Barbara Heyns

Solidarnosc: Reluctant Vanguard or Makeshift Coalition?

We analyze the election data from the first “almost free” political contest in the Eastern bloc, the Polish election of June 1989. Voting data for state socialist societies provide a novel source of information on the political transitions in process in East Central Europe; the source of electoral support for opposition candidates in Poland affords a glimpse of the emerging political groups that must deal with continuing economic crises while attempting to reconstruct or consolidate democratic procedures. Data on turnout and on the ecological patterning of votes for Solidarnośc and for the government coalition are reviewed. Electoral victory has transformed Solidarnośc from an opposition movement with strong trade union roots to a political coalition with a rather different constituency: the strongest relative support for Solidarnośc candidates was found in rural areas, particularly in the southeast, rather than in the urban, industrial centers where the movement was born.

Review: A Historical Sociology of Childhood: Developmental Thinking, Categorization and Graphic Visualization, by André Turmel. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 362 pp.

That does not fit on one dimension. The Charles E. Osgood tradition from the 1950s, much enriched by the affect control theory developments recently (e.g., Smith-Lovin and Heise 1988), would fit a good deal better. That work also helps to study experimentally one of Sunstein’s sources of crippled epistemology: his suggestion of ‘‘inherent rhetorical advantage’’ of some arguments. Most of the middle of the book is about the various ways that a crippled epistemology can take place in such small groups. For many of these, the generalization to everyday life and politics is deeper in Erving Goffman’s Strategic Interaction (1969). But Sunstein’s book gives a quicker survey in smaller doses, and he is as good a writer as Goffman. Sunstein’s is a fun book to read. Now to a brief comment on the crippling of Sunstein’s epistemology, adopted mostly from the experimental branch of behavioral economics, which usually uses, for example, one causal variable, often dichotomous, and almost always uncalibrated. Variation is usually created by a verbal manipulation. The lack of calibration means the size of the effects cannot be quantitatively estimated, and causal strength cannot be generalized quantitatively to the world, and so the cause cannot be compared with other causes: ‘‘rational action,’’ cultural socialization, or degrees of uncertainty. Consequently when Sunstein generalizes to real-world group behavior, his level of ethnography is perforce ‘‘shallow,’’ in the sense that the complexity of the situation cannot be analyzed in any nuanced way with only one variable. His scholarship in the descriptions he gives is almost always good, but none of it would ‘‘complexify the mind’’ of the reader. The experiment supports a model, then (as also happens with models from ordinary microeconomics) comes to the real world and asks a single question. Since the variables are ordinarily not calibrated, that one question cannot manage the additional question of ‘‘Is the effect important?’’ If one calls it ‘‘terrorism’’ when analyzing young male Muslims and ‘‘drone attacks’’ when analyzing American soldiers in Pakistani mountains, one has no metric for comparing effects. I have talked a lot about public affairs in the last 50 years, but am only a bit less extreme left than that 16-year-old, suggesting a small effect. I am myself addicted to the method of building simple models, ‘‘sometimes true theories,’’ as James S. Coleman called them, where a plea of ‘‘ceteris paribus’’ excuses us from specifying scope conditions of theories. The recklessness of then generalizing to the world raises the a priori probability that Sunstein or I have the hypothesis right high enough to say, ‘‘This might be worth studying seriously, with calibrated variables for generalization of experiment to world, with deep description of the context so as to study the scope of the theory.’’ Sunstein is a brilliant writer, learned and clever. I recommend him strongly to those who would like to dress up our theoretical apperceptive mass with slightly higher a priori probabilities about public opinion, terrorism, or the epistemological virtues of the First Amendment’s free speech provisions. And may we come to calibrate an independent variable.

35.99 paper. ISBN: 9780521705639:

While educational reform is scarcely a new hat, market reforms have become prominent feathers in the policy cap. Arguments in favor of educational markets in this country are based partly on economic theories, and partly on comparisons between private and public schools; invariably, however, the deficiencies of U.S. public education are rehearsed. John Chubb and Terry Moe (1990), for example, argue that efforts to create effective schools have failed, and that democratically controlled public education should be abandoned in favor of an open market in schooling. Effective schools are characterized by a cluster of common traits: strong leadership, responsible teachers, clear goals, high standards, and strong parental support. These characteristics are instrumental for fostering and sustaining high achievement; moreover, they tend to be associated with institutional autonomy, such as that found in the private sector. The agenda for public education should be set by parents, teachers, and students, rather than external groups such as state and local bureaucracies, teachers unions, civic authorities, taxpayers, and even business leaders. Market mechanisms are the best way to return educational control to consumers. Schools should be legally autonomous institutions, allowed to structure their own curriculum, governance, and personnel relations, and “to operate as they see fit.”

Markets for Organizational Reform

Teaching, as a profession, has changed considerably in the last several decades. Moreover, by policy design, the profession is likely to undergo even more extensive changes during the next decade. Educational reform has become centered on the teaching force, rather than the schools; accountability, examinations for certification and recertification, and salary incentives are among the most frequently mentioned proposals to enhance the quality and quantity of teachers. Moreover, dramatic increases in educational policy activity by the states have created an altered environment for teachers. States have mandated changes in the standards and legal requirements for graduation and instituted minimum competency tests, causing modifications in both the curriculum and teacher recruitment and staffing patterns. States require exams for certification and recertification, while grappling with career ladders and increased salaries for teaching. Finally, the emphasis on increasing professionalism and enhancing the status of teachers is likely to create change in the profession.