A neighborly welcome? Charter school entrance and public school competition on the capital margin

Public Choice - In 1999, the Utah State Legislature allowed charter schools to enter and be administered under the broad oversight of school districts. The structure of the Utah Charter School...     

Can Political Inequalities Be Educated Away? Evidence from a Large‐Scale Reform

Over the years, many suggestions have been made on how to reduce the importance of family background in political recruitment. In this study, we examine the effectiveness of one such proposal: the expansion of mass education. We utilize a difference‐in‐difference strategy to analyze how a large school reform launched in Sweden in the 1950s, which lengthened schooling and postponed tracking, affected the likelihood of individuals with different family backgrounds to run for public office. The data come from public registers and pertain to the entire Swedish population born between 1943 and 1955. The empirical analysis provides strong support for the view that improved educational opportunities for individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds can be an effective means to reduce the social bias of elected assemblies.     

Silk dresses and lavender kid gloves: the wayward career of Jessie Craigen,working suffragist

Abstract

Occasional references to Jessie Craigen occur in the literature on the nineteenth-century women's suffrage movement, generally emphasizing her importance as a working-class suffragist. Previously unknown material throws more light on her career, revealing the eddies of love and exasperation which flowed around her. This paper discusses the various representations of Jessie Craigen to be found in letters among her friends, representations which served to paint her – sometimes warmly, sometimes dismissively – as odd, eccentric, undisciplined. It also examines the more positive sense of herself which she attempted to convey in letters to several of her middle-class promoters – as a romantic authentic in the grip of unbrookable, passionate conviction. Her story confirms the existence of a current of radical-liberal opinion within the nineteenth-century women's movement, and the difficulties which confronted those who found themselves among its paid employees