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A basic premise of representative democracy is that every person subject to policy should have a voice in its making. However, policies enacted by electorally accountable governments often fail to reflect the interests of disadvantaged minorities. This paper uses political reservation in India

A basic premise of representative democracy is that all those subject to policy should have a voice in its making. However, policies enacted by electorally accountable governments often fail to reflect the interests of disadvantaged minorities. This paper exploits the institutional features

show that minority and female nominees are more likely than whites and males to receive lower ratings, even after controlling for education, experience, and partisanship via matching. These discrepancies are important for two reasons. First, as I show, receiving poor ABA ratings is correlated

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Policy makers at all levels of decision making in organizations use multiple criteria to analyze their complex problems. Multicriteria thinking is used formally to facilitate their decision making. Through trade-offs it clarifies the advantages and disadvantages of policy options under

Internships are an effective way of connecting high school students in a meaningful manner to the sciences. Disadvantaged minorities have fewer opportunities to participate in internships, and are

Curious to learn whether our nation has served as an historic "land of opportunity", Stephan Thernstrom opened the door to American "history from below". Using the innovative technique of tracing individuals through nineteenth century census manuscripts, he uncovered modest but perceptible improvement among the residents of Newburyport, Massachusetts (Thernstrom, 1964). Fol 1 owing his methodological example, a host of community studies have examined occupational mobi 1 ity from Boston to San Francisco and back again (Decker, 1978; Knights, 1971; Thernstrom, 1973). Much of this research has focused on the question of ethnic opportunity. Blacks, it has been universally concluded, participated unequally in the American dream. White immigrants, on the other hand, experienced a steady improvement, though the rate of advance varied across

David Grissmer is a senior management scien-tist at RAND. His education research has included work on teacher supply and demand and the analy-sis of national and regional test score trends. He is currently engaged in research analyzing state achievement scores, estimating the number and lo-cation of children at educational risk in the United States and assessing the federal research and devel-opment portfolio on children. Ann Flanagan is a consultant at RAND. She is analyzing state test scores to determine the effects of family characteristics and educational policies and resources. Her previous research has included estimating the amount and kind of federal research

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