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In March of 1973, the United States Supreme Court ruled, in the San Antonio I.S.D. vs. Rodriguez case, that the school finance system was not in violation of the federal constitution and that the matter should be resolved by the state. Today, arrays of questions concerning quality of educational opportunities and equity in educational funding have devolved to the states. After that decision the search for legal remedies concerning education shifted to state supreme courts. This paper explores coalition behavior among the state supreme courts concerning education policy. Under what conditions do state supreme court justices decide to vote in favor or against an educational policy case? The authors believe that as final arbiters, state Supreme Court judges consider issues of fact, but also act in a strategic manner balancing these facts, state contextual environments, and personal preferences. Specifically, this paper examines the phenomenon of dissenting opinions and the willingness of state Supreme Court judges to join the majority opinion within the context of education related cases. Evaluating both policy and finance related education cases; the authors seek to understand which conditions contribute to both those decisions favoring "haves" and those favoring "have-nots" separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about investigating the effects of political science education on the feelings of the students for the U.S. and its political system is presented. It discusses impact of political scientists' curricular practices and pedagogical approaches on students. It examines the political courses introduced by political sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset, and explores how learning about American politics in comparative perspective affected students' attitudes towards the U.S.

Introductory public policy courses can replicate limited, first-dimensional understandings of politics, confining inquiry and analysis to visible moments of legislative, executive, judicial, and group decision-making. First dimensional analyses provide an important starting point for undergraduates but can work to degenerative effect, feeding students' sense that politics is remote and distant and that political action is unusual and extraordinary and, thus, inaccessible to them. This paper argues that we can and should ask introductory policy courses to carry a heavier burden—the burden of inviting students to identify, assess, and author politics in the 'everyday.' This paper explores the de-centering potential of the introductory public policy course and suggests some of the pedagogical opportunities and challenges that accompany an effort to explode and expand students' understanding of what politics is, what it involves, and where it happens. The discussion focuses, in particular, on the visceral, affective dimension of students' encounter with the workings of politics in the 'everyday' and argues that this encounter, while precarious and destabilizing, offers a powerful opportunity for students to recover a sense of agency and authorship in the policy process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we describe the theoretical richness of teaching students about leadership and governance in smaller cities, defined as those with fewer than 250,000 residents. We examine components of three bodies of current theory that are pertinent to leadership in city government: growth and development politics, public management, and community development, including social capital. Then, we describe a compelling case from northwest Arkansas, which we have transformed into a three-part simulation for students to role-play different city leaders. The simulation follows the rise of entrepreneurial government, the pursuit of coalitions to create a sense of civic ownership and pride, and the challenge posed when race politics undermines a governing regime. We conclude with some lessons drawn from using the case in the classroom; those lessons demonstrate that simulations not only offer students an opportunity to experience the challenges of governance but also can prompt a re-examination of the prevailing theories about city politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine whether states respond to pressures to promote a positive business climate by allocating more spending to programs perceived as promoting economic growth (investment spending) and reducing funding of programs that are viewed as reducing economic growth (consumption spending). There is reason to expect, however, that these responses would not be consistent across states but may instead vary based on state level political factors. We examine state education, highway and welfare spending from 1987-1998 and find that during this time period, most states did not appear to alter their spending to promote economic growth. Instead, spending was primarily determined by socio-economic and political factors, largely unconditioned by economic performance, as previous scholars have found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses state public opinion data to explore if and how attitudes about localism affects people’s evaluations of equity-minded school finance reform. The results show that people value localism for its ability to isolate their resources from the problems of poor school districts. Measured in this way, localism is a significant predictor of opposition to finance reform. Commitment to the democratic goods local government provides is not a significant predictor of such opposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On April 17, 2001, over three-quarters of a million Mississippians went to the polls to decide whether or not to replace the state flag featuring the image of the Confederate battle flag in the upper-lefthand corner. The turnout equaled that of the 1999 gubernatorial race, and nearly 65 percent of those who voted B almost 500,000 people B opted to retain the old 1894 banner rather than replace it another that had been crafted by a special commission appointed by the Governor to explore the flag issue. This brought to an end a year-long political struggle over an issue very similar both to that which had recently been dealt with in South Carolina and to that which continues to bedevil Georgia, the two other states that had continued to give official recognition to the Confederate battle flag. While the outcome of the Mississippi flag vote was not really in doubt by the time the voting took place (several surveys had predicted a margin of about two-to-one in favor of the 1894 flag), the campaign took, or was thought to take, a number turns that surprised many political observers. This paper will review the events of the year leading up to the April, 2001 vote, identify the unexpected political twists and turns that appeared to arise during the course of the flag campaign, and then analyze the records of the official vote tally to determine which of those twists and turns are actually supported by the vote record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tensions between two rather contradictory views of higher education in the United States have increased over the past 30 years. The first emphasizes the traditional notion that the American academy consists of a community of scholars, who, supported by public and private endowments and shielded from severe economic vicissitudes, endeavor to order, expand and pass on knowledge that ultimately will benefit society. In this view, most American universities center upon their colleges of liberal arts and sciences, places where students and faculty not only learn together but also reflect philosophically upon how their knowledge affects the broader society. The second emphasizes practical aspects of higher education. It views these institutions as profitable markets for private suppliers of goods and services and as efficient training grounds for supplying intelligent malleable workers to private and public employers. American universities sell knowledge and credentials to diverse customers: not only students, but also private and public institutions that expect to profit from their investments of tuition, contracts or grants. This paper argues that the practical view has risen to prominence, and that in combination with new instructional technologies, it threatens to overwhelm the traditional view. If this argument proves correct, profound changes will occur. Faculties will be downsized as universities outsource instructional services; well-trained graduate students and part-time instructors will administer prepackaged courses; and considerably more instruction will take place from distant locations in real time, and also asynchronously. Tenured faculty as we know them will become rarities as universities adopt more flexible labor practices in a businesslike response to worldwide market forces. On a broader scale democracy will suffer if the idea of university graduates becoming responsible civic leaders is lost. If higher education?s central mission is to provide citizens with the skills to thrive in the market economy, then why should the university graduates concern themselves with public policy and civic affairs? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses student-level data analytics to capture valuable information about the time and attention spent on completing assignments outside of the classroom. This project is the collaborative effort of instructors of introductory courses in American politics across a variety of public and private academic settings, including two-year, four-year, MA-granting, and PhD-granting institutions. All instructors used Central Ideas in American Government by Soomo Publishing. In conjunction with course grades, data analytics offered by the publisher capture the relationship between the time students spend on course materials and student performance on course grade components. This analytic approach sheds light on the most effective strategies for maximizing student achievement of course learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenge for women running in public office has long been documented through various social, political, and institutional barriers preventing more equitable gender representation. Yet the recent surge of successful female candidates encourages a reevaluation of the campaign experience for women, particularly with regards to fundraising. Fundraising served as an area in which women lagged behind their male counterparts; this disparity has been attributed, in part, to the incumbency advantage garnered by the predominantly male officeholders. No only do incumbents generally have more experience in the fundraising process itself, they have the unique and powerful privilege of demonstrating their experience explicitly derived from holding that particular position. Because party platforms and personal experience can forecast the prospective officeholder's objectives, a divergence between the contributors based on candidate gender may occur. Campaign contributors, after all, are (presumably) slightly better informed voters who are financing their interests and consider the differences between the candidates when determining the recipient of their pledge. Traditionally, women are characterized as supporting more humanitarian issues such as education and health, while men are considered more interested in issues of the economy and defense. Do their financial supporters likewise follow this tendency? This paper seeks to explore whether the primary contributors to women's campaigns are different from those who contribute to men. Examining recent election results at the state legislature level, this analysis will observe the contributors (classified by industry) to determine if a disparity between the core fundraising groups for male and female candidates currently exists [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introducing undergraduates to the principles of social science research need not be restricted to the proverbial "methods" course. Instead, creative connections between social phenomena and social inquiry can and should be made early in the undergraduate's career. A freshman interdisciplinary course on urban affairs offered at the authors' institution provided an appropriate vehicle for "double exposure" to social research wedded to service learning.Through a service learning project at a local urban Catholic elementary school, our college freshmen meet students, interview them, and discuss the joys of reading. During the interview, data is collected on the reading habits and home resources of the elementary students. The data gathered is then compiled and analyzed by the college freshmen in the context of their course readings and lectures on urban social research. The goal of this approach is to reinforce two forms of experiential learning - "double exposure" if you will --- for college freshmen. The goal of this project is to heighten student awareness of the urban situation as well as equipping them with fundamental tools of social inquiry. Our paper will describe the project and assess some of the initial outcomes in terms of freshmen attitudes. We assert that budding social scientists must balance concern for searing social issues with the intellectual capacity to diagnose, analyze, and solve such problems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an insight into teenage girlhood by analyzing the reproduction of patriarchal gender norms within the walls of public high school system in the U.S. Relation of traditional gender norms with social and political processes occurring among young women; Role of internalization of dominant norms of young womanhood in determining school popularity; Images of a popular school girl; Sexual behavior of young women; Function of drugs and sex in the lives of popular girls.

The traditional survey course in Western policy theory remains generally popular with students, nonetheless students often fail to appreciate the relevance of political theory to the rest of their curriculum and to contemporary politics. This paper discusses how the instructor enhances the teaching of Western political theory by incorporating brief examples from the education and political thought of the American Founding Fathers. Among the examples used are Benjamin Franklin on Xenophon's Socrates, Alexander Hamilton on the justification of for independence in natural law, George Washington's use of the inspiration of Cato, Classical references in the Federalist Papers, and Thomas Jefferson on Aristotle's moderate democracy and Epicureanism, as well as the widespread influence of the writings and orations of Cicero. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Petrocik's (1996) theory of issue ownership holds that each party "owns" some issues and enjoys fundamental advantages on those issues over others. Once established, a party's issue reputation has been considered to be almost static. This paper examines the dynamics of issue ownership, focusing on education issues. While existing studies have addressed this question, there have not been many empirical studies. This paper makes a contribution by extending the study of issue ownership to governing period and incorporating several drivers of changes in issue reputation such as the president, Congress and media report at the same time. With data from iPOLL, public papers of the president, Congressional Information Service Index, and the New York Times, I do a Granger causality test and examine the conditions of changes in issue ownership. A study by Holian (2004) has a similar approach, but this study uses more extensive public opinion data for a longer period. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Education is important because it is a tool to eliminate illiteracy, poverty, racism and crime. Education is important because it offers an impetus to fight stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. Education for all is a very important principle and value because it promotes social justice and equality of opportunity. In particular, knowledge of human rights is essential as a tool for the observance and promotion of human rights. Endorsement of human rights education has been declared in various global and regional legal instruments ever since 1945, when the Charter of the United Nations called for cooperation “in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Today Japan is the second largest economy in the world. Japanese enjoy one of the highest standards of living in the world. However, in spite of its phenomenal economic “success” and the 1947 “peace” Constitution’s emphasis on human rights and democracy, Japan is a human rights deficit country. This paper, first, assesses the trend of human rights education in the world since World War II. Second, it analyzes the current human rights situations in Japan, especially focusing on minorities that include Koreans, foreign workers, Burakumin, and Ainu. Third, the paper makes historical examination of Dowa (integration) education as a case study of human rights education in Japan. The objective of this paper is to stresses the necessity of implementing more rigorous human rights education in Japan so as to improve the lives of women and minorities in the country. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This psper looks at public sector conflict and its impacts on the delivery of public goods and services. Then the paper reviews the current state of public sector education as it relates to conflict. The paper concludes with an analysis of public sector conflict and current educational systems. Three primary questions comprise the focus of the paper: 1) How do we prepare our students to pursue quality in an environment of conflict and change? 2) How do we educate our students fornew governence configurations? and 3) How do we prepare our students to contribute to quality governance in the global environment? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The military regime in Chile initiated a large scale privatization in K-12 education in the early 1980s, which created a universal school choice system. As a result, privately-run but publiclyfunded voucher schools have become the dominant school sector in urban areas.This paper investigates the parents' accumulation of social capital in public and voucher schools under a system of universal school choice.The paper focuses both on the patterns of social capital accumulation acrossdifferent socio-economic status parents and on whether voucher schools make a difference in social capital accumulation. The study uses a four-wave panel of primary school parents in Santiago, Chile whereschool choice has existed for almost a quarter century. Moreover, the Chilean school choice policy was modeled after the original school voucherdesign proposed by Milton Friedman (1962, 1980) making it a good case fortesting hypotheses related to the potential societal impacts of school choice policies when carried to their logical conclusions.An important objective of the study is to disentangle social capital accumulation in a universal choice environment from the sorting effectsof school choice along socio-economic lines. The study also investigateshow parents from different socio-economic groups develop positive ornegative attitudes towards other parents and whether their attitudes are paralledby participation in shool affairs, which has been considered animportant indicator of social capital. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary relevance of collective bargaining in education is widely debated in the scholarly literature (Hoxby 1996). Despite previous studies analyzing the political influence of teacher unions in federal policy development, there is relatively little attention on how labor unions gained public legitimacy as political institutions at the state level. To complement the recent growth in scholarly attention to labor unions in voter turnout, party voting, and class mobilization (Leighley and Nagler 2007), this paper considers the political and economic influences on collective bargaining rights for public school teachers. A second motivation for this research study is the substantive relevance of partisan and ideological considerations for education policy. The historical context of policy innovation is an increasingly salient topic for practitioners and scholars with the emergence of a new generation of public school reformers who believe the time has come to reconsider how federal and state authorities regulate the teacher labor market. While previous studies look at policy adoption under federal influence (Karch 2006) and interstate competition (Boehmke and Witmer 2004), interstate policy development has just recently been systematically examined in the political science literature. This research study uses a new longitudinal data collection of state legislative activity over fifty years. Our methodological approach builds on a recent investigation of children's health insurance programs (Volden 2006) to explore rival theories of policy learning and change in collective bargaining. Overall, this conference paper will promote the development of scientific theory on how political institutions respond to the challenge of education reform. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have suggested that American counties are emerging as leaders in local governance. This is mainly attributed to the fact that counties are being called upon to provide a whole host of new services to an ever-growing suburban and incorporated population. County executives are known to play a critical role in the provision of these services, however, researchers know very little about the factors contributing to county executive turnover. Several empirical studies have explored tenure and turnover patterns of top-level government executives, yet this research has principally focused on municipalities. This paper extends existing research by examining how factors contributing to government performance, political uncertainty, and community instability affect county executive turnover in counties with appointed administrators. This paper also attempts to determine whether an administrator/managers' level of education, tenure, race and gender had statistically significant predictive or explanatory strength with regards to executive turnover.The study sample consists of data collected on the 32 largest U.S. counties with council-manager forms of government. The models were estimated using a pooled cross-sectional panel beginning with year 1992 and ending with year 2005. The unit of analysis was appointed county administrators within large American counties. The Cox proportional regression procedure, a form of duration analysis, was employed to determine casual-effect.County executive turnover can have profound effects on county policies and fiscal commitments. This paper provides a better understanding to both practitioners and scholars as to the "push" and the "pull" factors that explain and predict the turnover of county executives. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does education affect individuals? democratic values under different regime types? Using Mexican public opinion data of 2008, I find that educational attainment can foster prodemocracy values and political tolerance even under authoritarian regimes. This impact is due to educations? role in fostering critical thinking, exposing individuals to different political opinions, and strengthening self-esteem. I find further evidence of education's "democratizing effect;" I find that the impact of education is greater among individuals who were educated under democratic regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses several aspects of generalization and valid measures of performance. It states that organizations providing job training, educating children, and delivering health care for the aged, are measures of public organizational performance that are acceptable as valid measures of organizational performance. Information on the linkage between managerial assessments of performance and actual performance by replicating is also presented.

If we value religious tolerance and autonomy, we must breach the silence about religion in public schools, and add a comparative religious education to the compulsory curriculum at the high school level. This education would expose students to a variety of religious beliefs in a fair manner by allowing religious denominations themselves to participate in deciding how their beliefs are presented to students. The major obstacle to the implementation of such an education is the objection of religious conservatives and fundamentalists that it would violate neutrality. Not only is a comparative religious education able to survive the criticisms that religious conservatives routinely make against a liberal education, but the inclusion of such an education is the only way to make a liberal education truly neutral. This education would provide the recognition of the importance of religion in general and of conservative religions in particular that religious conservatives complain is lacking from the status quo compulsory curriculum in public schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many American students approach and perceive the study of globalization as a phenomenon taking place "over there" and not as a presence "here". They tend to divorce global economic processes from their own daily social realities. The challenge posited, therefore, in globalization classes, is how to enable students to come to an understanding of themselves as actors in global economic processes, and to appreciate the interconnectedness of their lives with the global economy. This paper examines strategies employed in two capstone classes, and one entering freshmen only class, to explore this pedagogical dilemma. The scope, sequence and evaluation structure of the courses will be discussed, and some sensitizing hypotheses will be generated. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the extent to which different committees over-represent committee-relevant interests. I measure interest representation by comparing the proportion of committee members who hold a relevant financial interest to the overall proportion of legislators in that chamber holding that interest. Looking at 225 agriculture, banking, education, health care, and insurance committees in 45 lower chambers, I find that the strength of the interest in the chamber, the specificity of the committee's jurisdiction, and the presence of term limits are notable predictors of increased interest representation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a forward-looking discussion of the potential of community gatherings to contribute to the solidarity required for successful environmental mitigation and development. Specifically it relays the difficulty faced by Jericho Road Episcopal Housing Initiative of New Orleans, in its effort to garner community support for green building techniques and the mitigation of a brown field, in partial contrast to the community solidarity and ongoing success achieved by St Anna's Episcopal Church in their Wednesday night Music to Medicine program and their mobile mental health unit. Data for analysis are derived from open-ended interviews with organizational leadership. I conclude that Jericho Road has correctly identified a deficit in its community education and outreach, and the need for its organization to take part in the community in less formalized ways, in order for solidarity and education to commence regarding environmental and sustainable development. A Deweyian emphasis on knowledge as a function of association supports and helps articulate my findings, and define a solidarity that is not mechanical or organic, and so beyond Durkheim's categories. Implications for integrated indicator research suggest both the difficulty and possibility for assessing community solidarity based on the availability of cultural resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the equity issues of funding in the state of Mississippi. It is discussed that focusing on standards of providing adequate funding alone, the measures fail to account for some education funding discrepancies. It is concluded that discrepancy issues of equity exist and therefore, the overall quality of life for all citizens on national level can be improved by sticking to provide equity funding for all students in the U.S.

The article focuses on Leo Strauss and the reason behind its hermeneutical position. It states that Strauss' hermeneutics reflects theologians' way of reading Bible and he wanted readers to become philosopher and not a pupil to read his high level of writings. It further states that Strauss' hermeneutical position is not that of trust or suspicion, but build out of instruction and education.

The national charter school movement is taking note of North Carolina. North Carolina charter school legislation was enacted in 1996, with the state seeing its first charter schools in 1997. From an initial 23 charter schools in operation in 1997, the state has now reached its statutory limit of 100 charter schools. Over the last eight years, considerable effort has been mounted to increase the cap of 100 charter schools. The researcher uses interviews and textual analysis to examine state level coalitions.Using Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith's (1995) advocacy coalition framework, the researcher identifies two competing coalitions: a traditional public schools coalition and a choice coalition. The composition and policy core beliefs of both coalitions are analyzed in this study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last decade and a half has seen a new burst of activity related to the funding of public schools in the United States with a number of state courts deciding cases in the plaintiffs' favor in school funding cases using educational inadequacy as the grounds for the decisions. Research has indicated that such rulings have been successful in both increasing funding for education as well as reducing inequity in school funding across states (Reed 2003). As part of this movement, the first decade of the century has been one of significant change in the financing of public education in Arkansas. Diligent oversight by the state Supreme Court, which declared the state's school system constitutionally inadequate and inequitable in 2002, led to significant and ongoing growth in funding leading to the Court's 2007 declaration that adequacy had been achieved. During the same period that Arkansas's policy leaders were focused on this issue, the national education reform agenda has focused on addressing the achievement gap among children of different races and socioeconomic status. The federal No Child Left Behind Act aims to have all students in the U.S. making adequate yearly progress in their studies by 2011. Enhanced funding's purpose is, of course, to achieve better educational outcomes for all children. Early indications are that Arkansas's educational system has indeed shown improvement, compared to other states, on some key measures as the programs funded by these new school-focused revenues have been implemented (Quality Counts 2007). However, no analysis to date has systematically examined the efficacy of the programs implemented in recent years in closing the achievement gap between economically advantaged and disadvantaged and white and minority schoolchildren in the state. This is not surprising since the literatures dedicated to examining school funding equity and addressing the achievement gap have grown up separately. This project attempts to connect those two strands of research using Arkansas as a case study: Has the era of educational adequacy cases also been an era of inattention to the achievement gap? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of research have given us an impressive understanding of the mechanisms through which individual-level educational characteristics affect political participation. We know relatively little, however, about the manners through which the institutional providers of education, schools, impact the political behavior of individuals. This study seeks to shed some light on this important issue by analyzing the effect of schools on students' later-life political participation in three distinct stages. First, I employ a dynamic dataset, the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88), and multilevel modeling techniques to examine the extent to which school-level factors contribute to variation in political participation among young adults. Second, I analyze the mechanisms through which schools shape later-life participation. I perform this analysis by empirically testing several theories of educational effects at both the individual and school levels. Specifically, I examine whether schools increase participation by socializing students into social networks where participation is the norm, by inculcating an ethic of participation during students' school-age years, by developing cognitive skills that lower the cost of gathering the information required to participate, or by any combination of these mechanisms. Finally, I explore the persistence of school effects over time by analyzing participation of individuals at three points in time: their senior year of high school, two years after high school graduation, and eight years after high school graduation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What kind of education does a full engagement with the thought of the Founders presuppose? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In political science, there are many studies related to institutional choice. Previous studies, however, have exclusively considered the case of the national government. We must focus on intergovernmental relations and the socioeconomic context because the policy choices of local governments are restricted by these factors. We conducted an empirical analysis to answer this question. In Japan, the national government obliges the local governments to establish the Board of Education. In this research, we asked mayors whether the Board of Education would be retained or abolished if they could choose, and analyzed the type of mayors who wished to abolish the institution. We discovered that political conditions are the most important factors for institutional choice of local governments. The mayor wishes to abolish the institution when the mayor is supported from voters strongly but he or she can't have good relation to local assembly. Intergovernmental regulation prevents political conditions from influencing institutional choices. It is not certain that local governments would establish efficient and useful institutions if the intergovernmental regulation is abolished. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For scholars studying public opinion on sensitive topics such as tolerance, attitudes towards minorities as well as prejudice, social desirability bias (SDB) of survey respondents and especially those of educated respondents has been a continuous challenge. While scholars are pleased to report lower levels of prejudice and negative impact of education on prejudice, yet they arecautious to warn that some of these effects may be due to SDB. Nevertheless, most scholars especially those who analyze survey data failed to actually measure and reveal the true effect of this SDB. In this study, I am exploring the relationship between prejudice and immigration attitudes with a special attention paid to SDB. Using data from the recently released 2004 German Social Research (ALLBUS) survey, conducted over 3000 random sampled respondents from both (former) East and West Germany, I am able to illustrate a more complete model of attitudes towards immigration. Through an OLS regression model with multiple interaction effects, I not only illustrate the effects of prejudice and economic factors comparatively, but I also reveal the impact of SDB on this relationship. In addition, using separate logit models, I am able to illustrate the effects of these variables on immigration of certain groups separately, namely immigrants from EU states, non-EU states, asylum seekers, and ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. The results suggest that SDB has a strong impact on immigration attitudes especially regarding their relationship with prejudice and this effect is even more pronounced for culturally different group of immigrants. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A discussion of Jefferson and Emerson's view of freedom exploring how a culture of freedom is a double-edged sword, both permitting free inquiry and the freedom to reject the past, which makes it difficult to preserve the inheritance of the past. What kind of education would best enable citizens to make their way in the culture of freedom and accommodate the goals of preservation and liberation? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While only receiving one year's worth of formal education, Abraham Lincoln's passion for learning is often cited by historians and biographers as one of the key elements of his character. Among the most influential thinkers in Lincoln's life was Sir William Blackstone, whose Commentaries, especially his first book on the rights of persons, helped shape his legal and political thinking as it did for many Americans in the 18th and 19th centuries. This work aims to highlight, through his political actions and speeches, how Blackstone's ideas which sought to explain and clarify English common law influenced our nation's 16th president. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine county-level factors that explain variations in (1) the rate of concealed permit requests and (2) the rate of issuance of permits. Among our independent variables we include the violent and property crime rates, economic conditions, population growth and diversity, education, and political and administrative factors. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Market based education providers may employ unique organization types sharply distinct from traditional public bureaucracies. Excluding highly individualized "mom and pop" micro-providers, we outline the key characteristics of four market based models of schooling ranging from least to greatest on a continuum of goal and practice integration: networks, corporations, cooperatives, and clans. Aside from internal integration, the four types can be distinguished by their profit or non-profit status, their internal incentives and governance, their capacity for expansion, their capacity for innovation, and most importantly, their performance. We explore these through brief case studies of the Core Knowledge Foundation, the Coalition of Essential Schools, Edison, K-12, Edvisions, the Charter School of Sedona, the KIP academies, and North Star. The Charter School of Sedona, which exists in a state where money follows parent enrollment decisions and which has taken a large share of a small market, has influenced practices at local district schools. Seemingly, the other providers have had less influence, for reasons we explore. Finally, we outline the long term prospects for these new providers to have significant impacts on public education. Clans like KIPP and North Star offer the most successful schools; yet their very quality control limits rapid expansion. Cooperatives like Edvisions and the Charter School of Sedona also succeed educationally, but their very novelty makes them difficult for public policy-makers to embrace. While businesses like Edison and K-12 can expand rapidly and thus push existing school system bureaucracies to improve, their educational success is mixed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several years, scholars have debated over the contributing factors to a successful transition to democracy. Most notably, this debate has centered on whether democratization is the result of economic development or a byproduct of stochastic processes. We recognize that economic development is important to the establishment of democracy. However, we argue that it is the implementation of an educational system that more directly contributes to a successful transition. Using a survival analysis, with the emergence of democracy as the failure event, we maintain that economic growth allows a government to provide more services to its constituents. Those that provide education generate more sophisticated citizens that have greater interest in establishing democratic practices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even small variations in the political preferences of marrieds and singles, magnified by their group size, yield enormous electoral effects. Because in 2004 the 15-point marriage gap outshone the 8-point gender gap, reporters and pundits explained the gender gap away in terms of differences between marrieds and singles. However, I theorize that the marriage gap has its roots in economic differences between single and married men and women. The decision to marry is related to gender, race, income and education. Therefore, the marriage gap in vote choice should diminish when controlling for race, gender, income, and educational attainment. Utilizing 2004 National Election Survey (NES) data I examine the relationship between race, income, education, gender and marital status. For both men and women, I expect to find that race, income and educational attainment are predictive of marital status. I expect that the size of the effect of race and educational attainment on marital status is larger for women than for men. Similarly, I expect that income will be a stronger predictor of marital status for men than for women. Next, I use NES data to model vote choice as a function of marital status, race, income, and education. Running the model separately for men and for women, I identify the different mechanisms operating for each gender. I expect to find that marital status has little effect on vote choice independent of race, income, educational attainment either for men or for women. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political parties are an essential aspect of democracy, yet throughout contemporary democracies individual partisanship is on the decline. Theories of partisan dealignment have largely implicated education levels in advanced industrialized democracies. However, declining partisanship is even more evident in many Latin American countries where education levels are lower than in the advanced industrialized democracies. Country specific incidents and party system structure have contributed to partisan dealignment, yet even countries with flexible party systems have shown a decline in partisanship. The overall occurrence implicates a broader contribution to declining partisanship. One factor that is largely underemphasized on a comparative level is the mass media's role in an era of candidate-centered politics, but the information available on the media's role is limited. This preliminary analysis focuses on Argentina, Venezuela, the United States, Sweden and Norway to guide future research on party system structures and candidate centered media effects on partisan dealignment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]