Access provided by University of Redlands (5 May 2016 23:46 GMT) https://muse.jhu.edu/article/488570 Despite the growing demand for higher education in the United States, there has been a steady decrease in public financial support as a share of states’ income, as a policy priority, and as a share of overall insti- tutional costs (Toutkoushian, 2009). In fact, as the private benefits going to those who attend college keep growing, as politicians realize that higher education can find funds elsewhere, and as fiscal pressures build to focus on other public needs, the fairness of and very need for government subsidies for higher education have come under scrutiny (kane, Orszag, & Apostolov, 2005; McLendon & Mokher, 2009; ved- der, 2007). These trends have been followed by increased demand for accountability and the reshaping of the nature of the relationship be- tween institutions and state governments (Zumeta, 2000). Most impor- tantly, following broader trends in U.S. politics, higher education policy debates have become more contentious and polarized, with a growing focus on the instrumental benefits of higher education, to the detriment of the collective and redistributional roles of public investments in the tertiary sector (McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2006; McMahon, 2009; St. John & Parsons, 2004). While the policy shift in favor of the growing role of the private sec- tor and private financing in higher education has received a lot of atten- The Journal of Higher Education, vol. 83, No. 6 (November/December) Copyright © 2012 by The Ohio State University The Political Dynamics of Higher Education Policy This research was supported by the ASHE/Lumina Foundation dissertation fellowship and the UC ACCORD dissertation grant. The author thanks Susanne Lohmann, James DeNardo, José Luis Santos, Laura Perna, and Brad Curs for their comments on earlier drafts. Matthew Spence provided outstanding support for this research. Luciana Dar is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Education, Univer- sity of California, Riverside. Luciana Dar 770 The Journal of Higher Education tion, scholars and policymakers have been less interested in questions such as: Why are governments’ overall amounts and type of spending on higher education often misaligned with national and subnational economic and social needs? How do political dynamics affect the cost- sharing implications of some of the policy solutions currently adopted in the tertiary sector? Why do we see a rise in preferences for narrow vocational education programs, when employers increasingly demand workers with a broader and flexible range of skills? (Bauerlein, 2010). To answer these, one must sort out the links between political prefer- ences, political-economic institutions, and higher education policy. Indeed, recent scholarship has shown that politics matters in higher education policy outcomes, but much less is known about how it mat- ters. The.

1. Access provided by University of Redlands (5 May 2016 23:46
GMT)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/488570
Despite the growing demand for higher education in the United
States,
there has been a steady decrease in public financial support as a
share
of states’ income, as a policy priority, and as a share of overall
insti-
tutional costs (Toutkoushian, 2009). In fact, as the private
benefits
going to those who attend college keep growing, as politicians
realize
that higher education can find funds elsewhere, and as fiscal
pressures
build to focus on other public needs, the fairness of and very
need for
government subsidies for higher education have come under
scrutiny
(kane, Orszag, & Apostolov, 2005; McLendon & Mokher, 2009;
ved-
der, 2007). These trends have been followed by increased
demand for
accountability and the reshaping of the nature of the
relationship be-
tween institutions and state governments (Zumeta, 2000). Most
impor-
tantly, following broader trends in U.S. politics, higher
education policy

2. debates have become more contentious and polarized, with a
growing
focus on the instrumental benefits of higher education, to the
detriment
of the collective and redistributional roles of public investments
in the
tertiary sector (McCarty, Poole, & Rosenthal, 2006; McMahon,
2009;
St. John & Parsons, 2004).
While the policy shift in favor of the growing role of the private
sec-
tor and private financing in higher education has received a lot
of atten-
The Journal of Higher Education, vol. 83, No. 6
(November/December)
Copyright © 2012 by The Ohio State University
The Political Dynamics of Higher Education
Policy
This research was supported by the ASHE/Lumina Foundation
dissertation fellowship
and the UC ACCORD dissertation grant. The author thanks
Susanne Lohmann, James
DeNardo, José Luis Santos, Laura Perna, and Brad Curs for
their comments on earlier
drafts. Matthew Spence provided outstanding support for this
research.
Luciana Dar is an assistant professor in the Graduate School of
Education, Univer-
sity of California, Riverside.
Luciana Dar

3. 770 The Journal of Higher Education
tion, scholars and policymakers have been less interested in
questions
such as: Why are governments’ overall amounts and type of
spending
on higher education often misaligned with national and
subnational
economic and social needs? How do political dynamics affect
the cost-
sharing implications of some of the policy solutions currently
adopted
in the tertiary sector? Why do we see a rise in preferences for
narrow
vocational education programs, when employers increasingly
demand
workers with a broader and flexible range of skills? (Bauerlein,
2010).
To answer these, one must sort out the links between political
prefer-
ences, political-economic institutions, and higher education
policy.
Indeed, recent scholarship has shown that politics matters in
higher
education policy outcomes, but much less is known about how it
mat-
ters. The effects of public opinion, politicians’ preferences, and
politi-
cal institutions vary according to the context, timing, and nature
of the
higher education policy under evaluation (Barrilleaux,
Holbrook, &

4. Langer, 2002; Besley & Case, 2003; Rigby, 2007). In this paper,
I take
on one piece of this process and ask the question: How does the
distri-
bution of political preferences shape higher education policy
decisions?
I argue that an explanation of how politics matters may be
found
in the multidimensional character of higher education as both a
pro-
vider of public and private goods and its diverse sources of
financial
support. Government spending on and regulation of higher
education
disproportionately transfers resources across different income
groups,
from the general population to those that have access to these
educa-
tional services (Doyle, 2007b; Heller, 2005). At the same time,
govern-
ment spending on universities also provides collective benefits,
some of
which are clear public goods (e.g., cancer research). Either of
these two
characteristics may become more salient (i.e., important to
politicians
and the general public) and have effects on who supports
various types
of funding or regulation at a particular point in time.
Informed by the theoretical positive political economy
literature, I
propose an analytical framework to help understand political
dynam-
ics in higher education policy. The next section presents the

5. model and,
informed by recent higher education scholarship, describes how
spatial
models of political competition may be applied to higher
education is-
sues. The third section offers an application of the model by
explor-
ing the relationship between the distribution of political
preferences in
the California state legislature and higher education spending
decisions.
The last section concludes with a discussion of the potential
applica-
tions of this analytical framework for higher education research
and
policy.
Political Dynamics of Higher Education Policy 771
Theoretical Framework: A Spatial Representation of Higher
Education
Spatial models of politics have been part of the toolset of
economists
and political scientists for more than a generation. The median
voter
model continues to be the “workhorse” of political economists
and the
foundation of a large body of literature assuming that
competition for
office leads candidates and parties to choose policies that most
closely
align with the interests of the median voter (Besley & Case,
2003). Re-

6. fined versions of this framework have been successfully used to
explain
the politics of policy dynamics in various contexts, including
fiscal
policy, policy gridlock, abortion, and health care policy
(Ainsworth &
Hall, 2011; Alt & Lowry, 2000; McCarty et al., 2006; volden,
2006).1
Nonetheless, the median voter model is not yet a common
theoretical
framework in higher education scholarship (Doyle, 2007b). As a
result,
I describe it in more detail here through an example.
Assuming that there is only one issue-area that politicians argue
about, e.g., the rate of taxation (from 0 to 100%), every
legislator has
a preference about what the tax rate should be. This preference
may be
attributed to personal ideology, constituent preferences or a
combination
of factors. Then, if we draw a line segment from 0 to 100 and
place each
legislator at his or her ideal point, such that someone who
prefers a tax
rate of 50% is at the halfway point on the line, someone who
prefers
25% is halfway between 0 and that point and so on. If the actual
tax rate
is exactly at a legislator’s ideal point, he or she is satisfied. As
the actual
tax rate moves away from the legislator’s ideal point in either
direction,
the legislator becomes increasingly unsatisfied. If a legislator
prefers
25%, he or she is equally unsatisfied if the actual rate is 20% or

7. 30%,
as they are the same distance away from his or her ideal, and he
or she
is even more unsatisfied if the actual rate is 15% or 35%. The
technical
phrase for this phenomenon is that legislators have symmetric
single-
peaked preferences.
Now, using these ideal points, we can make predictions about
legisla-
tor voting behavior. Suppose that there are five legislators with
varying
tax rate preferences (one prefers 10%, another 20%, a third
30%, a fourth
40%, and the last 50%) and that the status quo tax rate is 42%.
If a bill
comes before the legislature cutting taxes to 25%, it will pass
with three
votes: the three legislators who prefer 10%, 20%, and 30% will
all vote
yes, as the bill moves the actual tax rate closer to their ideal
points; the
40% and 50% legislators will vote no, as the bill moves the tax
rate away
from their ideal points. A “low-tax” coalition has formed to
pass this bill.
If the legislators consider another issue-area, we simply add
another
dimension to our spatial model. Say the legislators now decide
to imple-
772 The Journal of Higher Education

8. ment a tariff on imported goods; we add an “up-down”
dimension to
our “left-right” dimension to get a two-dimensional Cartesian
plane, and
legislator ideal points can be mapped based on tax preferences
(“left-
right”) and tariff preferences (“up-down”). Additional issue-
areas can
be mapped to additional dimensions, such that each issue can be
asso-
ciated with one dimension in the space (Hinich & Munger,
1997). The
policy space ultimately depends on which policy issues are
salient, how
issue-areas are linked, and which sample of legislators is
included. For
example, although liberal state legislators in the northeastern
states usu-
ally favor more spending on financial aid, the opposite is true in
west-
ern states due to size of postsecondary enrollment in private
institutions
(Doyle, in press).
Based on assumptions about behavior and preferences in the
spa-
tial model, Poole and Rosenthal (2007), using scaling methods,
have
developed a nonpartisan measure of the ideological positions of
leg-
islators. The authors gathered historical data on roll call votes
for the
U.S. Congress and were able to produce scores for all
legislators that
are comparable over time. Their extensive empirical analyses of

9. vot-
ing patterns over 200 years have shown that most issues fall
within the
standard left-right continuum, that is, conflict over
redistribution or the
extent to which governments should interfere in markets.
Legislators
tend to “bunch together” into a group favoring redistribution or
into a
group opposing it. This means that, when analyzing two
different policy
areas, legislators close to each other in the “space” are likely to
support
the same set of policies. For example, legislators in favor of
universal
health care usually vote for increases in spending on welfare
programs.
Figure 1 presents two hypothetical distributions of legislators in
the
standard left-right continuum. The first shows a larger
concentration of
moderates whereas the second presents a hypothetical
legislature with
members at the extremes of the political spectrum. The latter
constitutes
a polarized legislature, in which there are wider differences in
policy
preferences among its members. The political and policy
implications of
each distribution have been the center of much of the recent
scholarship
in U.S. politics and comparative political economy (Bartels,
2008; Mc-
Carthy et al., 2006; Smith, 2007).

10. Using the standard left-right economic dimension as a
reference,
Figure 2 presents a hypothetical distribution of ordered policy
prefer-
ences in higher education. On the extreme left, a hypothetical
legisla-
tor supports, for example, significant government investment in
higher
education, an extensive system of public universities, free
tuition, and
open access. In sum, higher education would be provided in the
same
fashion as k–12 education, which governments have a
responsibility to
Political Dynamics of Higher Education Policy 773
offer to all. This set of preferences aligns with a social justice
orienta-
tion in educational priorities that favors the least advantaged in
society,
informed by the work of political theorists such as John Rawls
(St. John
& Parsons, 2004).
In comparison, a hypothetical moderate legislator would be
more
likely to support a version of the current U.S. system of public,
private
non-profit, and private for-profit universities.2 In this case,
public fund-
ing would be coupled with private sources of support for
students. Af-
firmative action in admissions would be common practice, as

11. would
government regulation of the private sector. Finally, an extreme
con-
servative would support only the private provision of higher
education,
merit-based aid programs (if any), and admission to universities
only on
a competitive basis. Here, the theoretical foundations for these
prefer-
ences have their origins in the utilitarian tradition from
economics.
There are many issue dimensions in higher education, but most
of the
time policy preferences align with what will be called herein a
“redis-
tributive dimension” (i.e., policies invariably involve some
transfer of
Fig. 1. A hypothetical distribution of legislators with more
moderate
members compared to one with a more polarized membership.
Fig. 2. An illustration of the one-dimensional higher education
policy space, reflect-
ing the standard left-right ideological spectrum from more to
less government
intervention in the economy (spending, provision of services,
regulation).
N
um
be
r

12. of
L
eg
is
la
to
rs
N
um
be
r
of
L
eg
is
la
to
rs
774 The Journal of Higher Education
resources from one group of constituents to another through
government
spending, subsidization, or regulation). Poole and Rosenthal’s
(2007)

13. work provides ample evidence to support this assumption.
McCarty,
Poole, and Rosenthal (2006) also show the growing salience of
income
in determining voter and legislators’ preferences, making
contemporary
legislation disproportionately focused on redistributive issues
(i.e., fi-
nancial aid for low-income students). As a result, one can
assume that a
legislator who supports a public system of universities is also
likely to
favor spending on need-based aid for students. Conversely, a
legislator
who thinks that universities are too liberal or inefficient is also
likely to
support merit-based financial aid.
The one-dimensional representation of conflict over
redistribution
provides a powerful and parsimonious tool by which to
understand how
politicians make choices in higher education policy. However,
by using
the standard left-right ideological continuum, inconsistent
policy posi-
tions emerge in many instances. For example, conservatives
may not
support increases in the funding for need-based aid programs in
post-
secondary education because they either dislike programs
targeting
the poor, in principle, or they believe that support for higher
educa-
tion should be based on merit.3 Alternatively, conservatives
may prefer

14. spending on need-based student aid to spending on public
universities,
based on the argument that market mechanisms of financing
higher edu-
cation are preferable to the public provision of services by
governments.
Another classic example of apparent ideological overlap is
public
spending on community colleges. Within the higher education
budget
across states, community colleges tend to receive support from
both
sides of the political spectrum, and spending levels are much
more
likely to be protected during recessions (Callan, 2002; Center
for the
Study of Education Policy, 2006). However, there are
differences in mo-
tivations behind this apparent agreement over spending
priorities. Liber-
als support community colleges because they consider these
institutions
to be a fundamental instrument of access to higher education,
and hence
social mobility, for lower-income students. In contrast,
conservatives
tend to support community colleges due to their cost-
effectiveness and
contribution to workforce development.
I propose that, unlike many other policy areas, to understand
politi-
cal competition in higher education, one must concurrently
consider two
issue dimensions: the aforementioned “redistributive

15. dimension” and
what will be called herein a “public good” dimension. Given
that higher
education provides both public and private goods leading to
public and
private benefits, policymakers keep these two dimensions in
mind, or
consider them separately conditional on economic or political
circum-
Political Dynamics of Higher Education Policy 775
stances, whenever they make decisions related to spending and
regula-
tion. Indeed, economists of higher education have pointed out
the dif-
ficulty in identifying the public/private costs and benefits,
within each
function of higher education, and the inevitable trade-offs
between
price, size of public subsidy and quality (Archibald & feldman,
2010).
In the first case (the redistributive dimension), there is a
transfer of
resources, through taxation or regulation, from the whole
population
to a particular group, specifically college students and their
families.
This transfer can be more or less regressive. The distributional
outcome
depends on the overall tax system and how states choose to
spend on
higher education, either by subsidizing various types of

16. institutions
or students through need-based or merit-based aid or by
providing tax
breaks (Doyle, 2007b; Heller, 2005). This dimension also can
encom-
pass policy choices that involve more or less government
intervention
in the higher education sector. For example, the establishment
of perfor-
mance-based accountability requirements influences
institutional goals
and priorities, hence affecting spending patterns (Alexander,
2000).
In the second case (the public good dimension), politicians take
into
consideration that the transfer of resources from taxpayers to
higher
education produces benefits for the whole population through
positive
externalities and other collective benefits. These may include
classic
public goods, such as medical breakthroughs, or collective
goods, such
as less income inequality and poverty or more state economic
growth
and development (Aghion et al., 2005; Boix, 2003).4 Other
perceived
public benefits of higher education include better social
indicators (e.g.,
less crime, better health, a bigger tax base, civic engagement) in
states
or countries with higher levels of education (Baum & Ma,
2007).
Figure 3 provides a representation of the two issue dimensions

17. using
the spatial analogy. Here, two hypothetical legislators could be
at the
same level, that is, in agreement over preferred policy positions,
in the
vertical dimension of the graph. In this case, they agree on
overall fi-
nancial support for higher education. In contrast, they can differ
on how
to spend the allocated resources, which would be represented by
dif-
ferent positions in the horizontal dimension. One might prefer
targeted
redistributive policies, reflected by choosing to spend on need-
based aid
combined with higher tuition, while the other might support low
tuition
for all students. The former would be located closer to the
center of
the spectrum, as compared to the latter. Alternatively, two
hypothetical
conservative legislators may agree that any higher education
spending
should take place through market mechanisms (preference for
spend-
ing on student aid over spending on public universities) but
differ in
their views over the share of public funds that should be
committed to
F
ig
. 3

18. . A
n
ill
us
tr
at
io
n
of
th
e
tw
o-
di
m
en
si
on
al
h
ig
he
r
ed

19. uc
at
io
n
po
lic
y
sp
ac
e.
T
he
“
re
di
st
ri
bu
tiv
e
di
m
en
si

20. on
”
re
fle
ct
s
th
e
st
an
da
rd
le
ft
-r
ig
ht
id
eo
lo
gi
ca
l s

21. pe
ct
ru
m
f
ro
m
m
or
e
to
le
ss
g
ov
er
nm
en
t i
nt
er
ve
nt
io

22. n
in
th
e
ec
on
om
y.
T
he
“
pu
bl
ic
g
oo
d”
d
im
en
si
on
re

23. pr
es
en
ts
le
gi
sl
at
or
s’
p
ol
ic
y
pr
ef
er
en
ce
s
ov
er
h
ig

24. he
r e
du
ca
tio
n
as
a
p
ro
du
ce
r o
f e
co
no
m
ic
e
xt
er
na
lit
ie

25. s
an
d
pu
bl
ic
b
en
efi
ts
.
Pu
bl
ic
G
oo
d
D
im
en
si
on
R
ed

26. is
tr
ib
ut
iv
e
D
im
en
si
on
H
ig
he
r
E
du
ca
tio
n
is
a
P

27. ub
lic
G
oo
d:
e
co
no
m
ic
de
ve
lo
pm
en
t,
ed
uc
at
ed
w
or

28. kf
or
ce
, c
iv
ic
e
ng
ag
em
en
t,
be
tte
r
so
ci
al
in
di
ca
to
rs
H

29. ig
he
r
E
du
ca
tio
n:
tr
an
sf
er
o
f
go
ve
rn
m
en
t r
es
ou
rc
es

30. b
as
ed
on
m
er
it
an
d
fo
cu
s
on
ec
on
om
ic
r
et
ur
ns
o
f
sp

31. en
di
ng
H
ig
he
r
E
du
ca
tio
n
is
a
Pr
iv
at
e
G
oo
d:
B

32. en
efi
ts
a
cc
ru
e
m
ai
nl
y
to
th
e
in
di
vi
du
al
th
ro
ug
h
hi

33. gh
er
s
al
ar
ie
s,
h
ea
lth
a
nd
w
ea
lth
c
re
at
io
n
H
ig
he

34. r
E
du
ca
tio
n:
m
ea
ns
to
pr
ov
id
e
eq
ua
lit
y
of
o
pp
or
tu
ni

35. ty
,
go
ve
rn
m
en
t s
ho
ul
d
tr
an
sf
er
re
so
ur
ce
s
to
n
ee
dy

36. a
nd
u
nd
er
re
pr
es
en
te
d
st
ud
en
ts
R
ig
ht
L
ef
t
Political Dynamics of Higher Education Policy 777

37. higher education. In this case, the former would be placed
rightward in
the upper right quadrant while the other also rightward but in
the lower
right quadrant.5
This representation of higher education policymaking helps
explain
one of the most puzzling characteristics of political dynamics in
this
field: the great instability of partisan and ideological positions
across
states/countries and over time. A multidimensional approach
leads to a
much more complex web of possible political coalitions and
cyclical
changes in discourse on the role and relevance of higher
education and,
most importantly, on determining who should pay for it. This
frame-
work may serve as a starting point for more complex analyses
that in-
corporate the mediating effects of institutional constraints and
political
competition (Besley & Case, 2003; Porterba, 1994; Rizzo,
2006). In
the next section, I present an application of the model and
explore how
political ideology may affect state higher education spending
decisions
and budgetary trade-offs.
Empirical Illustration: Ideology and State Support
Recent scholarly research has shown that there are clear
ideological

38. and partisan differences in legislators’ views on higher
education is-
sues. Doyle (2010) estimated U.S. senators’ preferences based
on roll
call votes and found that, as previously shown by Poole and
Rosenthal
(2007), for other policy areas, their ideal points fall along a
recogniz-
able left-right continuum. Despite these results, research on the
political
determinants of higher education spending still offers
conflicting evi-
dence about the direction and relevance of the relationship
between po-
litical ideology and various measures of state spending on
higher educa-
tion (see McLendon et al., in press, for an comprehensive
review).
The usual hypothesis put forth in this literature is that liberals
are
more likely to spend on higher education in absolute terms and
as a
share of states’ budgets (Archibald & feldman, 2006; McLendon
et
al., 2009; Nicholson-Crotty & Meier, 2003; Tandberg, 2010a;
Weerts
& Ronca, in press). Many of these contributions use a measure
of the
ideology of a state’s citizens rather than the ideological
preferences of
state legislators (Berry, Ringquist, Fording, & Hanson, 1998).
The as-
sumption is that there is a clear relationship between public
opinion and
legislators’ choices about spending and policy (Erickson,

39. Wright, & Mc-
Iver, 1993). The effect of the preferences of legislators
themselves is
tested through various measures of partisanship (share of the
legislature
or unified institutional control). The findings from these studies
vary
widely, without a discernible pattern for the direction or
relevance of the
relationship.
778 The Journal of Higher Education
There are three limitations to this empirical strategy. First,
research in
political science has shown that citizen and legislator
ideological prefer-
ences may diverge due to the nature of electoral institutions in
the U.S.
(Cox & katz, 2002) and that partisanship and legislators’
ideological
preferences may not be aligned, depending on the legislature
and the pe-
riod under consideration (McCarthy et al., 2006). As a result,
the impact
of legislators’ ideological preferences on spending decisions
varies with
political institutions, and outcomes frequently diverge from the
prefer-
ences of the median voter (Besley & Case, 2003).
Second, both liberals and conservatives may favor more
spending but
for different reasons. It may be that liberals see universities as a

40. neces-
sary condition for social mobility, but they also can favor k–12
spend-
ing or perceive higher education spending as a transfer of
resources to
middle- and upper-middle-income families. Alternatively,
conservatives
may focus on the economic benefits of higher education (e.g.,
state eco-
nomic growth, technological competitiveness), preferring to
spend on
workforce development rather than on welfare; or, as argued by
Doyle
(2007b), their strategy may be a conscious one for the purpose
of subsi-
dizing specific groups of the population.
Finally, as argued here, political competition in higher
education hap-
pens in a multidimensional policy space. As such, the role of
political
ideology in spending decisions may vary, depending on the
relative sa-
lience of the redistributive versus public good dimensions,
which are
affected by variables such as economic conditions, electoral
cycles, and
competing policy priorities as well as by the distribution of
legislators
across the ideological continuum.
Assuming that the relative salience of the two dimensions is
con-
stant, one can focus on the relationship between political
ideology and
state spending, given a different distribution of ideological

41. positions.6
As shown in Figure 1, the distribution of political preferences
can be
more or less polarized, that is, there may be more legislators
who hold
extreme positions on issues (e.g., “higher education is mainly a
private
good,” “spending on student aid should be based on merit
alone”) or a
higher concentration of moderates (e.g., “financing of higher
education
should happen through a combination of public and private
sources”).
Here, polarization describes how much liberals and
conservatives di-
verge on their policy preferences and not how electorally
vulnerable
legislators are or how closely divided the legislature is.
A more polarized distribution of political preferences has a few
im-
portant implications, which are extensively documented in the
politi-
cal science literature (McCarthy et al., 2006). for example, there
is an
increase in the political clout of single-issue groups and shifts
of focus
Political Dynamics of Higher Education Policy 779
toward single issues, instead of the broader trade-offs involved
in poli-
cymaking. There is an increase in political gridlock, limiting
the likeli-

42. hood of policy change or policy choices that involve complex
coalition
building (Rigby & Wright, 2008). In higher education, examples
of the
emergence of powerful single-issue groups can be found in the
growing
contentiousness of the debates over affirmative action in
admissions and
in state tuition for illegal immigrants.
Polarization of political preferences also leads to an increase in
legis-
lative gridlock and disagreement over various spending choices.
In light
of the model proposed here and empirical evidence in the
political sci-
ence and higher education literatures, the growing polarization
of po-
litical preferences has, hypothetically, two main implications
for higher
education spending decisions. First, as politicians move to the
extremes
of the ideological spectrum, political competition takes place
mainly in
the redistributive dimension, while the public good dimension
of higher
education becomes less salient. As a result, there is less overlap
in pol-
icy preferences between conservatives and liberals, leaving less
room
for compromise. Second, the very idea of higher education’s
being a
public good comes into question, giving clout to the argument
that sub-
sidies should be more targeted (Vedder, 2007).

43. In sum, polarization of political preferences leads to what can
be un-
derstood as one-dimensional thinking. Here, preferences become
more
limited as well as focused on single issues. Multidimensional
thinking,
in which there is room to assess the various trade-offs involved
in state
spending decisions in regard to higher education, becomes much
less
common. Both Democrats and Republicans in a polarized
environment
will look at the redistributive dimension over the public good
dimen-
sion, and because higher education is not a platform issue for
either
party (that is, each party has ideological reasons both to support
and
to oppose higher education spending), there will be decreased
support
for higher education (McLendon & Mokher, 2009; Rigby &
Wright,
2008).
figures 4 and 5 show how the political polarization of
ideological
preferences can be represented in the higher education policy
space.
Figure 4 is a hypothetical distribution of preferences where
there is
more overlap in the distribution of liberal and conservative
legislators,
that is, some have similar policy positions on higher education
issues.
figure 5 presents a hypothetical highly polarized distribution of
ideo-

44. logical preferences, whereby liberals view higher education
spending as
a public good but also believe that spending should transfer
resources to
the lower-income segments of the population. Conservatives in
this sce-
nario think that public funding for higher education should be
minimal
More Moderates
Public Good
Private Good
Left Right
Liberals
Conservatives
Fig. 4. Hypothetical distribution of legislators’ policy
preferences in a two-dimensional space.
Public Good
Private Good
Left Right
Liberals
Conservatives

45. More Extremists
Fig. 5. The effects of hypothetical increase in polarization on
the distribu-
tion of legislators’ policy preferences in a two-dimensional
space.
Political Dynamics of Higher Education Policy 781
and that any public funding should follow more market-oriented
models
of financing.
Based on the previous discussion, one can expect that, as
political po-
larization increases, states’ commitment to higher education as
a share
of income and of states’ budgets will decrease. I test this
argument here
using California data from 1976 to 2006. California has led the
national
trend, whereby the electorate has become more partisan and
ideologi-
cally polarized (Jacobson, 2004). It is, in many ways, a
microcosm of
the U.S. as a whole. California has achieved high levels of
partisan-
ship, most legislatures’ general elections are predetermined, and
there
is no serious contest in assembly general elections by the two
parties
(Masket, 2009). Rather, there is a weakening of the electoral
connection
(Fiorina, 1999).

46. California is presently also the only state for which roll-call
data
are available for an extended period of years. As a result, I was
able to
obtain state-level legislative ideology scores, making it a much
more
representative measure of trends in political preferences,
independent
of partisanship. Having a Democratic-controlled legislature
throughout
this period has also enhanced my confidence in the importance
of the
relationship between political polarization and state higher
education
support trends observed.
Data
Data for the illustration provided in this section come from
various
sources. A table containing a description and sources can be
found in
the Appendix.
Dependent Variables
This paper uses two measures of state support for higher
education.
The first measure is the share allocated to higher education in
Califor-
nia’s state budget, more specifically, total higher education
appropria-
tions as a share of state general fund expenditures. This variable
tracks
yearly change in the share of the state budget allocated to

47. current op-
erations for higher education; hence, it does not include capital
expen-
ditures or debt services. This is a commonly used proxy
measure for
higher education’s position relative to a state’s other policy
priorities
(Tandberg, 2010b).
Looking at the relative share of the budget allocated to higher
educa-
tion reveals the explicit and implicit trade-offs faced by
legislators when
formulating the budget (Gordon, 2007). Certainly, funding
requirements
from ballot initiatives and federal-state partnerships in
entitlement
782 The Journal of Higher Education
spending increasingly mandate specific levels of funding, which
should
lessen the amount of discretionary funding available; yet,
California
legislators have shown a willingness to borrow and spend
beyond their
revenue base. In allocating money, legislators reveal their latent
pref-
erences about how much they value each spending category,
including
higher education.
Most importantly, this measure also can be construed as a
preliminary

48. indicator of the redistributive dimension of higher education.
That is, as
legislators decide budget priorities, they also reveal their
preferences re-
garding how to allocate resources across the various policy
areas. They
also reveal their preferences in regard to the trade-offs between
provid-
ing collective or particularized benefits through policy
expenditures (Ja-
coby & Schneider, 2001). This trade-off at one point in time is
what I
capture with the relative share dependent variable.
The second is a common measure of overall state commitment
to
higher education widely used in the literature: tax fund
appropriations
per $1,000 of state personal income. This measure tracks, in
real terms,
how much of the state’s wealth the California government is
allocat-
ing to higher education. I use it as a proxy measure for the
public good
dimension discussed in the model.7 Like most used indicators
for state
commitment to higher education, this measure has limitations.
Increases
in personal income observed in the past three decades have
many causes
unrelated to higher education, thus, one must be cautious.
However, it
remains a good proxy for my goals to ascertain legislators’
willingness
to commit a share of overall income in a particular point in
time.

49. Independent Variables
The key variable in the hypothesis set forth here is the level of
politi-
cal polarization in the California state legislature. To measure
legislators’
ideological and policy differences, I use Poole and Rosenthal’s
(2007)
method of analyzing the roll-call votes.8 Employing a technique
similar
to factor analysis, the authors constructed coordinate variables
that place
each member of the legislature in a vote-predicting space (DW-
NOMI-
NATE scores). Essentially, each legislator is given a score,
which lines
them up on a single dimension, and like-minded legislators get
scores
that group together. The first dimension scores locate most
legislators’
ideological divisions on major issues quite well. The great
advantage of
this measure is that it is comparable across legislatures and over
time,
permitting consistent analyses of cross-sectional and time
trends.
The polarization measure comes from looking at the distance
between
the average party scores. first, I take the average the DW-
NOMINATE
scores of all Democratic state representatives, then the average
of all

50. Political Dynamics of Higher Education Policy 783
Republican state representatives. Then I calculate the distance
between
these two (the absolute value of the difference between the
Republican
and the Democratic average). The data for California follow the
national
trend of increasingly polarized legislative bodies (Gordon et al.,
2004;
Jacobson, 2004).
Democratic Party Strength is a continuous measure of the
proportion
of Democrats in both chambers of the legislature. Most of the
higher
education literature on party effects on spending decisions
hypothesizes
that Democrats are more likely to spend than are Republicans
(McLen-
don et al., 2009). Here, the variable controls for independent
partisan
effects.
Although the main variable of interest is political polarization, I
con-
trol for the separate effect of Government Ideology as well. The
variable
is the average of the DW-NOMINATE scores for the entire
legislature.
However, the proposed model leads to the hypothesis that
political ide-
ology matters only insofar as how it is distributed and not as
determined
by the mean or median position of the overall legislature. The

51. model
also includes standard measures controlling for economic cycles
and the
nature of budgeting in higher education. These variables are
State Rev-
enue per Capita, Unemployment, and Tuition at four-year
institutions
(lagged).
Other potentially relevant variables explored in the literature
are not
reported here because they were insignificant across various
specifica-
tions, and their inclusion in the model did not change, in any
substan-
tive way, the findings (party of the governor, unified democratic
control,
public postsecondary enrollment, and share of the population
18–24).
Methods and Results
The model presented here is a time-series regression analysis
using a
Newey-West covariance matrix to account for the
autocorrelation com-
mon in datasets with government spending variables (Greene,
2005).
This estimation technique provides standard errors that are
robust to
the presence of autocorrelation. Other applicable estimation
techniques
were attempted as robustness checks (regression with a lagged
depen-
dent variable, Prais-Winsten, AR (1), and first-difference
regression) in

52. an effort to control in other ways for autocorrelation,
heteroskedasticity,
and other common structures in time-series data. Importantly,
the main
findings remained consistent across specifications. Tables 1 and
2 pres-
ent the results.
The results confirm the hypothesized relationship between
political
polarization on higher education spending, both as a share of
the state’s
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786 The Journal of Higher Education
budget and per $1,000 of state personal income. The fact that
different
measures of higher education spending showed evidence of a
statisti-
cally significant relationship offers preliminary support for the
argument
that, as politicians become more polarized, higher education
becomes a
loser in the competition for states’ funds.9

103. Another finding from the analysis is that Democratic strength in
the
California legislature is a significant and negative predictor of
the share
of state expenditures appropriated to higher education. This
means that,
as the share of Democrats in the legislature increases, higher
educa-
tion’s share of the budget diminishes. There are two possible
hypotheses
for this observed pattern. first, it may be the case that
Democrats indeed
prefer expenditures on programs clearly targeted toward low-
income
constituents (e.g., welfare, k–12 education). As the Democratic
share of
the state legislature increases, these preferences are reflected in
spend-
ing choices. Alternatively, as political competition in the
legislature in-
creases, there is pressure for compromise in spending priorities.
As ar-
gued earlier in this paper, the ability to compromise is
fundamental for
decisions related to higher education. This result invites further
quan-
titative and qualitative investigation. A study by Weerts and
Ronca (in
press) offers empirical evidence for both arguments in
comprehensive
comparative analysis of state support for higher education by
Carnegie
class.
In comparison, Democratic strength turned out to be
insignificant and

104. negative in the second dependent variable, overall state
commitment to
higher education. Because spending levels are much more
sensitive to
economic conditions, it is expected that political variables turn
out to be
weaker predictors in the model. Nevertheless, this result
reinforces the
argument that Democrats in California are less likely to support
higher
education compared to their Republican counterparts. The
mechanisms
explaining this effect require further investigation.
Legislators’ ideology was negative and insignificant in both
models.
In light of previous research, this is not surprising. However,
the nega-
tive coefficient points to differences between the effects of state
citi-
zens’ liberalism, found to be positive elsewhere, and
legislators’ liberal-
ism on higher education spending (Doyle, 2007b). Research in
political
science on the relationship between public opinion and policy
decisions
can be a rich source to help to understand these mechanisms.
Jacoby
and Schneider (2001) have shown that the impact of public
opinion on
policy usually happens through the partisanship of states’
citizens and
not through their ideology. Doyle (2007a) has investigated these
rela-
tionships at the federal level, but they remain unexplored at the
state

105. level in the area of higher education.
Political Dynamics of Higher Education Policy 787
Overall, the results provide preliminary evidence supporting the
argu-
ment that political effects in higher education, due to this policy
area’s
multidimensionality, are conditional. As states make regulatory
and
spending decisions, there are competing levels of priorities,
both within
higher education and between higher education and other state
policy
areas. The empirical illustration suggests that the role of
ideological
polarization in higher education’s budgetary fortunes seems to
be more
relevant than had been previously assumed.
What is the mechanism? Assuming all else constant, if political
com-
petition in higher education is represented in a two-dimensional
space,
and not in the usual single left-right economic dimension (Poole
&
Rosenthal, 2007), then changes in political-economic
circumstances
(e.g., recessions, rise in income inequality, constituent and
legislative
ideological polarization) will affect not only overall preferences
over
redistribution but also the relative salience of the public
benefits of in-

106. vestments in higher education. That is, while legislators may
consider
that investment in higher education produces collective
benefits, it is
their disagreement over how to redistribute resources that
comes to the
forefront. If legislators become more ideologically polarized,
then the
increased difficulty in reaching compromises will
disproportionately af-
fect discretionary and/or less “important” policy expenditures.
Conclusion
There has been a welcome re-emergence of research on the
politics
and political economy of higher education. This paper
contributes to
this effort by proposing a theoretical framework to expand our
under-
standing of the political dynamics of higher education policy. It
high-
lights that the complexity of the higher education sector, as a
provider
of both public and private goods, funded by public and private
sources,
and often presenting barriers to entry based on academic merit
or so-
cioeconomic status, is a source of instability in political
coalitions and
produces ideologically inconsistent combinations of policy
preferences.
The paper also advances the argument that the distribution of
po-
litical preferences has a significant, but often overlooked,

107. impact on
higher education spending decisions. Although further
comparative re-
search is needed, it is clear that dichotomous variables such as
parti-
san control or composite variables of ideological orientation fall
short
in explaining the political dynamics of state spending on higher
edu-
cation. Inconsistency of findings present in the literature may
be ex-
plained by the instability in political preferences in a
multidimensional
policy space.
788 The Journal of Higher Education
Another implication is that scholars must now take an additional
step
and focus their efforts on understanding the causal mechanisms
linking
different state characteristics and higher education policies.
While we
now have comprehensive frameworks to help us sort out broader
pat-
terns, we still know very little about how each of the proposed
explana-
tory variables interact, specifically, whether different
combinations of
political or economic variables can lead to the same results or
whether
some of these relationships are systematic, linear, and/or
symmetric
(king, keohane, & verba, 2004; Tandberg, 2010b).

108. Another practical implication of the theoretical argument set
forth
here is that policymakers must take into account how policies
inevitably
change in the legislative process. A better understanding of how
politi-
cal institutions, political preferences, and constituency demands
influ-
ence policy outcomes in higher education enables advocates and
policy-
makers to act strategically and to shape policy accordingly in a
way that
leads to more desirable outcomes. Scholars must continue to
invest time
and resources in policy research that offers relevant and
applicable in-
terventions leading to greater student access and success.
However, we
must also direct our attention to the various stages of the higher
educa-
tion policy process, policy feedback from particular financing,
and regu-
latory choices and their redistributive consequences.
In the context of applied higher education scholarship, this
frame-
work can bring a fresh perspective to explain existing concerns
in the
field or to help uncover new or unexplored questions. for
example, why
are some Hispanic voters and legislators against offering in-
state tuition
charges to undocumented students? Why does the same
legislator or
policymaker support a particular policy at a particular point in

109. time but
then take the opposite position later on? Why do some states
favor merit
over need criteria in the design of student financial aid
programs?
Finally, we must acknowledge that redistribution through higher
educations subsidies, in addition to any other set of economic
and so-
cial objectives that governments establish at a particular point
in time.
While there is more agreement across various stakeholder
groups over
the need to increase postsecondary opportunity for all, the same
is not
true in regard to how to finance (i.e., public vs. private
provision, in-
stitutional vs. student support, or access vs. excellence),
regulate (i.e.,
accountability rules, oversight of institutional aid policies, or
input vs.
output measures for performance), or prioritize among
competing alter-
natives (i.e., vocational vs. liberal arts education or need vs.
merit-based
financial aid policies). These cannot be ignored when making
recom-
mendations of best policy practices in the postsecondary sector.
While themes such as human capital accumulation, efficiency
and ac-
countability are at the forefront of current higher education
policy de-

110. Political Dynamics of Higher Education Policy 789
bates, the two underlying fundamental questions remain: “Who
should
pay?” and “Who should benefit?” Neither can be answered
without
rigorous empirical research on democratic processes and
political-eco-
nomic institutions. In this regard, this paper makes a theoretical
con-
tribution to the emerging literature on the political economy of
higher
education.
Notes
1 Ansolabehere (2006) discusses in detail how political
economists have responded
to challenges to the spatial framework: “the theory is, in many
respects, a work in prog-
ress, and its development has proceeded in response to critiques
of the consistence of
the theory and empirical failings of its predictions” (p. 30).
2 The median policy position would be dependent on which
higher education issue is
under consideration (e.g., funding, regulation, admissions,
financial aid).
3 Merit-based aid to students may be a reward for past
accomplishments or an incen-
tive to produce desirable behavior, for example, academic
achievement in college, spe-
cific choice of professions, or staying in their home state after
graduation.

111. 4 Evidence of a causal relationship between state spending on
higher education and
economic growth is still the subject of debate (Wolf, 2002).
However, a recent paper
shows evidence of a positive relationship between these two
variables if the type of
spending fits the economic characteristics of a particular state.
States close to the “tech-
nological frontier” benefit from investments in research
universities, whereas states
below the average level of technological development observe
growth when spending
focuses on vocational education (Aghion et al., 2005).
5 As in many other policy areas, one can think of additional
dimensions of higher
education. One could be a “social issues/moral dimension” close
to the common rep-
resentation in analytical political science (Hinich & Munger,
1997). In this case, the
main issue would be the relative distribution of liberal and
conservative scholars in uni-
versities and the perceived relevance of the research and
teaching conducted at these
institutions. There is widespread anecdotal and empirical
evidence that faculty is dispro-
portionately liberal leaning and that this trend has affected the
amount of support that
legislators are willing to give to public universities in some
states (Schmidt, 2005). Only
further empirical analysis using historical roll call votes on
higher education policy mat-
ters will make it possible to assess the relevance of additional
issue dimensions. How-
ever, Poole and Rosenthal’s (2007) work provides strong
support for the assumption

112. made here that most issues in higher education overlap within
the standard left-right
economic dimension.
6 Dar & Spence (2009) relaxes this assumption and explores
how different political
variables, when there are shifts in dimensional salience, affect
state higher education
spending decisions, through a time-series, cross-sectional
analysis of 48 states.
7 Dar (2009) provides a more refined version of how to measure
the public good di-
mension by splitting up the higher education budget and looking
at support for research-
intensive universities.
8 I thank Seth Masket and Jeff Lewis for graciously sharing the
California DW-
NOMINATE data (1976 to 2004) as well as Matt Spence and
James Lo for providing
assistance in calculating the 2005–2006 scores.
9 As a robustness check, I tried a measure of polarization based
on the absolute dif-
ference between the median Democratic and median Republican
positions. This mea-
sure is denoted as Polarization (based on median). The findings
were not substantively
different from using Polarization (based on mean).
790 The Journal of Higher Education
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Study Guide and Discussion Questions on The Round House
(The directions for the questions you have to answer in writing
can be found on pages 4 and 6.)
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
The Burden of Justice: Louise Erdrich Talks About ‘The Round
House’
By JOHN WILLIAMS
OCTOBER 24, 2012 12:09 PM October 24, 2012 12:09
pm 9 Comments
Louise Erdrich’s 14th novel, “The Round House,” was recently
named a finalist for the National Book Award. It’s set on the

174. North Dakota Ojibwe reservation that is so familiar to her
readers, and it tells the story of Joe, a 13-year-old who seeks
justice after his mother is brutally attacked. In her
review, Michiko Kakutani wrotethat the novel “opens out to
become a detective story and a coming-of-age story, a story
about how Joe is initiated into the sadnesses and
disillusionments of grown-up life and the somber realities of his
people’s history.” In a recent e-mail interview, Ms. Erdrich
discussed the difficulty of obtaining justice on reservations, the
influence of her father on her fiction and more. Below are
edited excerpts from the conversation:
Photo
Credit
Q.
In The New York Times Book Review, Maria Russo said this
book represented a departure because your novels “have usually
relied on a rotating cast of narrators, a kind of storytelling
chorus.” There’s a fairly large cast of characters in the book, so
why did you decide to have Joe narrate the whole thing?
A.
In order to write a novel about jurisdictional issues on
American Indian reservations — without falling asleep — I
decided to try a character-driven suspense narrative. Personally,
I always envied and wanted the freedom that boys have. I get a
kick out of 13-year-old boys I know. Also, as this is a book of
memory, I am able to add the resonance of Joe’s maturity.
Q.
It’s hard as a reader not to share Joe’s desire for revenge on the
man who attacked his mother. Do you think he’s ultimately
wrong to pursue it?
A.
Wrong or right, for many families this is the only option when
justice is unobtainable. I wanted the reader to understand what
taking on that burden is like. On any state elections map, the
reservations are blue places. Native people are most often

175. progressives, Democrats, and by no means gun-toting vigilantes.
Being forced into this corner is obviously an agonizing
decision.
Q.
The novel’s plot partly revolves around the problem of
jurisdiction that keeps some brutal crimes on tribal land from
being efficiently investigated and tried. Has there been any
progress in fixing that problem?
A.
President Obama signed the Tribal Law and Order Act into law
in 2010 — it was an important moment of recognition. More
recently the Senate Judiciary Committee crafted a helpful piece
of legislation. The Violence Against Women Reauthorization
Act of 2012 would have given tribal nations limited jurisdiction
over sexual predators regardless of race. Right now tribal courts
can only prosecute tribal members. The problem is that over
80% of the perpetrators of rapes on reservations are non-Native.
Most are not prosecuted. The bill went forward only to stall in
the House, blocked by Republican votes. Hate to say it, but that
one’s on them.
.
In your “Art of Fiction” interview with The Paris Review, you
said, “My father is my biggest literary influence.” Where do
you feel his presence most in “The Round House”
A.
My father is the sort of man who would have spoken a
monologue like one that Judge Coutts [Joe’s father] speaks in
the novel, which includes a gundog on Dealey Plaza, a flagpole
sitter, the Ojibwe clan system, the Orthian chanted by Arion of
Methymna before he was cast into the sea, and Metis fiddle
playing. He is also famous for a frightful stew like the one that
appears in this book. My father created the pot of stew while my
mother was in the hospital recovering from the birth of one of
my sisters. He kept adding various elements to the stew all
week — just heating it up in the same pot. That last sentence is
beginning to sound like a book metaphor, so here I’ll stop.

176. Q.
At a panel that was part of The New Yorker Festival a couple of
weeks ago, discussing the general lack of strong marriages in
fiction, Lorrie Moore said she felt the marital life of Joe’s
parents was a central part of “The Round House.” Do you agree
that contemporary fiction is lacking portraits of strong
marriages? And how central to you was the marriage in this
book when you were planning and writing it?
A.
My parents’ marriage is a gift to everyone around them — 60
years of making their kids laugh. How many parents are actually
funny? It isn’t easy to write a happy marriage (Tolstoy’s
dictum). So of course the only way to write about a happy
marriage is to have a malevolent outside force attempt to
destroy it.
Q.
The North Dakota Ojibwe reservation in your novels has
frequently been compared to Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha
County for its scope and variety of characters. Have you been
directly influenced or inspired by Faulkner?
A.
Most writers have been influenced by Faulkner.
Q.
How do you keep track of the characters you’ve created in this
world? Are there genealogical charts hanging on your walls?
A.
I love this question because I can mention Trent Duffy, the best
copy editor in New York. Trent has meticulously cataloged and
recorded each character’s family tree as well as all of their
habits and the color of their hair, eyes, nail polish, etc. For
myself, I have only messy notebooks and bits of hotel notepads
jammed up with ideas.
Q.
“The Round House” is a sequel of sorts to “Plague of
Doves,”which also revolves around a violent crime, and I’ve
read that there’s a third related book planned. Will the third

177. book deal with similar themes of violence and justice?
A.
Talking about how I might write the next book is like talking
about whether or not to have sex. Any dithering ruins it.
Discussion Questions on
Louise Erdrich, The Round House
Carefully read through and think about all of these issues.
However, I would like you to write a responses to FOUR of
these questions. Each response should be at least a full
paragraph and you should include quotations from the novel to
back up your points.
1. Setting
What can you discover about when and where the book was set?
What can we learn about life on this reservation just from
reading the novel? Include both major points and minor details.
What difference does the setting (both time and place) make to
our understanding of the novel? Is it incidental or does it have
a major impact? (One way to answer this question is to imagine
what the novel would have been like if set somewhere else, say,
in southern California or a Minneapolis suburb, or Paris,
France.)
2. Indian/White Relations
What can you learn about the way the Native Americans and the
whites relate each other? Refer to specific passages which shed
light on the relationship between these groups of people.
3. Narrative Point of View
This novel is told from the perspective of an adult male looking

178. back to the time when he was a 13-year-old boy. What is the
significance of it being told from a 13- year-old’s-perspective?
How does the author combine both the adult and the adolescent
viewpoint? To what effect? Find specific passages that
illustrate how the point of view makes a difference to the story.
4. Compare/Contrast
What are some of the similarities between The Round House
and Peace Like a River?
5. Character of Joe
What do we know about Joe, both before the attack and
afterwards? Find two or three passages that illustrate an aspect
of his character.
6. Character of Joe’s Dad
What do we know about Joe’s dad, both before the attack and
afterwards? Find two or three passages that illustrate aspects of
his character.
7. Character of Geraldine (Joe’s mom)
What do we know about Geraldine, both before the attack and
afterwards? Find two or three passages that illustrate an aspect
of her character.
8. Joe’s friends
Name and provide a brief description of Joe’s best buddies.
Why do you think so much attention is given to them in this
novel? How do they contribute to the overall understanding of
the novel?
9. Motif: Akiikwe, Earth Woman
You’ll notice that Mooshum tells the fairly lengthy story of

179. Akiikwe (Earth Woman), her son Nanapush, and their
relationship to Buffalo Woman. This story gives us the
background of how the Round House came to be. In what other
ways is this mythic tale important to the novel? How does it
relate thematically to other elements of the novel, especially
issues of male-female relationships and justice?
10. Symbolism: The Round House
Think about why the title of the novel is The Round House.
Yes, the crime took place there, but in what other ways is the
Round House significant to the story? What does it represent?
11. Theme: Male-female relationships
The main story line of The Round House is obviously Joe’s
quest for justice for his mother’s rape. However, you will
notice other sub-plots as well, including the “love” triangle of
Sonja, Whitey and Joe as well as the “love” triangle of Linden
Lark, Mayla Wolfskin and Curtis Yeltow. What do these
different relationships have in common with each other?
17. Exploring themes: Race, politics, sexual relationships,
gender, injustice, religion, superstition, magic, and the
boundary between childhood and adulthood are explored in The
Round House. Choose a theme or two and trace how it is
demonstrated in a character's life throughout the novel.
18.Legal Issues: Given all of the injustices his people have
faced, why is Bazil (Joe’s father) so intent on making sure he
follows the law? How, then, in the end, does he find a way to
justify Joe’s actions?
Embedded Narratives

180. Read through and think about both of these questions, but
answer ONE of them in a short essay.
1. The title of this book is The Round House, which emphasizes
the importance of this structure. On the most obvious level, the
crime against Geraldine occurs near there and then inside it.
Additionally, however, we learn more about the symbolic
significance of the Round House through the stories told by
Mooshum about Nanapush and his mother Akiikwe, Earth
Woman. This embedded narrative begins on page 179 and ends
on page 215 with this passage spoken by the old female buffalo:
Your people were brought together by us buffalo once. You
knew how to hunt and use us. Your clans gave you laws. You
had many rules by which you operated. Rules that respected us
and forced you to work together. Now we are gone, but as you
have once sheltered in my body, so now you understand. The
round house will be my body, the poles my ribs, the fire my
heart. It will be the body of your mother and it must be
respected the same way. As the mother is intent on her baby’s
life, so your people should think of their children.
That is how it [the round house] came about, said Mooshum. I
was a young man when the people built it—they followed
Nanapush’s instructions. (214-215)
Write down the story of Akiikwe and Nanapush so that you will
be able to remember what happens. Include the concept of
wiindigoog in your answer and how it relates to the round house
story.
Then discuss how this embedded narrative contributes to the
larger meaning of The Round House.
2. Notice that many of the embedded narratives are about
relationships between men and women. The story of Akiikwe
and her husband (mentioned above) is one example. Another
one is the story of Sonja, Whitey, and Joe’s crush on Sonja.
This story climaxes on page 223 when Sonja says to Joe: “I
thought of you like my son. But you just turned into another
piece a shit guy. Another gimme-gimme asshole, Joe. That’s
all you are.” Jot down the gist of this Sonja-Whitey-Joe story

181. here.
Still another triangle between men and women is the embedded
narrative of Mayla, the Governor of South Dakota, and Linden
Lark. Discuss what happened with these characters. Consult
pages 124-125, 160-162 and 166.
Notice how these two “triangles” are about male-female
relationships that are exploitative or abusive relationships. The
rape of Geraldine is also obviously an exploitative and abusive
sexual relationship. And the story Mooshum tells about
Nanapush and Akiikwe is also, at its heart about an
exploitative/abusive marriage between Akiikwe and her
husband.
At the same time, the novel is also clearly about the unjust legal
system on today’s tribal reservations.
How are the stories about male-female relationships and
mainstream U.S./Indian relationships similar in The Round
House?
Important Quotations from the end of The Round House
When you think about how to interpret Erdrich’s novel, it is
important to keep in mind the totality of the book. In other
words, consider not just the fact that Joe did not get arrested
and incarcerated for what he did, but also consider everything
else that was written in the book. For example, if you want to
figure out the novel’s attitude towards Joe’s actions, make sure
you consider these important quotations from the end of the
novel: (No written response is needed.)
“I knew that they knew everything. The sentence was to
endure. Nobody shed tears and there was no anger. My mother

182. or my father drove, gripping the wheel with neutral
concentration. I don’t remember that they even looked at me or
I at them after the shock of that first moment when we all
realized we were old. I do remember, though, the familiar sight
of the roadside café just before we would cross the reservation
line. On every one of my childhood trips that place was always
a stop for ice cream, coffee and a newspaper, pie. It was always
what my father called the last leg of the journey. But we did
not stop this time. We passed over in a sweep of sorry that
would persist into our small forever. We just kept going.”
(317)
The silence of the wind around us, the car cutting through the
night along the Milk River, were Mooshum had once hunted,
driven out farther and farther into the west, where Nanapush
had seen buffalo straight back to the horizon, and then the next
year not a single one. Ad after that Mooshum’s family had
turned back and taken land on the reservation. He’d met
Nanapush there and together they had built the round house, the
sleeping woman, the unkillable mother, the old lady buffalo.
They’d built that place to keep their people together and to ask
for mercy from the Creator, since justice was so sketchily
applied on earth. (315)
(After realizing that Bugger had discovered Mayla’s body). “I
stood up, jolted. I knew, down to the core of me, that he had
seen Mayla Wolfskin. He had seen her dead body. If we hadn’t
killed Lark, he’d have gone to jail for life anyway. I spun
around thinking I should go to the police, then stopped. I could
not let the police know I was even thinking this way. I had to
get off their radar entirely, with Cappy, disappear. I couldn’t
tell anyone. Even I didn’t want to know what I knew. The best
thing for me to do was forget. And then for the rest of my life
to try and not think how different things would have gone if, in
the first place, I’d just followed Bugger’s dream.” (310)

183. English 155: Introduction to Literature
Dr. Debra Beilke
Compare/Contrast Paper (1000-1250 words)
Your final paper is designed to help you see connections
between the different works we’ve read this semester. Your
assignment is to compare and contrast two works we’ve studied
this semester. This means you must discuss both similarities
AND differences between the two works. Start by finding some
aspect that both works share. This could be a theme (such as
love), but it might also be a technique (such as first person
point of view), an image (e.g. animal imagery), a symbol, etc.
For example, you might compare the portrayal of marriage in
two works, or the portrayal of vigilante justice. (Vigilante =
someone who takes the law into his/her own hands by trying
and/or punishing another person without any legal authority.)
After finding a connection between the two works, you have to
INTERPRET them, showing how the interpretations are
different. For example, two literary works could be about the
horrors of war. One work, though, might be making the point
that the war is not worth the horror, while the other might be
arguing that the end result of war justifies all the horror.
To do well on this paper, it is essential to be able to figure out
what the author is trying to get across in his or her work; in
other words, what is the point or main idea. This is very
different from just explaining what happens to the different
characters or summarizing the plot.
When you are interpreting the overall point of a work, keep in

184. mind that what a character does is not necessarily the same as
what an author believes. This is quite clear in something like
Othello. Othello believes he is doing the right thing by killing
Desdemona, but Shakespeare clearly does not think so.
However, sometimes the difference between author and
character is less clear. Davy of Peace Like a River certainly
believed he was doing the right thing by killing the boys. That
does not necessarily mean that Leif Enger thought it was the
right thing. Trying to determine what Enger thinks is where
you need to use your skills of interpretation.
Keep in mind the following:
· Originality does count. A paper which argues an idea that we
have not talked about in class will receive a higher grade than
one which argues something we have discussed in detail.
· As with all of our papers, the goal is to interpret the works,
not summarize them. How do you know the difference? If you
find yourself writing things that are “facts” of the work, then
you are not interpreting. If no reasonable person who has read
the work could disagree with what you are writing, then it is not
an interpretation.
For example, consider this thesis: “Both Othello and Davy kill
people in acts of vigilante justice. Both believed they were
doing the right thing at the time of the killing. However, Davy
never changed his mind, whereas Othello ultimately realized he
had done something horrible.”
This is NOT an effective thesis because it is simply stating the
facts.
· As with all literary papers, you have to follow up your points
with quotations from the works to support your ideas. You
should have at least one quotation per supporting paragraph.

185. · Include both similarities and differences. If differences are
most obvious, focus on similarities and vice versa. For
example, “Although both ____ and ______ demonstrate how
love has gone wrong, in _______, the problem is caused by X,
whereas in _______, the problem is caused by Y.
· Make sure the two elements (the similarities and differences)
are related. For example, don’t say something like, “although
both works portray abused children, text #1 is written in the
1600s, while text #2 is written in the 1900s. (There is no
obvious relationship between the similarities and differences.)
A better strategy would be to say something like, “Although
these two texts were written in dramatically different historical
period, they both portray the theme of abused children. {this is
the similarity} However, text A suggests that abused children
have no option but to suffer the abuse, while text B argues that
children have ways of fighting back. {this is the difference}
There are two ways of organizing the body of a
compare/contrast paper:
Text A:
Point 1.
Point 2
Point 3
Text B

186. Point 1
Point 2
Point 3
OR
Point 1
Text A
Text B
Point 2
Text A

187. Text B
Point 3
Text A
Text B
How would you rate the following thesis statements?
· Both The Great Gatsby and Frankenstein address the issue of
socially created monsters.
(Not so good because there is a similarity but no difference.)
· Both The Great Gatsby and Frankenstein address the issue of
socially created monsters, but Fitzgerald’s monster is a rich
man, while Shelley’s monster is a scientist.
(Not so good either, because the facts about being “a rich man”
and a “scientist” sound like just random facts. How they help
us to understand the texts better/)
· Both The Great Gatsby and Frankenstein address the issue of
socially created monsters. However, Shelley suggests that
monsters are created by excessive ambition, whereas Fitzgerald
suggests that monsters are created by excessive materialism.
(This is better because the differences are related to the
similarities AND they are
interpretive statements that help us illuminate the texts—not

188. just random facts.)
Samples
Fulfillment or Failure?
Marriage in A Secret Sorrow and “A Sorrowful Woman”
In both the excerpt from Karen Van Der Zee’s novel A Secret
Sorrow and in Gail Godwin’s short story “A Sorrowful
Woman,” the plots center around ideas of marriage and family.
However, marriage and family are presented in very different
lights in the two stories. Karen Van Der Zee presents marriage
with children as perfect and totally fulfilling; it is what Faye,
the protagonist of A Secret Sorrow, wants and what is necessary
for her happiness. For Godwin’s unnamed protagonist marriage
and family are almost the antithesis of happiness; her home life
seems to suffocate her and eventually leads to her death. A
Secret Sorrow directly endorses and encourages marriage,
whereas “A Sorrowful Woman” indirectly questions and
discourages it.
Both of the female protagonists in the two stories experience a
crisis. In A Secret Sorrow Faye’s crisis comes before the
marriage. She is distraught and upset because she cannot have
children and fears that this will prevent her from marrying the
man she loves. Both she and her beloved, Kai, desire marriage
with children, and Van Der Zee suggests that only with these
things will they truly be happy. Faye feels that her inability to
have children is a fatal flaw that cuts her off from Kai’s love:
“Every time we see some pregnant woman, every time we’re
with somebody else’s children I’ll feel I’ve failed you!” (30).
Faye’s anxiety and fear are based on the thought of losing her
man and never having children. In “A Sorrowful Woman,”
however, the crisis comes after the marriage, when the woman
has already secured her husband and child. Unlike Faye, who
would be ecstatic in this woman’s situation, the protagonist of

189. Godwin’s story is not. Inexplicably, her husband and son bring
her such sorry that eventually she is unable to see them at all,
communicating only through notes stuck under her bedroom
door. Godwin’s character has a loving husband and child, yet
she is still filled with grief. This sense of defeat would be
unimaginable in a Harlequin romance because it goes against
one of the most popular formulas of romance writing: the plot
always ends with a wedding, with the assumption that the rest is
happily ever after.
(Excerpt from a sample student paper taken from The Bedford
Introduction to Literature, Fifth Edition, ed. Michael Meyer.
Page 55)
Trying Out Some Ideas
Similarity: Davy in Peace Like a River and Othello in Othello
both kill people in acts of vigilante justice that they believed
were well warranted. Davy wanted to keep Tommy and Isaac
from hurting his family, and Othello wanted to stop the
emotional pain Desdemona was causing him and to keep her
from harming other men.
· Note: I have to make sure that whatever difference I come up
with is not just a summary of what happens in the two works,
which are obviously very different. I also have to make sure
that the difference I discuss is related to the similarity of
vigilante justice. I can’t go off on another topic.
Some Possible Thesis Statements:
· Both Othello and Davy kill other people to keep them from
harming others. In Shakespeare’s play, however, the murder
was the result of a mind poisoned by jealousy, whereas in
Enger’s novel, the murder was the result of a mind overly
influenced by Western books and movies.

190. · Davy in Peace Like a River and Othello in Othello both kill
people in acts of vigilante justice that they believed were well
warranted. Davy wanted to keep Tommy and Isaac from hurting
his family, and Othello wanted to stop the emotional pain
Desdemona was causing him and to keep her from harming
other men. The difference is that Enger’s novel suggests that
Davy’s vigilante killing was justified because protecting one’s
family is more important than anything else, even the law.
Shakespeare, on the other hand, shows that vigilante justice is
not only a mistake, but a sign of an uncivilized, “Turkish”
mind.
· On the surface, Othello and Davy commit murder for very
different reasons. Davy kills to avenge and protect his family,
whereas Othello kills out of jealousy. Beneath the surface,
however, they both killed for the same reason: to stop the
turmoil in their minds.