Assessing bias in professional licensing examinations by checking internal consistency

Law and Human Behavior - There are serious difficulties in using standard psychometric techniques for validating professional licensing examinations such as medical and bar examinations against...     

Heir pollution: A note on Buchanan's ‘laws of succession’ and tullock's ‘blind spot’

But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. (Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, p. 26.)     

A Tale of Two Cultures: Contrasting Quantitative and Qualitative Research

Gary Goertz Department of Political Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 e-mail: ggoertz{at}u.arizona.edu The quantitative and qualitative research traditions can bethought of as distinct cultures marked by different values,beliefs, and norms. In this essay, we adopt this metaphor towardthe end of contrasting these research traditions across 10 areas:(1) approaches to explanation, (2) conceptions of causation,(3) multivariate explanations, (4) equifinality, (5) scope andcausal generalization, (6) case selection, (7) weighting observations,(8) substantively important cases, (9) lack of fit, and (10)concepts and measurement. We suggest that an appreciation ofthe alternative assumptions and goals of the traditions canhelp scholars avoid misunderstandings and contribute to moreproductive "cross-cultural" communication in political science.     

Jefferson and Executive Power: Revisionism and the "Revolution of 1800"

Thomas Jefferson's varied and divergent statements concerningthe nature and extent of executive power seem to defy interpretation.Evidence can be gathered to support the proposition that Jeffersonwas a determined foe of Hamilton's conception of the chief executiveor that he was an active partisan of that view. The argumentof this article is that as opportunities arose, Jefferson setout to revise the public understanding of the formal powersof the president and, in so doing, moved away from his earlierposition on the extent of those powers. Jefferson's purposewas to check what he perceived to be the dangerous "monarchic"designs of the Federalists and, in turn, reinvigorate the republicanspirit of the regime. At the same time, Jefferson did not discardhis appreciation for the necessity of resorting at times toan enlarged executive authority. How Jefferson set about tobalance these elements in his revised conception of the presidencyraises in a direct fashion key questions about the role of executivepower in a popular government dedicated to the rule of law.     

Why Public Employees Rebel: Guerrilla Government in the Public Sector

Employee recalcitrance and employer reprisal are ever-present conditions in public service. Yet we have limited knowledge of the forces that move administrators away from acquiescence and toward antagonism. The authors follow the theoretical thrust of behavioral public administration to better understand administrative behavior by targeting the determinants of guerrilla government actions. They do so by presenting the results of a conjoint experiment embedded in a survey of federal bureaucrats. Findings show that decisions to pursue guerrilla activities are conditional on a multitude of factors—namely, the bureaucrat's personal views of the directive as a policy solution, the compatibility of the directive with the bureaucrat's ethical framework, the status of the person issuing the directive, and the probability that the directive might cause harm to others. Notably, these decisions generally are not affected by the probability of retribution or the expected type thereof. However, they are affected by the magnitude of harm that may ensue if orders are obeyed and not resisted.