Political Value Systems Research Articles

Brown and Educational Policy Making at 40

Over the years, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (Brown 1) (1954) and subsequent legal challenges by African Americans have spawned a number of findings governing educational policies and policy making at almost every phase of schooling (Brown, 1979; Crain, 1969; Orfield & Ashkinaze, 1991).(1) Brown I and Brown II (1955) set in motion a series of educational policy changes. However, despite the more positive features of Brown, African Americans have not achieved equal educational opportunities.In the present article, policy making refers to changes in direction made by the federal courts in their holdings regarding school desegregation cases as well as congressional actions affecting the courts. While this article addresses federal action and school desegregation, state action is also important. However, states tend to leave matters affecting school desegregation almost exclusively to the federal courts. Thus, federal action or inaction covers most policy making issues in school desegregation.Several assumptions have been made regarding Brown and the subsequent federal court decisions designed to implement various components of public school desegregation across the nation. The first of these is that social decisions by the courts or other governmental agencies are inherently political. Federal court judges, including Supreme Court justices, are appointed to their positions because of their judicial orientations and or political value systems. These views are reinforced by public opinion and legislative action taken by Congress. Second, the dominant values of federal court jurists typically reflect those of majority rather than minority group members. This is true, with rare exceptions, for both majority and minority members of the federal judiciary, who also serve by appointment. Third, changes in educational policies made by the courts and Congress are always represented by these branches of government as improvements, regardless of whether these changes are positive or negative. This symbolic use of language in politics explains both the lack of action on the part of policymakers and the persistence of negative educational policies (Blase, 1991: Brown 1990; Edelman, 1980; Spring, 1992). Fourth, racism and self-interest have a greater impact on policy making in social matters such as education than do rational goals and objectives (Hatcher, 1992). Fifth, almost nothing involving education is exempt from political motives--this includes testing and the evaluation of pupils and the assignment of students to classes, programs, and schools (Goodlad, 1990; McCarthy, 1990; Mercer, 1973; Oakes, 1990; Page & Valli, 1990; Rist, 1978; Spring, 1976, 1992).Major changes in school desegregation litigation in the federal courts have occurred since Brown (Brown, 1979). The Supreme Court's decision in Brown I, which involved several cases combined by the Court, declared de jure or public school segregation based on race to be unconstitutional. Brown II established the speed with which desegregation would be implemented. From 1954 to 1973, the Court limited its rulings to de jure segregated public schools. In 1973, with Keyes v. School District of Denver, the Court expanded Brown to include de facto segregated public schools in northern cities. In 1974, the Court began making a steady retreat from its positive actions of the 1960s and ended the decade with significant setbacks for school desegregation. The threshold was Milliken v. Bradley (1974), a decision involving the desegregation of the public schools in both the city and suburbs of Detroit, Michigan. In Milliken, the Court ruled that state schools were local for the purpose of Brown, and further decreed that the liberal judicial test of evidence usually granted in cases involving racial discrimination could not be evoked because suburban schools were involved. This test of evidence, strict scrutiny, requires the defendant school districts to carry the burden of proof of nonracial discrimination and not the plaintiffs. …

Defense, safe(ty) and biosocial goals in relation to the agonic and hedonic social modes

Abstract This paper outlines why sociobiological efforts to move from gene to behavior without consideration on the intervening, evaluative systems that tag stimuli as threats or rewards is misleading. It is suggested that social behavior signals threat (sending and responding to threats) or investment (social rewards and reassurance) are two mental dimensions). The paper explores the role of various species typic behaviors for care eliciting, care giving, cooperating, and competing, distinguishes between authoritarian and authoritative hierarchies and considers the evolution of self‐awareness which arises from various role enactments. These various aspects of human nature can be integrated in Chance's theory of the two social modes of relationship, agonic (threat based) and hedonic (affiliative and reassurance based). In the final sections the implications of these ideas are considered in relation to cultural and political value systems.

Western Samoa Trade Unionism: the 1981 Public Service Strike

I have used a proposition developed in Kerry Howe's seminal work Where the Waves Fall (1984) to offer an explanatory framework for understanding industrial relations in the South Pacific. The paper concentrates on applying this analysis to a key moment in Western Samoan industrial relations, the 1981 public service strike. The key concept used in this analysis is mutual adjustment. The concept refers to an interactive process between foreign institutions, such as trade unions, and pre-existing institutions and values like fa' a Samoa (the cultural and political value system of Western Samoa). While the 1981 strike, and South Pacific industrial relations in general, can be interpreted from a nwnber of pespectives rhe approach used in this paper may offer a method that does not obscure the full interplay between Western values and institutions and local forces.

Emigrierte deutsche Historiker in den USA

AbstractGerman Refugee Historians in the United States. ‐ After the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, some twenty historians left Germany. They had lost their academic positions for political and/or „racial”︁ reasons. Most of them immigrated to the United States, and here they launched their second academic career. This intellectual immigration promoted the study of German and intellectual history and strengthened the development of comparative approaches in American historical scholarship. Many German refugee historians became interested in incorporating social science concepts into historical writing and thereby contributed to the advancement of a „Social History of Ideas.”︁ Although some were originally skeptical of the democratic process, in emigration these historians absorbed and accepted the political value system of a democratic and liberal republic, a change that is reflected in their historical studies. Despite the fact that almost all refugee historians chose to stay in the United States, their books and guest professorships left their mark on the course of West German historiography.

Political Values as Ideas of Social Needs

Values are considered abstract, culturally objectified ideas about phenomena. Such ideas have a lasting significance for the satisfaction of the needs of political subjects. Values can be called the "ideas of needs." Political values are of a dual nature, which is both the source of an inner conflict and is also overcome on the basis of a system of political values. The political value system is always the value system of a particular class, of a specific stratum as an organized social force. Thus political values are ideas expressing the attitude of large social groups as wholes toward the needs of other large social groups and of society as a whole, in respect to the awareness of their own needs. A basic task of Marxist political axiology is the examination of the characteristics governing the emergence of a political value system in order to find a concrete solution to a problem that each social group must cope with—that of correlating its own needs with the needs of the entire society.

Mill's Stationary State & the Transcendance of Liberalism

The stationary state has been treated for too long as an isolated, obsolete aspect of J. S. Mill's thought. The following article suggests that the stationary state functioned as Mill's deus ex machina, a device which reconciled apparent irreconcilables in his political value system. Mill's discussion of the stationary state forms both a critique and defense of liberalism, which deepens our appreciation of Mill and also suggests important directions for contemporary liberal thinkers.

Future Energy Resources - An Overview

Abstract The present period marks a turning point in OHT utilization of energy in which we will shortly see the maturation of the petroleum and natural gas consumption patterns and the emergence of a new energy form, namely nuclear energy. In Order to put this displacement of one energy form by another into the proper perspective it is important to realize that this has happened twice before in the last 100 years, and that the modern industrial society has an enormous capacity to adapt to such changes. Furthermore, our potential energy resources, whether measured in terms of the static reserves life index or in terms of an exponential reserve index, are probably greater now than at any previous time since tire beginning of the industrial revolution. Analysis of past consumption and discovery patterns is used to substantiate this claim. In the transition period, in which a particular energy reserves such as oil or natural gas may become scarce regionally, public policy must recognize the intergenerational externality caused by the usage of a depleting resources. Measure to assure security of supply of energy are suggested. Introduction ANY DISCUSSION of energy resources or, for that matter, any other kind of non-renewable natural resource involves questions not only of technology and economics, but also of social and political value systems. Hence, this paper, in addition to having technological and economic components, will also have an ideological component. There are two extreme views on non-renewable resources the essentially gloomy view of the Malthusian camp who foresee disaster unless we change our ways, and the more optimistic view of the economic determinists who believe that the normal market mechanism together with expected technological progress will keep our problems at a manageable level. The modern Malthusians are perhaps best typified by the Club of Rome, who sponsored Professor Meadows' study on "The Limits of Growth"(1). In accordance with this view, both population and industrial capacity tend to grow exponentially, putting pressure on scarce natural resources, on arable land and on the capacity of the environment to absorb pollution. The standard scenario is for population and capital to overshoot the limits imposed by finite resources, and to subsequently collapse. The question of limits resolves ultimately to a consideration of energy supply – because with abundant energy, the other material resources can be recycled and pollution can be abated to desired levels. The economic determinists and the technological optimists believe that the market system, despite all its imperfection, will allocate sufficient capital, technology and labour to alleviate the shortage of any commodity, including energy. They further believe that the growth of population and capital will trigger negative feedback mechanisms which will ultimately stabilize these quantities, particularly in societies where there exists a system of pluralistic, informed, decentralized decision-making, as is true of western democracies. Our position is an intermediate one, with perhaps a bias toward the optimists.