Under Two Flags: Symbolic Voting in the State of Mississippi

Participants in a specialelection held in the State of Mississippion April 17, 2001, voted overwhelminglyagainst changing the design of the state'sflag, which incorporates a symbol of theConfederacy. The determinants of voting onthe flag are analyzed and turnout rates inApril 2001 are compared with those forrecent gubernatorial and presidentialelections. We find that the flag votedivided Mississippians sharply along linesof race, class and political ideology. Akey empirical implication is that voterpositions in issue space tend to be morepolarized when political choices haveexpressive as opposed to instrumentalconsequences.     

Der Geist des „Roten Wien“ ins 21. Jahrhundert gerettet: Karl Popper Reconsidered by Malachi Haim Hacohen

Ohne Zusammenfassung Der nachstehende Text ist eine überarbeitere Fassung der Laudatio für Malachi Haim Hacohen anl?sslich der überreichung des Victor-Adler-Staatspreises in Wien am 25. April 2003. Hacohen erhielt diesen Preis für sein Werk „Karl Popper — the Formative Years, 1902–1945. Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna“, Cambridge: University Press 2000.     

Campaign-Finance Reform: A Public Choice Perspective

The Federal Election Campaign Act as passed in 1971 and amended in 1974represented landmark federal legislation. It imposed new restrictions oncampaign contributions and contained path-breaking provisions for the useof public funds to partially finance the campaigns of qualifyingpresidential candidates. The nominal intent of the legislation was torestrain the skyrocketing campaign costs and the feared abuses thatgrowing dependencies on such money engendered. Three decades later, withthe campaign spending ``arms race'' still raging. Congress sought toimpose further constraints on campaign spending with enactment of theBipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA). Competing theories ofgovernment regulation are reviewed to better understand the intent andlikely consequences of the 2002 legislation in particular and campaignfinance regulation in general. A simple model of the campaign spendingprocess highlights the likely causes of the rapid growth in campaignspending. Data and evidence are presented to test hypotheses concerningthe timing of and underlying motivations for BCRA.     

Social networks and non‐market strategy

To date, the field of non‐market strategy has little to offer in the way of an integrated perspective on the simultaneous management of strategic issues and corporate stakeholders. This paper employs social network analysis to make a number of theoretically grounded conjectures about the delicate relationships between stakeholder behaviour and issue evolution. It is found that social network analysis has the potential to enrich and integrate theoretical perspectives in the field of non‐market strategy, offering solutions to a set of previously unresolved puzzles. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Do school accountability systems make it more difficult for low‐performing schools to attract and retain high‐quality teachers?

Administrative data from North Carolina are used to explore the extent to which that state's relatively sophisticated school‐based accountability system has exacerbated the challenges that schools serving low‐performing students face in retaining and attracting high‐quality teachers. Most clear are the adverse effects on retention rates, and hence on teacher turnover, in such schools. Less clear is the extent to which that higher turnover has translated into a decline in the average qualifications of the teachers in the low‐performing schools. Other states with more primitive accountability systems can expect even greater adverse effects on teacher turnover in low‐performing schools. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.