Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A conceptually coherent system to assess development of knowledge, skills, and commitments of culturally and linguistically responsive (CRT) teachers; use of assessment data to hold faculty accountable for preparing CRTs.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: Theoretical and empirical work has offered compelling evidence that informational problems increase the odds of international conflict. Conversely, solutions to informational problems decrease these odds. Indeed, some explanations for the Democratic Peace draw extensively from this approach. Because democratic leaders can stake their threat to use force on the fact that they may lose office if they back down after issuing a threat, they are able to send more credible signals of resolve than autocrats. Moreover, to avoid these ‘audience costs,’ democrats only select themselves into conflicts when they are convinced that their adversaries will acquiesce to their demands. Both of these phenomena reduce the informational problems that lead to conflict. Most simply, democracies are bad bluffers. And, if rational, their adversaries know better than to resist their demands.

Applying these insights to intra-state conflict presents an empirical puzzle, however. Why does the Democratic Peace sometimes fail within states? That is, if democracies do not go to war with one another, why do groups within democracies sometimes come to blows with the central government? These questions raise a related theoretical puzzle: if national democratic leaders can generate audience costs in interstate disputes, why are regional leaders in democracies sometimes unable to gain concessions from the center through coercive diplomacy – without having to escalate to violent conflict? In other words, why would there be more uncertainty about the resolve of subnational actors within a democracy than between democratic states?

In this paper we offer both empirical and theoretical responses to these questions. We identify the microfoundations of credible signaling by subnational actors within democracies. Voters must control systematic and reliable mechanisms to punish regional leaders if they back down from demands. If they do not, because their regional executives are appointed by the central government, informational problems and thus bargaining failure and violent escalation ensue.

Empirically, we focus on the form of civil conflict most analogous to interstate conflict: violent secessionism. We find that the interaction between federalism and population size -- which we argue proxies for preference heterogeneity -- explains a lower probability of secessionist war. We attribute this finding to the ability of regional leaders under electoral federalism, a democracy in which regional governors are elected, not appointed, to generate audience costs. Indeed, we offer some "stylized facts" about the politics of decentralization that adduce regional political elites’ ability to extract concessions from central governments without needing to resort to violent escalation. Even as the magnitude of preference divergence increases and thus the incentives for regional leaders to seek changes in the policy status quo. This result does not hold so "structural federations," in which regional executives are appointed by the central government and not elected, however. We also find evidence for the fact that commitment problems and indivisibilities, the other culprits of bargaining failure that have been identified in the formal literature applied to international relations, explain a higher susceptibility to secessionist war within states.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This essay suggests a strategy for teaching political philosophy. In response to the usual difficulties in capturing the interest of students and in an attempt to guide them through a detailed consideration of a political theory, a two-step approach is suggested. First the student’s attention is directed to the contemporary relevance of the questions posed by the classical political theorists, and then, a simple model of the internal structure of a political theory is used in order to facilitate the analysis and comparison between theories.

Supporting Publications:
Supporting Document

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In the midst of popular outrage and protest over Enron, Wal-Mart, Nike, Shell, and other transnational corporations, a sprawling anti-corporate movement has emerged. Through its many organizations and strategies of resistance, it has attempted to promote corporate reform and mobilize the public around principles of economic justice, within and across borders. As it has done so, it has deployed a variety of strategies, including shareholder resolutions, consumer actions, and corporate campaigns involving student and labor organizations. These ties between movements are elemental to the success or failure of future corporate campaigns, and inform many scholarly debates on social movement coalitions in the face of global economic change. Through extended interviews of activists, movement documents, and news publications, the following paper performs a multi-case comparison of three international campaigns. In doing so, the paper assesses the political opportunity structures and strategic repertoires that have accompanied corporate reform, as well as the formation of movement identity around anti-corporate grievances.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines a new attempt to make U.S. corporations accountable for their complicity in human rights violations occurring abroad by using the Alien Torts Claims Act (ATCA) in U.S. courts. Although these cases have yet to be resolved, a preliminary analysis shows that powerful actors from the state and the business community have come together to oppose this use of the ATCA, commonly invoking free-market rhetoric. Furthermore, the ATCA cases allow us to look into a novel, legal approach to affecting human rights in a global world.