Zeroing in on the Right: Education and the Partisan Expression of Authoritarianism in the United States

In this paper, we examine how the relationship between authoritarianism and partisanship is conditioned by education. Arguing against perspectives suggesting that authoritarianism is the province of the “unsophisticated,” we hypothesize that the relationship between education and Republican partisanship should be stronger among educated Americans. Moreover, going beyond previous work on how education may moderate the political impact of psychological dispositions, we also argue that partisan signals pertinent to authoritarianism come more strongly from the right, producing a pattern in which the positive relationship between authoritarianism and preference for the Republican Party over independence is stronger among the educated but the negative relationship between authoritarianism and preference for the Democratic Party over independence is not stronger among the educated. Data from the 2004 and 2008 American National Election Studies indicate clear support for both hypotheses.     

Improving the Community College Transfer Pathway to the Baccalaureate: The Effect of California's Associate Degree for Transfer

The transfer between two-year and four-year colleges is a critical path to baccalaureate attainment. Yet students face a number of barriers in transfer pathways, including a lack of coherent coordination and articulation between their community colleges and four-year institutions, resulting in excess units and increased time to degree. In this paper we evaluate the impact of California's Student Transfer Achievement Reform Act, which aimed to create a more seamless pathway between the California Community Colleges and the California State University. We investigate whether the reform effort met its intended goal of improving baccalaureate receipt, and greater efficiency in earning these degrees, among community college transfer students. We tease out plausibly causal effects of the policy by leveraging the exogenous variation in the timing of the implementation of the reform in different campuses and fields of study. We find an overall positive effect on bachelor's degree attainment. This increase is driven entirely by increased transfer rather than an increased probability of earning a BA/BS conditional on transfer. We find only suggestive evidence that the policy led to greater efficiency (i.e., fewer units at graduation) in BA/BS receipt for transfer students. These findings are broadly consistent across student subgroups.     

Czechoslovakia and its Position within the Solidarity Network of Chilean Communism: A Reflection on the Coup and Resistance against Pinochet from a Country with Worn-out Revolutionary Ideals

The article will analyse the development of the Chilean cause in the politics of Eastern Europe countries since 1973, focusing on the Czechoslovak case. On the one hand, it will prove that during the communist government Czechoslovakia played an important role in the international campaign for the resistance against the dictatorship at a worldwide level. On the other hand, it posits that the propaganda aimed at Czechoslovakia, which sought to kindle society's belief in the revolutionary ideals strongly affected after the Soviet invasion in 1968, turned out to be much less effective.