The paradox of grading systems

We distinguish between (i) voting systems in which voters can rank candidates and (ii) those in which they can grade candidates, using two or more grades. In approval voting, voters can assign two grades only—approve (1) or not approve (0)—to candidates. While two grades rule out a discrepancy between the average-grade winners, who receive the highest average grade, and the superior-grade winners, who receive more superior grades in pairwise comparisons (akin to Condorcet winners), more than two grades allow it. We call this discrepancy between the two kinds of winners the paradox of grading systems, which we illustrate with several examples and whose probability we estimate for sincere and strategic voters through a Monte Carlo simulation. We discuss the tradeoff between (i) allowing more than two grades, but risking the paradox, and (ii) precluding the paradox, but restricting voters to two grades.     

Multiwinner approval voting: an apportionment approach

Public Choice - To ameliorate ideological or partisan cleavages in councils and legislatures, we propose modifications of approval voting in order to elect multiple winners, who may be either...     

High School Exit Exams and Dropout in an Era of Increased Accountability

A key form of student‐level accountability is the requirement for students to pass high school exit exams (HSEEs) in order to receive a diploma. In this paper, we examine the impact of HSEEs on dropout during a period when these exams became more common and rigorous. Further, we study whether offering alternate pathways to graduation for students who cannot pass HSEEs moderates any dropout effects. Using a district‐grade‐level panel assembled from the Common Core of Data, we exploit the fact that new exit exam policies first affect a particular graduating class, so we can isolate the impact of exposure to HSEEs for students in one grade in a district separate from other unaffected grades in the same district. We estimate dropout effects by grade for all students, and by race, sex, and urbanicity. We find that HSEEs increase dropout rates for students in the 12th grade, with especially large effects for African‐American students. Dropout effects are uniformly larger in states that do not provide alternate pathways to receive a diploma or alternative credentials for students that cannot pass exit exams. We estimate that 1.25 percent of 12th graders in these states do not graduate with their high school class, likely due to having a diploma withheld because of inability to pass the requisite HSEE. © 2013 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Postmodern politics and the battle for the future

Abstract

The postmodern turn which has so marked social and cultural theory also involves conflicts between modern and postmodern politics. In this study, we articulate the differences between modern and postmodern politics and argue against one‐sided positions which dogmatically reject one tradition or the other in favor of partisanship for either the modern or the postmodern. Arguing for a politics of alliance and solidarity, we claim that this project is best served by drawing on the most progressive elements of both the modern and postmodern traditions. Developing a new politics involves overcoming the limitations of certain versions of modern politics and postmodern identity politics in order to develop a politics of alliance and solidarity equal to the challenges of the coming millennium.     

Public Attitudes About Land Use Policy and Their Impact on State Policy-Makers

Results from a study in Ohio, and replicated in six additionalstates, show public opinion toward state land use regulationto be aggregated around two major attitudes: the Environmentalistsstress the impact of negative developmental externalities andfavor broader review of land use decisions; the Localists areconcerned with accountability and local control of decision-making.An intensive analysis of the Ohio Land Use Work Group revealsthe policy-making elite in basic sympathy with the Environmentalists,but constrained by intra-agency rivalries and apprehensionsabout public reaction. Discussion focuses on the shifting publicconsensus toward greater land use control, and the implicationsfor state policy-making. ^*Originally read at a meeting of the Midwest Political ScienceAssociation, Chicago, 1975. The authors gratefully acknowledgefinancial assistance from the Academy for Contemporary Problems,Columbus, Ohio, and from the Ohio Office of Budget and Management.Special appreciation is expressed to the Academy's president,Ralph R. Widner, and to Dean Clark and Paul Goesling who, atthe time of the study, were affiliated with OBM. Gratitude alsoto individuals who facilitated the national-regional interviewing:David Gillespie, Brij Khare, Michael Obrey, Michael Shay, JosephThomas, and Hugh Winebrenner.     

Writing history: flow and blockage in the circulation of knowledge

ABSTRACT

Historical writing in Tanzania has had highly serious goals from the early days of the history department at the University of Dar es Salaam. Historians have aimed at the decolonization of intellectual life, the construction of a national historical identity, and the achievement of a just society. This body of well-contextualized historical writing has circulated widely within the country, but does not reach readers outside east Africa as fully as it deserves. The article explores parallels with African genomic science as a way of getting at inequalities between northern and southern countries in access to resources for academic research and publication.     

Not All are Aboard: Decolonizing Exodus in Joon-ho Bong’s Snowpiercer

This article interprets Joon-ho Bong’s Snowpiercer (2013) as a political allegory. First, we compare Bong’s film to Danny Boyle’s Sunshine (2007) and Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014), two contemporaneous films about ecological crises. We argue that Snowpiercer exposes the limits of technocratic environmentalisms that obscure the links between ecological degradation, capitalist development, and colonial domination. Second, we put Bong’s film into conversation with autonomist Marxist and postcolonial accounts of social domination and transformation. We argue that Snowpiercer is about whether or not contemporary political economy has rendered the emancipatory strategies of recent centuries obsolete. Framed this way, the film proposes that global order is still capitalist and colonialist, but that Left projects must surpass state socialism and anti-colonial nationalism. What we call Bong’s “decolonial exodus” is the demand for a real alternative to both the ideology that there is no alternative to the existing order and the pseudo-alternative of authoritarian populism.