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This article presents data from a study of Syrian diaspora organizations providing assistance to conflict-affected Syrians in Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Using interview data from leaders in four Syrian diaspora non-profit organizations, this article examines the social mechanisms used to ensure accountability within the challenging environments where the organizations operate. We find that Syrian diaspora organizations benefit from informal social accountability mechanisms that derive from individuals' social network ties. Personal, social forms of accountability are particularly valuable to these organizations because these mechanisms help circumvent uncertainty and challenges in the operational environment. These findings reflect an important theme in the extant literature on diaspora philanthropy: diaspora members may have an advantage over other actors because of dense personal networks that make them adept at identifying dependable partners and enforcing agreements even in places where banking and legal systems are fragile.

Homelessness is a persistent problem in the United States in general and in Southern California especially. While progress has been made in reducing the number of people experiencing homelessness in the United States from 2007 (647,000) to 2019 (567,000), it remains an entrenched problem. The purpose of this paper is to outline a novel, interdisciplinary academic-practice partnership model to address homelessness. Where singular disciplinary approaches may fall short in substantially reducing homelessness at the community and population level, our model draws from a collective impact model which coordinates discipline-specific approaches through mutually reinforcing activities and shared metrics of progress and impact to foster synergy and sustainability of efforts. This paper describes the necessary capacity-building at the institution and community level for the model, the complementary strengths and contributions of each stakeholder discipline in the proposed model, and future goals for implementation to address homelessness in the Southern California region.

Responsiveness to constituents' demands and needs is considered an essential element of representation. Responsiveness takes several forms -service, allocation (casework), policies, and symbolic responses -and legislators usually respond to constituents using a combination of these means. However, this article discusses a category of Jordanian and Lebanese legislators, called 'Favours legislators', who respond to their constituents only through casework. These legislators use all tools available to them (party/parliamentary bloc, bureaucracy, and fellow legislators) to improve their access to services important to successful casework. Favours legislators assume that by providing a successful favour, constituents who received the favour will reciprocate in kind and vote and/or encourage others to vote for them.

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