School Flexibility and Accountability

This report presents a discussion and a menu of alternatives for school flexibility and accountability

The causes and consequences of Poland’s parliamentary crisis

The Polish parliament returned from its Christmas break on 11 January, but the new parliamentary term continued to be disrupted by a protest from opposition MPs which began in December. Ben Stanley writes that although the opposition eventually suspended its occupation of the plenary hall on the second day of the session, the crisis remains, with government and opposition not only unable to reach consensus about the legality of vital laws, but also unable to reach consensus about the legitimacy of the means for reviewing those laws

How high frequency trading affects a market index

The relationship between a market index and its constituent stocks is complicated. While an index is a weighted average of its constituent stocks, when the investigated time scale is one day or longer the index has been found to have a stronger effect on the stocks than vice versa. We explore how this interaction changes in short time scales using high frequency data. Using a correlation-based analysis approach, we find that in short time scales stocks have a stronger influence on the index. These findings have implications for high frequency trading and suggest that the price of an index should be published on shorter time scales, as close as possible to those of the actual transaction time scale.We would like to thank Yoash Shapira, Idan Michaeli and Dustin Plotnick for all of their help. DYK and EBJ acknowledge support in part by the Tauber Family Foundation and the Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems at Tel Aviv University. HES and DYK thank the support of the Office of Naval Research (ONR, Grant N00014-09-1-0380, Grant N00014-12-1-0548), Keck Foundation and the NSF (Grant CMMI 1125290) for support. This work was also supported by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) via Department of Interior National Business Center (DoI/NBC) contract number D12PC00285. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Governmental purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation thereon. Disclaimer: The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of IARPA, DoI/NBC, or the U.S. Government. (Tauber Family Foundation; Maguy-Glass Chair in Physics of Complex Systems at Tel Aviv University; N00014-09-1-0380 - Office of Naval Research (ONR); N00014-12-1-0548 - Office of Naval Research (ONR); Keck Foundation; CMMI 1125290 - NSF; D12PC00285 - Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) via Department of Interior National Business Center (DoI/NBC))Published versio

Forging, bending, and breaking: Enacting the “illiberal playbook” in Hungary and Poland

In recent years, Central and Eastern Europe have furnished several examples of illiberalism in power. The most prominent and consequential cases are Fidesz, which has ruled in Hungary since 2010, and Law and Justice (PiS), which has ruled in Poland since 2015. In both cases, illiberal governments have embarked upon an extensive project of political reform aimed at dismantling the liberal-democratic order. We examine the nature, scope, and consequences of these processes of autocratisation. We first argue that illiberal changes are ideologically founded and identify how both populism and nativism figure in the policymaking of illiberals in power. We then show how these practices emerge from a common “illiberal playbook”—a paradigm of policy change comprising forms of forging, bending, and breaking—and elaborate on the notion that illiberal governments are using legalism to kill liberalism. The fine-grained approach that we employ allows us to distinguish between different rationales and gradations of illiberal policymaking, and assess their implications for the rule of law, executive power, and civil rights and freedoms.In recent years, Central and Eastern Europe have furnished several examples of illiberalism in power. The most prominent and consequential cases are Fidesz, which has ruled in Hungary since 2010, and Law and Justice (PiS), which has ruled in Poland since 2015. In both cases, illiberal governments have embarked upon an extensive project of political reform aimed at dismantling the liberal-democratic order. We examine the nature, scope, and consequences of these processes of autocratisation. We first argue that illiberal changes are ideologically founded and identify how both populism and nativism figure in the policymaking of illiberals in power. We then show how these practices emerge from a common illiberal playbook - a paradigm of policy change comprising forms of forging, bending, and breaking - and elaborate on the notion that illiberal governments are using legalism to kill liberalism. The fine-grained approach that we employ allows us to distinguish between different rationales and gradations of illiberal policymaking, and assess their implications for the rule of law, executive power, and civil rights and freedoms

External Voting

This open access book is the first monograph that brings together insights from comparative politics, political sociology, and migration studies to introduce the current state of knowledge on external voting and transnational politics. Drawing on new data gathered within the DIASPOlitic project, which created a comparative dataset of external voting results for 6 countries of origin and 17 countries of residence as well as an extensive qualitative dataset of 80 in-depth interviews with four groups of migrants, this book not only illustrates theoretical problems with empirical material, but also provides answers to previously unaddressed questions. The empirical material focuses on the European context. The Eastern Enlargement of the European Union (2004-2007) triggered a westward wave of migration from Central and Eastern European countries which faced the expansion of existing émigré communities and the emergence of new ones. As this process coincided with the expansion of migrant voting rights, the result is a large set of populous diaspora communities which can potentially have a significant impact on country electoral politics, making the study of external voting highly relevant. This book’s introduction takes stock of current research on transnational politics and external voting, presenting core puzzles. The following chapter introduces the context of intra-European migration and the political situation in Central-Eastern European sending countries. The next two sections address the empirical puzzles, drawing on new quantitative and qualitative. The conclusion takes stock of the evidence gathered, discusses the normative problem of non-resident voters enfranchisement, connects external voting to the broader debate on political remittances and finally, maps the terrain ahead for future research. This concise, empirically grounded introduction to external voting is critical reading in structuring the debate around migration and shaping research agendas for the future

The Effect of Terramycin and Stilbestrol on Growing and Fattening Steers

This item is part of the Agricultural Experiment Station archive. It was digitized from a physical copy provided by the University Libraries at the University of Arizona. For more information, please email CALS Publications at [email protected]

A Response to Glaze Purification via IMPRESS

Recent work proposed a new mechanism to remove protective perturbation added by Glaze in order to again enable mimicry of art styles from images protected by Glaze. Despite promising results shown in the original paper, our own tests with the authors' code demonstrated several limitations of the proposed purification approach. The main limitations are 1) purification has a limited effect when tested on artists that are not well-known historical artists already embedded in original training data, 2) problems in evaluation metrics, and 3) collateral damage on mimicry result for clean images. We believe these limitations should be carefully considered in order to understand real world usability of the purification attack