Creative Freedom

Undergraduate 2-

Laboratories of Reform: Virtual High Schools and Innovation in Public Education

Virtual schools are growing rapidly, serving over 700,000 students in the 2005-06 school year. But these schools are proving to be more than just another delivery system for students; they are bringing about reforms that have long eluded traditional public schools

Parliamentary questions and the probability of reelection in the UK House of Commons

Members of worldwide parliaments partake in debates, where they have the opportunity to hold governments to account by asking pre-submitted questions. The UK House of Commons uses a ballot system to determine which members are selected to ask a question from those who expressed an interest in doing so. This paper is the first in the literature to exploit this randomization to show that the asking of such questions increases a member’s chances of being reelected by their constituents. It is shown that while the ordering of parliamentary questions is determined at random, the practicalities of conducting debates introduce a potentially endogenous element to the determination of which questions receive oral answers (particularly the speed at which questions are answered). This paper uses a matched sampling approach to cope with such non-random cases, but also includes alternative results, to show that the findings are not reliant on the use of this technique

Collective action framing genetic engineering resistance in New Zealand

The genetic engineering resistance movement in New Zealand constructed strategic and meaningful interpretations of why the genetic engineering technique is problematic and what can be done about it. There are four central interpretations – explored here as collective action frames – that were used by key movement activists in their mobilisation activities. These four frames describe genetic engineering as ‘involving a wide range of issues’, ‘risky’, ‘unnatural’ and as ‘all about the ownership of life’. The characteristics of these frames are explained in this paper, along with an analysis of why it is that activists were able to achieve widespread resonance through their deployment of them. The successful framing and articulation of movement grievances is a critical movement activity for engagement of civil society in issues of great importance