Cambridge Core BlogLabor Strikes Are Costly, Difficult… and Effective
With teachers on strike in Los Angeles and airport workers on strike in Berlin, early 2019 already looks set to be a notable year for labor actions in Europe and the United States.…
Social Studies
Protecting Academic Freedom: Using the Past to Chart a Path Toward the Future
This blog accompanies the Forum on Academic Freedom published in History of Education Quarterly. In the past decade or so, there has been an uptick in assaults on academic freedom across the globe. Whether through watch lists, denial of visas to travel to professional conferences, firings, or detentions and jail sentences, professors and teachers are battling for the freedom to regulate their own professional lives against government (and even administrative) officials who invoke national security and patriotism to justify suppression and enforce a particular consensus on contentious issues.…
The Great Keyishian Case: lessons in academic freedom from the Cold War
When the History of Education Quarterly asked me to contribute to a symposium on academic freedom, I could hardly refuse. I had recently written a book about how anti-communist witch hunters in the late 1940s and 1950s attacked teachers and professors, and about the Supreme Court’s eventual (and much-belated) response in 1967–striking down a typical state loyalty law and announcing that academic freedom is a “a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.” That case was called Keyishian v.…
How Ideas are Replacing Identities in Nigeria’s Electoral Competition
The 2015 defeat of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) at the polls was Nigeria’s first “electoral turnover,” giving us a new narrative for the decline of dominant parties.…
How Bureaucratic Leadership Shapes Policy Outcomes: Partisan Politics and Affluent Citizens’ Incomes in the American States
Unified control of policymaking by a single political party is perhaps necessary, but not sufficient for observing policy outcomes consistent with majoritarian policy preferences.…
More bang for your buck: tax compliance in the United States and Italy
Sven Steinmo states in his book Taxation and Democracy, “Governments need money. Modern Governments need lots of money.” This is no less true today than it was twenty-five years ago when he wrote it.…
The dynamics of policy change in authoritarian countries
In democratic countries, actors inside and outside the state have various channels for expressing their concerns and influencing policy agendas. In contrast, in authoritarian countries, less inclusive institutions lead to different dynamics of policy change.…
Do the 50 American States Give Voters What They Want on Health and Immigration?
The 50 American state governments have been faced with many questions related to healthcare and immigration in the past two decades.…
Gender-Submission Gap and Women’s Underrepresentation in Political Science Journals
Women are running for U.S. public office in record numbers, offering hopes of seriously tackling the gender gap in political representation.…
When less public participation may be better public participation
Currently, policymaking is torn between two demands. On the one hand, issues become increasingly complex, calling for the incorporation of expertise in the policymaking process and increasingly complex decision-making procedures.…
How the Social Determinants of Indigenous Health became policy reality for Australia’s National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Plan
Significant health inequities persist between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and non-Indigenous Australians, resulting from the past and continuing impacts of colonisation and contemporary social, economic and cultural inequalities.…
The Evolution of Human Trafficking Policy and Its Effect on Human Trafficking Attitudes
Despite a near unanimous agreement that human trafficking is a morally reprehensible practice, there is confusion around what qualifies as human trafficking in the United States.…