Nonpoor children in head start: Explanations and implications

According to the Head Start Act (1998), children are income‐eligible for the program if their “families' incomes are below the poverty line.” There are a number of statutory exceptions to this general rule and, according to the Head Start Bureau, the result is that about 6 percent of the children in the program are not poor. But the major national surveys of Head Start families report that 30 percent or more of Head Start children are not “poor.” This paper confirms and explains the high proportion of nonpoor children in Head Start: at enrollment, at least 28 percent are not poor; at midyear, at least 32 percent are not poor; and by the end of the program year, at least 34 percent and perhaps more than 50 percent are not poor. Although the presence of some of these nonpoor children seems to be an appropriate or at least understandable aspect of running a national program with Head Start's current organizational structure, the presence of others seems much less warranted and raises substantial questions of horizontal equity. Moreover, taken together, the large number of nonpoor children suggests that the program is not well targeted to fulfill its mission of providing compensatory services to developmentally disadvantaged children—and reveals the essential ambiguity of Head Start's role in the wider world of early care and education. The income and program dynamics that have led to so many nonpoor children being in Head Start are also at work in many other programs, and, thus, our findings demonstrate the need to understand better how income eligibility is determined across various means‐tested programs.     

The Earthquake, Civil Society, and Political Change in Turkey: Assessment and Comparison with Eastern Europe

Civil society has been widely celebrated as instrumental in democratization, but in some countries it remains poorly developed. Such was the case in Turkey, but many hoped that the 1999 earthquakes would lead to an invigoration of civil society and subsequent political liberalization. Examining this claim shows that Turkish civil society has not been able to sustain the energy it enjoyed immediately after the earthquake because of factors within civil society itself and the attitude of the state. This relative failure is then contrasted with the more positive experience of civil society in East-Central Europe. The comparisons reveal some limits to the utility of a civil society approach to democratization. I conclude by assessing the ability of other actors and factors to fashion political reform in Turkey today.     

AT ARM'S LENGTH WITH DIRTY HANDS: TAXING THE AUSTRALIAN PUNTER

Abstract: Taxes on betting are a major source of revenue for Australian state governments. Specific taxes on the racing industry date from 1915. However, the revenue potential has only been tapped in all the states since the legalisation in the past 30 years of off-course betting through the state-run totalisator (TAB). The introduction of the TAB followed a long period when various states adopted different policies towards off-course betting, ranging from legalisation of bookmakers' betting shops to attempts at complete suppression. In tracing the history of these policies, the focus is on "implementation failure", or the many administrative pitfalls and obstacles that were experienced. These include insurmountable tax evasion by bookmakers, regulatory capture of betting boards by bookmakers and corruption of the law enforcement agencies. State governments also had to accommodate a range of conflicting interests, including the interests of the racing industry itself and the demands of the anti-gambling lobby. The TAB is shown to be a happy and convenient resolution of most, but not all, of these administrative and political dilemmas.     

Historical apologies as acts of symbolic inclusion – and exclusion? Reflections on institutional apologies as politics of cultural citizenship

Institutional apologies for historical injustices can be conceived as acts of symbolic inclusion directed to people whose collective experiences and memories of the past have not been recognized in the hegemonic narratives of the past. However, in this article it is argued that such apologies also have exclusionary potential as vehicles of symbolic politics of citizenship in that they may designate the apologizing community, so that it effectively excludes cultural ‘aliens’, like migrants, from the community of ‘remedial’ citizens. The article suggests a crucial point is the rhetoric shifts when one is appealing to both cultural and political solidarity, as when apologizing in the name of the state but simultaneously invoking ‘our’ nation and ‘our’ history. Thus, the increasing number of institutional historical apologies is not necessarily incompatible with the trend of reinforcing the symbolic boundaries around ‘our’ historical–cultural communities that has been visible recently, e.g. in the demands for cultural canons and citizenship tests in many Western societies.     

The Influence of Low‐Income Children's Participation in Head Start on Their Parents’ Education and Employment

Head Start is the oldest and largest federally funded preschool program in the United States. From its inception in 1965, Head Start not only provided early childhood education, care, and services for children, but also sought to promote parents’ success. However, almost all evaluation studies of Head Start have focused solely on children's cognitive and social outcomes rather than on parents’ outcomes. The present study examines whether children's participation in Head Start promotes parents’ educational advancement and employment. We use data from the Head Start Impact Study (HSIS), a randomized trial of over 4,000 newly entering three‐ and four‐year‐old children. We find that parents of children in the three‐year‐old cohort (but not the four‐year‐old cohort), who were randomly assigned to and participated in Head Start, had steeper increases in their own educational attainment by child age six years compared to parents of children in the control group. This pattern is especially strong for parents who had at least some college experience at baseline, as well as for African‐American parents. We do not find evidence that Head Start helped parents enter or return to the workforce over time. Results are discussed in the context of using high‐quality early childhood education as a platform for improving both child and parent outcomes.     

Moderate Secularism, Religion as Identity and Respect for Religion

Political secularism takes many forms but a fundamental distinction is between radical and moderate kinds. The latter is a genuine secularism and not just a failure to take secularism to its logical conclusion. The failure to appreciate this obscures the secularism that exists in western Europe. Namely, an accommodation of organised religion which sees it as a potential public good or national resource (not just a private benefit), which the state can in some circumstances assist to realise—even through an 'established' church. I adumbrate five types of reasons the state might be interested in religion: truth, danger, utility, identity and respect. The challenge facing such secularism today is whether it can be pluralised or multiculturalised, in particular whether it can accommodate Muslims. A ground for optimism is the respect that some people, especially some Muslims, have for religions other than their own.     

Regions with regionalism? The rescaling of interest groups in six European states

In many European countries a regional or meso level of government has emerged, with significant policy responsibilities. It has been suggested that the representation of social and economic interests has not followed, so that policy communities remain state‐wide, giving ‘regions without regionalism’. This study of interest groups in six European states examines their adaptation to devolution, focusing on organisation, cognitive change and relationships. It finds there has been a regionalisation of interest representation, but it is uneven, depending on the strength of regional government, territorial identities and the interests of social actors. Business, trades unions, farmer organisations and environmental groups are all cross‐pressured on the regional question. The region is emerging in some cases as a site of interest intermediation. Territorial policy communities are emerging in some regions, but in most cases these supplement, rather than replace, state‐wide policy communities.     

Is Early Start a Better Start? Evaluating California State University's Early Start Remediation Policy

Remediation has long been a costly way to address the misalignment between K-12 and higher education. In 2011, the California State University (CSU), the nation's largest public four-year university system, enacted Early Start, requiring students needing remediation to enroll in such courses in the summer before their freshman year. We estimate the impact of Early Start summer remediation relative to both traditional fall remediation and relative to no remediation at all. Our results suggest Early Start summer remediation has not improved student performance or persistence relative to either alternative. As many states move away from remedial courses altogether, there is continued need for both innovation and for evidence in policy and practice to improve college readiness and success.     

Skunks in an English Woodland: Should England Embrace For‐Profit Higher Education?

The British government is encouraging the growth of for‐profit alternative providers of higher education (HE). While it is true that for‐profits have opened HE access to previously under‐served groups and have been more agile in reacting to market demand, they have done so at a considerable cost to students and the taxpayer because they do not share in the cost of the failure of HE to ensure a payoff for many of their students. The US experience with for‐profits should be a cautionary tale for those supporting their expansion in Britain. Policy is needed to craft a regulatory framework that produces the benefits that for‐profits can provide, but minimises the costs that often accompany them. At present, it is far from clear that expanding alternative providers—that is, for‐profits—would ‘work better’ for students.     

The United Nations and genocide: Prevention,intervention, and prosecution

Conclusion The UN has to date not been effective in preventing genocide, and has had only a slightly better record in stopping it. There have been occasions when its interventions has occurred only after a genocide has taken place, and even then its major focus has been on facilitating the provision of aid by non-governmental agencies rather than on the task of tracking down the perpetrators and bringing them to justice. The exceptions of the ICTY and the ICTR are so stark, in this regard, that they only serve to throw light on the many other genocidal events where the UN has not initiated measures against those responsible for carrying them out. In short, as a body the UN has no—until very recently—even approached the fulfillment of its mandate as articulated in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and only rarely invoked Chapter VII of the UN Charter in order to intervene physically for the purpose of countering threats to peace or stopping conflict. Its strengths, so far as there have been any, have focused on balancing great power interests with demands to intervene more forcefully. While in the years up to 1989 this could be seen as a way of maintaining the peace (albeit over the broken bodies of victims of genocide in places such as Biafra, Cambodia, and East Timor), since then the UN has been required to act with greater resolve and purpose. The failures of Bosnia, Rwanda, and Kosovo must thus be seen as having been brought on by a transition from one international regime to another; from a Cold War regime in which the UN—s main role was one of preventing a third (and possibly nuclear) World War from breaking out, to a post-Cold War regime which appears increasingly to be characterized by the UN searching for a new role in which humanitarian issues are to assume a higher priority than they once did. Whether or not this will continue, of course, will depend on an extremely wide variety of circumstances—and at this time it is likely that only a few of these can accurately be anticipated.     

EXPORTING AMERICAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE TO RUSSIA

The failure of US initiatives to build local/regional economic development capacity in Russia following the fall of Communism has been partly blamed on national factors, Russian culture, and American consultants. Much of the failure, however, probably resulted because American approaches to economic development—‐highly successful in other contexts—could not work during Russia's transition from a command economy to its current state. Such things as promoting entrepreneurship, developing public‐private partnerships, creating a market economy, accessing start‐up capital, attracting foreign investment, overcoming bureaucratic corruption and high taxation, working within the rule of law, and negating organized crime either should not have been done, or could not have been done, leaving many of our programs ineffective. We ask whether the Russian deviations from the U.S. model have any implications for the current situation facing state and local development policy in the U.S.     

The neurotic citizen

Over the last three decades we have witnessed the birth of a subject that has constituted the foundations of a regime change in state societies: the neoliberal subject. As much as neoliberalism came to mean the withdrawal of the state from certain arenas, the decline of social citizenship, privatization, downloading, and so forth, it also meant, if not predicated upon, the production of an image of the subject as sufficient, calculating, responsible, autonomous, and unencumbered. While the latter point has been a topic of debate concerning the rational subject, I wish to argue that the rational subject has itself been predicated upon and accompanied by another subject: the neurotic subject. More recently, it is this neurotic subject that has become the object of various governmental projects whose conduct is based not merely on calculating rationalities but also arises from and responds to fears, anxieties and insecurities, which I consider as ‘governing through neurosis’. The rise of the neurotic citizen signals a new type of politics (neuropolitics) and power (neuropower). I suggest a new concept, neuroliberalism—a rationality of government that takes its subject as the neurotic citizen—as an object of analysis.     

Who reads Navajo poetry and what are they reading? Exploring the semiotic functions of contemporary written Navajo

This paper analyzes contemporary written Navajo in public signs, newspapers, and poetry. While the number of public space displays of written Navajo has increased in recent years, this has not met with an increase in either Navajo literacy or in the number of Navajo speakers. This paper argues that much written Navajo is read not for semantico-referential content, but either as icons and indexes of Navajo spaces and identity or as icons and indexes of fidelity to an orthographic norm. Contemporary written Navajo poetry is not normally read as poetry but as a success or failure to align with the orthographic norm. This mirrors nothing so much as how many Navajos were taught English literacy in the boarding schools.     

The Fate of ‘Big Government’ in the United States:Not Over,But Undermined?

Big government in the United States has never been as expansiveas the big state abroad. Whatever its scope, there is little evidence that the days of big government are numbered. Among both the public and organized interests there is at once antagonism toward big government and yet consistent support for many of the protections it affords, including those provided by the U.S. federal government's largest, and sure to get larger, social programs. The most important story is not the threat of a reduced state, but rather itstransformation. Continuing attempts to privatize its administration could put much of the big state, including its social programs, in the hands of big business.     

Is the EU held accountable for economic performances? Assessing vote and popularity functions before and after membership

The EU has become increasingly responsible for the state of national economies over the last decades. Meanwhile, many observers have claimed that this increased responsibility has not translated into more accountability. In this article, we revisit this literature and analyse vote-popularity functions before and after accession because it provides a situation when the EU is an incumbent and when it is not. Using Eurobarometer surveys from 2001 to 2011, which were carried out in the countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007, we first show that individuals do not hold the EU accountable for macroeconomic performances before accession, but that they do after accession. Using European Election Studies surveys, we also indicate that the incumbent European Peoples’ Party is held accountable for the state of the economy in countries that are ruled by the EU, but not in countries that have just become EU members.     

Limitations in attributing state responsibility under the Genocide Convention

Protection from genocide has been a common denominator in state rhetoric since 1948 when the Genocide Convention was adopted. However, state accountability for this archetypical crime of the state is virtually nonexistent. This article addresses a two-pronged puzzle: namely, (1) why, no government involved in the commission of genocide has to date been held responsible for it; and (2) how legal processes of the sole court that addresses states' disputes regarding genocide, the International Court of Justice, condition and even limit the quality of decisions taken by the court with particular reference to state liability for this crime. The analysis contributes to an emerging debate on the application of state responsibility with reference to the protection from genocide by highlighting existing shortcomings pertaining to the interpretation and implementation of the Genocide Convention that, in turn, warrants a holistic revision of this treaty.     

Lock them up! Punitive aggression and populism as political vigilantism

Populist leaders and movements are incredibly diverse, but one factor that most share is the tendency to pick fights. Populists often stir up conflict and use aggressive rhetoric that would destroy the reputation of mainstream politicos. Furthermore, many of these fights have little material benefit for base-level supporters, and often actively harm them. Yet populist militants generally reward combative behavior. Why is populism so conflict prone? And why do populists so often escape negative consequences for provoking damaging dustups? I argue that these sorts of conflict are driven by an emotional impulse that lies at the heart of populism: punitive aggression. Populists view political problems as the result of malign actions by hostile outgroups, and they perceive the state as either negligently allowing or actively abetting these actions. The failure of the state to punish the guilty breeds an intense and deep-seated desire to harm those seen as violating norms and values, regardless of the cost. Observational and experimental data are consistent with the hypothesis that, while the never-ending conflict typical of populism may harm its adherents’ interests, it continues because it satisfies much more basic emotional and psychological needs. This paper suggests that confronting and challenging populists may be difficult because forceful responses will reinforce the bond between the leader and his or her followers.     

General fund financing versus earmarked taxes: An alternative model of budgetary choice in a democracy

This paper presents an alternative model of budgetary choices in a direct democracy. Our model is not only more consistent with the underlying assumptions of consumer theory, but also is easier to apply to the study of problems such as the impact of lump-sum subsidies, changes in the costs of production, and so forth, on the equilibrium levels of collective variables.The model appears to account for the hitherto inexplicable perverse results that plague many of the general fund financing models discussed in the literature to date.     

America's Misunderstood Welfare State: Myths and Realities

To listen to the critics, one would think that the nation's social welfare programs were an abject failure–ungovernable, unaffordable, and undesirable. But though widely believed by Americans of every political persuasion, the perception of failure is false. As the authors demonstrate, America today has all the institutions of a mature welfare state, while still regarding "welfare statism" with deep suspicion. The authors seek to explain this paradox and to set the record straight about the actual workings and accomplishments of the nation's welfare programs – social security, public assistance, and medical care –and it shows that the gloom and doom that surround so much public discussion in this area stems from simple, attractive–and false–ideas about what these programs are and how they work. Above all, they argue that American social welfare policy has been shaped by certain enduring commitments which most Americans believe in whether they realize it or not.     

The Impact of the Coalition Government on the Public Service: Was Change Inevitable?

Prime Minister John Howard has indicated that he wants to break down the welfare state as we know it and create a society that thrives on innovation and free enterprise. To do this will require a change in culture and attitudes in both the government and the community. The Coalition government argues that the state must withdraw its presence so market forces can be freed up to generate wealth, leading to greater prosperity for all Australians. This article poses the questions: was change in the public service inevitable under the Coalition government? and have the Coalition thought through the consequences of the changes proposed? The evidence to date suggests a negative answer to both.