http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/cat_239010.html 老人告訴男孩，這城裡只有湖沒有洋，但一想到亞紀，男孩就不敢絕望。 zh-tw Roodo Blog System All Rights Reserved 精闢原文



艾柏特 - 11/21/06 4:34:27 am
Dear Shouj,

You eloquently wax about new directions for the development of the social science. I like this article a lot. Regarding”人類的智識，仍可以被切割成自然科學、人文哲學、社會科學三大板塊嗎,” my department has recently recruited a bunch of scholars and graduate students, in an attempt to unite the political science, gene studies and evolutionary psychology. In some sense, this cutting edged approach, such as twin studies regarding their political behavior, merges social science and natural science. It remains unknown if this approach will be another scientific paradigm. But this approach efficiently solves a causality problem (we can be sure that X causes Y, rather than the other way around) and a non-falsifiability problem. The latter has been a big threat to not only European schools such as neo-Marxism, but also American schools such as positivism.

We had several discussions before about the statistic approach modern social scientists use. You are right in this article about the nonlinear relationship in many human behaviors (we still can handle this problem sometimes in statistic though). But except for using crude statistical measurements of political behaviors in many areas, I cannot think of a better way to falsify our theory. Perhaps the new direction in my department is a hope, even though I do not agree with some of their findings regarding race. I was married to racism studies, haha.

Sorry for this long message and I hope everything goes well for you.



shouj - 11/21/06 6:11:23 am
Dear Albert,

我對於「演化論」所衍生思維的重新興起，不抱任何興趣。科際整合不是硬湊配對的心智遊戲。

人類社會結構(structure)是人為的(human actions)，並非如生物體般會自我更生演化進展，同時雖人類(actor)相當程度受到這結構體之趨迫，但並非是單方面的，人類的social actions還是驅迫著結構性的改變，英國社會學家紀登斯(Giddens)就強調，人與社會結構是互動的，所要探討的是agent為何，而非結構壓人還是人領導結構的問題。

「演化論」的思維，就是嘗試建立一套人類行為的「血統族譜」，基本上仍是建立在「可測知measurable」、「可證實validity」的scientific method方面，一對雙生兒即使基因排列再怎麼close，其投票行為仍是probability的問題，socialization & unintentional因素，仍是扮演重要角色。

試想，今天出門我本來是要投共和黨的，但是投票所前被石頭絆了一跤給摔的頭破血流，一怒之下就投了民主黨，後頭另一個本要投民主黨的被同樣石頭給搞了一下，但他還是投民主黨了，這種投票行為，政治學者或是以其「不可預知性」或是「非理性」因素，而將其摒除在研究樣本之外，但在數度close call差幾百票的大選結果，這種reality你要如何做「科學性」解釋？這不是「天意」一句話，就可以兩手一攤把學者的學術責任promise給扔到一邊去。

韋伯(Weber）不是也提供了subjective rationality這個可能性研究方向嗎？uncertain and complex reality是人類社會的實際狀態，難道學者就只能坐在一旁抱怨自己的世界太複雜太讓人難以捉摸了嗎？或是，就只能將世界強放進一個抽象的實驗室中，做一些自得其樂的論文研究聊此殘生了嗎？

政治行為除統計模型之外，是否有alternative method to "make science?" 答案是應該有的，這正就是我們做高等智識研究的puzzle，是不？理論theory應該是經驗事實的結晶，並非是規範人類心智行為的測試框框。

艾柏特 - 11/21/06 6:44:37 am
Dear Shouj,

I like some of your arguments there. Like you, I am a political science student who leans toward a sociological type of thinking. I buy into many notions by Weber, Marx and even Giddens. Here are some evolutionary psychologist and social genetist response to your criticisms. They do not necessary represent my opinion. But since I am taking an evolutionary psychology class this semester, I feel it necessary to clarify some of your misunderstanding of this approach.

First, genotype is not “the” only determinist factor. The well known G(gene)X E (environment) formula explains human behaviors. The majority of current social scientists pay their exclusive attention to the E side. To be fair to you, my question of this formula is that how many factors, like the E and G, can be still included.

Second, genotype only “probabilistically” predicts behavior. They are always some outliers there like your Democrat and Republican example. My question to that is how big the portion of these outliers. If those outliers are in influential positions in our society, it would be very important to study them. A good example is the studies of the personality of presidents. It would be utterly naive to predict “all” human behaviors since it is completely impossible. Even for natural scientists, lots of them experience the same difficulties.

Third, I believe that you know R square and the internal validity. Unfortunately, the current research that uses the psychological approach, such as self report attitudes, and the sociological approach, such as culture studies in my Master’s thesis, have a much lower level of R square and internal validity than gene studies have. The well known 2005 twin studies by an Australia academic institute has even a 0.89 of R square. This level of R square is rarely seen in typical social science research. Substantial gene studies have similar predictive power.

Shouj, trust me. In many dimensions, I am with you. But it is helpful for us to think what sociologist perspective CANNOT do and what genetic perspective CANNOT do. No approach is panacea. We should always leave some room for revising our preexisting ideas.

]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2503577.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2503577.html 傷眼系列 Academic Tue, 21 Nov 2006 07:21:39 +0800 On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--for ever."

--from Nineteen Eighty-Four




The British author George Orwell, pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, b. Motihari, India, June 25, 1903, d. London, Jan. 21, 1950, achieved prominence in the late 1940s as the author of two brilliant satires attacking totalitarianism. Familiarity with the novels, documentaries, essays, and criticism he wrote during the 1930s and later has since established him as one of the most important and influential voices of the century.

Orwell's parents were members of the Indian Civil Service, and, after an education at Eton College in England, Orwell joined ( 1922 ) the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, an experience that later found expression in the novel Burmese Days ( 1934 ). His first book, Down and Out in Paris and London ( 1933 ), was a nonfictional account--moving and comic at the same time--of several years of self-imposed poverty he had experienced after leaving Burma. He published three other novels in the 1930s: A Clergyman's Daughter (1935), Keep the Aspidistra Flying ( 1936 ), and Coming Up for Air ( 1939 ). His major works of the period were two documentaries: The Road to Wigan Pier ( 1937 ), a detailed, sympathetic, and yet objective study of the lives of nearly impoverished miners in the Lancashire town of Wigan; and Homage to Catalonia ( 1938 ), which recounts his experiences fighting for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was wounded, and, when the Communists attempted to eliminate their allies on the far left, fought against them and was forced to flee for his life.

Orwell's two best-known books reflect his lifelong distrust of autocratic government, whether of the left or right: Animal Farm ( 1945 ), a modern beast-fable attacking Stalinism, and Nineteen Eighty-Four ( 1949 ), a dystopian novel setting forth his fears of an intrusively bureaucratized state of the future. The pair of novels brought him his first fame and almost his only remuneration as a writer. His wartime work for the BBC (published in the collections George Orwell: The Lost Writings, and The War Commentaries) gave him a solid taste of bureaucratic hypocrisy and may have provided the inspiration for his invention of "newspeak," the truth-denying language of Big Brother's rule in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Orwell's reputation rests not only on his political shrewdness and his sharp satires but also on his marvelously clear style and on his superb essays, which rank with the best ever written. "Politics and the English Language" ( 1950 ), which links authoritarianism with linguistic decay, has been widely influential. The four-volume Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell was published in 1968.

Richard A. Johnson

Bibliography: Atkins, John, George Orwell ( 1955 ) ; Buitenhuis, P., and Nadel, I. B., George Orwell: A Reassessment ( 1988 ) ; Crick, B., George Orwell: A Life ( 1980 ) ; Kalechofsky, Roberta, George Orwell (1973); Kubal, David L., Outside the Whale: George Orwell's Art and Politics ( 1972 ) ; Lee, Robert A., Orwell's Fiction ( 1969 ) ; Meyers, Jeffrey, A Reader's Guide to George Orwell ( 1977 ) and, as ed., George Orwell ( 1975 ) ; Oxley, B. T., George Orwell ( 1969 ) ; Patai, D., The Orwell Mystique: A Study in Male Ideology ( 1984 ) ; Reilly, P., George Orwell: The Age's Adversary ( 1986 ) ; Stansky, P., and Abrahams, W., The Unknown Orwell ( 1972 ) and The Transformation ( 1979 ) ; Steinhoff, William, George Orwell and the Origins of 1984 ( 1975 ) ; Williams, Raymond, ed., George Orwell: A Collection of Critical Essays ( 1974 ) ; Woodcock, George, The Crystal Spirit ( 1966 ) ; Zwerdling, Alex, Orwell and the Left ( 1974 ) .

Text Copyright © 1993 Grolier Incorporated
]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2462086.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2462086.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sun, 12 Nov 2006 06:09:57 +0800
The finale week of reading give us three general ideas. First, institutions matter in the sense that the institutional arrangement such as party control and election influence the policy outcome (Besley and Case, 2003). Second, institutions serve the interests of the socially advantaged (Przeworski, 2003) Finally, procedural justice rather than substantive outcome explains why policy recipients are happy with the institutional outcome (Smith and his colleagues, 2004; Tyler, 2001.)

These three notions altogether shows a possibility where ordinary Americans might be satisfied with an unfair institutional outcome simply because the institutional procedures seem fair to them. Put differently, ordinary Americans rely on their feelings rather than utility calculation to evaluate institutional work. If this is the case, institution, largely controlled by those who governs, could on the one hand continue their “contrivance” to protect the benefits of the advantaged and creates a seemingly fair institutional procedure that satisfy citizens on the other.

In Przeworski's Marxist type of explanation, institution protects the interest of the powerful, or bourgeoisie (p.14). To me ironically the workers would not revolt largely because the exploitation of the work force by capitalists is significantly compensated by those workers’ perception of a fair institutional process. If all these descriptions have been empirically supported, then the function of institution in a capitalist democracy is normatively bad.

What I am conveying in this paper is that procedure justice cannot be normatively justified if an institutional outcome is far from fairness. The affirmative action policies are such a good example. In the American politics, many “nominally” liberal politicians gain the political supports of electorates, especially the socially disadvantaged, by exploiting the symbols of affirmative action. So long as policy procedures are related to the title of affirmative action (as opposed to, for example, the racial quota), the politicians proposing those procedures would encounter few obstacles and embrace many supports.

However, it remains a question if those nominally liberal politicians really get done those liberal polices. The symbols of the affirmative action may humanitarianly decorate the institutional process and makes it a legitimate one regardless of the possibility for us to have an unfair
institutional outcome.

Concepts like “path dependence” in Przeworski’s article are institutional functions. Institution blocks transformation because institution is the product of the interest of the socially advantaged.

More importantly, policy recipients who are appeased by an ostensibly fair institutional process but unconcerned with the institutional outcomes stabilized the operation of the status quo, the current institution in particular. Path dependence is thus a routinized pattern that might persistently suppress certain social groups. Those suppressed groups remain silent because the institutional process seems fine to them. If a democracy heavily relies those types of institutions as described, this would be a crisis to the modern democracy.
]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2462014.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2462014.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sun, 12 Nov 2006 05:27:19 +0800

A general contribution of Kevin Smith’s book The Ideology of education and his Perspective article is that he alerts students about the “ideological attempt” to manipulate the educational policy research. As he points out in the preface of his short book, it is more interesting to see “who wants it to work and why” rather than “what works” in the data-driven, quantitative educational policy studies. An evaluation of Smith’s book is well put in Cilve Belfied’s book review: this book at least starts to acknowledge the importance of the ideological bias in the educational policy research.

As a critic of the advantage of the choice schools, however, Smith only weakly shows that non-choice schools perform better in general. Simply showing us the problem of the voucher, charter and even religious schools, Smith fails to tell us that the public school do not have those problems, or at least, public schools tackle those problems more effectively than do private schools. In chapter 2, culture rather than education is shown to enhance economic performance. Even though this empirical result contradicts the functionalist argument supporting the utility of the choice schools, the result in the chapter 2 says nothing about the causal relationship between the public school education and the economic growth. Many of those independent variables are educational factors “in general.”

The results in Charter 3 may lend more supports to Smith’s arguments, and yet it is still not a direct strike at the heart of the argument supporting the choice schools. The focus of the table 3.2 is such that charter schools undermine one of the educational functions: racial equality in the educational outcome. The absence of an overarching, systematic index of public school as an independent variable in the table 3.2 makes it hard to compare public and private schools in the issue of racial equity.

The empirical result in Chapter 4 follows the same problem. We see religious schools systematically expose their students to the religious doctrines, more so than inculcate students professional knowledge. But this chapter hardly says anything related to the capability of public schools to enhance the quality of professional education.

Regarding the civic culture function of the private schools in chapter 5, Smith even acknowledges the “Catholic school effect.” Even though the Catholic school effect is not equivalent with the private school effect in general, it is hard to deny that Catholic school is a type of private school. This type of school has indeed done a better job in educating civically engaged students. All in all, a general impression of reading this book is that choice schools are “not necessarily” better than non-choice schools in many dimensions. The general result of this book seems to show a tie between the utilities of the choice schools and that of the non-choice schools, even though the choice schools still have some deficiencies. We, however, did not empirically see the explicit advantage of the non-choice or the public school education.

Another concern I have is the way the institutional factors are treated in Smith’s book. Simply taking types of school (voucher, charter, public and etc.) as forms of institutions might not be far enough. If it is possible to see more elements of the market mechanism imbedded in public schools and examine the effect of those elements, we might have an innovative way to compare the utilities of the public school with that of private school. Charter school is such a good example. Charter school is public school but it is only slightly regulated by government policies. In other words, charter schools are the combination between the market logic and the commonwealth consideration.

Dr. Smith could have examined the institutional factors in a deeper way. For example, he could have decomposed “an entire public school system” into subunits and seen what of those subunits reflect the market logic. We could see the variety of the institutional subunits across different public school systems by examining, for example, whether the local school members in a district are elected (such as in the Texas independent school districts) or nominated (like in some school districts in UK.) If proponents of the choice school are right, we could see that those public school systems consisting of more market oriented mechanism are more likely to systematically show its utility (in dimensions like civic engagement among students and so on) By decomposing the school types into institutional subunits, we might see a competitive relationship more between the market logic and the commonwealth logic and less between choice and non-choice schools. Similarly, some private schools might exist in a district where those schools are subject to a great deal of public policy constraints. If private school proponents are right, then those private schools that somewhat resemble the public schools logically performs worse in general.
]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2462010.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2462010.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sun, 12 Nov 2006 05:23:39 +0800 enter ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2449908.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2449908.html 傷眼系列 Academic Fri, 10 Nov 2006 01:08:54 +0800
A major problem of this book Policy Paradox is that Deborah Stone did not offers us convincing policy solutions even though she has realistically pointed out the difficulties of defining policy goals and measuring policy problems. The reason for this weakness is a straightforward one: Stone has underestimated the utility of the logical positivism in the policy studies. The logical positivism has been able to provide us with value-free, scientific solutions even though theses solutions are not free of criticism either.

My evaluation of her book in this reaction paper centers on this question: if there is no possibility of presenting objective policy solutions, how could, in Stone’s term, the “policy paradox” problem be solved? This problem is hardly solved if her theoretical scheme is adopted. Even in the last chapter that deals with Affirmative Action, Stone cannot convince people of her preference for adopting the Affirmative Action. Stone encounters obstacles to finding empirically useful policy solutions in the theoretical castle she built. I have some suspicions about her theoretical arguments.

First, she tends to overstate the importance of ambiguities in the policymaking process. Certainly, politicians or policymakers frequently enjoy the benefits of enacting ambiguous policies. But ambiguities are not always a powerful tool in the political arena. In controversial issues like abortion, constituents like to see their congressmen “tough” enough in representing their pro-choice or pro-life interests. In fact, we have seen that many staunch conservative and liberal candidates before elections claim to have a high reputation for their unambiguous voting records in the past. Even when a bill is close to being passed, many originally modest politicians are forced to reveal their ideological faces. Many politicians’ attitudes toward the issue of the gay marriage are an example. Ambiguities occasionally do politicians and policymakers more harm than good.

Second, much as the mutually contradictory essences of two policy goals (efficiency and quality, for example), many of the policy solutions Stone offers are also mutually contradictory. For example, we have difficulties simultaneously adopting the solutions of “rights” and “rules” in the gun control issue. A mayor also have a hard time knowing when to use “inducement” rather than “power” as a policy solution of a controversy as to whether his city should adopt an educational voucher system. The definition of “solution” in Stone's book sounds rather like the restatement of her theory of “problems.” Stone’s theory of policy solution is not feasibly appealing. In her book she does give us many typologies that distinguish the rational version and the Polis version of the policy solution. But nowhere can we gain useful information as to applying her solution strategies to the real world situations. However, Stone has acknowledged in places of her book that her ambition is to help policymaking practitioners solve the policy paradox problem. In this sense Stone’s work is not successful.

Finally, students in the policy studies might agree with me that Stone relies on, if only with a soft tone, a “constructionist” approach to develop her theory. She offers criticism to the model of rational decision-making, telling readers about the weakness of that model in explaining the policymaking reality. But Peter Deleon or Anne Ingram and Helen Schneider, whose works also largely rely on the constructionist approach, may point out that Stone’s theory is not a democratic one.

If we examine the policy solutions and policy goals in this book, we would notice that Stone’s policy solution only weakly solves the “participation problem.” Solutions as inducement, rules and powers are devised in the interests of the people who govern. Even the solution of facts, according to Stone, is framed as the propaganda of the special interests. The most democratic one might be the “solution of rights.” But in the rights chapter Stone still spent the majority of the space discussing the legal content of rights, a rather elite perspective of how rights look like.

In her attempt to adopt the constructionist approach, Stone probably would have thought that one of the important dimensions of the constructionist approach utilized in her theory is democracy: more citizen participation, more transparent decision-making process and the like. But in her book, we see a picture where influential special interests and policymakers selfishly frame policy issues and policy solutions, rather than a picture where the interest of the public is largely sacrificed because of those greedy rent-seeking behaviors. Thus in the democratic sense, Stone's theory is not a successful one.


]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2449869.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2449869.html 傷眼系列 Academic Fri, 10 Nov 2006 01:00:33 +0800 The evaluation of Schneider and Ingram's book in this reaction paper is threefold. Two are criticisms raised to the two main typologies in chapters five and six. The last evaluation refers to the feasibility of subjecting their theoretical models to empirical examinations.

Regarding the first criticism, Schneider and Ingram are as ambitious as Lowi because they try to create realistic typologies. In chapter five we see the target population is categorized into four types: advantaged, dependents, contenders and deviants. Much like the difficulty Lowi has encountered, however, this typology might be weak in its empirical applicability. The dependent and deviant types are frequently representative of one single group. Those who have a very weak social economic status often economically rely on the governmental assistance on the one hand and create many social problems like crime on the other.

The African American group is such a good example. Thus how we can empirically classify those groups who have both the dependents’ and deviants' characteristics merits more theoretical clarification. Similarly, the advantaged and contender groups might frequently refer to a same group. A conservative wealthy Republican who opposes gun control, for example, is hardly defined as a member of the advantaged or the contender groups.

Even if we might have a chance to categorize different people, different parties in power would create different definitions of advantaged, contenders, dependents and deviants. When a Republicans president is in power, an African American who is simultaneously a food stamp recipient and a drug abuser may be more likely to be defined as a deviant rather than a dependent. Thus economically helping such a minority might increase the level of risk for the Republican government, according to the scheme of Schneider and Ingram. We can also image that for a Democratic president that African American is less likely to be subject to the deviant category than the dependent category.

A second criticism is raised to the major theoretical arguments in the chapter six. That is, Schneider and Ingram tend to overestimate the policymaking influence of scientists and professionals. Schneider and Ingram probably acknowledge the fact that politicians, the ones who are still the “policymaking king” in the current political system, decide whether or not the opinions of scientists and professionals are taken into account. More often than not, the policy suggestions, regardless of its constructed or scientific essence, offered by the policy experts are viewed merely as a justification for a “political argument.” It is rarely seen that a professional opinion commands a politician to make a political decision. In this sense the policymaking influence of professionals and scientists are still limited.

More importantly, if, as Schneider and Ingram analyze, the chances of a “value neutral” opinions given by the policy experts are unlikely, then many policymaking controversy remains unsettled; actually, the controversy will never be settled. Educational voucher policy is a good example. As Kevin Smith’s worries in a Perspective article, two voucher scholars who have received identical scientific training could offer polarized policy suggestions, largely because of their voucher research funded by two different ideological educational institutes.

The last evaluation is about the feasibility of empirically examining Schneider and Ingram’s typology in chapter five. Certainly their book deals with “policy design.” But we cannot be clear about if their theory is an empirical one unless their theory, despite currently being a “research design,” is subject to empirical examination in the future. In the typology where the advantaged, contender, dependent and deviant groups create different levels of political risks and opportunities, we can empirically expect that candidates during their elections are likely to propose those policies that bring in “political opportunities” such as reputation; we also expect those policy ideas that incur the cost of risk to candidates will be avoided. Thus in the typology in page 114, we should see, in past elections, significantly more policy proposals in the undeserving-weaker cell (the upper figure) and in deserving-stronger cells (the lower figure), when compared with their counterparts in each figure.

This empirical examination could even go further. We would not know if those policies incurring the cost of risk are really risky to the candidates who embrace those policies, unless we see those candidates are more likely to lose in the elections than other candidates who did not do so. Schneider and Ingram have many quality typologies because these typologies are frequently falsifiable. Thus future research could spend efforts empirically testing these typologies.
]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2449815.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2449815.html 傷眼系列 Academic Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:45:42 +0800 A major problem of the attitudinal model is that the empirical evidence did not support that model. According to Segal and Spaeth, the ideology of a justice should be persistent across different issues and enduring over time (p.69.) if the attitude model holds. That is, if, for example, justice Scalia is conservative in the criminal procedure issue, he should have been equally conservative in the federal taxation issue. But it is not the case in table 6.8 (p.251) Indeed, this kind of discrepancies occurs from time to time in the empirical evidence presented in this book. Segal and Spaeth acknowledge this loophole in a couple of places (p.287 and p.359.)

Second, in the attitudinal model, it is not clear how liberal or conservative a justice should be is counted as a liberal or conservative justice. For instance, if justice Brennan is liberal, it is when he is compared with justice Rehnquist. But Justice Brennan would seem conservative when compared with justice Marshall. The use of the concept of relativity in the attitudinal model to define justices' ideological backgrounds is problematic. In a strict theoretical sense of the attitudinal model, when a justice is liberal, he should always keep his liberal predisposition regardless this predisposition is examined on the conference vote stage or on the final vote stage.

When a liberal justice in his or her entire career is given ten times of chances to vote on an issue like abortion, he or she should consistently vote to support a pro-choice decision. There should not have been any exceptions. What Segal and Spaeth have shown us, however, is that in the real word even a stubbornly conservative justice cannot all the time cast a conservative vote (see pp.246-251). What we have seen in the empirical evidence is that the situation of tradeoffs between conservative and liberal justices occurs from time to time. This situation is such that the least conservative justice in a minimum winning coalition is possibly assigned the right to write an opinion, because his written opinion is likely to change the attitude of those liberal justices who originally dissent. Yet this situation “should not” have existed if the attitudinal model holds.

Tradeoffs among justices implies possibilities where diehard liberal or conservative justices vote in ways inconsistent with their ideologies. The voting behaviors of justices described in the book seem more a strategic one, less an attitudinal one. In other words, “the strategic model” has its utility here.

Segal and Spaeth's supporting evidence for their attitudinal model is often “with a limited scope” and that is why their model frequently lose an explanatory power when empirically examined in a more systematic way (such as the case in the tables from pages 246 to 251.) For example, Segal and Spaeth state that the self-assignment of chief justices or senior associate justices shows why the attitudinal model holds. It is not necessarily so! This kind of empirical evidence at best indirectly tells us that chief justices' or senior associate justices' behaviors reflect their policymaking purposes, but it says nothing of other justices. This book is full of empirical evidence that only weakly support the attitudinal model.
]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2449811.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2449811.html 傷眼系列 Academic Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:44:35 +0800
Jeffery Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky raise a similar concern in their book about the definition of failure programs. “Program delay is often difficult to distinguish from program failure. (p.122)” Their argument and the criticism raised in the first paragraph both point out the unclearness of the dependent variable in the implementation approach. When assessing the performance of FEMA in Hurricane Katrina, can we say that the program prepared by FEMA for salvaging the afflicted New Orleans has failed? When the media accused FEMA of their failure to implement the policy of helping traumatized people in New Orleans “in time,” the media does not seem to regard a “delayed” policy implementation as a successful policy implementation. An initially weak program in the implementation process can be retried and then strengthened. If one counts that initially weak program as a failure program before that program will be retried and successfully implemented, I do not see any reason why we cannot see that program as a successfully accomplished one later. Thus a conceptual vagueness in defining the outcome or output of the implementation process deserves a clearer explanation in the future.

Another point I find interesting is that implementation scholars tend to see an easiness to generate consensus over the goal rather than the means of a policy. Is it really the case? Charles Lindblom in his seminal article The Science of Mudding Through argues that different policymakers have different values of a single policy. Therefore, to generate a consensus over what a value guiding a policy should be is rather difficult. (Whether the belief in economic individualism or humanitarianism should guide the policymaking of affirmative action is an example) I cannot be sure if Lindbolm would have value equivalent to goal here. But Lindblom did paraphrase value and objective (p.83).

Also, Lindblom suggests that one means can be preferred to another and the comparison among different means relatively easily convince policymakers of the legitimacy of that preferred means. Thus the comparison helps an unfinished policy move forward. In Lindblom’s scheme, in order to see progress in policymaking, generating a consensus over the value of enacting a policy “may” be unnecessary, because it is possible to “defend a policy as good without being able to specify what it is good for. (p.84)” In a word, for Lindblom it is easier to generate consensus over means rather than values or objectives. But the “order” in the implementation approach is totally opposite. Whether it is easier to gain consensus among policymakers over the means or the objective of a policy implementation is debatable.
If, as Deleon argues in his article, implementation scholars tend to examine failure rather than successful policy implementations, then Lindblom’s notion might tell us that not only the difficulty of gaining a generally accepted means but also the difficulty of having a widely shared value will lead to an unsuccessful policy implementation. If this is true, it makes it more difficult for us to theoretically understand what a policy implementation is for. In other words, we might lack an independent variable that predicts the success of policy implementation.

Yet, a lot of policy implementations in the American government have been “successfully” made in the past. If neither a widely shared means nor goals are easily gained, we might speculate that those successful implementations just occurred by chance. That is, it was just damn luck that has made the democratic American government work.
]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2449793.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2449793.html 傷眼系列 Academic Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:40:46 +0800
The utility of the cost analysis approach is impressive when it is used to evaluate the performance of business activities. However, when this approach is applied in the evaluation of some policymaking performance, its utility is much more limited. An indiscriminate use of the cost analysis, CBA in particular, across different policy areas could be misleading; especially when a policy output cannot be properly measured in an pecuniary context. Educational policies are a good example raised here to illuminate my criticism to the utility of the cost analysis.

Consider the goal of education. Is the educational goal to increase the level of students' mathematical performance? Or is the goal to strengthen the self-esteem of educated adult, enhance the appreciation of reading material, or others? Certainly, they are all parts of the educational goals. It is, however, unreasonable to argue that the educational goal is to save tax money invested in school devices such as overhead projectors. Or if one argues that the education goal, in its attempt to foster an economically limited government, is to cut the budget of providing poor students with subsidized lunch, this argument even subjects itself to moral criticism. The inability of the cost analysis to convincingly evaluate the performance of educational policies is due to the built-in function of the cost analysis, that is, saving tax dollars is preferred to spending tax dollars. But in a good educational policy, inculcating quality citizens, if this is an impeccable educational goal, is first priority, even though it might spend more tax money than the economically conservative wish.

Another reason why the cost analysis cannot convincingly evaluate the performance of policies like a voucher school system lies within a deeper theoretical discrepancy. As Kevin Smith argues in his book chapter, “efficiency” captures the major concern of the cost analysis. “Efficiency is nothing more than a characteristic of the (fair) distribution of resources. (p.13) ” However, it remains unclear how efficiency plays a role in evaluating educational policies.

Again, what is the ultimate goal of education? Is the educational goal, for example, to give “every single” high school graduate in America a chance to attend colleges, even though a limited budget is enough for giving those graduates only the first year tuition waiver? If this is the case then we can imagine that there will be a lot of them dropping out of school after their first year of college education. Thus this type of educational policy is of bad quality since the education given to those dropouts is not long enough. But this policy is efficient because it gives every single graduate an equal chance to attend colleges. Here we see why the efficiency consideration cannot fit in the educational policy context.

Lawrence Mohr has shown us a critical factor about how to evaluate policies: outcome of interest. If the outcome of interest in an educational policy is to give a quality education where students must receive a complete cycle of education, then efficiency, another outcome of interest, falls short of becoming a good index. However, efficiency is always an underlying reason why the cost analysis can undertake the task of the policy evaluation.

To borrow a tool from economics, such as the cost analysis, in measuring policy performance reflects another problematic analogy: consumers and citizens. Policy analysts often intentionally ignore the distinction between consumers and citizens and this ignorance legitimizes the use of the cost analysis in the policy evaluation area. Citizens and consumers differ, however, in that, unlike consumers, citizens do not always economically consider those public services provided and citizens' obligation requested for.

For a generous liberal, for example, even a request from his government to strengthen an affirmative action policy by increasing his tax rate might gain his permission. That generous liberal might be very satisfactory because his government clearly shows how his tax money has been given to those in need. Can the CBA successfully measure his satisfaction in a pecuniary term? Satisfaction and dollars are after all two different things. Thus, the scope of use of the cost analysis should be greatly narrowed when considering the differences between consumers and citizens.
]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2449757.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2449757.html 傷眼系列 Academic Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:33:07 +0800
Sarah Binder's book Stalemate provide us with a very good chance to compare her finding with the finding of other scholars regarding the importance of “party” in the Congress. A major result in this book is such that party polarization within one chamber and a divided government (one party controls House and Senate and the other controls White House) lead to an unproductive Congress, or in her term, a stalemate problem. When Senators or House members are modest rather than ideological or, put differently, when partisanship is weak in the Congress, the bills are more likely to be passed. The 1960s is a good example when both Republican and Democrat congressmen were modest so that many influential bills got passed.

Regarding the importance of party, what does Binder's research imply? Or, how might Binder’s research correspond to Keith Krehbiel’s argument that party does not significantly matter in the Congress? First of all, the bipartisan conflict in Binder’s scheme refers to the inter-branch bipartisan conflict, namely, Senate and House controlled by one party whereas the White House by the other; the bipartisan conflict also means party polarization, that is, the ideological difference between Republican and Democrat congressmen within one chamber.

If, as Binder found, the bipartisan conflict is a significant predictor of stalemate, then party is important in the sense that party succeeds in thwarting an unjust legislative output. In this sense then Krehbiel’s argument that party is not a significant factor in influencing congressional output is challenged. However, if the task of party is to facilitate the legislative function of the Congress, then party is “not” important; especially when the Republican and Democratic parties share the partisan control of the government (House, Senate and White House.) Or when both parties within one chamber strongly polarize the ideology of their congressmen, party then fails to help the legislative function of the Congress. In this sense Krehebiel is right about that party does not influence the congressional output. In fact, he has found that the informational factor rather than the party factor facilitates the decision-making process at least at the committee or conference levels. Here, a key criterion to decide if party in Congress is influential is to see whether or not the party needs to implement the legislative function of the Congress.

The last sentence becomes a philosophical question. In a Madisonian perspective, factional interest is bad so a dominant party that commands a unified government should be prevented. Thus stalemate, the check and balance mechanism, might have been an intentional design by the constitutional framers. But if Americans do care about the efficiency of the Congress, then stalemate problem cause the public’s resentment toward itself, especially after the 1980s when the ideology of the congressmen has been greatly polarized and thus the stalemate problem aggravates. Binder does find that the stalemate problem has driven down Americans' approval of the Congress even though, she also ironically found that people do not hold accountable congressional incumbents in the elections for the stalemate problem. The public seems detached from the issue of stalemate even if they still want to see a productive Congress.
]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2446293.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2446293.html 傷眼系列 Academic Thu, 09 Nov 2006 14:57:05 +0800 SOCIAL INDIVIDUALISM, ECONOMIC INDIVIDUALSIM,
AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

*此論文提案於2006年3月美國西部政治學學會論壇(於新墨西哥州艾柏克奇),*

*以下為重點摘錄*
(繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2446241.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2446241.html 傷眼系列 Academic Thu, 09 Nov 2006 14:42:43 +0800 The theoretical model offered by Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones in their book Agenda and Instability in American Politics is not a parsimonious one. The contingent characteristics of their theoretical model, however, give rise to a strong explanatory power. There are so many theoretical perspectives worthy of students' attention in their book. One of major concerns one might have is in what condition we would have incremental policy changes and in what condition we would have drastic policy changes. Or we can even ask the question when we would have “no” policy change at all.
(繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2392090.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2392090.html 傷眼系列 Academic Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:41:07 +0800 I have been thinking the meaning of my webblog these days. As a Phd student, I am supposed to be committed to school works. Running a weblog is much like having a diary or electronic chicken. Writing something on the Internet should not have caused my grumble since there is nothing wrong with the weblog itself.
(繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2392076.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2392076.html 傷眼系列 Academic Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:36:05 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2392051.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2392051.html 傷眼系列 Academic Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:30:17 +0800
(繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2392047.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2392047.html 傷眼系列 Academic Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:29:12 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2392017.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2392017.html 傷眼系列 Academic Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:20:21 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2391666.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2391666.html 傷眼系列 Academic Tue, 31 Oct 2006 05:13:26 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2391661.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2391661.html 傷眼系列 Academic Tue, 31 Oct 2006 05:09:21 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378944.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378944.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 14:21:34 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378931.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378931.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 14:19:17 +0800 Democracy And The Policy Science is that Deleon proposes to incorporate the value of participatory democracy into the theories of policy science as if he is an activist for participatory democracy rather than a researcher of policy science. This evaluation does not suggest that the “value” is not important when constituting empirical theories in policy science. Rather, as Charles Anderson has suggested, value or what he terms “principles” is indispensable for the studies of policy science. (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378885.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378885.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 14:06:16 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378883.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378883.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 14:05:16 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378869.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378869.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 14:01:25 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378864.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378864.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 14:00:17 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378161.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378161.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 09:28:52 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378158.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378158.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 09:27:24 +0800 http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378035.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378035.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 08:17:59 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378031.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2378031.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 08:16:18 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2377964.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2377964.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 07:32:40 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2377961.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2377961.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 07:29:19 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2377958.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2377958.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 07:27:07 +0800 (繼續閱讀...); ]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2377955.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2377955.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 07:23:29 +0800
Dr. Whitt is in his 70s. It ought to be appreciated that he stands in class and teaches. He mentioned that he was kind of sick in large because he fell right before the class. Dr. Whitt tripped over the power strip that is connected to a running vaccumm. I should have requested him to have a seat during class.



]]> http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2377952.html http://blog.roodo.com/albert6811/archives/2377952.html 傷眼系列 Academic Sat, 28 Oct 2006 07:20:29 +0800