bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Arab Nightmare
Authors: Hansen Randall
Published: August 2023

Across the Middle East, oil exacerbated existing inequalities. In the early 2010s, oil prices pushed inequality and poverty to intolerable levels. When it did, the result was the Arab Spring—a call in the first instance for economic, not political, freedom. The crackdown that followed, above all in Syria, led to millions of refugees. By the end of 2014, there were in total 3.8 million Syrian refugees abroad, and another 7.6 million were internally displaced. Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey struggled to cope with them. Thanks to a French, British, and American invasion, Libya, home to almost 2 million immigrants, was on the brink of collapse. The horrors had no end in sight, and the crisis was about to spill beyond the borders of the Middle East and North Africa, right into the heart of Europe.
The Assault on Working-Class Wages
Authors: Hansen Randall
Published: August 2023

The destruction of the American labor movement is responsible for a sharp fall in working-class wages. White male working-class wages peaked in 1972; they have been on a long slide ever since. After the OPEC oil crisis, the US government, firms, and commentators defined inflation, a product of an exogenous oil shock, as the consequence of greedy workers. The Carter administration deregulated the trucking sector and let pro-union legislation die in Congress. The Reagan administration destroyed the air traffic controllers union and, with it, the broader union movement’s willingness to strike. Companies used an army of lawyers and management consultants, and direct threats, to prevent workers from unionizing. The result was a collapse in unionization rates and a dramatic fall in wages in both unionized and non-unionized sectors.
Where We Live III
Authors: Hansen Randall
Published: August 2023

Without cheap migrant labor, and internal migrants in India and China, the stunning growth of Asian and Middle Eastern cities in the last fifty years would have been impossible. In Malaysia and Thailand, the dynamics were the same as they were in the global north: a domestic supply of workers was exhausted and firms turned to migrant workers. In Hong Kong and Singapore, no rural hinterland meant that process was telescoped, and both city-states turned to migrant laborers in construction immediately. Across all countries, labor exploitation is common. It is even more so in the Gulf States, in which essentially all construction workers are migrants. The kafala system ensures that migrant workers are utterly denuded of rights. The only exceptions in Asia to this migration dependence are China and India, whose massive rural internal populations serve the same function.
Appealing to the Crowd
Authors: Snyder Jeremy
Published: August 2023

This book offers a close examination of the ethical, political, and practical dimensions of donation-based online crowdfunding for basic needs including medical treatment, housing, food, and education. Crowdfunding uses online platforms and social networks to raise money from friends, family, and complete strangers for a variety of projects and needs. This practice has grown massively worldwide in recent years in terms of the numbers of crowdfunding campaigns and donors, money raised, visibility, and cultural influence. While the money raised through crowdfunding has helped millions of recipients, there is also reason for concern around how it may undermine campaigners’ privacy and dignity, mirror and exacerbate social inequities, mask and deepen social injustice, defraud donors, and spread misinformation and hate. The author places this discussion of crowdfunding in the wider historical context of giving practices and shows that crowdfunding can repeat and exacerbate ethical and political problems with traditional giving practices while creating other, new problems. While crowdfunding is often held up as a more democratic and less mediated giving practice than giving through philanthropies, crowdfunding platforms have a substantial role in mediating the relationship between donor and recipient, including determining what information is required in crowdfunding campaigns, influencing how viral crowdfunding campaigns are created, and deciding what kind of campaigns will be hosted. The author concludes by presenting nine values that should guide donation-based crowdfunding. These values can help crowdfunding donors, campaigners, recipients, platforms, and policy makers preserve the good that can come from crowdfunding while addressing some of its many negative aspects.
Giving and the rise of crowdfunding
Authors: Snyder Jeremy
Published: August 2023

Giving to others includes giving directly to recipients and giving indirectly through institutional intermediaries. Both forms of giving have done a great deal of good but are also subject to criticism. Direct giving to people in need can be unfocused, inconsistent, and distract attention from institutional reforms needed to address the root causes of need. Indirect giving through philanthropic organizations may address these concerns by offering more sustained and effective use of financial resources. However, philanthropic organizations may prioritize the interests of donors and undermine democratic determination of public policy and giving priorities. Donation-based crowdfunding has emerged as a largely direct giving practice that has the advantage of closely connecting donors and recipients, allowing recipients to quickly raise funding without institutional barriers and make giving more democratic. These advantages, among other factors, have encouraged rapid growth in donation-based crowdfunding worldwide.
Missing and masking injustice
Authors: Snyder Jeremy
Published: August 2023

Direct giving to people in need is often episodic, individualistic, and ill-suited toward addressing the underlying causes of need. Philanthropic organizations can be better equipped to create and support just social institutions but they may instead reflect the priorities of relatively powerful and wealthy donors rather than the goals of social justice. In other cases, giving practices can even undermine social justice by distracting attention from the causes of systemic need. While crowdfunding donations are not primarily made by wealthy elites, there is good reason for concern that crowdfunding can have a similar effect of diminishing the perceived need for systemic reforms to social support systems and mask social injustices that give rise to the need to crowdfund for basic supports.
Loyalty in the Exercise of Private Law Powers of Administration
Authors: Smith Lionel
Published: August 2023

Chapter 3 is devoted to elaborating a legal concept of loyalty. Loyalty is often invoked in relation to fiduciary relationships, but is also challenged by some as unhelpful. The chapter aims to explain what loyalty means in this context, and why it is necessary in acting for others. It goes on to explain what loyalty demands of those who are bound by it. The core idea is that loyalty in this context means that a power held as an administrator can only be lawfully used in the pursuit of the purpose for which it was granted. The chapter goes on to show how the legal requirement of loyalty necessarily has a subjective dimension, even while the requirement of loyalty can be constrained and delimited objectively, where the purpose for which the power is granted is objectively constrained. It addresses also the legal consequences of the disloyal use of a power, including the possibility that the exercise of the power be set aside in law.
Other Features of Private Law Administration
Authors: Smith Lionel
Published: August 2023

This chapter completes the picture of private law administration by addressing other obligations of private law administration. This includes a range of duties which, although they are all important, are somewhat less characteristic of, or peculiar to, this field of law than the rules about loyalty, conflicts, and unauthorized profits. These duties are studied under three rubrics. The ‘duty of commitment’ is the duty to abide by the terms of the particular mission that has been entrusted to the administrator. A trustee, for example, must hew to the terms of the trust; a corporate director must abide by the terms of the corporate constitution and the relevant governing statute. Next there is the ‘duty of care, skill and diligence’, as it may be known in the common law, or the duties of ‘prudence and diligence’ in a more civilian turn of phrase. These duties presumptively require administrators to be careful and diligent in the way they carry out their mission. Finally we will address good faith. In both common law and civil law, many persons who are not administrators are bound by strictures of good faith. We will see, however, that good faith has a particular valence in the context of administration, and may allow certain kinds of wrongdoing to be aptly characterized as serious failures on the part of an administrator.
Clarifying Moral Understanding
Authors: Nannicelli Ted
Published: August 2023

Moral understanding is a distinctive cognitive good that has many facets. Noël Carroll’s idea of clarificationism helps show how screen stories can both clarify our moral knowledge and recalibrate our emotional responses. Moral understanding is an achievement that also consists in the capacity to know how to ask the right questions and, as Alison Hills argues, to know why in addition to knowing that something is true. Moral understanding has instrumental value in that it is often strongly connected to motivation for action. The influence of screen stories on moral understanding is likely to be “processional” or “cumulative,” developed over time and in relation to the development of one’s character.
Phenomenal Experience and Moral Understanding
Authors: Plantinga Carl
Published: August 2023

This chapter argues that the phenomenal experiences offered by films can, under certain conditions, lead to phenomenal knowledge that may deepen moral understanding. The chapter describes four methods by which screen stories provide remarkable phenomenal experiences: illustrative representation, looking and being looked at, the phenomenological aspects of mind reading (or theory of mind), and audiovisual metaphor. Films such as The Sound of Metal and The Silence of the Lambs are used to illustrate these four methods. The chapter then argues that two broad conditions must be met for a phenomenal experience in film viewing to contribute to moral understanding. The film or film scene must exhibit (1) directed realism, including patterns of salience, and (2) a qualifying ethical project.
Morality and Media
Authors: Oliver Mary Beth
Published: August 2023

Issues of morality have played an important role in many theories of media psychology. Early research was based on cultivation theory and focused on how media consumption affects viewers negatively. More recently, the movement toward positive media psychology is an attempt to understand how media can be harnessed for prosocial ends. This chapter provides an overview of research in media and positive psychology. It focuses on the role of elevation, or inspiration, in media viewing. Elevation is an emotion that occurs when we witness acts of great moral beauty. One challenge for media psychology is that elevation is not elicited uniformly in viewers. Although such research focuses on how elevation may elicit mental and emotional states rather than long-term traits, it is plausible that such elevation or inspiration relates to the long-term trait of moral understanding.
Ironing Out Evolutionary and Social Theory
Authors: Miller Elizabeth M.
Published: August 2023

The world’s women suffer from and sometimes die of iron deficiency. The simple approach offered by biomedicine—supplementation—is not enough to reach the most socially vulnerable women This chapter asserts that ignoring anthropological theory means that the problem of women’s iron deficiency will never be understood, let alone resolved. Arguing that anthropological human biology is a distinct discipline that relies on a multitude of theoretical perspectives to understand human physiology, it integrates evolutionary theory, evolutionary medicine, life history theory, social theory, and critical biocultural and medical anthropology to reframe iron deficiency as an evolutionary and social, rather than biomedical, problem, highlighting how they place women at risk for iron deficiency. Each framework adds tesserae to the mosaic of iron deficiency, helping reveal the full image of the human experience of iron.
Her Flesh and Blood
Authors: Miller Elizabeth M.
Published: August 2023

Chapter 3 delves into the relationship between women’s reproduction and iron status using an evolutionary framework. Pregnancy heavily depletes iron from women, adding to their risk of iron deficiency. This chapter uses life history theory to understand the dynamics of reproductive-related iron depletion and repletion across women’s reproductive-aged lifespans and why these parameters can vary between groups. Poor nutrition, short interbirth intervals, and lack of breastfeeding put women at risk for iron deficiency. In turn, iron deficiency is associated with preterm birth and small infants, further increasing the chance for perinatal morbidity. On the other hand, low iron during critical early windows of pregnancy likely protects the developing embryo from harm. Women’s physiology evolved to balance the help and the harms of iron, but the balance depends on ecological, nutritional, and social contexts.
Bled Dry
Authors: Miller Elizabeth M.
Published: August 2023

Globally, iron deficiency is a dire problem for women. This is not an evolutionary inevitability: women’s evolved iron biology can walk the tightrope between help and harm, if only there is enough iron available in the environment. The nutrientscape, or the flow of available nutrients between local and global contexts, greatly impacts a woman’s ability to walk that tightrope. This chapter will discuss why, globally, bodies do not have enough iron. It argues that food insecurity, soil depletion, and parasite infection are not accidents, but a feature of structural global inequalities that limit the flow of iron to certain people. The chapter will end with an analysis of the physical, mental, and social costs borne by affected women around the world.
Theology and History in the Methodology of Herman Bavinck
Authors: Clausing Cameron D.
Published: August 2023

This book examines the theological methodology of Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck (1854–1921). The focus of the book is on the influence of the German historicist movement on his theological method and uses Bavinck’s doctrine of the Trinity as a way to test the argument that while not embracing all of the relativizing implications of the movement, the role of history as a force that both shapes the present and allows for development into the future has a demonstrable influence on his theological methodology. To make this argument the book considers Bavinck’s larger nineteenth-century context. It traces the development of both history and theology being understood as sciences in the university and how this required a reimagining of both disciplines. It could be said that theology is thoroughly historicized in the nineteenth century. The book then considers the three principia of Bavinck’s theological methodology: Revelation, Confession, and Christian Consciousness, demonstrating how Bavinck both appropriates and adapts historicist assumptions.
Herman Bavinck
Authors: Clausing Cameron D.
Published: August 2023

This chapter introduces Herman Bavinck. It begins by offering a brief overview of his life demonstrating how he was born into a context in which the relationship between modernity and confessional orthodoxy was being worked out in substantially new ways. After offering a historical overview of the life and work of Bavinck, the chapter considers how others have attempted to answer the question about Bavinck’s relationship to modernity. It demonstrates that the current study sits fixed inside contemporary anglophone scholarship, arguing that Bavinck was ‘orthodox yet modern’. This chapter then lays out how this point will be demonstrated through an examination of Bavinck’s engagement with the historicist movement arising out of nineteenth-century Germany. Finally, the chapter closes by laying out the how this argument will be sustained in the subsequent chapters.
Theological Method
Authors: Clausing Cameron D.
Published: August 2023

This chapter considers the Bavinck theological methodology as a whole. The chapter argues that the influence of historicism on Bavinck’s methodology allowed him to see theology as a progressive science. The chapter opens with an exploration of the nineteenth century’s subject–object break. After considering this post-Kantian context, the chapter looks at how Bavinck attempted to respond to this philosophical problem with an appropriation of the early modern Reformed orthodox categories of principia for his theological methodology. It will be shown that Bavinck modifies these principia and deploys the nineteenth-century category of organicism to unify subject and object. The chapter closes with an exploration of the three principia of Bavinck’s theological methodology: revelation, confession, and Christian consciousness. The chapter concludes by explicitly demonstrating the way in which historicism influences Bavinck’s theological methodology.
The Dialectic of Unity, Difference, and Political Pluralism in Islam
Authors: Ghannouchi Rached , March Andrew F.
Published: August 2023

This essay grapples with the dilemma of affirming moral unity and legitimate pluralism within an Islamic framework. Ghannouchi tracks complementary commitments to consensus and legitimate disagreement within the realms of theology and creed, reasoning and judgment, and membership in different communities. Ghannouchi’s argument is that pluralism, disagreement, and difference all have their place, and that they point to the abiding significance of mutual consultation (shura) as the quintessential Islamic political practice. Ghannouchi argues that even if the political experience of Islamic civilization does not reflect the application of a recognized political pluralism that represents a constraint on authoritarianism, the Islamic religious tradition preserves a moral commitment to the ideal of shura (among other values) that provides motivation for the transition to more inclusive and democratic political systems.
Human Rights in Islam
Authors: Ghannouchi Rached , March Andrew F.
Published: August 2023

In this essay Ghannouchi asks, “Is there a concept of human rights in Islam? If so, what are its philosophical premises? How is it related to modern declarations of human rights?” Despite the concept’s secular origin and inconsistent application, Ghannouchi endorses modern international human rights standards, pointing out that Islam came with a declaration of divine respect for humanity and often addresses “the people” (rather than “believers”). Human rights are also a reflection of mankind’s status as God’s deputy (caliph) on earth and Islamic law’s fundamental orientation toward human welfare and well-being. Ghannouchi addresses Islam’s support for some specific human rights, including to freedom of conscience, legal equality, free religious practice, work and property, education and other social protections, political participation, and asylum.
Current Scholarship, Main Arguments, and Approach
Authors: Murib Zein
Published: August 2023

Chapter 1 situates the book’s argument in interdisciplinary scholarship on collective identity, citizenship, rights, interest groups, and social movements. This scholarship is woven together into an argument that highlights to perils of rightful citizenship claims for movement mobilization and identity construction, namely the exclusions they enact through the elevation of these members of the group who are most proximate to normative citizenship (White, male, heterosexual, reproductive). It details intersectionality as a methodological approach and describes the archive. Introduces critical discourse analysis as the method used and describes its implementation.
Feminism Is the Theory, Lesbianism Is the Practice
Authors: Murib Zein
Published: August 2023

This chapter details multifocal struggles to establish a lesbian identity that would advance a unique set of interests premised on rightful citizenship logic, specifically the right to self-determination and the right to be free from patriarchal dominance. It shows how the result of this discourse was a “woman-identified woman” for whom, in the words of radical feminist Ti Grace Atkinson, “feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice.” After laying out these epistemic foundations, the second part of the chapter foregrounds the writings and speeches of Black lesbian feminists who actively resisted the biological determinism at the core of this new lesbian identity. In contesting the narrow construction of lesbian identity emerging in White feminist discourse, Black lesbian feminists put forward a vision of political praxis focused on identifying power asymmetries as the basis of political coalitions and actively eschewed rights discourse.
“The B Isn’t Silent”
Authors: Murib Zein
Published: August 2023

Focusing on why bisexuals were unable to gain political traction, the analysis in this chapter shows that the perception of bisexuality as a “radical” sexual orientation, which challenged the organizing logic of gender for gay men and lesbians, motivated gay and lesbian political actors to silence bisexual voices in their midst for fear that they would disrupt efforts to make rightful citizenship claims. As with the construction of gay and lesbian identities examined in the first two chapters, this analysis of bisexual political identity construction shows that these cleavages were largely along lines of racial and class differences, with bisexual identification serving as a home for all those cast to the margins of gay and lesbian identification understood as gender-normative and White.
A Second Study in Political Ethics
Authors: Niditch Susan
Published: August 2023

Tales of the biblical judges are often treated as pro-monarchic propaganda, describing the time before there were kings in Israel as one of political and moral chaos. This chapter in political ethics re-evaluates supposedly positive views of monarchy, exemplified by the Davidic kings, and emphasizes a biblical counterpoint that offers a sustained critique of kings and a romantic harkening back to the heroic days of the judges. Integral to the study is a reassessment of the refrain “In those days there was no king in Israel and each person what was right in his own eyes did” (Judges 17:6; 21:25). The chapter also considers negative and positive views of female royal leadership exemplified by portrayals of Athaliah and the Queen of Sheba.
Ethics of Gender and Sexuality
Authors: Niditch Susan
Published: August 2023

A study of connections between the Hebrew Bible and attitudes to women, gender, and sexuality begins with Genesis 1–3. The tales of creation found in these first chapters of the Bible have had a lengthy post-biblical history and an enormous influence not only upon ways in which many actual men and women have defined themselves or been defined by societies but also upon realia of the social structures in which many people live. These texts are so familiar and come to readers so pre-framed by certain views and expectations that we have to work hard to read them afresh. A close reading of gender in Genesis 1–3 is followed by a study of interpretations in early Judaism and then a sampling of modern and contemporary readings. Throughout the author asks about possible implications or guides for moral action and about advice concerning the goodly life discussed in our introduction. Where have these tales led with what implications and where might they lead in the future?
Triads in Supply Networks
Authors: Choi Thomas Y.
Published: August 2023

Triads are the smallest unit where we can begin to observe network dynamics. We see how a link affects another link or a node affects a link once removed. We apply the balance theory that addresses balanced states and unbalanced states in a triad. We also study, in a triad, how power can come from the structural position. One such position is the structural hole—a bridge that sits on the structural hole can be a tertius gaudens (the third that profits) or a tertius iungens (the third that channels). A new type of tertius is proposed, tertius adiuvans, the third that helps another node in the triad, albeit reluctantly. Triads can help explain supply chain disintermediation, embedded supplier performance, and services outsourcing.
Supply Base in Supply Networks
Authors: Choi Thomas Y.
Published: August 2023

Focal companies have rationalized their supply bases. Besides the number of suppliers, this chapter considers other factors that may be considered in supply base rationalization such as how the suppliers may be connected in their own business relationships and how similar or dissimilar their culture and processes might be. The chapter also introduces emerging issues that affect supply base management, such as category management, cybersecurity, and startup suppliers. While we typically view suppliers in a supply base as first-tier suppliers, we also realize that a supply base may include tertiary-level suppliers that supply products to other suppliers. The idea of complexity is addressed. The chapter points out how the complexity of a system is captured in three things—number of elements, level of connectivity among the elements, and how similar or different these elements are from one another. The chapter considers managerial implications of supply base complexity and how different portions of a supply base may be viewed as a supplier ecosystem.
Joseph Smith's Gold Plates
Authors: Bushman Richard Lyman
Published: August 2023

For two centuries, newspaper editors, treasure-seekers, critics, novelists, artists, historians, missionaries, and Church teachers have sought to understand Joseph Smith’s gold plates. The problem is that there is nothing quite like them in either religious or secular history. Smith himself had trouble grasping what they were. He stated that an angel led him to the plates in 1823 and that from them he translated the Book of Mormon. This explanation has been hard for outsiders to believe, so that even today there is no agreed-upon understanding of where the plates idea originated. Critics denounced Smith as a charlatan for claiming to have a wondrous object that he refused to show, while believers pointed to witnesses who said they saw the plates. Though heated at first, this debate has cooled in recent years. Apologists never made much of the witnesses, and, over time, outside scholars have focused more on how Smith came to believe the plates were real rather than their reality itself. After two hundred years, the mystery of the gold plates remains. Other than the original angel story, there is no clear explanation. At the end, Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates asks how they figure in a class of inspired texts and holy objects that includes pseudepigrapha, relics, stone tablets, and Buddhist terma, concluding that none of these types perfectly matches the plates, but together they form a category to which the plates belong.
Global Perspectives
Authors: Bushman Richard Lyman
Published: August 2023

The final chapter of the book departs from the historical approach pursued to this point and instead scans the globe and all of history for comparative examples. What other religious objects most resemble the gold plates? It finds four: pseudepigrapha, quasi-scriptural writings attributed to prophetic figures of a previous time; relics, which draw on the power of previous holy people to heal and perform other miraculous acts; the stone tablets on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed by the finger of God; and terma, writings buried by Buddhist teachers for later teachers to recover and propagate. All resemble the gold plates in some regards and not others. Together they form a category in which the plates find a home.
The Party Demands
Authors: Cameron Charles M. , Kastellec Jonathan P.
Published: August 2023

This chapter presents new evidence on the party platforms from 1928 to 2020 and the parties’ stands on the Supreme Court. It documents the parties’ focus on particular ‘hot-button’ Supreme Court cases and issue areas. It also scrutinizes policy requirements for Supreme Court nominees—“litmus tests”—as well as calls for nominee diversity. The result is the first systematic overview of the parties’ judicial agendas. Before 1970, both parties had only limited and sporadic interest in the Supreme Court. However, both expanded their Supreme Court agendas in the early 1970s. Starting in the 1990s the Republican party became much more focused on the court than were the Democrats. Republicans also became much more demanding of the policy stances of judicial nominees. Democrats, on the other hand, emphasized judicial diversity much more frequently than have Republicans, creating a striking asymmetry between the parties in their approaches to the Supreme Court.
The Candidates for the Court and the Nominees
Authors: Cameron Charles M. , Kastellec Jonathan P.
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines the characteristics of every nominee between 1930 and 2020, as well the characteristics of the candidates the presidents considered for the court but did not select. It focuses on the major considerations for nomination politics today: ideology, qualifications, diversity, and age. It then considers religion and geography. It shows a significant transformation in both the characteristics among the men (and now women) who have been considered for the court and in the nominees themselves. Even as the justices became more ideologically polarized in the modern period, on every other dimension (except diversity) the court has become more homogenous. Today, a justice is very likely to be: a former judge on the Courts of Appeals; in their mid-50s; from the East Coast, a graduate of Harvard, Yale, or Columbia; and Catholic or Jewish. Noticeably absent are practicing politicians, who used to be common on the Court.
The Media
Authors: Cameron Charles M. , Kastellec Jonathan P. , Bass Leeann , Dean Julian
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines changes in the media coverage of Supreme Court nominations Most nominations from 1930 to 1960 received very little media attention. Coverage tended to focus on the nominee’s background/biography, judicial philosophy, and economic issues, in accordance with the high salience national issues of the day. Occasionally, a scandal or controversy attracted media attention. Newspaper editorials were generally supportive of nominees or deferential toward the president; outright opposition to nominees was rare. Beginning in the 1960s, the Court became more involved in social issues, and the national political agenda shifted toward such issues. Nominations increased in duration, and the volume of media coverage increased concomitantly. Hard news coverage shifted toward a focus on the nominee’s views on, and the Court’s role in, contentious social issues like civil rights, the death penalty, and (especially) abortion. Elite media opinion increasingly polarized along ideological lines over time.
Decision in the Senate
Authors: Cameron Charles M. , Kastellec Jonathan P.
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines changes in how the Senate treated Supreme Court nominees. First, it shows that contentiousness in the Senate—that is, the levels of opposition to a nominee—has ebbed and flowed over time. However, contentiousness in the modern period has now reached unprecedented levels, with confirmations now routinely featuring party-line votes. The chapter models changes in senatorial voting and shows that senators place greater weight on the ideology of nominees than formerly. Conversely, senators now place less weight on a nominee’s legal qualifications. The changes in evaluative criteria, in tandem with Senate polarization and nominee extremity, now result in party-line votes. Finally, the chapter shows that racial politics resulted in some unusual voting in the mid-twentieth century after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
Voting in the Shadow of Accountability
Authors: Cameron Charles M. , Kastellec Jonathan P.
Published: August 2023

This chapter seeks to explain the changes in senatorial voting documented in Chapter 8. The explanation features electoral accountability, the so-called electoral connection. In the early period, few citizens followed appointment politics. But senators still had to worry about ‘latent’ opinion, leading to safety-in-numbers voting. As nominations became more salient and contentious, the audience for nomination politics grew, with many voters having firm opinions about nominees. Consequently, senators today must worry about casting the ‘right’ voter. New data and strong statistical methods show that citizens follow confirmation votes and hold senators accountable for them. The chapter also shows that senators tend to align with the opinion of their co-partisan constituents, and not the median voter (i.e. Independents) in their home states. To explain this pattern, the chapter introduces the idea of an electoral compound lottery; under plausible assumptions, attending to primary voters rather than general voters is rational.
Four Women
Authors: Nagel Thomas
Published: August 2023

This chapter highlights Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Mary Midgley, and Iris Murdoch, four brilliant young women who were matriculated at Oxford in the late 1930s. It emphasizes how the enhanced attention and absence of the usual competitive male atmosphere made it possible for them to find their voices as philosophers. It discusses Benjamin Lipscomb’s The Women Are Up to Something and Clare Mac Cumhall and Rachael Wiseman’s Metaphysical Animals, which explain how these women were formed, what they were like, their deep connections with one another, and the impact they had on the philosophy of their time. The chapter covers the philosophical controversies in which the four were engaged, particularly the transformation in moral philosophy that began with a revolt against analytic orthodoxy in the late 1950s.
The Illusion of Tax Fairness
Authors: Nagel Thomas
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines the issue of tax fairness. It explains how the idea that there are standards of fairness that apply specifically to taxes is based on an illusion that threatens to distract attention from what really matters. It is what people end up with after taxes that should determine the assessment of any tax program. The persistence of the idea that the distribution of tax burdens can be fair or unfair in itself stems from a very natural, but mistaken, picture of the relation between taxes and property rights: that in taxing us, the government takes away some of our private property to pay for its activities. The chapter argues that there could be no private property rights in any of the things that a modern economy makes possible if those rights were not circumscribed by a built-in system of taxation. In a genuine argument about the justice of tax policy, the main issue is whether government should be concerned about social and economic inequality.
The Cortex and the Trolley Problem
Authors: Nagel Thomas
Published: August 2023

This chapter discusses Joshua Greene’s contribution to the recently salient field of empirical moral psychology. The grounds for the empirical hypotheses that he offers about human morality are of three types: psychological experiments, observations of brain activity, and evolutionary theory. His book, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them (2013), is framed as the search for a solution to a global problem that cannot be solved by the kinds of moral standards that command intuitive assent and work well within particular communities. Greene calls this problem the tragedy of commonsense morality. To solve this problem, Greene thinks we need what he calls a “metamorality.” He thinks that this higher-level moral outlook is to be found in utilitarianism, which he proposes to rename “deep pragmatism.” The chapter then looks at Greene’s discussion of the trolley problem, a set of gruesome thought-experiments that has become a staple of recent moral philosophy.
The Core of Mind and Cosmos
Authors: Nagel Thomas
Published: August 2023

This chapter addresses how the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. The scientific outlook, if it aspires to a more complete understanding of nature, must expand to include theories capable of explaining the appearance in the universe of mental phenomena and the subjective points of view in which they occur. There are two ways of resisting this conclusion. The first way is to deny that the mental is an irreducible aspect of reality, while the second way is to deny that the mental requires a scientific explanation through some new conception of the natural order. The chapter then considers the outlook of psychophysical reductionism and theistic interventionism.
Creators of the Modern Mind
Authors: Nagel Thomas
Published: August 2023

This chapter reviews Anthony Gottlieb’s discussion of six philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries whose stature and influence are especially great: Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume. Gottlieb emphasizes throughout that these men lived in a historical period dominated by dramatic developments and conflicts in three areas—science, religion, and politics—and that their thoughts and writings were dominated by the need to respond to those developments, and to understand the relations among them. First, there was the scientific revolution, which introduced a new way of understanding the physical world through universal laws, mathematically formulated, that govern everything that happens in space and time. Second, after the Reformation and the terrible wars of religion it had become clear that the plurality of religious beliefs in Christendom was not going to disappear. Third, the basis of legitimate political authority was coming seriously into question, with skepticism about the divine right of kings and support for the right of subjects to overthrow a ruler who abused his power. Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, and Hume all produced theories of political authority starting from the subject’s rather than the ruler’s point of view.
Dennett’s Illusions
Authors: Nagel Thomas
Published: August 2023

This chapter focuses on Daniel Dennett’s work, From Bacteria to Bach and Back. It notes that Dennett’s work is engaged in a grand project of disenchantment of the human world, using science to free us from what he deems illusions. Moreover, From Bacteria to Bach and Back has a historical structure that goes from the pre-biotic world to human minds and human civilization. One of Dennett’s most important claims is that most of what we do to stay alive, cope with the world and one another, and reproduce is not understood by us. It tackles the lengthy process of evolution involving biology, culture, intelligent design, the human mind, and human civilization.
Betsy Dworkin 1933–2000
Authors: Nagel Thomas
Published: August 2023

This is a eulogy for Betsy Dworkin, who died in 2000.
Citizen Knowledge
Authors: Herzog Lisa
Published: August 2023

Many democratic societies struggle with issues around knowledge: fake news spreads online and offline, and there is distrust of experts, but also fear of technocratic tendencies. Citizen Knowledge discusses how knowledge, understood in a broad sense, should be dealt with in societies that combine a democratic political system with a capitalist economic system. How do citizens learn about politics? How do new scientific insights make their way into politics? What role can markets play in processing decentralized knowledge? The book takes on the perspective of “democratic institutionalism,” which focuses on the institutions that enable an inclusive and stable democratic life. It argues that the fraught relation between democracy and capitalism gets out of balance if too much knowledge is treated according to the logic of markets rather than democracy. Complex societies need different mechanisms for dealing with knowledge, among which markets, democratic deliberation, and expert communities are central. Citizen Knowledge emphasizes the responsibility of bearers of knowledge and the need to support institutions that support active and informed citizenship. It develops the vision of an egalitarian society that considers the use of knowledge in society not a matter of markets, but of shared democratic responsibility, supported by epistemic infrastructures. It contributes to political epistemology, a new subdiscipline of philosophy, with a focus on the interrelation between economic and political processes. It analyzes the current situation, drawing on the history of ideas and on systematic arguments about the nature of knowledge and epistemic justice, developing proposals for reforms.
Putting the Market in Its Place
Authors: Herzog Lisa
Published: August 2023

This chapter argues that many markets, in order to fulfill their epistemic function—which continues to provide one of their central justifications, and is the basis for their economic function—require more rather than less regulation: they require an “epistemic infrastructure” in which certain forms of knowledge are taken care of, so that the price mechanism can actually fulfill its epistemic function. Moreover, for price signals to point to the satisfaction of meaningful human preferences, the conditions under which these preferences are formed need to be taken into account, again leading to questions about regulation, for example, of advertising. Even the markets sometimes taken to be the paradigm of informational efficiency, financial markets, often fail to fulfill their epistemic function for lack of regulation. The chapter argues that properly understood, the epistemic argument about markets is one for careful market regulation through democratic politics, not one for abolishing all government intervention.
Defending Democracy
Authors: Herzog Lisa
Published: August 2023

This concluding chapter defends democracy against a number of criticisms from the “realist” camp. Against the view that voters are nothing but incompetent “fans,” and that the capture of political processes by private interests is inevitable, it argues that by taking a more socially embedded, institutional view of democratic life, we can see in what ways voters’ ability to hold politicians to account could be strengthened. It also argues that strengthening the epistemic infrastructure of democracy and reducing socioeconomic equality, as defended in earlier chapters, are in fact crucial strategies for reducing the risks of capture and government failure. Finally, the chapter defends a view of democracy as an experiment, in which the realization of democratic principles in practices and institutions is an ongoing task.
Popular Nationalism and War
Authors: Ko Jiyoung
Published: August 2023

Does nationalism lead to interstate war? This book challenges the widely held assumption that nationalism causes war and systematically investigates how popular nationalism affects a country’s decision to launch military aggression. The book makes a novel and provocative claim that popular nationalism has not only a conflict-inducing effect but also a restraining one, and identifies the conditions under which popular nationalism triggers interstate violence. Specifically, the book asserts that popular nationalism leads to war only when leaders who confront popular nationalism are very confident about their chance of achieving complete victory in conflict or they are politically vulnerable. In the absence of these two conditions, popular nationalism has a restraining effect, pushing leaders toward maintaining the status quo and avoiding the use of force. The book first demonstrates the restraining effect of popular nationalism through a survey experiment conducted in China and an in-depth case study on the territorial dispute between China and Japan in the East China Sea. It then offers comprehensive historical and contemporary analyses of when popular nationalism’s restraining effect can turn into a conflict-inducing one through case studies on the War of 1812 and the Falklands War. The book provides important insights into whether popular nationalism can put great powers like China and the United States on a collision course, as well as broad policy implications for preventing war driven by popular nationalism.
Popular Nationalism, Political Elites’ Strategic Calculations, and Conflict Initiation
Authors: Ko Jiyoung
Published: August 2023

This chapter proposes a new theory of popular nationalism and war by investigating how popular nationalism factors into political leaders’ strategic decision to launch military aggression. It elucidates how popular nationalism creates two contrasting incentives with regard to the initiation of militarized conflict, and how those incentives, coupled with the two moderating variables—political elites’ perceived chance of victory in conflict and their domestic political vulnerability—ultimately shape a state’s decision to go to war or maintain the status quo. The chapter emphasizes two faces of popular nationalism: it can trigger interstate war, but it can also suppress the chance of military aggression and facilitate maintaining the status quo. The chapter closes by laying out a multimethod research design employing a survey experiment and in-depth case studies.
Illusion of Complete Victory
Authors: Ko Jiyoung
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines how a change in the expectation of complete victory moderates the effect of popular nationalism through the Falkland/Malvinas Islands dispute between Argentina and Great Britain. Specifically, it investigates the impact of popular nationalism on Argentina’s choice between war and the status quo. This chapter shows that a country can quickly slide into war when leaders’ belief in their chance of complete victory shifts amid strong popular nationalism. Despite the public’s intense nationalistic sentiments, Argentinean leaders did not consider using force in the early phase of the territorial dispute and instead opted for the status quo. Only after the Argentinian junta was convinced of its chance of complete victory did popular nationalism have a conflict-inducing effect, sparking the Falklands War in 1982.
Fluid Frontiers and Forever War I
Authors: Kadercan Burak
Published: August 2023

This chapter goes beyond the territorial orders that lie at the heart of the so-called modern state system and examines amorphous territorial orders, which are defined by adherence to flexible, fluid, and porous demarcation principles and a preference for sociospatial heterogeneity. From a world-historical perspective, amorphous territorial orders have been more of the norm than the exception. Amorphous territoriality is usually associated with an understanding of continuous war and reluctance to homogenize the space-society association in target areas. The chapter proceeds in three steps. First, it offers a general discussion of amorphous territoriality. Second, it examines the case of the Ottoman Empire, reflecting on the Ottomans’ territorial ideas and the ways in which these ideas affected the Ottomans’ motives and methods for territorial expansion. The third section applies the same framework to the British experience in South Asia, especially during the nineteenth century. The British case also drives attention to the notion of dual territoriality, or states’ practice of upholding one set of territorial ideas in their core territories, while professing another set of territorial ideas in areas targeted for imperialistic (territorial) expansion and control.