The anti-discriminatory tradition in Virginia school public choice theory

Public Choice - This paper studies the practice of Müsadere in the Ottoman Empire. Müsadere refers to the expropriation of elites—often tax farmers or administrators—by the...     

The uneven playing field of school choice: Evidence from new zealand

New Zealand's 10‐year experience with self‐governing schools operating in a competitive environment provides new insights into school choice initiatives now being hotly debated in the United States with limited evidence. This article examines how New Zealand's system of parental choice of schools played out in that country's three major urban areas with particular emphasis on the sorting of students by ethnic and socioeconomic status. The analysis documents that schools with large initial proportions of minorities (Maori and Pacific Island students in the New Zealand context) were at a clear disadvantage in the educational market place relative to other schools and that the effect was to generate a system in which gaps between the “successful” and the “unsuccessful” schools became wider. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

State involvement in limiting textbook choice by school districts

Who gets to decide what textbooks are used in America’s public school classrooms varies by state. States can let each school district decide, provide standards that must be followed and make available an incomplete listing of books meeting those standards, or allow schools to choose books only from a list provided by the state. I present a model that provides an explanation for state limits on textbook selection by school districts. I examine the roles played by decision making costs, effectiveness of voters, religious composition, power of teachers, and propensity of state governments to interfere with or to help districts in textbook selection policies at the state level. There has been virtually no research on this topic. My findings corroborate the extant literature that addresses interference by state governments in local affairs and extend the morality politics literature by finding a strong link between religious fundamentalism and state-level policies. I also find that state book lists are less likely (1) in more educated states, where voters are better able to select the most appropriate textbook, (2) in states with smaller school districts, where voters are more involved in the schools, and (3) in states with stronger teacher unions, giving teachers more power in textbook selection.     

The public choice of educational choice

The very small literature explaining (i) how citizens have voted in two California voucher referenda, (ii) how legislators have voted on voucher bills in the State of Florida and the US Congress, and (iii) the variation across states in charter school provisions is summarized. New empirical evidence documenting the cross-state variation in the success of voucher referenda and voucher bills is examined. Voucher bill characteristics and state characteristics play important roles. Voucher bills have been passed only in the more conservative Republican states, and almost all of the successful voucher programs have been targeted at large, struggling school districts.     

Endogenizing the median voter: Public choice goes to school

This paper investigates implications of the relationship between voter self-selection and the behavior of politicians. Voter self-selection arises in elections because only a portion of eligible voters actually vote. It is likely to be more pronounced whenever the implied net benefits from a given electoral choice are disproportionately distributed across voters. Public choice theory predicts that incumbent officials will manipulate this self-election pursuant to the maximization of their personal objective functions. This paper provides evidence from school bond elections that politicians influence voter self-selection via manipulation of election parameters.     

Policy innovation in local jurisdictions: Testing for neighborhood influence in school choice policies

Before making difficult decisions, individuals tend to collect information on decision makers in reference groups. With respect to policy innovations in a decentralized public sector, this may give rise to positive neighborhood influence on adoption decisions. In this paper, U.S. school district data are used to show that decision makers indeed are heavily affected by decision makers in reference groups. The policy innovation under consideration is inter-district public school choice. The results suggest that if a given district's neighbors' expected benefits from adopting school choice policies increase, this substantially increases the original district's probability of adoption. The paper thus supports the view that the diffusion of policy innovations is stimulated by horizontal interaction among local governments.     

The mobilising effect of political choice

Political choice is central to citizens’ participation in elections. Nonetheless, little is known about the individual-level mechanisms that link political choice and turnout. It is argued in this article that turnout decisions are shaped not only by the differences between the parties (party polarisation), but also by the closeness of parties to citizens’ own ideological position (congruence), and that congruence matters more in polarised systems where more is at stake. Analysing cross-national survey data from 80 elections, it is found that both polarisation and congruence have a mobilising effect, but that polarisation moderates the effect of congruence on turnout. To further explore the causal effect of political choice, the arrival of a new radical right-wing party in Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), is leveraged and the findings show that the presence of the AfD had a mobilising effect, especially for citizens with congruent views.     

The unfinished business of public choice

Over the past fifty years, the public choice research program has generated important insights into collective decision-making processes, especially as they operate within the political institutions of Europe and North America. Despite a half-century of progress, a great deal of unfinished business remains on the public choice research agenda. In the course of assessing the current state of the literature, as represented in the contributions to this special issue of Public Choice, this essay identifies some of the unanswered questions.     

The endogenous public choice theorist

Public choice theory has effectively explored defects in collective action and political processes. However, little attention has been given to the fact that any recommendations as to how to improve the situation can only be realized on the basis of precisely those defective institutions. What turns up here can be identified as a problem of self-reference. Normative contributions by Buchanan and Hayek may serve as an example. In order to clear up the seemingly paradoxical situation, “endogenization” of the public choice theorist within an extended theory is suggested. A straight-forward extension is briefly outlined.     

四川简阳县私立纪云中学办学记

简阳县私立纪云中学,是由一位四川简阳籍爱国大盐商罗华垓独资创立。从1943年创办到1950年停办,历时7载。学校设备新制,管理严格,成绩斐然,在当地享有崇高声望。罗华垓不仅创立并在艰难困苦的环境下支撑起照常运行,写下了事业生涯辉煌的篇章,体现了盐商办学的鲜明特质。