Policy learning as complex contagion: how social networks shape organizational beliefs in forest-based climate change mitigation

Policy Sciences - Policy learning can alter the perceptions of both the seriousness and the causes of a policy problem, thus also altering the perceived need to do...     

Disentangling the racial test score gap: Probing the evidence in a large urban school district

We examine the size and distribution of the gap in test scores across races within New York City public schools and the factors that explain these gaps. While gaps are partially explained by differences in student characteristics, such as poverty, differences in schools attended are also important. At the same time, substantial within‐school gaps remain and are only partly explained by differences in academic preparation across students from different race groups. Controlling for differences in classrooms attended explains little of the remaining gap, suggesting little role for within‐school inequities in resources. There is some evidence that school characteristics matter. Race gaps are negatively correlated with school size—implying small schools may be helpful. In addition, the trade‐off between the size and experience of the teaching staff in urban schools may carry unintended consequences for within‐school race gaps. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

中小学教师课堂评价言语行为研究——基于言语行为理论

言语是个人运用语言的过程或产物,当个体为实现交际目的而在具体的语境中使用语言的行为,就是言语行为。教师课堂评价言语行为是在课堂教学活动中教师根据学生提出问题、回答问题、学习态度以及分析问题和解决问题的能力等言行。提高中小学教师课堂评价言语行为水平的对策有三:将教师评价言语体系纳入教师专业化发展;学校予以重视;教师自身注重培养课堂评价言语行为的考识。     

When school meets the Other: intercultural policies in the Basque inclusive school

ABSTRACT

Gatti, Irazuzta and Martinez address the intercultural public policies implemented in the education system of the Autonomous Region of the Basque Country (Spain). Focusing on the education system allows them to reconstruct the historicity of identity-alterity production in a region in which language has been central for the establishment of ethnic frontiers. More specifically, they examine the implementation of these policies in three pre-school and primary educational institutions in a multicultural neighbourhood of the city of Bilbao. They look at Euskara—the Basque language—as a key element of the us-them distinction. The various education models regarding language and the teaching in/of Euskara or Spanish pave the way for the specialization and spatialization of the schools analysed. ‘Integration’ policies are implemented in ethnically marked schools only, based on a rhetoric of interculturality that assumes that any ‘racial or ethnic discrimination’ can be overcome through knowledge of the Other. Moreover, the assessment of public policies through ‘interculturality figures and best practice’ developed to address the so-called ‘immigration issue’ promotes a protectionist intervention on behalf of the assumed social vulnerabilities of immigrant schoolchildren and their families, which are read as ‘problematic characteristics’. The article argues that, as a result of the approach based on the social conditions of immigrant children and their families in the Basque Country, the race issue evaporates.     

第五届全国科社学科导师工作会议在张家界市召开

２００１年８月２０日至２４日,第五届全国科学社会主义学科硕士、博士导师工作会议在湖南省张家界市召开。本次会议由湖南师范大学法学院承办,全国科社学科７个博士生培养点（中央党校、中国社会科学院、北京大学、中国人民大学、山东大学、华中师范大学、天津师范大学）的博士导师和一批有硕士学位点的硕士生导师参加了会议。 本次会议的主要任务是讨论如何根据“三个代表”的要求加强科社学科的建设。多出成果,出好成果;多出人才,出好人才。与会代表分别就学科的课程设置、教材编写、科研、师资队伍建设和研究生培养等工作发表意见…     

School choice in Chile: Is it class or the classroom?

Skeptics of school choice are concerned that parents, especially low‐income ones, will not choose schools based on sound academic reasoning. Many fear that, given choice, parents will sort themselves into different schools along class lines. How‐ever, most surveys find that parents of all socioeconomic groups cite academic aspects as important when choosing a school. Moreover, almost no parents refer to the social composition of the student body. Many advocates of choice hold up these results as proof that choice will produce desirable outcomes. However, these results may not be reliable because they may simply be verbal responses to survey items rather than indicators of actual behavior. In this research, we report on the search behavior of parents in the Metropolitan Region of Santiago, Chile, examining how they construct their school choice sets and comparing this to what they say they are seeking in choosing schools. The data indicate that parental decisions are influenced by demographics. Based on this evidence, we argue that unfettered choice may reduce the pressure on schools to improve their performance and could potentially increase stratification. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Mobilising evidence in public policy: The contribution of the evidence provider

This article contributes to the conceptualisation of evidence‐based policy through providing a framework of the key factors that influence research utilisation, including those that shape the quality of evidence provided. We apply this framework to an analysis of public policy to regulate the remuneration of freight truck drivers to improve workplace safety in their industry. Recent policymaking concerning the regulation of truck drivers’ remuneration in Australia provides an opportunity to examine the quality and utilisation of research evidence by external evidence providers in opposing political contexts. This article suggests the need for informed and vigilant scrutiny of the contributions of evidence providers to government policymaking, particularly in the case of wicked policy problems about which there are sustained ideological differences that underpin problematisation, research interpretation, and conceivable policy solutions.     

Pricing in the nuclear power industry: Public or private interest?

This paper tests empirically the Ramsey version of the public-interest theory of regulation by examining the pricing practices in the nuclear power industry, using a 1985 cross-sectional sample of 40 electric utilities. Other researchers have avoided this segment of the industry because of difficulties with nuclear fuel data, or perceived differences in the underlying production function. We show that regulators respond to political influences according to the Stigler-Peltzman version of regulation and that Ramsey pricing cannot be validated, at least for the nuclear segment of the electric power industry.     

Chav-spotting in Britain: the representation of social class as private choice

The word chav is a relatively new one in British English, used to describe a supposed social group defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “a young person of a type characterised by brash and loutish behaviour and the wearing of designer-style clothes … usually with connotations of a low social status”. Discourse on chavs in contemporary Britain has been widely implicated in the reinforcement of social inequalities. This article argues that a central element of such discourse is the representation of “everyday” British public experience as a practice of chav-spotting, of reading materials as signs of the private characteristics of those with which they are associated. This means reading class as a privately motivated phenomenon, as the product of the “choice incompetence” of chavs. This chav-spotting practice is viewed from two perspectives: (1) as a recontextualisation of class as the result of private choice; and (2) as a practice of sign-making by which meanings are articulated for publicly observable materials in accordance with (1).     

浅析二语习得课堂之教师话语

教师话语作为课堂教学的语言输入和教学媒介,对学习者习得第二语言起着非常重要的作用。论述了教师话语的意义、分类以及现状,并提出相应的改进措施:转变教师在课堂中的角色;营造轻松活泼的课堂气氛;设计组织课堂话语;增加提问的有效性;做出积极恰当的反馈。     

The effect of school district and municipal government financial health information on local tax election outcomes: evidence from fiscal stress labels in Ohio

A key informational asymmetry in local public finance is the lack of information available to local residents regarding the financial status of the school districts and local governments in which they reside. Given that voters in many states must approve property and income tax increases for these local entities, the lack of full information on the financial status of these local entities may lead to sub-optimal voting decisions. State financial intervention systems have begun to make financial problems more salient to residents, potentially alleviating these informational asymmetries. This paper examines the effect of the Ohio fiscal stress labeling program on voting outcomes and the tax-setting behavior of local officials for school district and municipal government tax referendums. We use a difference-in-differences approach to examine data from over 3000 school district and 2300 municipality property tax elections from 2004 to 2012. While we find minimal evidence that the yes vote share changed for school district referendums following fiscal stress label receipt, we find very large increases (15 to 23 percentage points) in the likelihood of referendum passage for school districts following label receipt. We do not find much evidence of changes in the likelihood of passage or the yes vote share following label receipt for municipalities, but we do find that these voting outcomes rise following label removal. We also find that local officials do not appreciably change their tax-setting behavior in response to these labels, as the size and likelihood of property tax proposal are largely unchanged following label receipt or removal.     

The private stake in public goods: overcoming the illogic of collective action

Conclusion According to the Logic of Collective Action, most actions in the service of common interests are either not logical or not collective. In a large group, the argument goes, individual action counts for so little in the realization of common interests that it makes no sense for a person to consider group interests when choosing a course of personal conduct. Only private interests are decisive. Their fulfillment, at least, depends in a substantial way on one's own behavior. Individual actions designed to achieve private advantage are therefore rational. Actions aimed at collective goods are a waste of time and effort. Occasionally, of course, a person acting on the basis of private interests may inadvertently provide some collective good from which many other people derive benefit. This is what happens in the case of the Greek shipping tycoon. But it occurs only because one person's private good fortuitously coincides with the collective good of a larger group. From the tycoon's perspective, there are no collective interests at stake in the sponsorship of an opera broadcast, only his own private interests. Nor does his decision to underwrite a broadcast take account of the other people who will listen to it. His action is a solitary one designed to serve a private interest, and it is perfectly consistent with Olson's argument concerning the illogic of collective action, because it is not grounded in collective interest and is not a case of collective behavior. Olson's theory permits people to share collective interests but not to act upon them voluntarily. The only acknowledged exception occurs in the case of very small groups, where each member's contribution to the common good represents such a large share of the total that any person's default becomes noticeable to others and may lead them to reduce or cancel their own contributions. In this instance, at least, one person's actions can make a perceptible difference for the chance of realizing collective interests, and it is therefore sensible for each person to consider these collective interests (and one another's conduct) when deciding whether or not to support group efforts. Outside of small groups, however, Olson finds no circumstances in which voluntary collective action is rational. But in fact the conditions that make collective action rational are broader than this and perhaps more fundamental to Olson's theory. They are inherent in the very ‘collectiveness’ of collective goods - their status as social or group artifacts. In the absence of a group, there can be no such thing as a collective good. But in the absence of mutual awareness and interdependence, it becomes extremely difficult to conceive of a social group. The assumption that group members are uninfluenced by one another's contributions to a collective good is no mere theoretical simplification. It may be a logical impossibility. Being a member of a group, even a very large one, implies at the very least that one's own conduct takes place against a background of group behavior. Olson's assumptions do not acknowledge this minimal connection between individual and group behavior, and they inhibit recognition of the elementary social processes that explain why slovenly conduct attracts special attention on clean streets, or why the initial violations of group norms are more momentous than later violations. It may be argued, of course, that the groups of Olson's theory are not functioning social groups with a collective existence, but only categories or classes of people who happen to share a collective interest. The logic of collective action is intended precisely to show why these ‘potential’ groups are prevented from converting themselves into organized social groups whose members act in a coordinated way. In such latent groups, perhaps, members are unaware of one another, and Olson's assumption that they are uninfluenced by one another's conduct becomes a reasonable one. Another implication, however, is that Olson's theory is subject to unacknowledged restrictions. The logic of the free ride is for potential groups. It may not hold for actual ones. The distinction is exemplified, in the case of public sanitation, by the difference between what is rational on a clean street and what is rational on a dirty one. The logic of the free ride does not make sense for the members of an ongoing group that is already operating to produce collective goods such as public order or public sanitation. While this represents a notable limitation upon the scope of Olson's theory, it apparently leaves the logic of collective action undisturbed where potential or latent groups are concerned. But suppose that a member of an unmobilized group wants her colleagues to contribute to the support of a collective good that she particularly values. Her problem is to create a situation in which such contributions make sense to her fellow members. As we have already seen in the case of the neighborhood street-sweeper, one possible solution is to provide the collective good herself. If it has the appropriate characteristics, its very existence may induce other members of the latent group to contribute to its maintenance. This is not one of those cases in which one person's private interest fortuitously coincides with the collective interest of a larger group. The neighborhood street-sweeper is acting on behalf of an interest that she is conscious of sharing with her neighbors. Her aim is to arouse collective action in support of that interest. She does not expect to pay for public cleanliness all by herself, or to enjoy its benefits all by herself. Her role bears a general resemblance to the one that some analysts have defined for the political entrepreneur who seeks to profit personally by supplying a collective good to the members of a large group (Frohlich, Oppenheimer, and Young 1971). Like the neighborhood street-sweeper, the entrepreneur finds it advantageous to confer a collective benefit on others. But the similarity does not extend to the nature of the advantage or the manner in which it is secured. The entrepreneur induces people to contribute toward the cost of a collective good by creating an organizational apparatus through which group members can pool their resources. The existence of this collection mechanism can also strengthen individual members' confidence that their colleagues' contributions are forthcoming. What the entrepreneur gains is private profit - the difference between the actual cost of a collective good and the total amount that group members are prepared to pay for it. By contrast, the neighborhood street-sweeper induces support for a collective good, not by facilitating contributions, but by increasing the costs that come from the failure to contribute. As a result of her efforts, she gains a clean street whose benefits (and costs) she shares with her fellow residents. She takes her profit in the form of collective betterment rather than private gain, and her conduct, along with the behavior of her neighbors, demonstrates that effective selfinterest can extend beyond private interest. Self-interest can also give rise to continuing cooperative relationships. The street-sweeper, acting in her own interest, brings into being a cooperative enterprise in which she and her fellow residents jointly contribute to the production of a collective good. Cooperation in this case does not come about through negotiation or exchange among equal parties. It can be the work of a single actor who contributes the lion's share of the resources needed to establish a collective good, in the expectation that its existence will induce others to join in maintaining it. The tactic is commonplace as a means of eliciting voluntary collective action, and it operates on a scale far larger than the street or the neighborhood. Government, paradoxically, probably relies on it more than most institutions With its superior power and resources, it may be society's most frequent originator of voluntary collective action. Its policies, imposed through coercion and financed by compulsory taxation, generate a penumbra of cooperation without which coercion might become ineffectual. By providing certain collective goods, government authorities can move citizens to make voluntary contributions to the maintenance of these goods. The stark dichotomy between private voluntary action and public coercion - one of the mainstays of American political rhetoric - may be as misleading as the identification of self-interest with selfishness. There is more at stake here than the voluntary production of collective goods. Continuing cooperative behavior can have other results as well. Once group members begin to expect cooperation from one another, norms of cooperation and fairness are likely to develop. Axelrod (1986) has suggested that modes of conduct which have favorable outcomes for the people who pursue them tend to evolve into group norms. Public-spirited action that serves self-interest could therefore engender a principled attachment to the common good, undermining the assumption of self-interestedness that gives the logic of collective action its bite. Laboratory studies of cooperative behavior have already demonstrated that experimental subjects have far less regard for narrow self-interest than rational choice theory requires (Dawes 1980). In one extended series of collective action experiments, however, Marwell and Ames (1981) found a single group of subjects who approximated the self-interested free-riders of Olson's theory. They were graduate students in economics.     

Black-white differences in private pensions: findings from the retirement history study.

This article compares older black workers and older white workers on coverage under private pension plans, the receipt of pension benefits upon retirement, and the job characteristics associated with both coverage and receipt. Data are from the 1969 and 1975 interviews of the Retirement History Study and describe pre-ERISA conditions among persons in their late fifties to mid-sixties. Black workers were much less likely than white workers to have been covered by a private pension on their longest job. Moreover, among those who were covered, they were less likely to have received benefits. The racial differences appear to result in part from subtantial differences on job characteristics, particularly industry.     

A crisis of trust: history,politics, religion and the polio controversy in Northern Nigeria

ABSTRACT

In the middle of 2003, disagreement over the safety of the oral polio vaccine pitted ordinary citizens and community leaders in the predominantly Muslim north of Nigeria against the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund and Nigeria's federal authorities. During the crisis that ensued, five northern states (Niger, Bauchi, Kano, Zamfara and Kaduna) banned the use of the controversial vaccine on children in their respective domains. Underpinning Obadare's paper is the assumption that the immunization crisis is best understood after considering developments in the broader politico-religious contexts, both local and global. Thus, he locates the controversy as a whole against the background of the deepening interface between health and politics. He suggests that the crisis is best seen as emanating from a dearth of trust in social intercourse between ordinary citizens and the Nigerian state on the one hand, and between the same citizens and international health agencies and pharmaceutical companies on the other. The analysis of trust is historically embedded in order to illuminate the dynamics of relations among the identified actors.     

Persistence in government spending fluctuations: New evidence on the displacement effect

In spite of Peacock and Wiseman's 1961 NBER study demonstrating the “displacement effect”, simplistic theoretical and empirical distinctions between temporary and permanent spending are common. In this paper, impulse response functions from ARMA models as well as Cochrane's non-parametric method support Peacock and Wiseman's conclusion by showing 1) government spending in the aggregate displays strong persistence to temporary shocks, 2) simple decomposition methods intended to yield a “temporary” spending series have a weak statitistical foundation, and 3) persistence in spending has increased during this century. Also, as a basic “fact” of government spending behavior, the displacement effect lends support to interest group and bureaucracy models of government spending growth.