Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The importance of school choice in the current educational reform debate has stimulated various research focused on charter schools. Previous charter-school studies, however, primarily centered on educational outcome, parental satisfaction, and state-level politics behind the charter school movement, typically ignoring the importance of local context to the policymaking and implementation process surrounding charter schools. This study employs California's charter schools as a window through which to examine why some school districts are prone to the development of charter schools, while others are resistant to it. Data were collected from 164 school districts in southern California for use in examining three possible theories-educational, fiscal, and political-racial factor hypotheses. Evidence points to the importance of the partisan division and fiscal condition of local school districts. Student academic performance does not appear to be an important determinant of the success of the local charter school movement.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper analyzes charter school state laws in terms of two general dimensions: 1) the
flexibility, freedom, and support extended in the law; and 2) the degree of public
accountability required of charter schools. The paper proposes a much more complex set
of analyzes of those laws than have been accomplished to date. After analyzing the
empirical properties of the subscales, we briefly compare them to the widely used Center
for Education Reform scale. We then estimate what state characteristics appear to best
predict both flexibility and accountability. Finally, we study the relationship between
variance in laws, other independent variables and the number of charter schools established
in a state. We find somewhat surprisingly that flexibility in laws along our multiple
dimensions is also highly correlated with high levels of required public accountability. We
are very unsuccessful in finding any linear relationships that appear to explain which states enact flexible laws and which do not. We do, however, find a number of interesting
relationships between the number of charters existing in states and the nature of their laws, as well as other demographic and political factors.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study concerns the prevalence of public charter schools in school districts across the United States. We combine several publicly available datasets and employ several advanced statistical techniques—in particular hierarchical linear modeling—to estimate the relationship between several state and district-level factors and the availability of charter schools. We find that the most important predictors of the probability that school districts operate charter schools are characteristics of the states within which the districts are located. The nature of state charter laws is perhaps the key predictor of charter presence, as are indicators such as the state's size and poverty rate. At the district level, the size of the student population and the percentage of white students in the student body appear to influence the presence or absence of charter schools. In our most advanced models, teacher unionization also significantly predicts district's charter operation. Taken together, the results of this paper contribute both to current literature on the topic of school choice, and suggest several promising avenues for future research.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Companies chartered for overseas exploration and trade proliferated in Europe during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A chief motivation for their creation was the profitable trade in spices, sugar, tea, coffee, silk, china, valuable metals, and other goods from the Indies. Europeans have been long exposed to these exotic products, but for centuries they had no direct control over the mercantile networks across the Orient supplying them. Gaining control of these commercial routes was not easy; the travel to the Indies could take up to a few years between departure and return, and the risks involved were necessarily high. This persuaded merchants to share risk and organise themselves in large groups, which adopted the form of joint-stock enterprises. These were chartered ventures, during early modern times private enterprising required governmental consent, which was granted in the form of a charter. The charters of overseas trading ventures allowed companies to raise their own forces to accompany them on the risky voyages overseas. More than any of the early modern forms of military organisation with a private element, I argue in this paper argues the forces maintained by the overseas trading companies constitute the closest historical antecedent to Private Military Companies (PMCs) and can be regarded as PMCs in an embryonic form.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: ABSTRACTDuring the nineties, the Organization of American States developed collective mechanisms for defending democracy in the western hemisphere. A process began with the declaration of Santiago, passed through the protocol of Washington and achieved a major watershed in the approval of the Inter American Democratic Charter in Lima, September 11, 2001. This institutional development represented a commitment to democratic constitutional continuity in the whole continent. The preservation of democracy was not anymore a question of internal jurisdiction of specific member states but an issue of hemispheric concerns. ]This paper discusses the implementation of the Inter American Democratic Charter to three specific cases of democratic crises that occurred in 2005: 1) The deposition of president Lucio Gutierrez of Ecuador in a combination of popular mobilization and impeachment by the National Congress after Gutierrez twice sacked out the highest judicial authorities of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Tribunal of Ecuador, 2) the resignation of president Carlos Mesa in Bolivia after massive mobilizations of civil society against his government; and 3) the invocation of the IADC by Nicaraguan president Enrique Bolanos under the assumption that democracy was at peril because the National Assembly, dominated by opposition parties (FSLN and PLC) passed constitutional reforms that significantly reduced his presidential prerogatives. The crises are discussed in the following framework: First, I discuss the sources and the development of the specific crisis and; Second, I concentrate on the OAS response to it. The central approach is to look at the building of a functioning democracy as a long term project, trying to understand not only the immediate sources of instability or the short term effects of the OAS intervention but also assessing the impact of the OAS response in the long term consolidation of democracy in the country and the wide effects of the intervention in the international regime and the norm of hemispheric democratic solidarity.Why is this analysis relevant? The crises in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua seem to approach situations of democratic governance that the region would likely face in the next decade. During the 1990?s, the OAS developed a doctrine of democratic solidarity coherent with the prevailing interpretation of the non-intervention norm recognized in the OAS Charter. The Declaration of Santiago and the protocol of Washington clearly defined situations in which the hemispheric organization should react and how to react to situations of political upheaval in a state member. This refers essentially to cases of a military coup or a foreign military intervention. Short of these two extreme cases, any intervention was doctrinally questionable. The Inter American Democratic Charter expressed a continental consensus on supporting democracy beyond these extreme cases. The main disruptions of democratic consolidation in the region have its roots today in the explosive socioeconomic situations in some countries, the dysfunctional system of political parties and the low performance of courts, parliaments and other state institutions that make difficult the observance of the rule of law and the constitutional compliance with the balance of the public powers of the state.This paper analyzes the OAS responses to three crises of this kind, searching for common problems and lessons that can help international organizations, states and civil society groups to draw useful conclusions about the tools and methods to use in future situations.