Beyond Politics: Addressing Forgotten Issues (Spring 2010)

Beyond Politics
An Undergraduate Review of Politics
Spring 2010
Addressing Forgotten Issues
beyondpolitics.nd.edu
politics@nd.edu
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Acknowledgments
This year’s journal was made possible with the help of

many individuals. The Political Science Department’s Direc-
tor of Undergraduate Studies Professor Joshua Kaplan serves
as the faculty advisor for Beyond Politics. Professor Kaplan’s
active guidance and support is the reason this journal exists
today. We would also like to thank Political Science Depart-
ment’s Director of Internships and Associate Director of Un-
dergraduate Studies Professor Carolina Arroyo for her contin-
ued dedication and encouragement.
Beyond Politics would like to express our appreciation
for the institutional endorsement provided by Political Sci-
ence Department Chair Professor Michael Desch. Without his
willingness to work with us, this journal would not be possi-
ble. Alongside Professor Desch we would like to express our
gratitude to Professor Cecelia Lucero for her enthusiasm and
commitment to our project.
Our funding was made possible through the generosity
of the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (ISLA), the
Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement (CUSE), and
the Department of Political Science. Without the encourage-
ment and support for the excellent undergraduate work we
publish, Beyond Politics would not be a reality today. Lastly,
we would like to thank all of the undergraduates who bravely
submitted their work for publication in Beyond Politics. A
special thanks also to Juliana Hoffelder, our student cover art-
ist and Executive Editor.
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Beyond Politics 2010 Editorial Board
Editors-in-Chief
Kathleen Donahue - Chinese, Philosophy, Political Science, 2010
Michael Rowley - Arabic, Political Science, 2010
Executive Editor
Juliana Hoffelder- Political Science, 2010
Senior Editors
Kevin Donohue - History, 2010
Evan Guimond - Peace Studies, Political Science, 2010
Christy Haller - English, Political Science, 2010
Tim LeBarge - English, Political Science, 2010
Robin Link - Political Science, Spanish, 2010
Theresa Olivier - English, Political Science, 2010
Associate Editors
Christi Chelsky - Peace Studies, Political Science, 2012
Paul Phelan - Political Science, Russian, 2012
Patrick McDonnell - Political Science, 2011
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction.........................................................................................7
The Catholic Effect: Catholic Representation in Congress

Ryan Brellenthin...................................................................................#
Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body

Eleanor Huntington...............................................................................#
2010 Political Poll

Christi Chelsky and Patrick McDonnell................................................#
Turkey’s Continued Pursuit of Membership in the European Union:

A Liberal Institutionalist Approach
Kelly Kanavy........................................................................................#
Should a Progressive Support School Vouchers?

Chris Rhodenbaugh..............................................................................#
Rebutting the Rebuttal: A Discussion of Chris Rhodenbaugh’s

“Should a Progressive Support Vouchers?”
Christy Haller........................................................................................#
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Cover Art by Juliana Hoffelder, University of Notre Dame
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Introduction
Urgent domestic issues continue to dominate news headlines in
the United States. The suffering economy, the controversy over health
care reform, and issues of immigration and homeland security receive the
most coverage. Although these problems receive appropriate attention in
the news, numerous other domestic and global issues continue to cause
conflict; these issues lurk in the shadows. Our authors examine several of
these issues in order to emphasize their importance as legitimate concerns
for this Administration.
The 2010 Edition of Beyond Politics is entitled Addressing For-
goten Issues. As a journal of undergraduate research, this edition features
four outstanding student research articles, highlighting issues across the
globe. Our authors have conducted first-hand interviews and studied
primary sources in the U.S. and abroad to complete their research. The
articles address important topics such as genocide, the EU, the U.S. edu-
cation system, and Catholic representation in Congress. In the spirit of
academic debate, a senior editor wrote a critical response to one of these
feature articles.
Additionally, for the first time, Beyond Politics has published sev-
eral outstanding research articles on our website, beyondpolitics.nd.edu.
These pieces cover topics such as torture, Iran’s nuclear program, race
relations, Congressional Committees, and game theory. The Editorial Staff
viewed these articles as too impressive to be ignored. With no ability to
expand on the size of the Journal, we have turned to our website to provide
another outlet for outstanding undergraduate research.
Finally in this edition, readers will find revealing polling results
that detail the political preferences of Notre Dame undergraduates. This
poll addresses political issues nationally and on campus. In order to ex-
amine trends among the Notre Dame population, many of the questions
are similar to those asked in previous editions. We encourage you to view
previous poll results (also found on our website) to understand how Notre
Dame students are evolving in a changing world.
We hope you enjoy the 2010 Edition of Beyond Politics.
Kathleen Donahue and Michael Rowley

Editors-in-Chief
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The Catholic Effect: Catholic Representation in Congress
Ryan Brellenthin
Ryan Brellenthin is a senior Political Science major with a minor in The-

ology. Having focused on American politics within his major, Ryan has
been interested in legislator voting behavior since sophomore year and
has been interested in the interaction of religion and politics since taking
several courses on the topic during his junior year. This paper was writ-
ten for a graduate course on representation. The theoretical framework
behind this paper has subsequently become the basis for Ryan’s senior
thesis, which is being written on a similar topic. Next year, Ryan will be
teaching secondary mathematics in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a member
of Teach For America.

For many scholars of American government, one area of great
concern is representation. A common normative assumption about the
American political system is that it should represent every citizen equal-
ly. Studies have shown, however, that the many crosscutting constituen-
cies within the electorate and the means of representation in this country
leave some people represented less than others, depending on the issue
chosen and the group or groups represented. Some of these studies focus
on how different racial minorities are represented. Others examine the
representation of voters as compared to non-voters. The list continues,
with studies on the representation of the poor and females. Lee and Op-
penheimer examine the implications Senate apportionment has on repre-
sentation.
Yet while examination of the representation of different groups
within the electorate is extensive, different religious groups in the
electorate is one area of study that is in need of much further research.
Cameron, Epstein, and O’Halloran essentially ask, “Should blacks be
represented by blacks?” Mansbridge asks the same question, and adds to
it the question, “Should women be represented by women?” This study
asks, “Should Roman Catholics be represented by Roman Catholics?”
This question is of great importance because of the primacy of Roman
Catholics in American political life. As of February 2008, Catholics
comprised about 24% of the American population, the nation’s single
largest denomination. In the 109th Congress, Catholics comprised just
8 The Catholic Effect

over 30% of members of the House of Representatives. Understanding
the intersection of Catholicism and representation has great value for
understanding the nature of representation as a whole.
While these numbers alone create abstract interest in Catholic
representation in Congress, there are practical applications as well.
During the 2004 presidential election, Senator John Kerry, the Demo-
cratic nominee for president and a Catholic, came under fire from—and
was eventually refused Communion by—several Catholic bishops
throughout the United States for his support of abortion rights. While
Senator Kerry was the most prominent figure in this controversy, sev-
eral other Catholic politicians were refused Communion in 2004, such
as Governor Joe Kernan of Indiana and Governor James McGreevy of
New Jersey. Other Catholic politicians, such as Governor Gray Davis
of California, were not refused Communion but still were urged to have
the “integrity” to “abstain from receiving Holy Communion.” Kerry
responded to this controversy by saying, “I oppose abortion, person-
ally….I don’t like abortion. I believe life begins at conception….But
I don’t take my Catholic beliefs, my article of faith and legislate it on
a Protestant, on a Jew, or an atheist, who doesn’t share it.” From this
controversy emerges a picture of two loyalties that sometimes compete
within Catholic politicians—loyalty to one’s constituency and loyalty to
one’s religion.
The aforementioned controversy during the 2004 presidential
election provides a case study for representation by Catholic politicians.
In this case, the politicians reprimanded by the Catholic bishops seem
to place loyalty to their constituencies above loyalty to the teaching of
the Catholic Church. However, it is limited to the issue of abortion and
covers specific instances, thus lacking the generality applicable to all
Catholic politicians. To solve this problem, I create a model to attempt
to definitively answer two questions. My primary question of interest
concerns whether Catholic Members of Congress vote differently than
Members of Congress of other religions, holding all else constant. The
secondary question of interest is whether Members of Congress vote
more consistently with the Catholic Church as the compositions of their
districts become more Catholic.
As this study shows, the answers to the two questions above
have important implications for the study of religious representation in
America. To uncover these results, this paper first examines previous
research in the field of representation, with a specific emphasis on what
The Catholic Effect 9

causes legislators to adhere to or deviate from their constituencies given
different situations. Next, I explain the reasoning behind my model,
and provide an explanation of my results. Following the explanation,
I discuss the impact the results have on the body of work in the field of
representation. Finally, the conclusion ties the results back to the origi-
nal two questions and provides a summary of the study undertaken. I find
that legislator Catholicism has a significant effect on legislator behavior
and that the percentage of a legislator’s constituency that is Catholic does
not have a significant effect on legislator behavior.
Previous Research
Many of the studies of representation revolve around the influ-
ences on a politician’s behavior. In a representative democracy, conven-
tional wisdom would seem to point to a legislator acting on behalf of his
or her constituency. Miller and Stokes tested this normative assumption
by examining the connections between the attitude of a constituency and
the roll call behavior of a legislator. They find that constituents are able
to control their legislator, but only under certain conditions: (1) the leg-
islator’s voting must correspond with his or her own views or perceived
views of the electorate, (2) the legislator’s actions must be motivated by
his or her perception of the district, and (3) the electorate must take the
legislator’s policy views into account at some level when voting. In this
study, Miller and Stokes note that four-fifths of the legislators sampled
said that they felt that their success “had been strongly influenced by the
electorate’s response to their records and personal standing.” While the
study shows that most of the electorate is relatively uninformed, it points
to the potential threat of losing an election as the reason that legislators
respond to their constituencies.
More recent research, however, points to the importance of influ-
ences on the voting behavior of legislators apart from constituency. Cox
and McCubbins examine the role of political parties in Congress on vot-
ing behavior. Their study looks at voting behavior in Congress as a col-
lective action problem. By conforming only to district interests, parties
lose power in Congress if all legislators vote based on constituent desires
(theoretically maximizing their chances at reelection). Instead, Cox and
McCubbins demonstrate that party leaders are central agents, whose role
it is to organize members of their party to vote in a certain way, even
if it is not in their own personal best interests. The theory behind such
action is that voting in Congress, under certain conditions, is a situation

in which rational individuals can act in their best interest but act against
the common good of the party. By giving party leaders selective incen-
tives, parties grow stronger, meaning that a legislator’s party becomes
highly influential in determining what affects voting behavior, coming at
the cost of constituency influence.
A different theory of congressional voting behavior claims that
legislators have personal interests, characteristics, or preferences that
they value more than the interests of their constituency or their party.
One study of this theory, conducted by Levitt, shows that a senator’s
personal ideology has a much higher effect on his or her voting behavior
than both constituency interest and the party line. Perhaps a more in-
teresting finding in this study is that, while these less significant factors
take on varying values depending on whether it is a senator’s first term
or later term or how close a senator is to an election year, the senator’s
ideologies are incredibly stable. Levitt also looks at regional differences
to see if disparities in ideology influence change according to geogra-
phy. While senator ideology varies to a greater extent than in the model
summarized above, it is still the most influential variable in determining
a senator’s voting behavior. Because Levitt’s models view senator ide-
ology as all factors having an influence and not already controlled for,
it is probable that a large measure of error is included in the model and
attributable to senator ideology. However, the fact that this variable has
such a large influence on voting behavior means that, even if the actual
influence of this variable reduces dramatically, it would still be the most
influential variable in this model.
One of the most recent studies of congressional voting behavior
belongs to Burden. This study finds that the preferences of a legislator
are of great importance to voting behavior (and all congressional behav-
ior, as well), but that it is necessary to “unpack” these preferences from
one large monolithic category: “Preferences depend on a wide[] range
of phenomena, including the backgrounds of legislators themselves.
The information gleaned, and the interests and values formed, from life
experiences shape their behavior on roll call votes.” This study points
to three types of personal preferences that have the power to shape
legislative behavior: values, information, and self-interest. According to
Burden, “These values are often religious in nature and thus differ from
ideologies. They do not necessarily conform to the left-right spectrum
and are not relevant to every issue.” This framework of viewing per-
sonal preferences is important to my study because it helps appropri-

ately shape my model in order to accurately measure the influence of a
legislator’s religion.
In the area of religion and representation, Green and Guth make
one of the strongest cases for the importance of religion for determining
legislator behavior. In their study, Green and Guth compare the religion
of a congressional district, taken as a characteristic of the entire district,
and compare it to Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) scores for
the district’s representative, thus measuring how liberal a legislator’s
voting behavior is. Green and Guth create a denominational index,
which rates different groups of denominations on a continuum from zero
to seven, with the lowest score being the “unchurched” and the highest
score being the most theologically conservative denominations. Next,
they apply the scores to individual legislators based on the legislator’s
religion and to each congressional district based on the district’s reli-
gious composition. The study shows that there is a negative relationship
between a legislator’s district denominational index and the legislator’s
ADA score. This relationship is the second most influential determinant
of a legislator’s ADA score, falling behind only party affiliation. More-
over, the study shows that the legislator’s own denominational index is
the fourth most influential determinant of a legislator’s ADA score, with
the region of the congressional district being the third most influential.
Green and Guth find that both the legislator’s own denominational index
and the district denominational index are negatively related to ADA
scores.
In this paper, I focus on two specific theories of legislator be-
havior. To answer my first question, I will test the theory—set forth by
Levitt, Burden, and Green and Guth—that personal preferences of some
sort are responsible for legislator behavior. Although many preferences
can be identified, my paper will give a special emphasis to the religion
of members of legislators, specifically to whether or not a legislator is
Catholic. To answer the second question, I will test the theory of Miller
and Stokes, who argue that legislators are responsive to their constitu-
encies. In this case, the group that is of specific interest is Catholic
members of a legislator’s constituency. By grounding my study in these
theories while also including a measure for party affiliation, I hope to
reconcile how religion interacts with constituency, party, and personal
preferences in determining legislator behavior.
Data Analysis

In order to examine the role of Catholicism in shaping legislator
behavior, this paper considers how Catholicism affected roll call vot-
ing in the House of Representatives for the 109th Congress. As in other
studies that perform a cross-sectional analysis of roll call voting, this
study will use multivariate Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression to
determine the relative impact of Catholicism, at both the legislative and
constituency level, as compared to other factors that may drive legislator
behavior. By using multivariate regression, this study is able to con-
sider how much effect each independent variable has on the dependent
variable while taking into account the effects of all other independent
variables. By including measures of individual legislator Catholicism,
constituency Catholicism, and how “Catholic” a legislator votes, in ad-
dition to other variables, this study is able to determine whether either of
these measures of Catholicism affects how a legislator votes. Given past
research in representation, it is expected that a Catholic legislator and a
higher percentage of Catholics in a legislator’s district will both signifi-
cantly shape how a legislator votes on issues of concern to the Catholic
Church.
My study is modeled after the framework of Green and Guth’s
research mentioned above, but this study differs in several ways. First, it
is not designed to measure the liberalism or conservatism of Members of
Congress. Instead, it is designed to measure how often a legislator votes
in line with the policy stances of the Catholic Church. Second, while
Green and Guth examine all religious denominations, this study focuses
primarily on Catholicism. Finally, as Green and Guth’s research uses
data from the 96th Congress, this study provides a much more modern
investigation of the intersection of religion and congressional voting
behavior.
Independent and Dependent Variables
The independent variables in this study are those that, as in other
studies of similar design, significantly shape a legislator’s behavior.
Three theories for explaining congressional voting behavior are promi-
nent in past research—constituency influence, party affiliation, and
personal characteristics. In this study, the independent variables are as
follows: legislator party affiliation, legislator race, legislator gender, the
region of a legislator’s district, the percent of constituents in the district
that identify themselves as Catholic, and legislator Catholicism. The
party affiliation variable measures the influence of party affiliation; the
region and constituency Catholicism variables measure the influence of

constituency; and the race, gender, and Catholic variables test the influ-
ence of personal characteristics. The dependent variable in this study
is a measure of how often a legislator’s voting behavior is in line with
the position of the Catholic Church on a set of issues of interest to the
Catholic Church. Later, I explain the complexities involved in obtaining
this measure. For the purposes of this section, however, it is appropriate
to note that the measure is an index created in a manner similar to inter-
est group scores such as ADA scores. I create my score based on the
following equation:
Creating a Measure of Catholic Roll Call Behavior

While certain stances are well defined by the Catholic Church in
the abstract, it is much more difficult to determine the Church’s position
on the actual issues that come before Congress for votes. In addition to
time constraints, to search through all the votes of even a single Con-
gress would inject a certain amount of subjectivity into the measure of
which votes are “Catholic” and which ones are not. Moreover, different
Catholic thinkers often view issues differently. For example, thinkers
such as Peter Steinfels and others on the “Catholic Left” may hold one
stance on an issue, whereas Catholic thinkers such as George Weigel,
Father Richard John Neuhaus, and Robert George may hold the opposite
opinion. All would claim to be proponents of the Catholic Church’s posi-
tion. Other Catholic thinkers hold yet another position, such as those
affiliated with the Catholic Worker Movement.
The problem of many schools of thought within a religious
denomination is one that is largely unavoidable, yet quite unfortunate
when it comes to political analysis of Church teachings. The Catholic
Church is unique, though, in that it has doctrines and moral teachings to
which all members of the faith are expected to adhere. The United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), while not officially affiliated
with the Holy See, is an assembly of all Catholic bishops in the United
States and Virgin Islands. Among other tasks, the USCCB tracks legis-
lation before Congress and actively lobbies legislators on certain issues.
For each Congress, the USCCB publishes its “Final Legislative Report,”
which gives a summary of issues of concern to the Catholic Church that
arose before Congress. Included in this report is the stance that the US-
CCB took on each issue, whether it be opposing, supporting, or taking
no opinion. With this resource, it becomes possible to create a more ob-
jective measure of the Catholic Church’s stance on issues arising before

Congress.
Scope of Study
In this study, I examine the voting behavior of the House of
Representatives for the 109th Congress. Although the legislative report
provided by the USCCB can be used as a more objective measure of
Catholic policy positions, some subjectivity is necessary. For the pur-
pose of this study, the only votes examined are either votes on bills that
the USCCB has a firm opinion or individual votes on which the USCCB
takes a position. By using these criteria, there are a total of 19 votes in
the House of Representatives that took place in the 109th Congress on
which the USCCB takes a clear stance.
The 19 votes of the 109th Congress used in this study allow for
the creation of a support score for Catholic legislation. This score is a
percentage of the times a member of the House of Representatives voted
with the position of the USCCB. It is created by dividing the number of
times a House member voted with the USCCB position divided by the
number of times that the House member voted on an issue that the US-
CCB took a position on (regardless of whether the legislator voted for or
against the position).
As mentioned earlier in this paper, such a score is not a unique feature

to the study of voting behavior. It is the concept behind the ADA scores
used in Green and Guth’s study, as well as many others. The idea of a
score targeted at support levels for a specific subgroup rather than lib-
eral or conservative issues is a bit more novel, though, but its existence
can be found in other studies. For example, it is the type of score used
by Cameron, Epstein, and O’Halloran in measuring legislator support
for issues important to black constituents. Even though this Catholic
score is the first of its kind, the theory behind such a score is the theory
that underlies many other pieces of research. This theory is that the
score, representing a percentage of support that a member of the House
of Representatives gives a certain subset of issues, is a legitimate indica-
tor of a House member’s support for the type of issue.
Catholicism in the House of Representatives

Before I perform any detailed analysis, it is necessary to de-
termine how Catholicism is reflected in Congress, both at the level of
the legislature and the level of the constituency. Of the 438 members
of the House of Representatives studied in this paper, 131 identified

themselves as Catholic and 307 identified themselves with some other
religious affiliation. For the Catholic members of the House, the average
Catholic score determined by using the USCCB Final Legislative Report
is 59.97%; for the 307 non-Catholic members of the House, the Catholic
score is 55.06%. In other words, the average Catholic House member
voted with the USCCB almost five percentage points more than the aver-
age non-Catholic House member. It appears that there is a discrepancy
between representation of Catholics in districts represented by a Catholic
legislator and Catholics in districts represented by a non-Catholic legis-
lator.
One theory behind why Catholic constituents are better represent-
ed by Catholic legislators than by non-Catholic legislators is the theory
originally investigated by Miller and
Stokes, namely that Catholic legislators respond to their constituency
preferences. Following this theory, the pressure of constituents on a leg-
islator to vote in line with the USCCB is higher in some districts because
they have a higher percentage of constituents that are Catholic. Based
on the results mentioned above, one would expect that districts with a
greater composition of Catholics are represented by Catholic Members
of Congress. At first glance, it appears as though this hypothesis may be
true: Catholics represent districts that, on average are 39.00% Catholic;
non-Catholics represent districts that, on average, are 25.78% Catho-
lic. These statistics show that the average district served by a Catholic
House member has over thirteen percentage points more Catholics in it
than the average district served by a non-Catholic House member. Thus,
on the whole, districts represented by Catholic legislators have higher
percentages of Catholics in the district than districts represented by non-
Catholic legislators. Also, districts represented by Catholics have repre-
sentatives who vote in line with the USCCB more often than districts not
represented by Catholics.
The data shown above seem to demonstrate that the theory of
constituency interests driving voting behavior in the House of Represen-
tatives is at least plausible. However, the aggregated data at the national
level treat all Catholic legislators and all non-Catholic legislators as
monoliths. In reality, legislators vary in regards to the type of district
each represents, the party each is affiliated with, and the personal char-
acteristics each possess. To test whether or not these aggregated results
hold up when looking at the particulars of each legislator and the cor-
responding district, a more detailed analysis of Catholicism in Congress

must be utilized.
Explaining the Data

As detailed above, the model for testing the effects of Catholi-
cism in the House of Representatives is a multivariate OLS regression.
Given the fact that there appears to be a difference in Catholic voting
between districts represented by Catholic Members of Congress and
districts represented by non-Catholic Members of Congress, the findings
of this model should focus on the significance and influence of two vari-
ables. First is the percentage of constituents in a district that are Catho-
lic. If this variable is significant with a positive coefficient, it means that
the constituency influence theory is plausible. Second is the legislator
religious affiliation variable. If this variable is significant with a posi-
tive coefficient, it means that the personal ideology theory is credible
for Catholic representation. If neither of these variables is significant, it
means that the other controlled factors are coincidentally responsible for
the variation between how Catholics and non-Catholics are represented
at the aggregate national level.
Table 1. Influences on Percentage that a House Member Votes with the
USCCB (by Religion)
Variables All Legislators Catholic Non-Catholic
Legislators Legislators
Party of 2.935*** 5.318*** 1.781***
Legislator (.934) (1.885) (1.072)
Race of 1.183 -.589 2.007
Legislator (1.637) (5.126) (1.695)
Gender of -2.136* -4.757* -.836
Legislator (1.213) (2.413) (1.402)
Region of District 1.724* 1.186 1.508
(1.023) (2.328) (1.137)
% Catholic in -.037 -.010 -.073*
District (.034) (.062) (.042)
Catholic 5.428*** -- --
Legislator (1.015)
Constant 54.373*** 57.990*** 55.580***
(1.188) (2.557) (1.402)
N 435 131 304
***Denotes p < .01; **p <. 05; *p < .10. Standard errors in parentheses.
The first column of Table 1 shows the results of the model. Party
and religious affiliation are significant at the .01 level, while gender and
district region are significant at the .1 level. Interestingly, the percent-
age of constituents in a district that are Catholic is not significant, even
at the .1 level. Party affiliation, district region, and legislator religion
all have positive coefficients, meaning that Democrats, Southerners, and
Catholics all vote more in line with the USCCB. Gender has a negative

coefficient, meaning that females vote less in line with the USCCB; this
variable, however, is insignificant at the .05 level and thus cannot be
considered truly significant. Of all the significant variables, Catholicism
and affiliation with the Democratic Party have the strongest influence on
the percentage of voting with the USCCB.
Seeing that religion and party affiliation are the two most in-
fluential variables, it is interesting to examine each of these subgroups
separately. Doing so has two purposes. First, it allows us to see whether
certain variables remain significant or insignificant within a certain sub-
group. Second, it shows which characteristics are most influential within
each subgroup. The second and third columns of Table 1 apply the same
model as in the first column, but do so first for only Catholic members of
the House of Representatives and then for only non-Catholic members
of the House of Representatives. The findings contained in these two
columns largely confirm the results of the original model, but also bring
attention to some new points for consideration.
First, since legislator Catholicism is manually controlled for in the
second and third columns, the influence of party from the first column
is largely reflected in the difference between the constants in the second
and third columns. Next, the table shows that party affiliation is signifi-
cant at the .01 level. However, the amount of influence that this variable
has varies depending on whether the legislator is Catholic or not, with
party affiliation having a much greater influence on Catholic Members of
Congress than non-Catholic Members of Congress. District region also
loses its significance when controlling for legislator religion. Finally, the
percentage of constituents in a district becomes significant at the .1 level
for districts represented by non-Catholics, but with a negative coefficient.
Since the .1 level of significance is statistically weak, this result seems
to show that the Catholic makeup of a legislator’s constituency is not
altogether important.
Table 2. Influences on Percentage that a House Member Votes with the

USCCB (by Party)
Variables All Legislators Republican Democratic
Legislators Legislators
Party of Legislator 2.935*** -- --
(.934)
Race of Legislator+ 1.183 -- 1.995
(1.637) (1.680)
Gender of Legislator -2.136* -3.571** -1.522
(1.213) (1.875) (1.597)

Region of District 1.724* 3.148** -.680
(1.023) (1.304) (1.651)
% Catholic in District -.037 -.054 -.046
(.034) (.048) (.049)
Catholic Legislator 5.428*** 4.091*** 6.879***
(1.015) (1.393) (1.482)
Constant 54.373*** 54.813*** 57.400***
(1.188) 1.570) (1.880)
N 435 234 201
***Denotes p <. 01; **p < .05; *p < .10. Standard errors in parentheses.
+
There were no black Republican House members in the 109th Congress.
Table 2 applies the same model as in Table 1, but manually con-
trols for party affiliation rather than for legislator religion. Again, the in-
fluence of party affiliation seen in the first column reflects the difference
between the constants in the second and third columns. Also, religious
affiliation is still significant at the .01 level for both parties, with the
influence of religion being stronger for Democratic legislators compared
to Republican legislators. Region and gender are statistically significant
at the .1 level for Republican legislators, as in the model in the first col-
umn. However, for Republican legislators, the results are significant at
the .05 level and the influence of each variable is greater than in the first
column. For Democratic Members of Congress, no other variables were
significant. In other words, this model predicts all variation in Catholic
scores for Democratic legislators based on whether or not the legislator is
Catholic.
Table 3. Influences on Percent that a House Member Votes with the

Catholic Church (with Other Religions)
Variables Slope Variables Slope
Coefficients Coefficients
(Standard (Standard
Error) Error)
Party of Legislator 2.960*** Episcopalian Legislator -7.151***
(.986) (1.784)
Race of Legislator -.174 Presbyterian Legislator -5.407***
(1.833) (1.759)
Gender of -2.040* Jewish Legislator -5.487***
Legislator (1.237) (1.955)
Region of District 1.501 Mormon Legislator -5.221*
(1.061) (2.883)
% Catholic in -.024 Protestant/Lutheran -7.094***
District (.036) Legislator (1.733)
Baptist Legislator -3.085* Other (Non-Catholic) -5.287***
(1.609) Legislator (1.574)

Methodist -4.401*** Constant 59.335***
Legislator (1.567) (1.664)
N 435
***Denotes p < .01; **p <. 05; *p < .10. Standard errors in parentheses.
Again, for both parties, the percentage of constituents in a district
that are Catholic is not significant, even at the .1 level.
The findings from Table 1 and Table 2 seem to be rather compel-
ling, but it may not do justice to the variety of other religions represented
in Congress to treat them all as one bloc in contrast to Catholicism.
Instead, taking into account all other religious affiliations as distinct enti-
ties creates a more accurate picture. Doing so shows whether any other
denomination is correlated with Catholicism on issues of concern to the
Catholic Church. In Table 3, the same model as in Table 1 and Table 2
is repeated, but with variables for all other religious affiliations except
Catholicism. The additional variables in Table 3 that replace legislator
Catholicism in Table 1 and Table 2 are Baptist legislator, Methodist leg-
islator, Episcopalian legislator, Presbyterian legislator, Jewish legislator,
Mormon legislator, Protestant or Lutheran legislator, and Other (Non-
Catholic) legislator. By creating these variables, all Members of Con-
gress fall into one of these categories unless they are Catholic. By doing
this, the difference between Catholics and members of other religious
denominations can be compared. This measure is mutually exclusive
and collectively exhaustive. If there is an actual difference in Catholic
representation between Catholic Members of Congress and non-Catholic
members of Congress, these new religious variables should be significant
and should possess a negative coefficient.
As in Table 1 and Table 2, Table 3 finds party affiliation to be
significant at the .01 level. Again, gender is significant at the .1 level
with a negative coefficient. Also, the constant of this model is much
higher than in previous models, because the starting point for this model
assumes that a legislator is Catholic. Therefore, the Catholic effect that
was noted in previous tables is essentially contained within this higher
constant as compared to previous models. Most importantly, though, Ta-
ble 3 shows various levels of significance for the eight religious control
variables and each of these variables has a negative coefficient. This is
precisely what was to be predicted if Catholic legislators vote distinctly
from non-Catholic legislators on the issues tested in this model.
Discussion
Wilson writes of “Catholicism’s declining significance as a pre-

dictor of respondent issue positions” in his study of the positions taken
by Catholics in the electorate on issues that the Catholic Church takes a
position on. The study conducted here seems to confirm Wilson’s find-
ings, as the measure of Catholicism in a congressional district has no sig-
nificant effect on the Catholic score of Members of Congress. The one
difference is for non-Catholic Members of Congress, for whom greater
Catholic presence in the constituency actually has a slight negative effect
on the legislator’s Catholic score. However, this effect was minimal—
a less than .1% change in voting behavior for every 1% increase in the
district composition of Catholics. The result is that the constituency
theory of congressional voting, although first believed to have been the
driving force behind voting behavior on Catholic issues, is found to be
essentially insignificant in my model.
Instead of constituency influence, this study finds that the other
two theories of congressional voting behavior—party affiliation and
personal ideology—are what primarily predict a member of the House
of Representatives’ level of voting on Catholic issues. Drawing upon
past research in the study of representation, my study affirms the theories
of Levitt, Burden, and Green and Guth while discrediting the theory of
Miller and Stokes. Indicators of both party and personal motivations
for legislative behavior are significant at high levels in every model and
were the two most influential variables in these models (Table 3 requires
a slight modification of this statement, however, because religion was
modeled as eight separate variables rather than a single variable). It also
was the case that, between the party affiliation of a House member and
the religious affiliation of that House member, affiliation with the Catho-
lic Church is the single strongest indicator of a higher percentage of vot-
ing with the positions taken by the USCCB. This affirms the statement
that, in the area of Catholic representation in Congress, whether or not a
House member is Catholic is the primary characteristic affecting voting
behavior.
In the regressions above that model all non-Catholic Members of
Congress as one group, legislator religion is significant and highly influ-
ential. However, to group all non-Catholic
Table 4. Predicted Increases in Catholic Score for Catholic House Mem-
bers Compared to Other Religions
Religious Affiliation Difference of Being Catholic (in
Percentage Points)
Baptists 3.085
Methodists 4.401

Episcopalians 7.151
Presbyterians 5.407
Jews 5.487
Mormons 5.221
Protestants or Lutherans 7.094
Other (Non-Catholic) Religions 5.287
Members of Congress together does not respect the individuality of ev-

ery denomination, so the regression displayed in Table 3 tested whether
any of the major denominations have voting behavior similar to that
of Catholics on Catholic issues. The aggregation of all non-Catholic
members of the House of Representatives may have hid the similarities
between legislators of a single non-Catholic denomination and Catholic
legislators. However, after taking the major non-Catholic denomina-
tions into account, the effect of being a Catholic House member is not
mitigated, but rather is made even more apparent. Every non-Catholic
denomination tested showed significance (all at the .01 level, with the
exception of Baptist and Mormon legislators, which were at the .1 level)
with a negative coefficient and an influence greater than that of party af-
filiation. Table 4 displays the regression results of Table 3 as the differ-
ence between the percentage that a Catholic House member tends to vote
in line with the USCCB and the percentage that a legislator from each of
the eight religious groups tested will vote in line with the USCCB. As
is demonstrated, a Catholic House member has a Catholic score that is
percentage points higher than non-Catholic House members of all reli-
gious affiliations, even after controlling for constituency influence and
party affiliation.
CONCLUSION
At the beginning of this paper, I asked two questions about the
nature of Catholic representation in Congress: Do Catholic legislators
vote differently than legislators of other religions on Catholic issues,
holding all else constant? Do legislators vote more consistently with
the Catholic Church as the compositions of their districts become more
Catholic? Through the findings shown above, I can approach these ques-
tions with a high degree of confidence:
First, the question of religious identification affecting the way
that members of the House of Representatives vote on certain issues is
answered in Table 3. The fact that legislators from each of the eight reli-
gious groups tested differ significantly from Catholic legislators at the .1
level, even while controlling for constituency influence and party affili-
ation, means that religion appears to be a determinant of how a member
of the House of Representatives votes on issues that the USCCB takes a
stand on. The fact that variance in how often a legislator votes with the
USCCB is best predicted by looking at a legislator’s religion speaks to
the importance of religious identification on a legislator’s voting behav-
ior.
Second, the question of members of the House of Representatives
voting more consistently with the Catholic Church as the percentage of
Catholics in their districts increases is answered in each of the regression
models in this study. Although at first glance, aggregated data appears
to suggest that House members do vote more consistently as the percent-
age of Catholics in their districts increase, further analysis tells other-
wise. These tables only look at descriptive statistics for the entire 109th
Congress rather than at the characteristics of the individual members of
the House of Representatives themselves. When controlling for party
affiliation and personal ideology (namely the religious affiliation of the
legislator), constituency influences become insignificant, with only two
exceptions.
The first exception is that being a House member from a South-
ern state was significant to voting with the USCCB, both in the overall
model (from Table 1 and Table 2) and in the model that examines just
Republican legislators. In all other models, though, this variable lost
its significance at the .1 level. As a result, the overall influence of dis-
trict region on a legislator’s Catholic score is inconclusive. The second
exception is that, for non-Catholic House members, the percentage of
constituents in the district that are Catholic has a slightly negative effect
on voting behavior. Both the presence of this very minimal negative ef-
fect of Catholic constituency on non-Catholic legislators and the lack of
significance in all other models of voting behavior indicate that there is
inconclusive evidence to assert that members of the House of Represen-
tatives vote more consistently with the Catholic Church as the percentage
of Catholics in their districts increase.
This study shows that there is an actual “Catholic Effect” in Congress.
The presence of such an effect is not tested on the basis of issues that
are liberal or conservative, but rather on the basis of issues that are of
importance to the Catholic Church, as defined by the USCCB. Members
of Congress do not pay attention to their constituencies about the level of
interest in Catholic issues, regardless of whether or not the Members of
Congress are Catholic. Yet there is still a difference in voting behavior
on Catholic issues between Catholics and non-Catholics in Congress.
My model suggests that this difference is attributable to the religious

affiliation of the legislator. If a legislator is not Catholic, the legisla-
tor’s voting behavior is best predicted by the legislator’s party affiliation.
This appears to imply that non-Catholic legislators do not view Catholic
issues in terms of religion, but rather in terms of their place in the larger
set of issues that is before Congress. If a legislator is Catholic, however,
they seem to pay attention to Catholic issues and take them into account
when voting. This is a large behavioral difference between Catholic
legislators and non-Catholic legislators and, thus, has important implica-
tions for the overall study of religion and representation.
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Jane Mansbridge. “Should Blacks Represent Blacks, and Women Represent Women? A Contin-
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Frances E. Lee and Bruce I. Oppenheimer. Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of
Equal Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
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cal Science Review 57.1 (1963): 45-56.
Miller and Stokes, 54.
Gary W. Cox and Matthew Daniel McCubbins. Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the
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Barry C. Burden. The Personal Roots of Representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
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Burden, 5.
Burden, 39.
John C. Green and James L. Guth. “Religion, Representatives, and Roll Calls.” Legislative
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See Miller and Stokes, Green and Guth for examples of such research.
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Political Science Association in Chicago, Illinois.

Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body
Eleanor Huntington
Eleanor Huntington is a History and FTT (Film) double-major. She

became interested in refugee issues while working with Somali, Libe-
rian, and Cambodian refugee children in Denver Public Housing. While
studying abroad in Uganda, Eleanor had the opportunity to travel to
Rwanda. For her senior history thesis, Eleanor wrote on the Rwandan
refugee crisis in East Africa throughout the twentieth century. This paper
is a part of the third chapter of her thesis.
Between April and August 1994, an estimated 800,000 people

died in the Rwandan genocide. The ramifications of this genocide con-
tinue to negatively affect Rwanda today. The grotesque murders of nearly
one million citizens caused government structures to shut down, leading
to agricultural, educational, and economic disasters. After the Rwandan
Patriotic Front (RPF) took control of Kigali and effectively ended the
genocide in July 1994, nearly two million Rwandans, mostly Hutu rebels
and civilians, fled the country for Zaire (modern-day Democratic Repub-
lic of the Congo, DRC), Tanzania, Burundi and Uganda. Their departure
coincided with the return of many Tutsi refugees who fled the previous
massacres, complicating land tenure issues in modern-day Rwanda. The
land tensions and unjust laws of land ownership directly affected ethnic
tensions, which eventually imploded into the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
The goal of the future prevention of genocide is implicit in the study of
it. Rwandan history may repeat itself without national pressure to ad-
dress the structural violence of inequitable land distribution and misap-
plication of justice. Rwanda needs to create a solid system for address-
ing land rights abuses in order to mitigate misappropriation of power and
to prevent future genocide.
Violence and displacement mar Rwanda’s history. In pre-colonial
Rwanda, a Tutsi king ruled over both Tutsi pastoralists and Hutu agricul-
turalists. German and Belgian colonial powers manipulated this political
system, thereby imposing indirect rule. These successive colonizations
institutionalized Rwanda’s ethnic stratification. The colonial powers
granted special privileges to Tutsis and implemented identification cards
based on ethnicity. Frustrated by this discriminatory system, many Hutus
26 Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body

and a small number of Tutsi peasants revolted against the Tutsi leader-
ship in 1959. Thousands of Tutsis fled the country for surrounding states,
beginning the endemic problem of Rwandan displacement. In 1987,
Rwandan refugees formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in Uganda
with the intention of reclaiming power in Rwanda. To that end, in Octo-
ber 1990, they launched a surprise attack on Rwanda. This began a civil
war that culminated in the 1994 genocide. In the months following the
genocide, the displaced Tutsis reentered Rwanda while Hutus fled the
country, renewing the cycle of Rwandan displacement.
In this paper, I explore the inability of current legal structures to
address land rights abuses in Rwanda. Part of my research is based on my
personal interviews with Hutu Rwandan refugees residing at Nakivale
Refugee Settlement (NRS). During the summer of 2009, the Govern-
ment of Uganda (GoU), the Government of Rwanda (GoR) and the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) attempted
to repatriate all Rwandan refugees as determined by the 2003 Tripar-
tite Agreement on the Voluntary Repatriation of Rwandan Refugees in
Uganda. The initial deadline of July 31, 2009, received a one-month
extension, but voluntary repatriation continues to be minimal. I analyze
the information I received in interviews with the understanding that the
individuals feared involuntary repatriation and may have used the inter-
view as an opportunity to plead their case for continued United Nations
(UN) protection. With this in mind, the refugees at NRS focused on the
issue of landlessness and the sociopolitical abuses they suffered after
their initial returns to Rwanda in the late 1990s. Additionally, they com-
municated discouragement about the current reconciliation process as
exemplified by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
and the gacaca court system.
From these interviews, it is apparent that the effects of genocide
do not end when the last person is killed. In addition to providing trauma
care for victims and families, a post-genocidal society must integrate the
pursuits of both justice and reconciliation. It is imperative that Rwanda
foster restorative rather than retributive justice to achieve reconciliation
and genuine acceptance of both Tutsis and Hutus. After histories of geno-
cide, displacement, and inequitable land distribution, Rwanda must face
the challenges presented by contested land rights and collective memory.
Land Rights Abuses

Though a small country, Rwanda had one of the highest popula-
Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body 27

tion densities and highest rates of population growth of all countries in
the world both before and after 1994. Even before the genocide, a few
individuals cited Rwanda’s lack of land and dense population as a reason
why the previous waves of Tutsi refugees could not resettle in Rwanda
and needed to integrate into their host countries. The 1993 Arusha Ac-
cords attempted to make land agreements to allow for Tutsi repatriation;
the Tutsis believed that they deserved to live on their ancestral lands.
The parties involved in creating the Arusha Accords, however, deter-
mined that the government could not grant people ownership of land they
vacated more than ten years prior.
After the genocide, the massive population shifts within and across
Rwanda’s borders prompted new approaches to the issue of land tenure.
Beginning in December 1996, the GoR implemented the National Habi-
tat Policy to provide housing in imidugudu for returning Tutsi refugees.
Government officials eventually coerced other Rwandans, both Tutsi and
Hutu, to move to these villages far from arable fields and local markets.
Not only did the government enact a policy of enforced displacement of
its citizens, but in the process it also destroyed homes and farms to make
way for the imidugudu. This forced villagization victimized rural Tutsis
as well as displaced Hutus, as all were forced to move yet again.
The imidugudu system had benefits for returning Tutsis, who
were able to gain land and resources immediately upon reentering
Rwanda. Government and international humanitarian support focused
on refugee Tutsis at the expense of other groups. After writing separate
books about survivors and perpetrators of the genocide, Jean Hatzfeld
composed a study of the interactions of Tutsis and Hutus in the recon-
ciliation process through his personal interviews. In, The Antelope’s
Strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide he quotes a Tutsi survi-
vor’s frustration with refugee Tutsis, those whom the genocide did not
directly affect: “Basically, it’s the Tutsis from abroad, those of the former
diaspora[s], who are running the show. These Tutsis suffered in exile and
returned after the killings to reclaim houses, buy the most cows, [and]
start up new businesses.” Though the internal Tutsis underwent the most
horrific abuses during the genocide, the external Tutsis received most of
the land benefits provided to survivors.
The First Congo War caused further displacement in the region
beginning in November 1996, exacerbating the problems of imidugudu.
The combatants waged this war in part because of inequitable distribu-
tion of natural resources within Zaire, in part as a revolt against President

Mobutu Sese Seko, and in part because of regional instability stemming
from Zairian nationals and Rwandan Hutu refugee attacks on the Ban-
yamulenge, Zairian Tutsis. The Rwandan refugee population in Zaire
included some extremist rebels who planned subversive military attacks
against the RPF-led Rwandan government. In retaliation, Laurent Kabi-
la’s Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDLC)
allied with the RPF government and evicted all Hutu refugees from east-
ern Congo. Before the Rwandan government could sort out the residual
land problems caused by hundreds of thousands of Tutsis returning after
decades of displacement during the Hutu-led regimes, the forced repatri-
ation of Hutu refugees from Zaire added 1,270,000 to the homeless and
landless population in Rwanda. Upon return to Rwanda, Hutu refugees
discovered that RPF soldiers and other former Tutsi refugees occupied
their homes and farms.
Seven of the twenty-four refugees I interviewed cited RPF con-
fiscations of their land as the preeminent reason for their displacement
in Uganda. They stated that the RPF soldiers who took their land feared
reprisals for land confiscations and had threatened the Hutu families with
imprisonment and death should they attempt to reclaim the properties.
Without a general plan for reconciliation even before the forced repa-
triation from Zaire, the hundreds of thousands of returning Tutsis and
repatriated Hutus continued to harbor feelings of bitterness and hatred, a
combination that proved disastrous for Rwanda.
The GoR and the international relief community were unprepared
to handle the sudden influx of thousands of Hutus who chose self-exile in
Uganda rather than remaining in Rwanda. Of the twenty-four people that
I interviewed at Nakivale Refugee Settlement, twenty-one initially left
Rwanda during 1994 for either Zaire or Tanzania. They returned between
1994 and 1997 and left Rwanda for Uganda as recently as 2008 because
of unresolved land issues. This state of landlessness increases political
vulnerability and fosters a propensity for violence. The landless person,
especially the rural peasant, must rely on the national government or
foreign aid for food, shelter, and security. Without land, a peasant will
not be able to grow food and provide for his family. Prior to the 1959
Revolution, the Tutsis controlled most of the land and hence exercised
dominant political power. Dissatisfaction with this system propelled Hu-
tus toward violence. This process repeated in the refugee settlements in
Uganda, as Tutsi refugees joined rebel movements out of desire for land
and power. As this shows, the landless person has become an economic

and political liability to the government because of financial need and
dissatisfaction with the government.
The Hutu refugees who managed to flee Rwanda do not want to
return to a state of landlessness. Under current Ugandan law, refugees
in Uganda live in settlements rather than camps. The difference is that
in settlements the government grants refugees small plots of land, some
tools, and occasionally seeds with which to farm. In East Africa, eco-
nomic opportunity is intimately linked to one’s educational status. Many
of the Hutu refugees with whom I spoke are peasants who attended only
a few years of primary school before fleeing. Without an education and
without land, they do not look optimistically toward a future in Rwanda,
a country that the refugees believe does not want to provide for the
Hutus. The Hutu refugees’ aversion to repatriation stems from the lack
of security experienced following repatriation from Zaire and Tanza-
nia. None of the refugees want to remain in Uganda, yet they all dread
returning to Rwanda, preferring death in Uganda to the torture, imprison-
ment, and degradation they envision in Rwanda. As one refugee woman I
interviewed stated, “Any soil can host a dead body; I can die in Rwanda
as easily as Uganda.”
Due to the history of displacement throughout the twentieth
century, land possession remains ambiguous. Does the land belong to the
descendents of those who possessed it before colonization? Does it be-
long to the Tutsis to whom Belgians granted the majority of land? Does
it belong to the Hutus who lived on the land before 1994? Are the Hutus
obligated to renounce their claims on land as punishment for enacting
genocide? In the words of one of the women refugees, “I have nowhere
to go if I return to Rwanda… [Rwanda] is completely destroyed; its form
cannot be reshaped.” Displaced Rwandans had and continue to have no
place to go without legal and moral clarifications of Rwandan land rights
policy.
The Direction of Justice

The current justice system in Rwanda only pursues crimes of
genocide, excluding other crimes committed by the RPF during and after
the Rwandan civil war. Though victims of génocidaires must receive
justice, the system of crime singularity negates the development of a
peaceful reconciliation. The official RPF narrative deliberately discards
“the elements of authoritarianism and the suppression of dissent which…
mark the behavior of the ruling, Tutsi-dominated elite.” The current

RPF-led government acknowledges neither war crimes committed by
invading RPF troops during the civil war nor the retaliatory attacks
against Hutus after the genocide. This practice encourages temporary
“passive coexistence,” and ignores the fact that “the genocide was politi-
cal and [that] unity and reconciliation can only be brought about by the
reconstruction of a political community, unified but multicultural, fully
participating in the structures of power.” A unified political community
requires individuals’ participation and trust in the government, which
post-genocidal Rwandan government lacks because of the current leader-
ship’s exclusion and demonization of Hutu refugees. A Rwandan refugee
accused of providing machetes to génocidaires stated, “The government
uses genocide to cover up revenge on Hutus.” He continued to describe
how the government under Paul Kagame, the former RPF military leader
and current Rwandan president, convinced European countries to view
Hutus as killers only, and not as human beings. One must take into con-
sideration this refugee’s obvious bitterness toward Kagame and the RPF.
However, his statements demonstrate how Hutus with very little access
to popular media understand stereotypes against them as being propa-
gated by the current Rwandan government. These feelings of extreme
indignation and marginalization do not suggest the growth of a peaceful
society and hamper efforts at reconciliation.
Neither the RPF-led government nor the justice system accounts
for all perpetrators and victims. The UN Security Council approved the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha in No-
vember 1994 for “the sole purpose of prosecuting persons responsible
for genocide and other serious violations of international humanitarian
law committed in the territory of Rwanda.” Convened so shortly after
the genocide, the UN mainly intended the ICTR as a means of convicting
the main planners and perpetrators of genocide even though its mandate
includes violations of all international humanitarian law. The RPF com-
mitted war crimes against non-combatant citizens during the war, a crime
under Article Four of the Geneva Conventions, but the ICTR has yet to
prosecute any RPF member for these crimes. Additionally, the ICTR
does not guarantee the safety of those who choose to testify. One of the
refugees whom I interviewed refused to testify against his former army
commander and fled the country for fear of reprisal.
The GoR does not provide any protection to witnesses who
testify against people acquitted of genocide. One woman left for Uganda
in 2001 after the ICTR released the man against whom her husband

testified in Arusha. They feared this fellow Hutu would want to avenge
her husband’s testimony. Another woman spoke of how members of the
ICTR tried to force refugees to testify against perpetrators upon return to
Rwanda. She cited this as a reason why she and others, who were chil-
dren during the genocide, fear forced repatriation to Rwanda. The ICTR
only classifies the Hutus as perpetrators of genocide and never as vic-
tims, ignoring both their needs for justice and protection. As a result, the
ICTR does not act a reconciliatory instrument for post-genocide Rwanda.
The ICTR does not prosecute any of the crimes committed by the
RPF in large part because of Western reticence to condemn the RPF. As
the victors of the Rwandan civil war against the genocidal Hutu Power
regime, Tutsi leaders remain exempt from justice because foreign gov-
ernments do not want to appear unsympathetic to Tutsi victims. The RPF
has found it easy to humiliate the previously inactive international com-
munity into submission: “the guilt and debt of the international commu-
nity… meant that Westerners lost the right to ask ‘awkward’ questions of
the RPF and its agenda.” Instead of attempting to create a multi-lateral
and multi-ethnic government in post-genocide Rwanda, U.S. Represen-
tative Christopher H. Smith advocated complete trust in the victorious
Kagame regime. At the hearing before the Subcommittee on Interna-
tional Operations and Human Rights, Smith commented, “The one lesson
that the Clinton Administration has drawn [from the genocide] is to back
the current Tutsi-led Government of Rwanda.” The U.S. government’s
attitude, one shared by other Western governments, created a reluctance
to criticize Rwanda’s illegal occupation of parts of eastern Zaire as well
as RPF crimes against humanity in the former Zaire. Unable to fairly
scrutinize the RPF because of widespread belief that the West failed the
Tutsis, the ICTR and the West chose to ignore RPF’s crimes, thwarting
potential for reconciliation offered by the ICTR.
Apart from the ICTR, an alternate form of legal action and
punishment in Rwanda is the gacaca courts. These courts, a traditional
legal forum in Rwanda, require the perpetrator to publicly state his or
her crimes and ask for forgiveness from the community. The GoR imple-
mented this system to provide an outlet for the numerous backlogged
cases after human rights groups decried the detainment of prisoners with-
out trial. The courts minimized the overcrowding of Rwandan jails, but
similar to the ICTR, critics point to problems of insecurity and witness
intimidation in gacaca. The July 2009 UNHCR Uganda Report com-
mented that “despite sustained activities to promote voluntary repatria-

tion, very few Rwandans are willing to return, claiming difficulties in
recovering their land and fear of being prosecuted by the Gacaca [sic]
courts.”
The only ethnically Tutsi Rwandan refugee (son of a Tutsi father
and a Hutu mother) I interviewed at NRS is a single male who left his
wife and children in Rwanda in 2006 because he believed the gacaca
aggressively attacked him. He fled Rwanda in 1994 for Tanzania and re-
turned during the forced repatriation of Rwandan refugees from Tanzania
in 1996. Upon arrival, Rwandan officials arrested and imprisoned him
for three months under charges of rebel activity. Though the subsequent
investigation deemed him innocent, the gacaca arrested him in 2002 un-
der new charges of genocide. He claimed that the court officials rejected
his neighbors’ testimonies that would have exonerated him in an attempt
to persecute his Hutu mother. The traditional justice system of gacaca
brings fractured communities together to address the genocide, but too
often personal politics subvert the genuine intent of reconciliation. The
personal and political conflicts subvert the justice process of the RPF-led
GoR, the ICTR and the gacaca, and minimize the opportunity for timely
and peaceful reconciliation.
Conclusion
Displacement is an unfortunate reality throughout the history of
East Africa. This region must collectively address its refugee problem
in order to stabilize current tensions and reduce the likelihood of future
conflicts. In the conclusion of his study of Rwandan refugees in Uganda,
E.D. Mushemeza states, “a homeless Banyarwanda is not in the interest
of peace and stability in the region.” He later asserts that the Rwandan
genocide is a potentially repeatable event, as the tensions over land and
access to resources continue to provoke violent outbursts. As demon-
strated by the Tutsi refugees’ willingness to support Yoweri K. Musev-
eni’s National Resistance Army (NRA) and by present day conflict in the
DRC, those homeless victims of violence are more susceptible to joining
violent rebel movements. Just as landlessness fostered frustration that
led to the 1959 Revolution, so too did protracted displacement encourage
refugees to turn toward violence.
The current Rwandan government’s insensitivity to land rights is-
sues is discouraging for prospects of both reconciliation and justice. One
of the women interviewed recounted a repatriation sensitization meeting
during which a Rwandan official informed the refugees that they would

not receive any land compensation: “When you decided to leave, no one
told you to. You must start afresh, expect no properties.” The majority of
Tutsi refugees who returned to Rwanda in 1994, however, received land
even though “no one told them to [leave].” In effect, the current adminis-
tration creates a similar social system to the pre-colonial and colonial pe-
riod in which rule by Tutsi elite stripped the remaining Tutsis and Hutus
of power and land. Without redistribution of land, rural peoples’ feelings
of powerlessness will continue to fester and may again result in violence.
This structural violence is the aftermath of exploitation and marginaliza-
tion and, if left untreated, will once again develop into physical, direct
violence.
Without punishment for Tutsi war criminals and land confis-
cators, the conflicting claims for land will remain at the forefront of
Rwanda’s problems. The misapplication of justice systems designed to
prosecute crimes of genocide does not adequately address the residual
problem of inequitable land distribution and appropriation. In the post-
genocide era, Tutsi elites once again dominate and control land, the
justice system, and national leadership. While Hutu perpetrators of geno-
cide need to admit impunity and accept consequences, so also do Hutu
citizens and refugees need to see that the new Rwanda will also acknowl-
edge and punish crimes committed by Tutsis.
The Tutsi refugees in Uganda mounted a successful campaign
against the Hutu-led Government of Rwanda, which eventually imploded
into the genocide. Unless Rwanda addresses the complaints and needs
of the displaced Hutu, the RPF-led government remains susceptible to
subversive rebel movements. The history of Rwanda demonstrates the
intersection between land rights, displacement, and genocidal violence.
The future of Rwanda depends on the government’s dedication to foster-
ing equality through justice in order to thwart the continuation of this
cycle of violence.
References
For a more detailed discussion of the estimated number of people killed during the genocide,
see Adam Jones’s Gendercide Watch website’s case study of the Rwandan genocide, in the “How
Many Died?” section available online at <http://www.gendercide.org/case_rwanda.html>.
Johan Galtung first described “structural violence” as a form of violence in which social
structures harm people by preventing them from achieving their basic needs in his 1969 article
“Violence, Peace, and Peace Research” from the Journal of Peace Research. Since the rise of Ho-
locaust and genocide studies, “Never again” emerged as the rallying cry of people concerned with
the rise of ethnic violence across the globe. For more information, see Ronnie Landau’s article
“Never Again?” published in the March 1994 issue of History Today.
Rwanda was part of German East Africa from 1884 to 1916, when Belgian forces from the

because of unresolved land issues (Refugees B male, E male, G male); and two woman (Refugees
M female, S female) spoke of their torture by RPF soldiers in connection with land disputes.
Refugee B male left Rwanda for Uganda in April 2006, Refugee E male left Rwanda for Uganda
in July 2008, and Refugee V male left Rwanda for Uganda some time during 2004. The remain-
ing interviewees initially left Rwanda in 1994.
Pottier, Johan. Re-Imagining Rwanda: Conflict, Survival, and Disinformation in the Late Twen-
tieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002: 17.
For more information on the specifics rights of refugees in Rwanda, see “The Refugees Act,
2006,” of the Republic of Uganda, specifically Section 29, e, iv.
Refugees A female, H male, K female, M female, N female, P female, Q female, R female, S
female, T female, U male, V male, and X female self-identified as peasants in Rwanda prior to
the genocide.
Refugee K female. Interview by author. Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda. August 11,
2009. Four other refugees (G male, H male, U male, and X female) echoed similar sentiments,
that they would prefer suicide to a return to Rwanda.
Refugee I female. Interview by author. Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda. August 11, 2009.
Bromley, Roger . “After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? Cultural Representations of Rec-
onciliation in Rwanda.” French Cultural Studies 20 (2009): 181.
Bromley describes “passive coexistence,” as the state of non-reconciliation and continued bit-
terness without overt antipathy. Bromley, “After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?,” 184.
Emphasis in original.
Refugee C male. Interview by author. Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda. August 11, 2009.
In the context of the interview, the interviewer understands the choice of “European” as connot-
ing “Western.”
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Security Council resolution
S/RES/955(1994), 1994 (Geneva, Switzerland: G.P.O. 1994).
The most notable proponent of the theory of double genocide is Pierre Péan, a French journal-
ist and author of Noires fureurs, blancs menteurs [“Black Furies, White Liars”]. During the
interviews, three male refugees (identified by numbers 3, 4, and 6) used variations of the term,
“vengeful genocide,” “developmental genocide,” and “moral genocide,” to explain why they are
unable to repatriate. Article Four of the Geneva Conventions “affords protections to civilians,
even in occupied territory.” For more information, see The International Committee of the Red
Cross website, available at <http://www.icrc.org/Web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/htmlall/genevaconven-
tions> (accessed December 7, 2009).
Refugee J male. Interview by author. Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda. August 11, 2009.
The interviewee referred to the ICTR colloquially as “Arusha.”
Refugee A female. Interview by author. Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda. August 11, 2009.
Refugee Q female. Interview by author. Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda. August 12,
2009.
For more information on the types of crimes prosecuted by the ICTR, see Human Rights
Watch’s August 17, 2009 article “Rwanda: Tribunal’s Work Incomplete,” available at <http://
www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/08/17/rwanda-tribunal-s-work-incomplete> (accessed December 9,
2009).
Pottier, Re-Imagining Rwanda, 156.
U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights
of the Committee on International Relations: Rwanda: Genocide and the Continuing Cycle of
Violence, 1998 (Washington, DC: G.P.O., 1998), 2. Representative Smith of New Jersey served
as Chairman of the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights during the
hearing.
Hintjens, Helen. “Conflict and Resources in Post-genocide Rwanda and the Great Lakes Re-
gion.” International Journal of Environmental Studies 63.5 (2006): 600.
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN Special Representative of the Com-
mission on Human Rights all prepared reports about prison abuses in Rwanda. For more informa-

Belgian Congo occupied the country during World War I. Belgium officially gained control of
Ruanda-Urundi in 1923 from a League of Nations mandate.
The interviewees resided at Nakivale Refugee Settlement as of August 13, 2009.
UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNHCR Country Operations Plan 2004 - Uganda, Sep-
tember 1, 2003, <http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3f7987397.html> (accessed December 8,
2009).
On September 8, 2009, Tarsis Kabwegyere, Ugandan Minister for Relief, Disaster Preparedness,
and Refugees extended the deadline indefinitely for the remaining Rwandan refugees in Uganda.
See Gashegu Muramira’s September 9, 2009 article “Rwanda: Uganda Extends Refugees Repa-
triation Deadline,” from The New Times, available at <http://allafrica.com/stories/200909100083.
html> (accessed December 9, 2009).
A Rwandan refugee third-year university student served as translator in all of the interviews (in
Uganda, universities award undergraduate degrees after a three-year program). The interviewer
asked a question in English, the translator communicated the question in Kinyarwanda for the
interviewee, who then relayed the answer in Kinyarwanda. One interviewee responded in English
(Refugee E male). The translator knew personally and selected all of the interviewees. The
interviewer spoke with thirteen men and eleven women. None of the interviewees provided their
names; throughout the paper, the refugees will be referred to by a randomly assigned number and
by their gender, for example “Refugee B female.”
Gacaca is a Kinyarwanda word for the traditional justice system in Rwanda that roughly
translates to “justice on the grass.” Article 51 of The Organic Law of 2004 provides the gacaca
with the necessary government mandate. For more information, see “Reports on Trials in Gacaca
Courts,” published by National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions and available at <http://www.
inkiko-gacaca.gov.rw/En/EnIntroduction.htm> (accessed December 9, 2009).
See the CIA World Fact Book’s page on Rwanda, located at <https://www.cia.gov/library/publi-
cations/the-world-factbook/geos/rw.html> (accessed December 7, 2009).
Prunier, Gérard. The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. Kampala: Fountain Publishers,
1994: 353.
The Government of Rwanda and the RPF signed the Arusha Accords on August 3, 1993. The
Accords came about following a series of peace talks to end the Rwandan civil war. Uprooting
the Poor in Rural Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2001: 7.
Parties to the Accords included the Government of Rwanda, the RPF, the Government of Tanza-
nia, and the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
Uprooting the Poor in Rural Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2001: 1. Imidugudu is a
Kinyarwanda word for government-created villages.
Bruce, John. “Drawing a line under the crisis: Reconciling returnee land access and security in
post-conflict Rwanda.” Working Paper, Humanitarian Policy Group (2007): 13.
Hatzfeld, Jean. Life Laid Bare: The Survivors in Rwanda Speak. New York: Other Press, 2000
and Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak. New York: Macmillan, 2003.
Hatzfeld, Jean. The Antelope’s Strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide. New York: Far-
rar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007: 90.
The First Congo War included the governments of Uganda, Rwanda, Angola, Burundi, and Zaire
among its belligerents, as well as the rebel groups, National Union for the Total Independence of
Angola (UNITA), Alliance for the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDLC), and
the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda (ALiR). The most commonly accepted dates for the First
Congo War are November 1996 to May 1997.
For more information on the First Congo War, see Gérard Prunier’s book Africa’s World War:
Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2008.
Uprooting the Poor in Rural Rwanda, 9.
Refugees B male, D male, F male, K female, Q female, U male, and X, female.
Six refugees claimed that family members died during land conflicts (Refugees B male, D male,
Q female, U male, and V male); three declared that the RPF illegally jailed family member(s)

tion, see the UN Special Representative’s report, available at <http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/
texis/vtx/refworld/rwmain?page=search&docid=3ae6af334&skip=0&query=rwan
da*%20and%20prison*%20and%20special> (accessed December 9, 2009).
Mafumbo, Charlotte Karungi. “Post Genocide Rwanda: Rebuilding a Polarized Society.” Paper
presented at the Rwandan Genocide Memorial Public Lecture, Kampala, Uganda, April 8, 2009.
Akello, Vanessa J. “UNHCR Uganda: July 2009 Update.”
Refugee L male. Interview by author. Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda. August 11, 2009.
Mushemeza, E.D. The Politics and Empowerment of Banyarwanda Refugees in Uganda 1959-
2001. Kampala: Fountain Publishers, 2007: 149.
Mushemeza, The Politics of Empowerment, 145. Yoweri K. Museveni is the current president of
the Republic of Uganda. He defeated former president Milton Obote’s regime in a coup in 1986.
Many Tutsi refugees in Uganda, Kagame included, served in Museveni’s rebel army during the
Ugandan Bush War, waged from 1981-1986.
Refugee D female. 2009. Interview by author. Nakivale Refugee Settlement, Uganda. August
12.
Weigert, Kathleen Maas. “Structural Violence,” in Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Con-
flict, ed. Lester Kurtz. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, 2005. She defines structural
violence as violence that “emerges from the unequal distribution of power and structures.”

2010 Political Poll
Christi Chelsky, Associate Editor

Patrick McDonnell, Associate Editor
Similar to last year, the economy is a major focus for many

Americans, and Notre Dame students are no different. While the eco-
nomic situation has improved, more students site the economy as a factor
influencing post-graduation plans. However, political party distribution
and views on campus issues have remained consistent with last year’s
numbers. Some issues new to the poll concern events surrounding Presi-
dent Obama’s first year in office including the University’s decision to
invite him to Commencement.
For the most part, party identification has remained relatively
stable at Notre Dame from 2009 to 2010. The percentage of Republi-
cans and Democrats has decreased from 37% to 32.7% and from 30%
to 27.9% respectively. Independents saw a slight increase from 29% to
30.3%. Third parties underwent a higher increase, 4% in total in 2009 to
8.7% in 2010. What has undergone a significant change from last year is
President Obama’s job performance levels. Approval dropped from 59%
to 43.4% and disapproval rose from 30% to 48.2%; 8.4% had no opinion.
Interestingly enough, only 8.1% of Republicans approved of the Presi-
dent while only 1.8% of Democrats disapproved.
38 2010 Political Poll

Unsurprisingly, healtcare saw a notable increase in the amount
of respondents reporting it as an essential priority, from 29% in 2009 to
43.9% in 2010. This increase in priority perhaps contributed to a de-
crease in some other issues, mainly regarding terrorism. In 2009, 32%
respondents reported issues concerning terrorism as an essential priority,
this year only 22.9% responded as such. However, many continue to
hold terrorism as important; over half of this year’s respondents ranked
the issue as at least very important. Priorities regarding other issues
remained relatively constant. Pro-Choice/Life went from a 14% to a
15.5% in priority and Social Security went from 15% to 16.6%. Despite
the University’s efforts to increase environmental awareness and advoca-
cy, concern among Notre Dame students regarding envrionmental issues
has decreased from last year. In 2009, 22% listed the environment as an
essential priority while only 18.7% listed it as such this year. While the
economy saw a decrease in priority from the previous year, it nonethe-
less was the most highly ranked priority for the Obama administration.
Although the priority of the economy did decrease from 80% last year to
74.5% this year, these numbers are large enough to conclude that eco-
nomic issues are still salient on campus.
The current economic downturn has shown steady concern
among students regarding post-graduation plans. In 2009, 42% of stu-
dents felt the present state of the economy had some impact; this in-
creased to 46.4% this year. However, the survey was conducted among
freshmen through seniors, and does not capture the higher possible
concern among juniors and seniors. Regarding post-graduation plans,
those planning on continuing their formal education stayed relatively the
2010 Political Poll 39

same – from 34% in 2009 to 33.7% in 2010 in terms of graduate school,
and 22% to 22.1% for those attending professional school. The amount
of people intending to conduct an intense job search increased from 31%
in 2009 to 34.7% in 2010. This may be reflective of the slight improve-
ment of the U.S. economy from 2009. The number of students intending
to partake in service projects after graduation decreased from 2009 to
2010, another possible indication of an improving economy.
Apart from these results, probably the most charged issue the
University faced in the past year was President Obama’s invitation to
be Commencement speaker and to receive an honorary degree. While
81.6% of the respondents at least somewhat agreed with the University’s
choice to invite the President to be the Commencement speaker, only
64.2% agreed with the decision to award him an honrary degree. Inter-
estingly, there appears to be a relationship between political ideaology
and whether a respondent agreed with the university’s decision to award
a honorary degree, 90.4% of liberals agreed while 72.8% of conserva-
tives disagreed. Despite differing opinions over the President’s invita-
tion and receiving an honorary degree, only 25.7% of respondents agreed
to the statement that the appearance of Notre Dame’s Catholic identity
has been compromised because of the President’s visit.
Similar to last year, opinion on other campus issues tended to
be more moderate. When asked if colleges should have the right to ban
speakers, whether the Catholic identity of a university is dependent on
the presence of Catholic faculty, if the schools energy initiatives were
effective, or whether Notre Dame should join the American Association
of Universities, most respondents—like last year—fell into the “agree
somewhat” category. However, one campus issue did show a more
definitive response. On January 13, 2010, the Observer printed a comic
that reignited the discussion of GLBT relations here on campus, includ-
ing the addition of “sexual orientation” to the University’s nondiscrimi-
nation clause. In this survey, 66.3% of respondents believed that the
clause should be added.
General Information
Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as a Republican, Democrat,

Independent, Libertarian, Green, or something else?
Republican 32.7%

Democrat 27.9%
Independent 30.3%
Libertarian 5.3%
Green 0.5%
Another Party 3.4%
How would you characterize your political views?
Far Left 2.4%

Liberal 27.2%
Middle-of-the-road 39.3%
Conservative 30.6%
Far Right 0.5%
How strongly do you hold your political views?
Very Strongly 14.9%

Strongly 35.1%
Somewhat Strongly 39.4%
Not Very Strongly 8.7%
Not At All 1.9%
If independent, to which party do you generally consider yourself clos-

est?
Democrat Republican Libertarian Green

51.6% 33.9% 12.9% 1.6%
How frequently during the past year have you been politicaly involved?
(e.g. attending speeches, volunteering or working for campaigns or po-
litical parties, etc.)
Very Frequently Somewhat Frequently Occasionally Never

3.4% 12.0% 38.0% 46.6%
National Politics
Did the 2008 Presidential election increase your interest in politics?

Very Much 28.4%
Somewhat 48.6%
Not So Much 19.2%
Not At All 3.8%
Which of the following best describes your opinion of the things Barack
Obama has done?
Strongly Approve 5.2%

Somewhat Approve 38.2%
Somewhat Disapprove 28.3%
Strongly Disapprove 19.9%
No Opinion 8.4%
In your opinion, how important are each of the following national priori-
ties for the Obama Administration and Congress?
Very Somewhat Not

Essential Important Important Important
Economy 74.5% 20.2% 5.3% 0%
Afghanistan 22.0% 49.5% 25.8% 2.7%
Healthcare 43.9% 33.7% 19.3% 3.2%
Foreign Policy 30.5% 42.2% 25.7% 1.6%
Environment 18.7% 34.2% 36.9% 10.2%
Terrorism 22.9% 47.9% 27.7% 1.6%
Pro-Choice/Life 15.5% 18.7% 33.2% 32.6%
Social Security 16.6% 42.2% 36.4% 4.8%
What is your opinion of the decision to award President Obama the No-
bel Peace Prize?
Strongly Agree 4.7%

Somewhat Agree 14.7%
Somewhat Disagree 27.7%
Strongly Disagree 46.6%
No Opinion 6.3%
In the fall, President Obama’s administration questioned the legitimacy

of the reporting of Fox News. Was this a violation of the free speech pro-
tected in the first ammendment of the Constitution?
Yes 22.5%

No 55.0%
Unsure 22.5%
Do you think the country overall is heading in the right direction or the
wrong direction?
Right direction 28.3%

Wrong Direction 35.1%
Unsure 36.6%
Do you support the Obama administration’s proposed health care legis-

lation?
Yes 27.7%
No 46.1%
Unsure 26.2%
Campus Politics
Has the recent condition of the economy influenced or changed your

post-graduation plans and/or career goals?
Yes 11.1%
Somewhat 35.3%
No 53.7%
With regards to your post-graduation plans, what has the current eco-
nomic climate encouraged you to focus on more?
Graduate School 33.7%

Professional School 22.1%
Service Project 9.5%
Intense Job Search 34.7%
Colleges have the right to ban speakers from campus.
Agree Strongly 18.9%

Agree Somewhat 42.1%
Disagree Somewhat 25.8%

Disagree Strongly 13.2%
The chief benefit of a college education is that it increases one’s earning

power.

Do you agree with the University’s decision to invite President Obama to

deliver the 2009 Commencement address?

Do you agree with the University’s decision to confer an honorary doc-

torate of laws on President Obama during the 2009 Commencement?

The appearance of Notre Dame’s Catholic identity has been compro-

mised by the University’s decision to invite and honor President Obama
at the 2009 Commencement ceremonies.
Agree Strongly 8.9%

“The Catholic identity of the University depends upon, and is nur-

tured by, the continuing presence of a predominant number of Catholic
intellectuals.”(University Mission Statement)

Generally speaking, how effective do you feel are the University’s cam-
pus-wide attempts to “Go Green?”
Extremely 1.6%
Very 22.6%
Somewhat 67.4%
Not at All 8.4%
Generally speaking, what is your opinion of the University administra-

tion’s pursuit of membeship in the American Association of Universities
(AAU), an elite group of research universities?

Do you believe that “sexual orientation” should be added the Univer-

sity’s non-discrimination clause?
Yes 66.3%
No 20.5%
No Opinion 13.2%
Polling Procedure and Methodology

The undergraduate editors of Beyond Politics collaborated with Ms.
Tatiana Combs of Institutional Research to create this poll. Ms. Combs
compiled a random sampling list of 799 Notre Dame undergraduates that
represent an accurate cross section of the student body. The demograph-
ics of the sampling poll included students of varying ages and majors.
After being contacted via email, respondents were directed to “Survey
Monkey,” which hosted the poll between February 16th-23th. We re-
ceived a response rate of 26.03%. Many questions of this year’s poll
were repeated from last year allowing for an analysis of trends within the

Notre Dame student body. New questions included issues regarding the
President’s first year in office. In future editions of Beyond Politics we
hope to continue to analyze trends and expand to include relevant cam-
pus and national issues.

Turkey’s Continued Pursuit of Membership in the European Union:
A Liberal Institutionalist Approach
Kelly Kanavy
Kelly Kanavy is a senior majoring in English and Political Science.

She spent her junior year in Oxford studying the postcolonial writing of
female authors and the politics of the Middle East. This period of inten-
sive study sparked her further interest in these topics, culminating her
senior year in two theses and the article which appears in this journal.
Although her work usually involves the study of gender, the following
essay is a policy paper written for the class Diplomacy and Conflict in
the Middle East. Kelly plans to attend law school next year and hopes to
have a career in women’s advocacy or international law.
Executive Summary
This paper examines whether Turkey should continue its long
struggle to join the European Union or abandon this monumental effort.
It provides a brief historical account of Turkey’s endeavors to become
a member state in the EU, including the changes it has made and the
union’s history of rejecting the country. It then analyzes the benefits,
risks, and costs of continued efforts to join the EU mainly within the lens
of two specific theories of international relations: liberal institutionalism
and Innenpolitik. This study will reveal that in order for Turkey to both
maximize its gains in many areas and remain true to its valued traditions,
it must continue its efforts to join the European Union. Three major ben-
efits of pursuing this policy are:
1. Ideological validation
2. Economic advantages
3. An extremely unique and invaluable diplomatic position “between
worlds.”
Choosing to remain on the path of joining the EU will be an arduous
task, however, because Turkey has not yet been deemed ready to become
a member state. In order to remedy this situation, this paper will identify
the problems that remain with Turkey’s application to the EU and sug-
gest ways to resolve these elements of concern. Three problems are:
1. Migration
Turkey’s Continued Pursuit of Membership in the European Union 47

2. The Kurdish minority
3. Fear of radical Islam
After making a careful study of each of these components and advocat-
ing continued attempts to join the EU, this paper suggests that if Turkey’s
Prime Minister Erdogan chose to reject the EU and cut its ties to Europe,
this would likely prove fatal for the tradition of secularism within Turkey
and cause a multitude of other problems. Ultimately, it will become clear
that, while there are certainly risks and costs to address, the most benefi-
cial policy for Turkey is to continue attempting to join the EU. The coop-
erative benefits provided by membership in the EU are simply too good
to reject. As the old Turkish proverb goes, “Bir elin nesi var, iki elin sesi
var:” People achieve a better outcome when they cooperate.
Turkey has been at a crossroads in its relations with the European

Union since December 17, 2004. It was on this day that the EU made a
commitment to begin the official membership negotiation process with
Turkey the following year. Despite this decision, which many Turks saw
as a victory and greeted with “tremendous fanfare,” there has been little
meaningful activity in the two parties’ negotiations, leaving many Turks
wondering, “Will Europe ever accept us?” It seems only two definitive
courses of action can answer this question. Turkey can continue imple-
menting reforms and attempting to shape itself in order to be accepted by
the EU, or it can abandon its attempts and detach itself from the negotia-
tions.
This is an extremely important issue facing Turkey, and this paper
examines this sensitive problem and recommends that Turkey continue
with its attempts to join the European Union. This course of action would
maximize gains and allow Turkey to garner the respect it deserves on the
international stage. To pursue this course, however, there must be clear
advantages to doing so. To place the decision into a larger theoretical
framework, I then examine the benefits of joining the EU through the
lens of several theories of international relations to illuminate the politi-
cal advantages Turkey would receive from membership in the EU. Also,
I address the risks and costs of such a plan in a theoretical and practical
framework, focusing particularly on the policies Turkey must follow if it
is to have the best chance of attaining EU member status. Then, I dis-
cuss why implementing them is beneficial. Finally, I examine the alterna-
tive policy option, that of Turkey terminating its attempts to join the EU.
I argue that pursuing this policy would most likely prove harmful to the
48 Turkey’s Continued Pursuit of Membership in the European Union

tradition of secularism and modernization in Turkey begun by Ataturk.
Ultimately, while it may be a long process, the fruits of membership will
prove to be well worth the labor it will require to join the EU.
Turkey’s complex experience with collective European economic
endeavors has spanned decades. It is vital to start with an overview of
this history in order to place the current battle for membership in the EU
in the context of a longer, larger struggle. Turkey’s attempts to become
an economic partner with Europe date back to the 1950’s when Turkey
applied for membership in the European Economic Community (EEC)
which was formed in 1957. The EEC approved Turkey’s membership in
1963, but since then the EU and Turkey have had what has been called a
“‘roller coaster relationship’ characterized at times by good political and
economic ties as well as worsening relations following [Turkey’s] mili-
tary interventions.” When the EEC became the EU, despite its member-
ship in the older collective, Turkey found itself excluded from the new
version of the European cooperative economic organization. For reasons
discussed later in this paper, Turkish leaders believed membership in the
EU would be extremely beneficial to Turkey. Accordingly, in 1987, Tur-
key’s leaders applied for membership but were quickly denied, a denial
which was echoed in December 1997 when EU leaders excluded Turkey
from a list of countries that qualified for candidacy to join the organiza-
tion. This seemed to indicate that Europe did not accept Turkey cultur-
ally, politically, or socially, and that perhaps it was never to be part of the
EU.
Despite these fears, Turkey’s exclusion from EU candidacy
proved to be temporary. At the Helsinki Summit of 1999, the EU in-
formed Turkey that it might have a chance of consideration if it met a
mandatory set of requirements for membership called the “Copenhagen
Criteria.” This list includes implementing economic reforms, improv-
ing its human rights record, and normalizing its relations with Greece
over Cyprus. Believing that membership in the EU was a truly valuable
goal, the leaders of Turkey presented the EU with a “National Program,”
a comprehensive 500-page plan detailing how Turkey would change
to meet the requirements of the EU. This was not a bluff, as Turkey’s
National Assembly proposed 37 amendments to the Constitution and
passed 34 of them. It seemed as if a monumental victory had been won
on December 17, 2004 when the EU finally acknowledged Turkey as
a qualifying country for membership and set a date for negotiations in
2005. These negotiations failed, however, and stalemate ensued. As made

evident from the historical context of relations between Turkey and the
EU, Turkey has worked diligently for acceptance to the European Union.
From altering its very Constitution and limiting the traditionally impos-
ing presence of the military in the government to granting ethnic minori-
ties a much wider range of rights, Turkey has fundamentally changed
itself for Europe. Yet, despite all of this work, the question remains:
When Europe continually rejects the country and ignores its changes and
progressions, why should Turkey continue to pursue EU membership?
The pursuit of membership would be economically, ideologically, and
diplomatically rewarding to Turkey.
It is crucial to ground the policy which I recommend Turkey
pursue in a theoretical framework in order to fully explore the economic,
ideological, and diplomatic benefits of such a union. Theories of interna-
tional relations offer paradigms by which the policy goals of a country
can be evaluated, judged, and ultimately chosen. For example, during
the Cold War, theories of realism were generally thought by theorists to
provide the most accurate and practical explanations of states’ actions.
Realism views nation-states as the main actors in a system of anarchy in
which each nation-state must fend for itself without relying upon other
states for any type of help. To realist theorists and policy makers, “re-
spect for moral principles is wasteful and dangerous… in the rational
pursuit of national power.” This excludes many, if not all forms of coop-
erative action between nation-states because cooperation depends upon
a degree of trust and compliance between partners. In the realist model,
military collusion is excluded. However, it seems economic cooperation,
which provides equal - or close to equal - benefits to all partners, should
be prohibited as well. If each state leader is solely focused upon maxi-
mizing his gains relative to other countries, he would not be able to enter
into agreements that called for him to compromise his country’s wealth,
prestige, or ability to build up its military. Because other countries would
be unlikely to enter into a partnership entirely biased towards a differ-
ent country, it seems that partnerships must always involve at least some
form of compromise. Any policy accommodation to other states’ interests
is unacceptable in the realist framework, especially if the compromise
reduces the material capabilities of the compromising country.
Contrary to what realism describes, the large number of members
in the EU indicates that countries are quite willing to compromise some
of their own material capabilities for the benefits of cooperation. Al-
though many scholars cling to realism as the theory that best explains the

state of politics, Turkey does not need to conform to the realist version of
the world. Turkey has always prided itself on being an extremely mod-
ern, secular country, even giving women the right to vote before most
Western countries. It is for this reason that Turkey may be confident in
evaluating its actions by quite a different paradigm, that of liberal institu-
tionalism. This theoretical framework, though somewhat more theoreti-
cal than realism, better aligns with the contemporary situation in Europe.
The tenets of liberal institutionalism hold that contemporary states are
less worried about power and security than they have been in the past,
and are much more concerned with providing their populations with
“growth, full employment, and price stability.” The theory suggests that
as globalization progresses and states realize that they may not be able to
provide everything their citizens need, they will attempt to form trans-
governmental and transnational organizations to solve their problems.
Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, the founders of the neoliberal school
of thought, assert, “in a world of multiple issues imperfectly linked, in
which coalitions are formed transnationally and transgovernmentally, the
potential role of international institutions in political bargaining is greatly
increased.”
Liberal institutionalism allows for a larger role for “complex
governments… in which the state continues to play a critical role, but in
which many other institutions become increasingly important.” In real-
ism, the goal is for states to acquire as much power as possible, whereas
the objective for states in a liberal institutionalist paradigm is to provide
benefits for their citizens, often through cooperation with other states. In
this manner, the “needs of individuals for government derive from the
demand for goods that can only or most effectively be produced jointly
(such as security, maintenance of free markets, [etc.]).” Liberal institu-
tionalism does allow for “rational” objectives such as maximizing goals
and achieving success, but through different routes than those offered by
realism. The European Union clearly fits into this description, as its goals
are to produce these benefits for all Europeans. Participating countries
may be compromising, but they also gain an immense amount from their
union.
Turkey’s citizens and leaders will benefit by continuing to pursue
and ultimately obtaining membership in the EU in three distinct ways:
(1) economic advantages (2) ideological validation and (3) a unique
diplomatic position as an intermediary “between worlds” (the Christian,
democratic West and the Muslim, generally non-democratic Middle
East). Therefore, Turkey’s goal is to join the EU because it will bring
money, prestige, and diplomatic power. The theory of liberal institution-
alism provides a system of cooperation in which these elements can be
accomplished, while realism asserts that a country must strive to achieve
these aims individually. Although it may involve compromising, espe-
cially in the early negotiation stages, continuing to pursue membership
will ultimately prove to be rewarding for Turkey in these three ways.
It would be economically advantageous for Turkey to obtain
membership within the European Union. Currently, Turkey has the “six-
teenth largest economy in the world and a dynamic private sector that
competes successfully with world financial markets [and] fifty percent
of Turkey’s trade is [already] with the Union.” Belonging to the Euro-
pean Union provides two types of economic benefits. The first is through
direct benefits, which the EU makes to the member states like the Euro,
while the second is through indirect benefits, manifested in trade with
EU members. The form of trade that occurs within the EU is almost
completely free of restraints. In fact, “The European Union facilitates
trade among the member states through negative integration efforts
aimed at abolishing restraints on the free movement of persons, goods,
services, and capital.” If Turkey became a member state of the EU, it
would enjoy this trade advantage. Because Turkey already trades a great
deal with the EU, the removal of constraints which the EU places on
non-EU countries will likely cause Turkey’s economy to spike upwards
because Turkish businesses will no longer be burdened by the duties of
trading with the EU while being a non-EU state. Another financially pos-
itive consequence of joining the EU would be Turkey’s ability to use the
Euro. Moving from the Turkish Lira to the Euro also would be economi-
cally advantageous for Turks. By current estimates, the Turkish Lira is
worth .44 of the Euro. Transferring to the Euro would eliminate the need
for Turks to convert to the Euro in their trade agreements, essentially
removing a tax on all Turkish businesses and transactions with Europe.
This fits with the model of liberal institutionalism because cooperation
through the programs of the EU allows Turkey to advance and bestow
the positive benefits on its citizens. This occurrence also echoes theories
of commercial liberalism, which explain that economic “interdependence
is… a goal of foreign policy that should result in a framework in which
natural harmony of interests among nations can unfold.” It is coopera-
tion, not competition which will bring Turkey to a better position. Al-
though Turkey is currently considered the cheap holiday spot of Europe,
switching currencies and receiving the economic benefits that the EU

offers its members would further improve the living situation of Turks.
The depiction of Turkey as nothing but a cheap holiday locale
reflects an unfortunately common European conception of the country.
Joining the EU would not only be economically sound but ideologically
validating for a country that has too long been referred to as the stereo-
typical “sick man” of Europe. The years of failure in attempting to join
the EU have cast doubt within Turkey’s own political consciousness as
to when they will be modern and European enough to be accepted by
the European Union. Political commentators have described this attitude
regarding the situation as “yes-but…” Additionally, the immigration
situation in Europe has created an atmosphere of prejudice against the
Turks. There is an extremely large level of illegal Turkish immigration,
particularly in Germany, leading to anti-Turkish sentiments which are
clearly made manifest in publicized negative European feelings about
Turkey joining the EU.
If Turkey joins the EU, however, it will likely diminish the effect
of illegal immigration. This is because citizens of the EU are allowed to
move within the confines of Europe and be hired as if they were nation-
als of the country in which they would then reside. By reducing the ten-
sion between illegal immigrants working for a low wage and the natives
who believe immigrants take away their jobs, it is possible that a more
positive view of Turks could permeate Europe. Additionally, French
politicians have repeatedly stated, “Turkey is not a European country…
It has a different culture, a different approach, and a different way of
life. It is not a European country, and membership for Turkey in the EU
would mean the end of Europe.” This extreme, negative stance reflects
the immense prejudice held against the Turks in the mind of many Eu-
ropeans. If Turks were finally permitted to join the EU, this acceptance
could validate them as “European” and justify all of the changes they
have endured in their country as having been worth the effort.
When domestic pressure exerted upon the government to con-
tinue to solicit membership in the EU helps to shape foreign policy, that
phenomenon would best be explained through the framework of Innen-
politik. Gideon Rose introduces Innenpolitik as a body of theoretical
work which argues that foreign policy is best explained by a country’s in-
ternal factors. To understand why a country behaves the way it does, he
asserts, one must “peer inside the black box and examine the preferences
and configurations of key domestic actors.” Turks are proud of their his-
tory and their tradition of modernization and secularization as instilled

in the culture by Ataturk, the father of the Turkish people. Although the
country has passed his time, his legacy as a key domestic actor lives on
and is constantly invoked. The national ethos therefore resounds with the
theme of modernization, a concept that the European Union supposedly
encourages. By joining the economic collective of the EU, Turks not
only gain material advantages in standard of living and currency but also
fulfill the dream of the nation’s forefather.
A final positive effect of Turkey joining the EU is Turkey’s
unique position in the world. In his article “Turkey’s Dreams of Acces-
sion,” David Phillips states, “Turkey’s accession to the EU is an un-
precedented chance for the country to fulfill its potential as a successful
modern democracy in the Muslim world and for the West to strengthen
a precious ally in the fight against terrorism, deepen its commitment to
diversity, and foster liberalization in the Islamic world.” Turkey, as a
Muslim democracy, is a rarity in itself. In fact, “Turkey is the only coun-
try in the Muslim world that has a completely secular legal system… and
Turks are deeply proud of the Ataturk-era reforms.” The Turkish govern-
ment’s military accords with Israel (signed in 1996) and its granting of
permission for the US to launch air strikes from Turkish territory in the
First Gulf War demonstrate the nation’s willingness to communicate with
and support the Western world.
If Turkey were to join the EU, it would cement its unique place in
global diplomatic relations. No other country can claim to have the same
hybrid nature of Turkey, and if Turkey were on the inside of the eco-
nomic sphere of Europe it would only further enforce the idea of Turkey
as a Western-influenced country which remained true to its Islamic roots
as a country with a majority Muslim population. The success of Prime
Minister Ergodam’s political party, the Islamic-oriented AKP or Justice
and Development Party, in pursuing secular goals while remaining com-
mitted to Muslim values, demonstrates the diverse mix of characteristics
that Turkey has. Membership could lead to further economic and military
cooperation which would further Turkey’s success in partnerships, as
detailed by liberal institutionalism.
After studying the benefits of joining the EU through a theoretical
lens, it is vital to understand the possible hardships caused by Turkey’s
attempts to join the EU . Three specific elements, highly related to the
benefits, make up these difficulties: 1) Migration 2) The Kurdish minor-
ity and 3) Radical Islam. These three issues are sources of concern in
both Turkey and European countries, so I will analyze the attitudes and

motivations of each party. Accompanying these risks or costs will be
suggestions of how to overcome them or diminish their impact. If Tur-
key can resolve the issues Europe has with it and secure itself as a stable
place, all of the cooperative partners will benefit as described in theories
of liberal institutionalism.
There are deep-set fears in the EU about whether allowing Tur-
key to join the Union will open the floodgates for Turkish immigration.
I have already addressed the positive elements of immigration for coun-
tries in the EU for Turkey, but there are negative ones as well. Turkey
would be both the largest and poorest member of the European Union if
it were to join the EU. Europeans fear that poor Turks with higher birth
rates would flood European job markets, ruining the culture of Europe
and making native unemployment levels rise. Some Turks fear this
exodus as well, and the Turkish government is wary of Europe attract-
ing talented Turkish workers, a concern building from guest worker
programs already in place in Europe. As Michael Teitelbaum and Philip
Martin explain in their article “Is Turkey Ready for Europe?” however,
“the truth is that no one can offer credible predictions in the case of
Turkey. Most analysts guess that if Turkey entered the EU, a large initial
wave of Turks… would travel abroad [but] after this initial wave, migra-
tion would likely depend on the… markets in Turkey.”
This means the government can act to diminish the possible negative
effects of joining the EU. Turkey should actively look for foreign invest-
ments and capital to stimulate the job market and create opportunities,
thus reducing fears of a flood of Turkish laborers into Europe. Addi-
tionally, the government could work with grant organizations to offer
scholarships to students (possibly even overseas) in return for an agreed
upon period of time working in Turkey after graduation. Exploring these
options will help to allay European fears and cushion the possible impact
of joining the EU.
Beyond the fear of Turkish laborers flooding the market, how-
ever, there exists a deeper, more fundamental objection to Turkey joining
the EU, which is the issue of the Kurdish minority. This is an extremely
difficult situation which Europeans may not be able to fully understand
without knowing the history of tenuous relations between Turks and
Kurds. Turkey’s official policy on Turkish Kurds had long been to deny
their existence entirely. If Kurds renounced their Kurdish heritage and
declared their loyalty to the Turkish state, they could live normally and
even hold office in the Turkish government. If they refused, however,

and asserted their Kurdish heritage, they would be the targets of govern-
ment persecution. In the past quest of a coherent nation-state, the Turkish
government attempted to eliminate competing identities in order to build
a strong and unified Turkish nation.
In accordance with the “Copenhagen Criteria,” however, the Turk-
ish government has taken important steps to liberalize its policies and
become more tolerant of the Kurdish minority. In 2002, Parliament
declared bans on Kurdish education and broadcasting to be lifted, and
in 2003 it passed laws allowing greater freedom of speech and Kurdish
language rights. In a great indication of tolerance for the Kurdish minor-
ity, during the elections in 2007, twenty pro-Kurdish MPs were elected
and allowed to take their seats. These positive changes reflect Turkey’s
willingness to tolerate pluralistic identities and admit historical mistakes.
Other governments in the EU have made similar errors, but they have
become fully cooperative and productive members of the Union. This
historical issue should not prevent the EU from accepting Turkey as a
member state. Turkey has been actively altering itself to Europe’s stan-
dards and is truly willing to change.
However, there is a more salient problem for Europe to face in
accepting Turkey to the EU., There most likely exists the overwhelming
European fear that Turkey will install an overtly radical Islamic regime
which will crush inhabitants’ civil liberties, foster terrorism, and export
religious revolution through the porous EU borders. Unarticulated fears
of Islam are on the forefront in the Christian continent as immigration
from Muslim countries rises. On the other side, many Turks believe that
“no matter how much the country reforms, the EU will ultimately reject
a Muslim candidate.” Although Kemalists are extremely supportive
of modernization and secularization, radical Islamic stirrings do exist
beneath the surface. Islamists maintain, “Turkey should identify itself as
part of the Islamic community rather than as a member of the Western
political, military, and economic organizations.” The European fear of
Muslims exposes a number of contradictions in Europe’s policy towards
Turkey. The leaders of the EU want Turkey to allow all minorities and
religious groups to have free reign and free organization. They also ad-
vocate an end to military tension with the Kurds, as many of them belong
to the PKK, a terrorist organization that fights to liberate Kurdistan from
Turkey. Europeans desire a free and egalitarian democratic system in
Turkey, but fear radical Muslim representation. Right now, the threat
of radical Muslims is slim because most Turks are extremely proud of

Ataturk, their founding father, and the secularization he instilled in Tur-
key. Working towards the common goal of European integration should
continue to enforce secularization and “Europeanness.”
The fear of radical Islam, however, is relevant in examining the
pursuit of other policy options. If the Turkish government stopped at-
tempting to join the EU, it is possible that after all the ways in which the
Turkish people have attempted to mold themselves to Europeans stan-
dards, “Turkey’s rejection by the EU could cause a domestic backlash
against the West and embolden ultranationalists and religious extremists
been on derailing Turkey’s liberalization, democratization, and demili-
tarization.” In this manner, although Islamist rumblings do exist beneath
the surface, they are generally kept in check by the majority who desire
to “bind Turkey more closely to the West [and] fulfill Ataturk’s vision of
Turkey as a modern European country.”
This paper has demonstrated that Turkey would gain major mate-
rial and ideological benefits by continuing to pursue membership with
the EU. Abandoning attempts to integrate with Europe, Turkey might
forever lose its foothold in the European community, which would be a
true tragedy for Turkey after its struggle for modernization. The theo-
retical framework of liberal institutionalism demonstrates that Turkey
should cooperate with Europe rather than rebel against it in order to gain
the maximum benefits for its people, such as a likely rise in standard of
living and a better reputation throughout Europe. The accomplishment of
joining the EU would be a concrete marker of the battle waged by Turks
to be accepted by Europe. Seeing the benefits of integrating with Europe,
the ability to overcome the costs of such integration, and the negative ef-
fects of pursuing an alternative course of action, Turkey should continue
to strive to be a member state of the EU.
References
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Middle East Research and Information Project (Summer, 2005) 20 Nov. 2009 pp. 25 <http://
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Ibid 95.
Middle East Research and Information Project (Summer, 2005) 20 Nov. 2009 pp. 24: <http://
Birol A. Yesilada, “Turkey’s Candidacy for EU Membership,” Middle East Journal 56:1 (Winter

2002) pp. 95-96 18 Nov. 2009: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4329722>.
Ibid 98.
Ibid 99.
Michael S. Teitelbaum and Philip L. Martin, “Is Turkey Ready for Europe?” Foreign Affairs,
82:3 (May-Jun 2003) pp. 98, 20 Nov. 2009: <http:www.jstor.org/stable/20033581>.
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Controversies in International Relations Theory: Realism and the Neoliberal Challenge, (New
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Ibid pp. 4-5.
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eral Challenge, (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1995) pp. 154.
Barry Hughes, “Evolving Patterns of European Integration and Governance: Implications for
Theories of World Politics,” Controversies in International Relations Theory: Realism and the
Neoliberal Challenge, (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1995) pp. 233
Ibid pp. 225.
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2002) 18 Nov. 2009: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4329722>.
Christopher J. Anderson and M. Shawn Reichart, “Economic Benefits and Support for Mem-
bership in the E.U.: A Cross-National Analysis” pp. 234 20 Nov. 2009: <http://www.jstor.
org/4007534>.
Ibid pp. 234.
http://coinmill.com/EUR_TRY.html
Mark W. Zacher and Richard A. Matthew. 1995, “Liberal International Theory: Common
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Neoliberal Challenge, (New York: St. Martin’s Press) pp. 124.
82:3 (May-Jun 2003) pp. 110, 20 Nov. 2009: <http:www.jstor.org/stable/20033581> 98.
Ibid 104.
82:3 (May-Jun 2003) pp. 110, 20 Nov. 2009: <http:www.jstor.org/stable/20033581> 98.
82:3 (May-Jun 2003) pp. pp. 110, 20 Nov. 2009: <http:www.jstor.org/stable/20033581> .
Gideon Rose, “Neoclassical Realism and Theories of Foreign Policy,” World Politics 51:1
pp.148.
Ibid.
David L. Phillips, “Turkey’s Dreams of Accession,” Foreign Affairs 83:5 (Sept-Oct 2004) pp.
97: <http:www.jstor.org/stable/20034069>.
Middle East Research and Information Project (Summer, 2005) pp. 27: <http://www.jstor.org/
stable/30042445>.
Sabri Sayari, “Turkey and the Middle East in the 1990’s,” Journal of Palestine Studies XXVI,
26:3 (1997) pp. 49: <http:www.jstor.org/stable/2538156>.
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26:3 (1997) pp. 51: <http:www.jstor.org/stable/2538156>.
Ibid.

Should a Progressive Support School Vouchers?
Chris Rhodenbaugh
Chris Rhodenbaugh is a junior Political Science major with a minor

in the Hesburgh Program in Public Service. His experience in poli-
tics includes being an intern and field organizer for President Obama’s
campaign and the Northern Indiana College Democrats, field director
for Anne Peterson Hutto for South Carolina State House District 115,
and campus intern with Organizing for America. Chris participated in
the Washington D.C. semester program his sophomore year, interning at
the Children’s Defense Fund and received the Lyman Internship Award to
remain in D.C. for the summer where he worked in Senator Evan Bayh’s
office. This paper was written for a research seminar focusing on public
policy.
Introduction
Quality of education is one of the most important issues in the
United States today. The U.S. has not established a public education sys-
tem that is competitive with our international counterparts, and therefore
legislators from both sides of the aisle agree on the need for reform. The
Congressional Progressive Caucus states its opinion on education reform
as:
Every child in America, regardless of race, gender, income,
ability, language, and sexual orientation is entitled to the same, high quality,
educational opportunities. Education is the one way that every child can
compete on a level playing field to achieve his or her full potential, and public
education is the backbone of American society.
The public school system in the United States is failing to serve the
next generation of Americans effectively and equally. Shortcomings in
current education policy will prove devastating to the well being of the
United States in the long-term if they are not addressed. Today, the Unit-
ed States finds itself trailing other industrialized countries significantly
in important indicators of overall academic achievement. The cost of the
international achievement gap is valued at roughly $1.3 trillion, nine per-
cent of the GDP of the United States. Much of the achievement gap can
be attributed to not providing adequate opportunity for low income and
minority students. Only nine percent of college students in the top 120
universities in the U.S. come from the bottom half of the income distri-
bution. One in two African Americans and Latinos will drop out of high
60 Should A Progressive Support School Vouchers?
school. Further, “most high schools graduate little more than two-thirds
of their students on time. And even the students who do receive a high
school diploma lack adequate skills: More than 33% of first-year college
students require remediation in either math or English.”
This is also an issue of economic inequality. Roughly 90% of
American children attend public school and for many they are satisfied
with their experience because their schools are well funded by their up-
per income property taxes. However, the families and children in poorer
districts, in particular minority students in urban areas, have not seen
many of the benefits of public schooling. The value of having education
as a public good is that it is supposed to be the foundation for equal op-
portunity. Instead, the current public education system can function as
a means of discrimination, a barrier to racial equality and socioeconomic
mobility. According to Richard Kahlenberg of the American Prospect,
“Four decades of research has found that the single best thing one can
do for a low-income student is give her a chance to attend a middle-class
school.” A good public education should be the first step towards the
American dream and for many Americans it is.
However, for minorities and the poor, the numbers overwhelm-
ingly display a system that is thoroughly failing. The 2007 National As-
sessment of Educational Progress given to fourth-graders in math found
that low-income students attending more affluent schools scored nearly
two years ahead of low-income students in high poverty schools.” High
poverty schools are defined as having more than 75% of students eligible
for free or reduced-price lunch. In contrast, economically successful
families have had a national school choice plan for decades because they
have the ability to choose where they live according to the quality of the
schools, or to pay for private school tuition. This paper evaluates wheth-
er vouchers are an essential component of education reform if the school
system in the United States is going to reach the expectations set forth
above by the progressive caucus.
The terms “vouchers” and “progressive” are broad concepts
that need clarification. School vouchers in the context of this paper are
government cash grants or tax credits for parents to pay for their child’s
K-12 education in a private school. School choice is the umbrella term
that defines the movement for parents to have more choices for their chil-
dren. School choice encompasses public school choice, charter schools,
and vouchers for private schools. I define a progressive as a liberal
reformist in the American political system that most often identifies with,
Should A Progressive Support School Vouchers? 61

or is a member of, the Democratic Party. In the United States, progres-
sives focus on equality and justice, often seeking change through an in-
creased government role. I argue that in regards to education, a progres-
sive by definition should be willing to accept any structural reform if it is
clear that it will meet education policy goals. To be accepted by pro-
gressives, education reform needs to achieve three goals: substantially
reduce the racial and socioeconomic achievement gap, increase overall
performance and amount of candidates for college, and make the United
States competitive internationally in academic achievement. Teacher
union Democrats and free market voucher Republicans define the struc-
ture of the education reform debate that has come to a halt on partisan
lines. In order to overcome this political stalemate and achieve success-
ful education reform, it is crucial that progressives consider vouchers as
a potential means of reform.
The political environment for improving the education system
is evolving as recent attempts at reform, in particular the bi-partisan No
Child Left Behind Act of 2001, have failed to meet their goals. Pessi-
mism is growing in Congress and within the education community about
the potential for the current structure to effectively educate all children,
even with proper funding. This lack of faith explains in part the enor-
mous growth of charter schools in recent years, as well as the momen-
tum towards changing the payment mechanism for teachers to reward for
student performance. Both chambers of Congress are actively preparing
for dealing with education reform in 2010. In today’s hyper-partisan
political environment there are trends developing that already indicate
partisan divide on the issue. Progressives tend to think that increased
funding will solve many of the problems in public schools, and that
any reform effort must work for every child. Conservatives often argue
that school vouchers and tax subsidies for private education will rescue
the school system with the free market. In order to be successful after
implementation, there must be a middle ground in the debate and policy
formulation process that consistently prioritizes children above political
ideologies.
No Child Left Behind

The most recent federal overhaul of the education system is the
No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. The act amended the Elementary
and Secondary Education Act of 1965 to become the new foundation
for public education in the United States. The official purpose of the

bill is “to close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and
choice, so that no child is left behind.” At the foundation of the Act is
mandatory testing in reading and math in grades three through eight.
Other testing is mandated for high school students to continually monitor
progress. The test results are the sole indicator of “adequate yearly prog-
ress” (AYP). AYP is the standard requirement that schools work to meet
every year, and failure to do so results in repercussions. This includes
a sliding scale of programs implemented each consecutive year that a
school does not meet their AYP. After two years, parents must be noti-
fied of the status of their child’s school, and they have the right to choose
another public school. After three years, every student is eligible to be
covered by the government for tutoring programs in addition to school.
After four and five years of not meeting AYP, schools are required to be
restructured or even closed.
No Child Left Behind is very ambitious in its scope of addressing the
problem and was made into law with the help of progressive leader and
late Senator Ted Kennedy. However, after nearly nine years of imple-
mentation, new data reveals that test scores have not improved consis-
tently and that the racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps have not
been reduced. , The failure of the legislation in its first decade is the
topic of much debate. President Obama said in his campaign’s Blue Print
for Change:
No Child Left Behind Left the Money Behind: The goal of the
law was the right one, but unfulfilled funding promises, inadequate im-
plementation by the U.S. Department of Education and shortcomings in
the design of the law itself have limited its effectiveness and undercut its
support. As a result, the law has failed to provide high-quality teachers in
every classroom and failed to adequately support and pay those teachers.
Progressives frequently cite that “teaching to the tests” is not
an effective method and funding for underachieving schools has been
inadequate in the implementation of NCLB. , The Republican controlled
House and Senate structured the bill so that it requires funding for ad-
ditional help programs for students in underachieving schools to come
from redirecting funds from their own Title-1 grants. This reduced the
cost of the bill, but it also failed to provide needed funding for struggling
schools. Regardless of funding difficulties, NCLB endorsed the structure
of the public school system that it was designed to reform by maintaining
a lot of power centralized in districts. The failure of NCLB to meet the
goals set by legislators, most importantly reducing the racial and socio-

economic achievement gap, makes it clear that the next round of reform
to the education system must not assume that the structure of the current
public school system needs to be maintained.
Despite the demonstrated need for reform, it already appears as
though progressives are muting school voucher advocates under the as-
sumption that vouchers are the free market solution to solving education
problems. Representative George Miller, the Chairman of the Education
& Labor Committee in the House, said in a press release, “On Education,
More of the Same From Republicans…GOP Leaders Push for Vouch-
ers Again Instead of Giving Public Schools the Resources They Need to
Succeed.” Miller’s statement is indicative of the sentiment on the left
towards vouchers. The Senate HELP Committee Majority website, in
addition to many of the committee’s prominent members, fails to men-
tion school vouchers. Only three Senators out of 59 that caucus with
the Democrats are on record as supporting vouchers for private schools,
Senator Lieberman of Connecticut, Senator Byrd of West Virginia, and
Senator Feinstein of California. Not a single progressive member of the
House or Senate is on the record for supporting school vouchers. Be-
cause of the clear apprehension in the Democratic party about school
vouchers, it is important to examine the existing vouchers.
Existing Voucher Programs
Voucher programs can be privately or publicly funded. Inde-
pendent privately funded voucher programs, or programs without any
government involvement, exist across the country. In 2001 there were 79
private voucher programs serving roughly 50,000 children. Today there
are 7 states that have implemented a tax credit system that relies on tax-
deductible donations from either corporations or individuals to provide
tuition scholarships for low-income children. Apart from these indepen-
dent voucher programs, this paper focuses on the merits and prospects
of federal and state funded vouchers for families to send their children
to private schools. There are currently five publicly funded programs
nationally, excluding programs solely for students from foster homes or
students with intellectual disabilities, which offer publicly funded vouch-
ers to students. Florida’s Opportunity Scholarship Program is cited with-
in the paper, but is not included in the chart below because it was ruled
unconstitutional in 2006. The program allowed students who attended
a school given an F rating for two years out of a four-year period the
opportunity to use a voucher to attend another private or public school.
The program still exists today, but only allows students to choose within

the public system. The ruling was made because the Florida Supreme
Court claimed the program “uses public funds to provide an alternative
education in private schools that are not subject to uniformity require-
ments for public schools.” The ruling did not set a trend; no other states
have deemed vouchers unconstitutional since the Florida ruling.
Location Description Enrollment Participating
(2009) Schools
Milwaukee, Enacted in 1990, K-12, income 20,328 111

WI does not exceed 175% ($38,587)
of federal poverty level, funding
taken from public school system
Cleveland, Enacted in 1995, K-8, no income 5,469 39
OH1 caps for eligibility but preference
given to those that do not exceed
200% of federal poverty level
($44,100), cap of $2,250 per
voucher
Ohio Enacted in 2005, K-12, student 11,685 298
eligible if he/she attends a public
school that has been in Academic
Watch or Academic Emergency
for two years out of a three year
period
Louisiana Enacted in 2008, K-3, up to 1,195 32
$6,300, income does not exceed
($55,125), must have attended
“failing public school,” funded by
state government
Washington Enacted in 2004, K-12, up to 1,319 45
D.C. $7,500, income does not exceed
($40,793), funded by federal
government, killed by Democrats
in 2009 for all future students but
hearings are being convened to
reopen debate on the issue
1 Egan. Chapter 4.
Progressive Talking Points Against Vouchers

In order to address the progressive concerns about school vouch-
ers, this paper examines six commonly made arguments against vouch-
ers. In turn, I provide evidence and arguments to counteract these claims
before making my final proposal on policy for education reform.
a. Free-market competition will not solve the problems of our struggling

school system.
Response: Instead of being framed as the means to reforming the system,
vouchers need to be discussed as policy that will provide justice in the
education system by ensuring that every American child has an equal
right to education.
Suspicion of the free market is fundamental to the value system of most
progressives. While most publicly believe that free market capitalism is
the best economic system available, progressives strongly assert that it
must be regulated to protect and benefit the citizens. Milton Friedman,
a prominent free market economist, created the concept of vouchers as
the free market prescription to the flawed concept of government run
schools. He details his proposal as follows:
Here is a piece of paper you can use for the educational
purposes of your child. It will cover the full cost per student
at a government school. It is worth X dollars towards the cost
of educational services that you purchase from parochial
schools, private for-profit schools, private nonprofit schools,
or other purveyors of educational services. You may add from
your own funds to the voucher if you wish to and can afford to.
Friedman’s argument for school vouchers is constructed and justified in
the same way envisioned by the progressive left. The constant pressure
from Republicans to apply free-market principles to education reinforces
these thoughts. In addition to the reputation of faith in the free market,
Friedman’s proposals were first attempted by Southern legislators in the
1950’s in order to maintain segregation in their schools. This piece of
history has increased suspicion of vouchers and led to fears that it would
lead to further racial segregation even when no evidence exists.
While conservatives are likely to support a program that expands
school choice, they generally believe in implementing a system that will
provide vouchers, or at the very minimum generous tax subsidies, to all
American parents or families. To conservatives, the core of education
reform with vouchers is applying competitive pressure to public schools
as the means of reforming the public school system. According to their
ideology, public schools essentially have a monopoly on education and
therefore do not have to be efficient. They claim that only by letting the
market challenge public schools to improve will the schools be reformed.
Progressives believe education is a public good and that Republican
equality arguments for school choice use the dismal state of poor public
schools to pass legislation that gives vouchers to their wealthy constitu-

ents.
One obstacle to progressives support for a school voucher pro-
gram is the conservative advocacy for school choice. In order for a
national plan of vouchers to be passed into law it must be recognized
that while the free market will create new education opportunities, it will
not be the remedy for all of America’s public schools. While emphasis
must be on equal opportunity for progressives, emerging evidence that
free market principles and competition can benefit public school sys-
tems should be acknowledged. David Figlio of Northwestern Univer-
sity describes the lack of choice in the public school system as creating
enormous inefficiency in the matching of students to a particular type
of school. He writes, “in a public education system, many individuals
are forced to attend schools that differ considerably in size, academic
focus, curricular emphasis, or instructional style from the schools these
individuals would have selected in a system of fully privatized.” Vouch-
ers provide an opportunity for parents to not only find the school with
the best academic record, but to find one that is a better match for their
child than what the public system currently offers. Therefore, a system
of choice more efficiently meets what parents demand for their children’s
education, which likely results in a more productive learning environ-
ment for the child.
In addition to empowering consumers in education, choice brings
potential of accountability to the public school system. Two different
methods of research on Milwaukee’s voucher program have concluded
that competition has had positive effects on the local public schools.
Florida’s Opportunity Scholarship Program provides more supportive
data. In multiple studies of schools that received a rating of “F” by the
Florida public school system for consecutive years, making the students
at those schools eligible for vouchers, researchers found that the “vouch-
er threat” contributed to an increase in “F” rated school performance
and quality. Researchers Figlio and Rouse approached the studies with
suspicion because of the influence that the stigmatization of an “F” rating
would have on the administration could be the driving force for reform,
and not the threat of school vouchers. However, they discovered, “Flori-
da had had previous experience with a stigmatizing school rating system,
in which schools were called critically low performing.” They found
that the F rating was equally stigmatizing as the previous rating system.
Therefore, the only difference in the programs that would make the data
change positively was the schools making students eligible for vouchers.

While Figlio admits the need for further examination, there is evidence
that voucher effects can improve public schools.
b. Private schools receiving vouchers have not been held accountable to

federal dollars in existing programs and would lead to massive
fraud and abuse if implemented nationally.
Response: Innovation and success in public schools can be inhibited
by overly rigid standards. Adequate federal dollars put towards
oversight would ensure that vouchers are being used legally and ef-
fectively.
Progressives cite a lack of accountability as reason for real
concern amongst private schools. The National Education Association
(NEA) writes, “The absence of public accountability for voucher funds
has contributed to rampant fraud, waste and abuse in current voucher
programs.” The NEA documents all of the fraud and waste in Milwau-
kee, Cleveland, and Florida. In the 1995-1996 school year, four of the
18 voucher schools in Milwaukee were shut down because of “fraud,
mismanagement, or negligence.” A state audit in 2000 found that nine
Milwaukee voucher schools, “have no accreditation, were not seeking
accreditation, and administered no standardized tests.” Cleveland had
similar issues with five schools collecting, “about $1 million in vouchers
prior to completing their applications process, resulting in schools with
serious fire code violations, health hazards, inadequate curricula, and un-
qualified teachers.” The NEA found other Cleveland schools acquiring
vouchers when they employed uncertified teachers. Additionally, they
found a school comprised of a coalition of parents using religious video
lessons and workbooks supplied by the Pensacola Christian Academy.
If funds are not properly allocated, the concern for fraud and ineffective
learning is a legitimate concern.
The NEA’s detailed criticisms for a lack of enforcement reveal
this, not the vouchers, to be the problem. While much of the private
industry has been left insufficiently regulated with budget cuts by federal
departments there is no reason to believe that a system of verification
could be set up and maintained to protect children and government dol-
lars. Additionally, the NEA’s insistence that certification is a require-
ment to be an effective teacher is not an objective point of view. While
creators of voucher legislation could decide what minimum requirements
teachers must have in a particular school for the school to be eligible for
vouchers, teacher certification with the U.S. government would not be a

necessity. The NEA does not acknowledge in their documents that many
of the worst schools in the country are being forced to use teacher’s aides
without college degrees because no one will take certain jobs.
In a hearing I attended during the summer of 2009 at the Center
for American Progress in Washington D.C. on teacher certification and
programs like Teach for America, the NEA consistently argued against
flexibility in the education system. As a union their competitive ad-
vantage comes from being “certified,” but the rules for certification are
being exposed as extreme and a roadblock for more teachers to enter the
workforce. For example, a career engineer in the private sector would
still have to undergo a multiple year training program to be certified to
teach high school science in many states. Allowing more flexibility in
teaching styles does bring risk, but as long as schools are required to
meet certain standards in order to continue receiving voucher students,
the risk should be accepted as part of what makes private schools dif-
ferent and able to be more effective with certain students. If parents are
unhappy with the school and its teachers, they can easily choose a differ-
ent school.
In the current structure of vouchers, states can choose how they want to
implement their programs. If a voucher program is to be successful the
private schools must be willing to take voucher students. There must
be a financial incentive to take on more students, in particular higher
risk students. Concomitantly, there need to be requirements that private
schools cannot discriminate in taking students so that they only get the
highest academic achievers with the best behavior records. This is an is-
sue to be addressed in policy formation, but is able to be overcome.
c. Vouchers will pull money out of the financially strained and desperate
public school system.
Response: Voucher programs should be done in addition to current
education spending and reform.
Anti-voucher progressives claim that voucher programs will pull
money directly from public schools. Both Cleveland and Milwaukee
received funds for their voucher programs directly from their cities’
existing public school dollars. While Milwaukee adjusted to have 55%
of the funds come from the state, the money is still being taken from the
public school system. Progressives are steadfast advocates for increases
in education funding, but they often hit the wall of disinterest because of
lack of short-term benefits and government pessimism about giving more

money to public schools. However, funding is essential to any educa-
tion reform. NCLB exemplifies an ambitious program that struggled
to change the education status quo, partially because of a lack of fund-
ing. While progress often requires new laws, if the government does not
adequately fund them, in particular investing in human capital through
education, then there is no purpose in passing legislation.
The U.S. spends a significant amount of money on schools
compared to the rest of the world. However, even more funds are needed
in many districts and must be better spent if the public school system is
going to recover. The failure of NCLB to accomplish its goals shows
that you cannot help schools by taking their necessary funds and further
dividing them. Instead of dividing existing education money and redis-
tributing public money to private schools, additional funding should be
allocated to voucher programs. The cost would not be as large as it may
appear. Between federal, state, and local governments, the U.S. is pay-
ing an average of more than $10,000 per student in public schools while
the average private tuition is only $6,600. Voucher programs would
require increased bureaucracy to ensure private schools are meeting
standards and to evaluate and distribute the vouchers. However, the cost
could be substantially less per student than paying for public education
in many districts.
It would be more fitting if voucher programs came from tax revenue not
already allocated to education. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship pro-
gram was paid for with new funding from the federal government, not
taken from the D.C. public school’s budget. Various progressive leaders
in D.C. were openly supportive of the program because of how fund-
ing operated. These leaders include Mayor Fenty, D.C., Public Schools
Chancellor Michelle Rhee, City Council Chair Vincent Gray, and former
Mayors Anthony A. Williams and Marion Barry. In addition to using all
government funds to create government vouchers, the government could
also seek private and public money partnerships. Therefore, a program
in which the government matches any personal donations for tax refunds
should be considered because of the significant philanthropic interest in
school vouchers.
The federal government’s jurisdiction over Washington D.C.
makes the Opportunity Scholarship Program a national indicator of how
Congress would shape nationwide voucher programs. It is fair to as-
sume a national voucher program would either provide states additional
funding or require them to raise funds outside their existing education

budgets. A lot of scrutiny has been placed on the first sets of data from
the D.C. Opportunity Program. The studies show an improvement in
reading scores and parental satisfaction, but not much improvement else-
where. While it is unreasonable to place the future of vouchers on the
shoulders of roughly 1,000 children, the lack of indisputable and unvary-
ingly positive statistics proves that vouchers must be only an element of
reform, not the entire package.
d. School vouchers will result in private schools skimming the talented

students and involved parents out of the public school system, but leave
behind all of the most disadvantaged students.
Response: Talented students in schools that are intellectual and cul-
tural prisons should not be required to sacrifice their potential in a
failing school.
Former Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Spence Korte
said of vouchers in Milwaukee in 2001, “If society wants to make a
conscious decision that the role of the public schools will be to take care
of all the kids that no one else wants, then let’s say that. Let’s not back
into it because of a political agenda.” Korte saw the results of vouchers
personally and held a strong opinion that with vouchers, public schools
become more of an aid program akin to Medicaid instead of being im-
proved by increased competition in the education system. Korte’s point
is an enormous concern for progressives and the anti-voucher commu-
nity. One of the greatest links to success in functioning public schools
is parental involvement. Parental involvement is a requirement in exist-
ing voucher programs in order for a student to change schools. Thus, it
is likely that there will be a selective bias in the students who choose to
use vouchers when programs are implemented. If a voucher program is
implemented without regard for the students who do not have active par-
ents, the existing public schools will further deteriorate for the children
who are the most in need.
Much like the AYP element of NCLB, a program should be
implemented for schools that experience the departure of many suc-
cessful students. In the case of vouchers, the support programs should
be adequately funded so the problems that arise in schools because of
vouchers can be handled effectively. Schools that have large departure
of students should be restructured, heavily invested in, or closed. In
addition to other changes, those schools that remain open must retain at
least the same amount of funding they received before students left with

vouchers in order to ensure reduced class sizes. Most studies find small-
er schools and classroom sizes to have a strong correlation with student
achievement. Whether it is paying for after-school tutoring, hiring qual-
ity teachers with extra funds, reducing class sizes, or updating facilities,
the problems in struggling schools must be addressed or they need to be
shut down.
Approximately 34% of Democratic members of Congress send
their children to private school, yet they argue that creating voucher
programs for the poor will leave the more challenged poor children in
tougher positions. In addition to the 34%, it is a given that most of the
Democrats in Congress who have children in public schools have cho-
sen where to live based on the quality of the school within a particular
district. It is discriminatory and hypocritical for progressives, including
President Obama, to send their children to private schools while asking
concerned parents and talented students in failing public schools to stay
in order to protect their classmates and neighbors.
Even if talent was taken from existing public schools, the situ-
ation cannot get much worse in urban public schools. Joseph Vetiritti
writes, “It might be sobering to note that the terrible nightmare imagined
by choice opponents is not a far cry from the situation that now exists,
more similar perhaps than most Americans would care to admit.” Near-
ly two-thirds of black and Hispanic public school students attend schools
in which more than 50% of students are eligible for subsidized meals,
compared with just one in five white students. Equal opportunity is a
foundational value in the United States. An inner-city child who is intel-
ligent and has a good work ethic has a lot to overcome. Suffocating the
talent and desire by trapping the child in a failing school is unacceptable.
e. There is no clear quantitative evidence that vouchers will meet the

goals that conservatives promise.
Response: While there is no statistical consensus on the quantitative
improvement as a result of school vouchers, there are a substantial
number of researchers who have found significantly positive results
in regards to achievement.
The problem with collecting data on current voucher programs
lies in how student achievement should be calculated. The data pool
from the few programs in the United States is not sufficient to make a
definite ruling on vouchers either positively or negatively. This is exac-
erbated by the only targeted and progressive voucher program that has

existed long enough to generate significant data: Milwaukee. The city no
longer requires private schools using vouchers to take standardized tests.
Every city or state has many outlying factors and there are many strate-
gies to implementing vouchers that have not been utilized. It is false for
progressives to argue that no data exists to support the success of school
vouchers. However, they are correct in their assertion that there is no
widely accepted consensus. Just as the right has based their opinion on
research that argues vouchers are the necessary, the left cites research
that argues improvements are negligible and not worth the investment or
risks involved with vouchers.
David Figlio writes, “The fact that families desire different things
from their children’s schooling experiences makes it difficult to know
what the best measure of student success would be. Therefore, it is
important to be cautious about claiming that school vouchers are unsuc-
cessful just because students who use them do not appear to be benefit-
ing along certain measurable dimensions.” As mentioned above, the
Milwaukee voucher program has shown positive results in regards to
academics. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program showed positive
results in reading scores, but not math scores after three years of imple-
mentation. The body of data on academic achievement seems to indicate
that vouchers lead to minor improvements. However, Figlio raises valid
questions in the pursuit of solving the benefits of vouchers. He writes,
“one possible standard for judging successful voucher programs would
be that voucher systems increase satisfaction without harming perfor-
mance along the dimensions collectively deemed to be important.” In
addition to higher academic achievement, outcomes that result from
voucher programs include better morals and character, civic participation,
safety, or measures of happiness and satisfaction.
While limits to data have resulted in less than startling results
from existing voucher programs, there is substantial data on the advan-
tages of private schools. Paul Peterson of Harvard University has writ-
ten about and researched private schools extensively. His thesis in the
article, Differences between Public and Private Schools, is that private
schools have shown that they benefit minorities (in particular Afri-
can Americans) more than Caucasian students. He argues that private
schools are usually more effective than public schools for three reasons.
He argues that public schools are submerged in inefficient bureaucratic
school districts and do not have to keep up with the demands of the
market. However, his insightful additions to the private school narra-

tive are the sociological and political in nature. These differences make
private schools use of money better and seek more effective educators.
The sociological differences are primarily the religious aspect offered
by private institutions. He cites the researchers Bryk, Lee, and Holland
who write, “Catholic schools benefit from a network of social relations,
characterized by trust, that constitute a form of “social capital”…Trust
accrues because school participants, both students and faculty, choose to
be there.” Often, poor urban minority communities are heavily reliant on
their local churches. The opportunities to attend religious schools will
be conducive to an environment where religion is often one of the only
stable factors. Finally, Peterson believes there is a political explanation
for the advantages of private schools. He writes, “public schools are
subject to the control of elected officials (e.g., school boards, state school
superintendents, state legislatures, members of Congress) who respond
to political pressure when formulating school policy…more attention is
given to adhering to bureaucratic guidelines than to educating students.”
He continues by arguing that private schools are under intense pressure
to satisfy parents. School officials know that parents choose to send their
children to that particular school, and if they are seen as failing, they will
lose students. Therefore, the intentions of private school administrators
are much more focused on education and children.
f. Private schools will lead to lower salaries, lack of quality teachers,

and instability in the work force.
Response: While the input of the teacher unions is an important ele-
ment of the process, education reform needs to be about the chil-
dren.
Teacher unions, like all unions, are designed to use their power
of collective interest to gain benefits and recognition. While reform is
important to teachers, they are also concerned for their own well-being.
Wages in public schools, an average of $45,542, are generally better than
in private schools, an average of $30,307. The migration of students
from a public system to a private system has progressives and teacher
unions concerned that union jobs will be lost. While eight in ten pub-
lic school teachers are unionized, only seven percent of private school
teachers belong to a teacher’s union. Teacher unions are an important
influence on progressives because progressives are often large recipients
of teacher union dollars and are sympathetic to the concerns of teachers.
Democratic opposition to vouchers is generally blamed on union pres-

sure.
Teacher unions are one of the most powerful political forces in
the U.S. and they contribute heavily to the Democratic Party. In the
2008 election cycle, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) spent
$2.8 million dollars on candidates, more than any defense contractor.
The top two teacher unions, the AFT and the National Education As-
sociation (NEA) combined to contribute $5.27 million dollars, more
than the top five lobbying firms combined and more than the top four oil
companies combined. The level of lobbying and money being used by
teacher unions reveals how strong their hold is on Democrats. Progres-
sives should not ignore the unions and begin to support school vouchers.
Instead, it would be more appropriate to find out what concessions can be
made in order to appease the constituency and protect the livelihood of
the millions of teachers in the United States while still promoting vouch-
ers. For example, under a voucher program, the government could re-
quire that schools eligible for vouchers must pay their teachers a certain
salary.
The teacher unions are often guilty of treating education as a workplace
and prioritizing their own interests as employees before the benefits of
the children they teach. Education is an investment in human capital and
the future of the United States. Teachers must be looked after and paid
properly, but they cannot continue to block the road to reform. Progres-
sives have to be strong and avoid the influence of money and lobbying in
their decision making about the future of the United States.
My Proposal
The first and most important element of a voucher program is that it finds
commonalities between the right and left wing ideologues. This means
that vouchers do not have to be, and should not be, debated as the only
way to fix the struggling public school system. Once it is established that
a voucher program is an issue of rights for underprivileged children, not
the answer to all of the problems in the education system of the United
States, the debate can move to creating a common sense and bi-partisan
voucher proposal. While voucher proposals will continue to occur at the
state and local level in the short-term before a national policy is imple-
mented, my guidelines to a proposal will be tailored towards a national
voucher plan.
1. Vouchers should only be given to lower and lower middle

class families. Out of those families, the most economically chal-
lenged should receive larger vouchers.
It is necessary that a voucher program give special advantages to chil-
dren in struggling schools or who live in poor households. A voucher
system that would include federal money going to families that make
more than $200,000 would be destructive, wasteful and unnecessary.
While Republicans are proposing that policy, it is possible to find the
middle ground of limiting vouchers to certain income groups and using
sliding-scale scholarship amounts. Sliding-scale scholarships would
divide families into income brackets and provide more lucrative vouch-
ers depending on the level of poverty of the child’s family. The poverty
level would include data similar to other government aid programs like
the number of parents and incomes in the household and assets of a fami-
ly. This is important because statistics and logic both suggest that a child
in a severe poverty situation is more at risk to fail in school than a child
in a mild poverty situation. Depending on the willingness to incur costs,
policymakers would need to choose a reasonable cap on income for a
child to receive a voucher. This must be chosen carefully because the
more students given vouchers the more students are competing for the
similar amount of capacity in the private system. Robert Reich suggests
the poorest 20% of families should receive a voucher, while the Ameri-
can Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) believes students should be
eligible if their family’s total annual income does not exceed 2.5 times
the income standard for reduced price lunch under federal lunch pro-
grams. The income standard for reduced price lunch is roughly $27,000
per year for a family of four. Therefore, ALEC’s proposal would gener-
ally cover families, depending on their amount of children, who make
between $50,000 and $100,000 per year or less. Within that income
allotment there should be different amounts of vouchers. The poorest
children should have vouchers that overpay for private tuition.
The value of vouchers should be calculated by a percentage
above or below the price of tuition of the private school where the
voucher is being used. This is the only way to ensure poor families
have freedom of choice. Therefore, lowest income children should have
a voucher worth a sizeable percentage more than tuition at a particu-
lar school. This provides an economic incentive for private schools to
recruit the most challenged students. Even if every private school only
seeks out some of the most financially strained students in order to help
offset other costs or to make a profit, the concept of a school recruiting

students much like college campuses is a novel idea for K-12 education.
Similar to how lowest income children receive vouchers that overpay for
private school tuition, students at the high end of the income levels eli-
gible for vouchers should receive a voucher that underpays by a similar
percentage. The marginal cost for lower middle class families to contrib-
ute partial tuition is low enough that they will be able to choose schools
with limited vouchers and not cost the government as much money.
2. Protections must exist to ensure private schools will take

vouchers, and will not discriminate unfairly in admissions.
It is essential to form a policy that ensures students will have access to
the best private schools. Overpaying for tuition is a market-based so-
lution that could be very effective, but other standards and incentives
should be considered. First of all, policymakers need to decide on a
cap on tuitions in which the government is willing to pay. For example,
the program in Washington D.C. has a cap on vouchers at $7,500. A
figure between $7,500 and $10,000 for the cap is reasonable, but the
bill would need to index the cap to inflation to be sure vouchers retain
their value. Once a generous cap on tuitions is decided upon, it must be
a part of the law that under no circumstances would private schools be
able to discriminate against voucher students because of race, income
level, or sexual orientation. Another decision in creating voucher policy
is whether or not schools should be allowed to have academic or behav-
ioral standards for acceptance. Behavioral standards seem acceptable in
the interest of the safety of the other students whose families will leave
if they feel their children are in danger. However, behavioral standards
should be realistic. Detentions for talking back should not have the same
implications as suspensions for fighting or bringing weapons to school.
The academic discrimination predicament is more challenging because a
highly specialized or academically rigorous school would not be happy
being mandated to take voucher students without the ability to discrimi-
nate based on academic ability. A standard should be set that creates a
situation in which voucher students can only be evaluated for attendance
on academics if the school requires intensive standards for acceptance
from all students.
3. There must be an effective information mechanism to be sure

that all eligible families understand their opportunities.
Milwaukee’s policy that private schools have to take half of their

voucher students from a lottery is a good method for removing discrimi-
nation in the accepting of voucher students. This would allow private
schools to target low-income talent, but at the same time be forced to
accept a certain number of students of random ability and income level
below the family income cap. In order for a student to be eligible for a
lottery or to exercise choice in schools there must be a parent or guard-
ian that signs off on the school selection, and that is willing to figure out
how the student will be able to be transported to and attend a non-public
school every day. For the program to work and be efficient, the parents
must be able to make rational and educated decisions to maximize their
utility. It is essential that a very strict, clear, and thorough program is
implemented to provide information to parents and students at public
schools about their legal rights to vouchers and each of the schools from
which they can choose.
The obvious first step would be requiring all participating private schools
to provide detailed information on the various aspects of their school.
However, it must be decided where parents will go to find out informa-
tion on their child’s schooling options and what the infrastructure will
be for gathering and providing relevant and valuable information to the
student and his or her family. The way to reach the most people most
effectively would be to use the public school system to advertise op-
portunities. The public school system should focus on providing the
best education to American children, whether in a public school or not.
Therefore, the federal government should require a district official or
person in every school to collect and distribute information to all eligible
families. Corruption amongst school district bureaucrats will likely oc-
cur in some cases, but it is better to police the bureaucrats then to have
people who are not familiar with education at another government office,
such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, handling such important
information.
4. Schools with voucher students must meet some type of aca-

demic standard.
In order for private schools to be eligible to receive voucher students
they must be held to a specific academic standard. Federal dollars are
valuable in regards to education. It would be very unfortunate if a
voucher program failed because of the publicizing of money given to
private schools that do not educate effectively. This is a serious concern
for teacher unions and needs to be addressed in any legislation on school

vouchers. It is reasonable that private schools should have to meet
certain standardized testing scores, college enrollment figures, or receive
satisfactory parental surveys. However, it is important that flexibility
is retained in the private market even with the existence of a voucher
system. Perhaps an evaluation policy could be established to incorporate
more than meeting a standardized test score. Regardless, it should be a
requirement that private school students take state examinations. While
some fears are valid regarding “teaching to the test” as unhealthy and
counterproductive, there is a need for some quantitative data to support
the ability of a private school to obtain voucher students. It is established
that on average private schools pay teachers less. Therefore, protection
for teachers should be put in place if a school receives school vouch-
ers. The policy needs to include means by which private school teachers
can address concerns; the right of teachers to organize must always be
protected.
5. There must be a program to aid public schools that lose a

large percentage of their students because of vouchers becoming
available.
To ensure that vouchers do not damage public schools have potential to
pass Congress, a multi-faceted program, including guidelines for clos-
ing schools, needs to be established to deal with public schools that are
heavily affected by voucher eligible students leaving the school. The
NCLB model of AYP schools is a good base upon which a strategy can
be developed. The consensus opinion argues that the failure of the AYP
standard and the implications that come every year a school does not
meet the goal comes from a lack of funding for intervention in failing
schools. In other words, it is not a problem with the model meeting the
AYP standard. Public schools that have a certain percentage of their stu-
dents depart for private schools should receive increased aid for tutoring
programs, hire more qualified teachers, or update facilities when neces-
sary. If certain schools undergo a major loss of students in a short time
period there needs to be a law that explains how funding will be distrib-
uted. Clear standards should be established for when a school should
be closed as a result of a high number of students leaving or evidence of
continued underachievement.
Implementation
The key to political success is establishing a voucher proposal is

to meet the criteria just proposed. Conservatives have embraced school
choice eagerly as the means to reform the education system. Therefore,
they will be likely to support any program that increases choice. If they
grow concerned about increased government spending, or government
role in regulating private education, they have invested too much politi-
cal capital in the promise of vouchers to oppose a reasonable voucher
policy proposal. Progressives can be a part of policy making and be
leaders on the issue as they grow to understand that popular opinion,
in particular amongst minority communities, is on the side of school
choice. Additionally, they will be able to qualify their previous dismissal
of vouchers by advocating for a new type of proposal in which vouch-
ers are a part of a greater system of reform and not a perfect solution, as
proposed by the Republicans.
Conclusion
The American political system is not conducive to creating and sustain-
ing the best public schools in the world; children do not vote or donate
to campaigns. Our system of governance does not address long-term
problems with long-term solutions, because constituents want to see
concrete benefits as they approach elections every two or six years.
Public schools and policies to benefit children are long-term investments
that have countless positive effects, but they cannot be condensed into
30-second advertisements. The benefits are not only not materialized
quickly enough for political benefit, but the costs usually do not appear
for years, allowing politicians to advert the blame when they abandon
children. Public schools are essential to our democracy and will be
preserved. This is not anti-public education, because private schools are
not always better. My proposal is for school choice to allow low-income
families to use a voucher for any public school, charter school, or private
school. Additionally, I do not support any voucher program that takes
funding away from existing public schools.
Vouchers are about the rights for children and their families
to have the same choices that wealthy families have had for decades.
Vouchers are also an important step toward ensuring equal opportunity
to succeed. The greatest indicator of success in the United States should
not be the income of one’s parents, but one’s willingness to work hard.
Progressives that are not corrupted by campaign contributions, or naïve
on the capacity of government to work in the short-term, must take the
lead to create a quality voucher policy for the lower class in the United

States. Vouchers will not solve all the problems of the education sys-
tem in America, but they are a part of the solution that will reach the
progressive goals in education of substantially reducing the racial and
socioeconomic achievement gap, increasing overall performance and
amount of candidates for college, and reestablishing the United States
as a leader in educational performance in comparison to the interna-
tional community.
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Forman

Rebutting the Rebuttal: A Discussion of Chris Rhodenbaugh’s
“Should a Progressive Support Vouchers?”
Christy Haller
Let’s begin where Rhodenbaugh began, it’s true, education

policy is stuck in the trenches of partisan banter. What’s not these days?
I commend Rhodenbaugh’s open-mindedness as a Progressive, if more
politicians were willing to sincerely consider the opposing opinion as
he has done, maybe there would be an increase in bi-partisan measures.
Maybe. While his paper raises legitimate concerns that both parties have,
it fails to provide a convincing response to anti-voucher concerns. Its
suggestions are non-specific, at times contradictory, and it lacks a com-
prehensive outline of just how voucher programs should be implemented
nationally. However, this may not be a fault of the paper so much as it is
a fault of the construction of American education. Just as this paper has
found it difficult to parse out the intricacies of federal funding and the
federal government’s role in education, so have policymakers. Perhaps
the U.S. government’s foremost goal regarding education policy should
not be to decide how much money it dolls out to schools but to instead
decide what specific role it is willing and capable of assuming in the edu-
cation of the nation’s children. Although I am not convinced by Rhoden-
baugh’s arguments, he is correct in stating that vouchers can, at best, be
only part of the solution for education reform. It would be unfair to think
otherwise. This paper is unmistakably valuable; it re-opens the conversa-
tion about the currently unacceptable state of American education. It’s a
conversation that we as a country cannot afford to ignore.
One of the claims that Rhodenbaugh relies heavily upon through-
out the paper is that school choice allows for an increase in account-
ability in the public school system. He uses a study on Florida’s Oppor-
tunity Scholarship program to conclude that because schools that had an
F rating did not improve solely because they did not want to have the
stigma of having an F rating, the only logical explanation for why they
improved was due to the voucher system that was concurrently imple-
mented. He makes this assumption without providing any evidence that
the voucher system had any casual effect on the school improvements.
Although he admits the weakness of this study, it is more problematic
that he does not define school improvement here or later in the paper.
Rhodenbaugh suggests in his fourth recommendation that flexibility,
84 Rebutting the Rebuttal

supposedly by way of a very general “evaluation policy,” must be main-
tained while requiring private schools to administer state examinations to
their students. Without the ability to quantitatively measure and compare
the effectiveness of voucher programs, it would be impossible for a Pro-
gressive to have an informed change of heart, even if they are, “willing
to accept any structural reform if it is clear that it will meet education
policy goals.”
Rhodenbaugh proposes that vouchers will apply competitive
pressures that will encourage schools to improve, while at the same time
suggesting that public schools should not receive less funding as students
leave the schools. He argues that distributing vouchers to students that,
for all intents and purposes encourage them to change schools, will al-
low the schools they leave behind to reduce their class sizes, hire more
qualified teachers, and update facilities. All these improvements may in
fact happen, and perhaps overcrowding in schools is the primary problem
facing failing schools. However, continuing to fund failing schools with
the same amount of money they were given prior to the voucher students
leaving, negates the idea of having competitive pressures. If schools are
given the same funding, what are the market pressures that encourage
them to improve? Furthermore, even if they do seek to improve due to
the possibility of a looming school closure, there is nothing to encour-
age them to improve beyond just above failing. In this model, it is in the
school’s best interest to be at best, mediocre; that is what is most cost ef-
ficient. So long as they improve enough to not be considered failing, they
will continue to receive the same funding.
As is the case with most reform initiatives, finding and securing a
sustainable source of funding presents a significant challenge to the lon-
gevity of this program. Using Rhodenbaugh’s numbers and suggestions,
a public school that lost students to vouchers, would still receive the
same amount of money they did before the X number of students left. In
addition to this cost, Rhodenbaugh proposes that an additional $7,500 to
$10,000 be made available per student who qualifies for a voucher. This
is not to mention his explanation that each public school student costs
the government approximately $10,000 per year. Under his plan, voucher
students are paid for twice, costing the government approximately
double the amount of a non-voucher student. Furthermore, additional
costs would be incurred if as he suggests, cash rewards were offered to
schools that accepted voucher students. Although he briefly mentions
that vouchers could be financed through a combination of federal dol-
Rebutting the Rebuttal 85

lars and philanthropic donations, it is unclear how such a vast increase in
funding needs would be accomplished.
Perhaps Rhodenbaugh’s most egregious suggestion is that private
schools should not be allowed to deny admission to a student based on
the student’s academic achievement or behavioral record. The very fact
that private schools are private gives them the right to choose to whom
they grant admission; more importantly for this discussion, it gives them
the right to choose whether or not they want to accept voucher students
at all. Even with my background as a public school student, I recognize
and respect a private school’s right to choose its own admissions stan-
dards. Just as universities set their own subjective admissions standards,
so may private schools. Arguably there is a need to distinguish between
K-12 schools and universities, however when both receive federal fund-
ing, it becomes a highly subjective distinction. It appears that the govern-
ment’s only constitutional ability to prevent private schools from setting
their own admissions standards would come from withholding federal
funding assuming that is an applicable situation.
Rhodenbaugh mentions that one of the concerns of implement-
ing voucher programs is that it will remove high achieving students
from schools, subsequently creating an environment of disadvantaged
and poorly performing students. As a rebuttal to this concern, he sug-
gests that top performing students should not be held in “intellectual and
cultural prisons,” and should instead be given the opportunity to receive
a higher quality education. According to the Congressional Progressive
Caucus, as quoted by Rhodenbaugh, “every child in America…is entitled
to the same, high quality, educational opportunities.” The caucus does
not distinguish between high and low performing students. Furthermore,
as he also argues in the paper, it is often the most disadvantaged students
who benefit most from a private school education. Thus, his rebuttal to
the fourth talking point is grossly contrary to the Congressional Progres-
sive Caucus’s mission to provide equal education to all students; a point
which he attempts to justify by claiming that even by skimming failing
schools of their top talent, the situation in urban public schools could not
get much worse.
While the paper makes a strong point that teacher unions do
not always serve the best interests of the students, it is irresponsible
to not acknowledge the necessity for teacher training and certification
programs. The paper presents the example of an experienced engineer
who despite many years of industry experience must complete a lengthy
86 Rebutting the Rebuttal

certification process in order to be an accredited teacher. Although there
is an argument for introducing innovative and creative teaching methods
to better serve a variety of students, any program that makes it too easy
for untrained people to become teachers will not best serve the needs of
American students. It should be added to his paper that there would need
to be a standardization of what constitutes a highly qualified or certi-
fied teacher. Rhodenbaugh provides a good proposal in suggesting that
a minimum salary would be required for teachers who are potentially
un-unionized and work in a school that accepts vouchers. This highlights
the importance and potential of creating a plan that is collaborative and is
supported by both parents and teachers.
This paper provides us with a highly ambitious proposal for
extending the implementation of voucher programs in America’s most
underprivileged school districts. Although it aims to be as comprehensive
as possible, it seems to find itself having the same problems policymak-
ers have: how do we get everyone to buy into the proposals and how do
we pay for it? Though I doubt that his rebuttals to Progressives’ talking
points against vouchers are convincing enough to convert the masses,
he does force us to consider how strongly America believes that qual-
ity education is a public good. Most importantly, Rhodenbaugh sees the
potential for movement beyond a deadlock of political ideologies. Now
that’s encouraging.

Rebutting the Rebuttal 87

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Beyond Politics

An Undergraduate Review of Politics

This year’s journal was made possible with the help of

The Catholic Effect: Catholic Representation in Congress

Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body

2010 Political Poll

Turkey’s Continued Pursuit of Membership in the European Union:

Should a Progressive Support School Vouchers?

Rebutting the Rebuttal: A Discussion of Chris Rhodenbaugh’s

Kathleen Donahue and Michael Rowley

Ryan Brellenthin is a senior Political Science major with a minor in The-

8 The Catholic Effect

The Catholic Effect 9

10 The Catholic Effect

The Catholic Effect 11

12 The Catholic Effect

The Catholic Effect 13

Creating a Measure of Catholic Roll Call Behavior

14 The Catholic Effect

As mentioned earlier in this paper, such a score is not a unique feature

Catholicism in the House of Representatives

The Catholic Effect 15

16 The Catholic Effect

Explaining the Data

The Catholic Effect 17

Table 2. Influences on Percentage that a House Member Votes with the

18 The Catholic Effect

Table 3. Influences on Percent that a House Member Votes with the

The Catholic Effect 19

20 The Catholic Effect

The Catholic Effect 21

Members of Congress together does not respect the individuality of ev-

The Catholic Effect 23

Miller and Stokes, 54.

24 The Catholic Effect

The Catholic Effect 25

Eleanor Huntington is a History and FTT (Film) double-major. She

Between April and August 1994, an estimated 800,000 people

26 Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body

Land Rights Abuses

Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body 27

28 Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body

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The Direction of Justice

30 Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body

Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body 31

32 Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body

Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body 33

34 Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body

Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body 35

36 Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body

Any Soil Can Host a Dead Body 37

Christi Chelsky, Associate Editor

Similar to last year, the economy is a major focus for many

38 2010 Political Poll

2010 Political Poll 39

Generally speaking, do you think of yourself as a Republican, Democrat,

40 2010 Political Poll

How would you characterize your political views?

Far Left 2.4%

How strongly do you hold your political views?

Very Strongly 14.9%

If independent, to which party do you generally consider yourself clos-

Democrat Republican Libertarian Green