Women in Defense of Workers: Ella Winter,the literary left,and labor journalism in California

Left-wing, middle-class journalists such as Ella Winter contributed decisively to the labor rebellion of the 1930s. In contrast to mainstream labor reporting, they practiced a form of anti-fascist, working-class journalism that consistently linked the drive for collective bargaining to a larger movement for social and economic justice. Winter and other writers such as Miriam deFord and Emily Joseph carried forward a tradition of labor defense, socialist feminism, and free speech advocacy that originated in the bohemian left of the early twentieth century. Rather than reducing women’s activism to communist intrigue or the exigencies of the economic crisis, this essay seeks out the deeper roots of women’s working-class journalism in the 1930s. It finds them in the democratic and aesthetic aspirations of the pre-Bolshevik left, even while it addresses the critical impact that the crisis of capitalism and the rise of fascism had on socialist feminist writers. Functioning as mediators, organizers, and witnesses to the movement, they bridged the gap between the middle and working classes, chronicling the experiences and articulating the aspirations of a multiracial proletariat. For these writers, radical commitment and responsible social commentary seemed entirely compatible. Out of this conviction, Winter and others helped build a cross-class coalition in California. In addition, they carved out lives of social purpose that allowed them to achieve a measure of female independence and professional achievement.     

Covid-19 and UK Universities

Universities UK (UUK) has suggested that there may be very significant losses to higher education as a consequence of Covid-19. However, losses are likely to be substantially lower than the potential losses estimated by UUK. But the magnitude of losses is very uncertain. The UUK’s proposal to restrict undergraduate enrolment per university to stop institutions poaching students is not in the interests of the most highly regarded universities, or that of students. Some rationalisation of the sector should be the price of further government support. Now is also the time to reconsider how university research is funded.     

Single-party government,Prime Minister psychology,and the diversionary use of force: theory and evidence from the British case

ABSTRACT

This paper develops expectations about the likelihood of diversionary conflict initiation by parliamentary democracies with single-party majoritarian (SPM) governments. While most of the literature on diversion and governmental arrangement claims that SPMs have little incentive and/or limited capacity to execute diversionary gambits, we contend that the structural and environmental impetuses for diversion in such states are in fact largely indeterminate. We posit that the psychological attributes of prime ministers under SPM – in particular, their level of distrust – is the most important predictor of how they view structural and environmental constraints, and thus of whether they will militarily divert from poor economic conditions. Distrustful prime ministers are predisposed to the use of force, will dwell on the costs of economic problems, and fear that co-partisan MPs (especially in the cabinet) have designs on their office. Thus, despite having a legislative majority, these leaders will choose diversionary conflict over economic policy fixes. We conduct a partial test of this hypothesis in the British case from 1945 to 2007, and our analyses provide robust support.     

Regulating technology: Can administrative agencies cope with technological change?

The debate over scientific issues has made a difficult transition from the scientific community to the public-polity process. The traditional view of scientists undertaking “pure” science in their laboratories did not envision government intervention into scientific and technological discovery through administrative agency regulation of risks associated with the results of such research. Yet examples of government regulation of technological risks abound as the nation grapples with nuclear power issues, new-drug testing, and environmental issues, to name a few. This paper considers whether the presently constituted regulatory apparatus is capable of responding to dramatic advances in technology in a timely and effective way. Concluding that it is not, the paper examines the circumscribing characteristics of the regulatory process. Then it discusses alternate approaches for regulating the risks posed by science and technology without doing too much violence to due process or the notion of public participation in the regulatory function.     

Measuring the “personal vote” of members of Congress

This paper uses a pooled time series/cross sectional research design to measure the “personal vote” of three groups of members of Congress. The personal vote is defined here as that part of a candidate's vote share that is unique to him or her. It is measured using a legislator-specific intercept for each legislator in an equation predicting vote share. The other variables in the equation account for the effects of the election year environment and the tenure of the representative. Three cohorts of representatives are analyzed: 1) those whose careers ended before 1966, 2) those whose careers began after 1965, and 3) those whose careers began before 1966 but ended after. The mean legislator-specific intercept is nearly twice as large for the first group as for the second; it is 29 percentage points larger for the first than the third. A second stage regression explains these intercepts using legislator characteristics, party affiliation, region of origin, and number of terms served. The term effects increase at an increasing rate as tenure increases for all those whose careers end after 1966. Personal vote accumulates nearly twice as fast for those first elected after 1965 as for those first elected before 1966.