Empirical studies often use Freedom House ratings for Political Rights and/or Civil Liberties as institutional proxies for the degree of democracy. In this study, Granger-causality tests are used which reveal that Political Rights tend to precede Civil Liberties, but not the reverse, in a panel data set of former Soviet Republics. For transition nations, Freedom House also publishes a separate ...

It is often argued, both in popular and academic literature, that there are two Israels: one religious, benighted and anti-democratic and the other secular, Western and liberal. The fact that this account dominates public discourse in Israel tells us a great deal, but the account itself tells us little about Israeli society. Actually, the most telling fault line in Israeli society lies between ...

This paper examines a key concept of democratic experimentalism, asking what is a “democratic experiment”? Starting with Donald Campbell’s argument in favor of an experimenting society, the paper critically examines whether randomized controlled experiments should be the gold standard for democratic experimentalism. This tradition of experimentalism, it is argued, values the verification of kno...

Introduction California today is the setting of dramatic demographic change. Yet higher education in the state has not reflected that diversity. Stark socioeconomic and racial gaps exist in college enrollment and achievement. At the same time, a college degree has never been more critical to career success and to promoting a democratic society. California needs to ensure that the students, facu...

A S WALL STREET TRACKS THE HEALTH OF AMERICAN BUSIness by monitoring indicators of economic productivity, so must scientists, parents, and taxpayers heed leading indicators of scientific productivity. Since mathematics is the foundation discipline for science, the state of mathematics education is a crucial predictor of future national strength in science and technology. Evidence suggests that ...

Effective policing in a democratic society must balance the sometime conflicting objectives of public safety and community trust. This paper uses a formal model of optimal policing to explore how society might reasonably resolve the tension between these two objectives as well as evaluate disparate racial impacts. We do so by considering the social benefits and costs of confrontational types of...

The author proposes that in a democratic society, education serves to establish fundamental relationships of fraternity, generating the “social capital” that bonds citizens together. Against this perspective, he examines the cultural values transmitted in the educational systems of six Latin American countries. He finds that following world-wide trends, the curricula have shifted from privilegi...

While the ideas of Western democracy and individualism are increasingly popular and influential in Korean society, the traditional Korean understanding of authority has been challenged, especially in Korean schools. In this essay, the author first tries to analyze some important educational problems in contemporary Korea as it relates to the problem of authority. The paper, then, examines Dewey...

This paper explores the connections between democracy, peace and development in three cases of recent history Uganda, Kenya and Sri Lanka. It is shown that there are no simple and universal relationships. The experience of all three countries shows that democratic institutions are not sufficient to prevent conflict and can foment it in sharply divided societies. The case of Sri lanka suggests t...

This is the first study that assesses the economic effects of direct democratic institutions on a cross country basis. Most of the results of the former intra-country studies could be confirmed. On the basis of some 30 countries, a higher degree of direct democracy leads to lower total government expenditure (albeit insignificantly) but also to higher central government revenue. Central governm...