se…
NGOs, Ingos, and Environmental Policy Reform, 1970–2010
We examine the effects of domestic and international environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on pro-environmental policy adoption using cross-national data. We address three views: (1) a bottom-up perspective, prioritizing the role of domestic NGOs; (2) an interaction imagery, stressing alliances or reinforcing pressures between domestic and international NGOs; (3) a top-down view, emphasizing the part of international NGOs. We use eve…
Membership Has Its Privileges: Shared International Organizational Affiliation and Foreign Aid Flows, 1978–2010
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…
A Comparative Analysis of Corporate and Independent Foundations
Justin Koushyar, Wesley Longhofer, Peter W. Roberts Sociological Science, December 15, 2015 DOI 10.15195/v2.a28 Abstract Notwithstanding some visible debates, systematic evidence about the implications of greater corporate involvement in the social sector is sparse
Abortion Liberalization in World Society, 1960-2009
Controversy sets abortion apart from other issues studied by world society theorists, who consider the tendency for policies institutionalized at the global level to diffuse across very different countries. The authors conduct an event history analysis of the spread (however limited) of abortion liberalization policies from 1960 to 2009. After identifying three dominant frames (a women's rights frame, a medical frame, and a religious, natural fam…
Histories of the Dustheap: Waste, Material Cultures, Social Justice
Social Theory Re-Wired
Contemporary Sociological Perspectives: Social Theory
Targeting electricity’s extreme polluters to reduce energy-related CO2 emissions
When Do Laws Matter? National Minimum-Age-of-Marriage Laws, Child Rights, and Adolescent Fertility, 1989-2007
Using the case of adolescent fertility, we ask the questions of whether and when national laws have an effect on outcomes above and beyond the effects of international law and global organizing. To answer these questions, we utilize a fixed-effect time-series regression model to analyze the impact of minimum-age-of-marriage laws in 115 poor- and middle-income countries from 1989 to 2007. We find that countries with strict laws setting the minimum…
National and Global Origins of Environmental Association
We examine the origins of voluntary associations devoted to environmental protection, focusing on the divergent trajectories of industrialized versus developing countries. We consider a wide range of domestic economic, political, and institutional dynamics that give rise to environmental associations. Developing and extending neo-institutional world polity arguments, we characterize domestic association in the developing world as the product of g…
World Society, NGOs and Environmental Policy Reform in Asia
We examine the role of domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in environmental policy reform in Asia. Standard accounts treat NGOs as critical players in the policy process, responding to local environmental degradation and pressing states for environmental reforms. We argue, by contrast, that environmental policy changes are borne largely of the global environmental regime, and that domestic environmental NGOs in Asia are better seen as p…
Abortion Liberalization in World Society, 1960-2009
Controversy sets abortion apart from other issues studied by world society theorists, who consider the tendency for policies institutionalized at the global level to diffuse across very different countries. The authors conduct an event history analysis of the spread (however limited) of abortion liberalization policies from 1960 to 2009. After identifying three dominant frames (a women's rights frame, a medical frame, and a religious, natural fam…
The Structural Sources of Association
Where do associations come from? The authors argue that the expansion and openness of state institutions encourage the formation of associations. Moreover, the institutional structures of world society provide important resources and legitimation for association. Longitudinal cross-national data on voluntary associations are analyzed using panel models with fixed-effects and instrumental variables models to address possible endogeneity. Instituti…
Women's participation and challenges to the liberal script: A global perspective
Existing scholarship documents large worldwide increases in women's participation in the public sphere over recent decades, for example, in education, politics, and the labor force. Some scholars have argued that these changes follow broader trends in world society, especially its growing liberalism, which increasingly has reconfigured social life around the choices of empowered and rights-bearing individuals, regardless of gender. Very recently,…
Decoupling reconsidered: Does world society integration influence the relationship between the environment and economic development
When Do Laws Matter? National Minimum-Age-of-Marriage Laws, Child Rights, and Adolescent Fertility, 1989-2007
Using the case of adolescent fertility, we ask the questions of whether and when national laws have an effect on outcomes above and beyond the effects of international law and global organizing. To answer these questions, we utilize a fixed-effect time-series regression model to analyze the impact of minimum-age-of-marriage laws in 115 poor- and middle-income countries from 1989 to 2007. We find that countries with strict laws setting the minimum…
A Fresh Look at Sociology Bestsellers
A little over a decade ago, ASA past-president Herbert Gans embarked upon an intriguing and, to our knowledge, unprecedented study of bestselling books written by professional sociologists. On the heels of his presidential campaign tomake sociologymore visible and influential to the lay public, Gans believed such a study would help us better understand the general reading public's interest in and understanding of sociology's knowledge, informatio…
World society and the natural environment
We review the world society approach to explaining macrohistorical change generally and as it relates to the natural environment specifically. Our review includes work describing the rise of the environmental world society as well as empirical evidence of the consequences of national ties to world society for policy adoption, practices, and individual attitudes at the national level. Additionally, we suggest the application of world society theor…
Targeting electricity’s extreme polluters to reduce energy-related CO2 emissions
Pathways to Carbon Pollution: The Interactive Effects of Global, Political, and Organizational Factors on Power Plants’ CO2 Emissions
Climate change is arguably the greatest threat to society as power plants, the single largest human source of heat-trapping pollution, continue to emit massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Sociologists have identified several possible structural determinants of electricity-based CO2 emissions, including international trade and global normative regimes, national political–legal systems, and organizational size and age. But because they t…
Organizing for Education: A Cross-National, Longitudinal Study of Civil Society Organizations and Education Outcomes
We address two views from organization theory to consider the expansion and effects of nonprofits in education: first, a functional view emphasizing the direct effect of work of civil society organizations (CSOs) and, second, a phenomenological neoinstitutional view focusing on the cultural meaning of education CSOs as indicators of a rationalized, liberal world society. We use panel regression models with country fixed effects to analyze the cro…
Marketcraft: How Governments Make Markets Work
The Multi-method Comprehensive Review: Synthesis and Analysis when Scholarship is International, Interdisciplinary, and Immense
This article presents a new strategy for reviewing large, multidisciplinary academic literatures: a multi-method comprehensive review (MCR). We present this approach and demonstrate its use by the NGO Knowledge Collective, which aims to aggregate knowledge on NGOs in international development. We explain the process by which scholars can identify, analyze, and synthesize a population of hundreds or thousands of articles. MCRs facilitate cross-dis…
World Society, NGOs and Environmental Policy Reform in Asia
We examine the role of domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in environmental policy reform in Asia. Standard accounts treat NGOs as critical players in the policy process, responding to local environmental degradation and pressing states for environmental reforms. We argue, by contrast, that environmental policy changes are borne largely of the global environmental regime, and that domestic environmental NGOs in Asia are better seen as p…
Discoveries: New and Noteworthy Social Research
National and Global Origins of Environmental Association
We examine the origins of voluntary associations devoted to environmental protection, focusing on the divergent trajectories of industrialized versus developing countries. We consider a wide range of domestic economic, political, and institutional dynamics that give rise to environmental associations. Developing and extending neo-institutional world polity arguments, we characterize domestic association in the developing world as the product of g…
A Fresh Look at Sociology Bestsellers
A little over a decade ago, ASA past-president Herbert Gans embarked upon an intriguing and, to our knowledge, unprecedented study of bestselling books written by professional sociologists. On the heels of his presidential campaign tomake sociologymore visible and influential to the lay public, Gans believed such a study would help us better understand the general reading public's interest in and understanding of sociology's knowledge, informatio…
The Structural Sources of Association
Where do associations come from? The authors argue that the expansion and openness of state institutions encourage the formation of associations. Moreover, the institutional structures of world society provide important resources and legitimation for association. Longitudinal cross-national data on voluntary associations are analyzed using panel models with fixed-effects and instrumental variables models to address possible endogeneity. Instituti…
Sociological Institutionalism and World Society
Social Theory Re-Wired
Contemporary Sociological Perspectives: Social Theory
Targeting electricity’s extreme polluters to reduce energy-related CO2 emissions
When Do Laws Matter? National Minimum-Age-of-Marriage Laws, Child Rights, and Adolescent Fertility, 1989-2007
Using the case of adolescent fertility, we ask the questions of whether and when national laws have an effect on outcomes above and beyond the effects of international law and global organizing. To answer these questions, we utilize a fixed-effect time-series regression model to analyze the impact of minimum-age-of-marriage laws in 115 poor- and middle-income countries from 1989 to 2007. We find that countries with strict laws setting the minimum…
Histories of the Dustheap: Waste, Material Cultures, Social Justice
A Comparative Analysis of Corporate and Independent Foundations
Justin Koushyar, Wesley Longhofer, Peter W. Roberts Sociological Science, December 15, 2015 DOI 10.15195/v2.a28 Abstract Notwithstanding some visible debates, systematic evidence about the implications of greater corporate involvement in the social sector is sparse
Abortion Liberalization in World Society, 1960-2009
Controversy sets abortion apart from other issues studied by world society theorists, who consider the tendency for policies institutionalized at the global level to diffuse across very different countries. The authors conduct an event history analysis of the spread (however limited) of abortion liberalization policies from 1960 to 2009. After identifying three dominant frames (a women's rights frame, a medical frame, and a religious, natural fam…
Social Theory Re-Wired: New Connections to Classical and Contemporary Perspectives
This social theory text combines the structure of a print reader with the ability to tailor the course via an extensive interactive website. Readings from important classical and contemporary theorists are placed in conversation with one another through core themes—the puzzle of social order, the dark side of modernity, identity, etc. The website includes videos, interactive commentaries, summaries of key concepts, exams and quizzes, annotated se…
NGOs, Ingos, and Environmental Policy Reform, 1970–2010
We examine the effects of domestic and international environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on pro-environmental policy adoption using cross-national data. We address three views: (1) a bottom-up perspective, prioritizing the role of domestic NGOs; (2) an interaction imagery, stressing alliances or reinforcing pressures between domestic and international NGOs; (3) a top-down view, emphasizing the part of international NGOs. We use eve…
Membership Has Its Privileges: Shared International Organizational Affiliation and Foreign Aid Flows, 1978–2010
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…
The effects of economic and political integration on power plants’ carbon emissions in the post-soviet transition nations
The combustion of fossil fuels for electricity generation, which accounts for a significant share of the world’s CO2 emissions, varies by macro-regional context. Here we use multilevel regression modeling techniques to analyze CO2 emissions levels in the year 2009 for 1360 fossil-fuel power plants in the 25 post-Soviet transition nations in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia. We find that various facility-level factors are positively associat…
World society and the natural environment
We review the world society approach to explaining macrohistorical change generally and as it relates to the natural environment specifically. Our review includes work describing the rise of the environmental world society as well as empirical evidence of the consequences of national ties to world society for policy adoption, practices, and individual attitudes at the national level. Additionally, we suggest the application of world society theor…
Decoupling reconsidered: Does world society integration influence the relationship between the environment and economic development
World Society, Legal Formalism, and Execution of Legal Procedures
World society scholars have focused on how international organizations lead nation-states to adopt similar policies, procedures, and programs in order to signal compliance to prevailing rules and norms. In this study, the authors propose that integration into world society is associated with higher levels of legal formalism, which in turn can result in lengthening the execution of legal procedures. The empirical analysis of the study combines a d…
NGOs and international development: A review of thirty-five years of scholarship
Pathways to Carbon Pollution: The Interactive Effects of Global, Political, and Organizational Factors on Power Plants’ CO2 Emissions
Climate change is arguably the greatest threat to society as power plants, the single largest human source of heat-trapping pollution, continue to emit massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. Sociologists have identified several possible structural determinants of electricity-based CO2 emissions, including international trade and global normative regimes, national political–legal systems, and organizational size and age. But because they t…
Organizing for Education: A Cross-National, Longitudinal Study of Civil Society Organizations and Education Outcomes
We address two views from organization theory to consider the expansion and effects of nonprofits in education: first, a functional view emphasizing the direct effect of work of civil society organizations (CSOs) and, second, a phenomenological neoinstitutional view focusing on the cultural meaning of education CSOs as indicators of a rationalized, liberal world society. We use panel regression models with country fixed effects to analyze the cro…
The Third Sector: Community Organizations, NGOs, and Nonprofits
Contentions over World Culture: The Rise of Legal Restrictions on Foreign Funding to NGOs, 1994–2015
The last two decades have witnessed an unprecedented rise in government restrictions on foreign funding to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Often in the name of defending the nation from outside influences, over 60 countries have implemented laws limiting foreign funding to NGOs. We use event history analyses to evaluate domestic and global explanations for the adoption of these policies over the period 1994–2015. Prior work has argued that …
Political science (21 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Economics (16 works) · Law (13 works) · Politics (9 works) · Law (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Nonprofit Sector and Volunteering (6 works) · Social science (6 works) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice (5 works)