bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Political Theory: Empirical Political Theory
Authors: von Beyme Klaus
Published: October 2003

Provides a chronology of shifting paradigms, tracing a shift from ‘grand ideas’ to empirical studies. These changes are not universal, seen in the ‘geography of paradigm shifts’ of France, Germany, Britain, and the USA. Methodological approaches are situated within a framework of comparisons of the micro or the macro, and systems or actors. A minimal consensus is developing, in the theme of communitarianism. Empirical political theory reflects the revival of old positions in new formats, unlike the Kuhnian paradigmatic revolutions of the natural sciences.
Public Policy and Administration: An Overview
Authors: Nelson Barbara J.
Published: October 2003

Provides an overview of the progression of public policy research, from its origins in American assumptions of stability to contemporary concerns regarding the potential for ethical policy‐making. Three contentions exist regarding definitions of the policy process, marked by emphases on either the process as a whole, the individual problem solver, or a system of inputs, transformation, and outputs. Each is unified by the belief in a synergistic process. The history of the field is traced and four core imperatives emerge: holism, consequences, usefulness, and democracy. These four imperatives structure the theoretical tensions in public policy research.
Public Policy and Administration: Comparative Policy Analysis
Authors: Hofferbert Richard I. , Cingranelli David Louis
Published: October 2003

How can we explain policy similarities and differences across time, jurisdiction, and country? Examples are offered in a comparison of social and economic context, the role of institutions, ideology, democratic type, industrialization, and social change as they account for two political outcomes: welfare policy and party election programs. Key methodological and theoretical issues are raised, relating to the empirical demands of causality and contingency. ‘How politics matters’ is ultimately left unanswered because of methodological indeterminacies, though three findings remain: policies are not made in a socio‐economic vacuum, institutional effects are still an open question, and policy conditions are attributable to partisan conditions.
Public Policy and Administration: Ideas, Interests and Institutions
Authors: Majone Giandomenico
Published: October 2003

Provides an account of the transformation of policy‐making. From the top‐down state‐centric approach and from the bottom‐up grassroots popularism of the 60s and 70s, policy‐making now reflects an increasing emphasis on the importance of ideas and institutions. How can we understand this shift in emphasis? Offers an account of the contracting approach, on the basis of the growing need for efficiency in public policy, credibility and reputation maintenance, and the rediscovery of the importance of institutions. Theoretical implications of the contracting approach are outlined.
Political Economy: An Overview
Authors: Alt James E. , Alesina Alberto
Published: October 2003

Provides an overview of the political economy approach as it relates to the political economy of institutions and the political economy of public policy. The field has developed and the literature has exploded on the basis of analyses of the transaction costs in the incentives, strategies, and choices of maximizing and strategic behaviour, within interconnected political and economic institutions. These themes are examined as they relate to cooperation, efficiency, game theoretic models and institutional choice in legislatures, bureaucracies, and government formation. Models are elaborated and evidence assessed in the political economy of public policy, specifically in the areas of political business cycles and budget deficits.
Political Economy, Old and New
Authors: Atkinson A. B.
Published: October 2003

Considers what was old about political economy and questions the new. The transition from old to new represents a move from economics to political economy, in which the latter includes the approach of public choice, a new interaction between economists and political scientists, and a rapid growth of interest in the political economy approach. Three areas of contribution in new political economy: the role of institutions, rational choice analysis, and the deployment of empirical evidence are questioned, respectively, for their exogeneity, application, and demonstrability.
Political Methodology: Qualitative Methods
Authors: Ragin Charles C. , Berg‐Schlosser Dirk , de Meur Gisèle
Published: October 2003

Reviews qualitative methodology: its strengths, application, and its potential weaknesses. A comprehensive range of qualitative techniques is reviewed, and three main issues are highlighted for their proper treatment: framing the area of investigation, the use of macro‐qualitative techniques, and epistemological issues of causality, induction, case selection, and level of explanation.
Political Methodology, Old and New
Authors: Alker Hayward R.
Published: October 2003

Theoretical considerations and epistemological issues are not new in political science. They can be traced to the methodological innovators Aristotle and Weber. However, contemporary political science is beset with an inauthenticity malaise. Even as methods have become more sophisticated, so specificational uncertainties have persisted. The future of political methodology should be developed by combining Weberian understanding with methodological explanation, and by the appreciation of a broader conception of political science, based upon an integrated conception of data, theory and value, empiricism, criticism, and constructivism.
Beliefs in Government
Authors: Kaase Max , Newton Kenneth
Published: October 2003

This book, the fifth and last in the ‘Beliefs in government’ series, provides a brief comparative study of political attitudes in Western Europe and draws together the findings of the ‘Beliefs in government’ project, setting them in the wider context of modern politics in Western Europe. It considers the main post‐war literature on democratic crisis, change, and transformation in the West, and compares this literature with the extensive collection of West European survey evidence that is discussed in greater detail in the other series volumes. It touches upon general themes of citizens’ attitudes to the modern state, to the scope of government and its services, and to the growing power of agencies of international government, especially the European Union. It tracks the nature and impact of fundamental values on political attitudes and behaviour. Its conclusions challenge widely held views about modern democratic behaviour and politics, including the literature on political participation, mass political opinion, post‐materialism and post‐modernism, the welfare state, and democratic change and stability.
The Growth of Government
Authors: Goldsmith Michael
Published: October 2003

Outlines the widening and deepening of government activity, as measured by increases in government revenues and expenditures, over the period 1950 to 1990. It then discusses the evolving ways in which this growth has been perceived by public opinion, and the factors that have shaped this evolution—changing demographics and demands for government action, and changing abilities on the part of governments to satisfy such demand, as a function of economic growth and development.
The Welfare State: The Equality Dimension
Authors: Roller Edeltraud
Published: October 2003

There are two motives underlying support for the welfare state—socio‐economic egalitarianism (the redistributive function) and socio‐economic security provision (the safety net function). This chapter assesses the various hypotheses concerning the former, the indicators on which they rely, and the statistical evidence for the varying degrees of support for redistributive policies across Western Europe. The evidence suggests that the concern over socio‐economic inequality diminishes proportionately as national prosperity and standards of living increase. However, while it clearly exists, it is much less salient than concern over security provision, which is discussed in the next chapter.
The Welfare State: The Security Dimension
Authors: Pettersen Per Arnt
Published: October 2003

The basic question for analysis in this chapter is whether people prefer that security benefits such as state pension schemes, public health services, and unemployment benefits should expand, continue as they are, or diminish. The chapter reviews the historical development of welfare and benefit provision from the self‐confident 1960s, through the stagnation of the 1970s, through to the austerity of the 1980s. It then examines which demographic and social groupings are likely to support or oppose the expansion of security provision by the welfare state, and the nature of the connections between public perceptions and party‐political positions on welfare policies.
Scope‐Of‐Government Beliefs and Political Support
Authors: Borre Ole
Published: October 2003

This chapter explores the consequences of beliefs about the scope of political support with a view to explaining the possible loss of political support in advanced democracies. Its main hypothesis is that policy distance—the distance between a voter's policy position and the actual policy of the government—reduces support for the political system. The analysis first examines the nature of this relationship, and then develops it in three ways: first, by introducing controls for party choice; second, by investigating whether it holds only for specific policy fields; third, by testing the further hypothesis that, in practice, it is ‘negative distance’—the tendency to demand ‘more’ rather than ‘less’ government, which accounts for the low level of support in countries with a low aggregate level of support. The evidence suggests that the fulfilment of public expectations and the securing of public support is likely to be a much bigger problem for governments of the less economically advanced societies.
Introduction: The Impact of Values
Authors: Van Deth Jan W.
Published: October 2003

This chapter sets out the purpose of the book, namely to investigate the ways in which changes in public attitudes to key areas of social and political life (‘value changes’) affect the fundamental aspect of the political health of a democracy, namely its readiness and capacity to be governed. It outlines the analytical scheme of the book, and the research methods employed to collect the data on the value orientations that define the public attitudes investigated. It concludes with a summary of the book's findings.
The Concept of Values
Authors: Van Deth Jan W. , Scarbrough Elinor
Published: October 2003

This chapter begins by noting some general conceptual and methodological issues arising from the social‐scientific study of values, and then reviews various approaches to conceptualizing, selecting, and defining the values most conducive to the purpose of the book. This is in contrast to other social‐scientific approaches, which are more oriented towards ‘issue’ models of electoral behaviour.
A Macro Setting for Micro Politics
Authors: Van Deth Jan W.
Published: October 2003

The main element of a macro setting for micro politics in advanced industrial societies is the effect of increasing economic development on increasing levels of government activity. The chapter provides a brief overview of these twin processes, looking first at several aspects of economic development over recent decades and its correlates in terms of rising levels of education, increasing mobility and communication, and the position of women in society, and then at corresponding growth and shifts in government intervention over the same period. The final part of the chapter looks at the characteristics of the political processes in Western Europe in terms of involvement and protest.
Religious and Ethical Pluralism
Authors: Jagodzinski Wolfgang , Dobbelaere Karel
Published: October 2003

The argument that ethical pluralism requires new forms of governmental process to manage a changed consensus about fundamental societal values and norms rests on a key premiss that there really exists a pluralism of religious beliefs and ethical norms in modern societies. This chapter examines the evidence for this premiss, and concludes that while it does reveal a tendency towards increasing religious and ethical pluralism, the trend is by no means as universal as has often been suggested. Furthermore, it is ambiguous whether disparities between religious and ideological groups will assist or hinder democratic governability.
Green, Greener, Greenest
Authors: Nas Masja
Published: October 2003

This chapter attempts to gain an insight into the relationship between changing value orientations and the concept of ‘greenness’. Unfortunately, there exist no data permitting green attitudes to be studied alongside religious‐secular or left‐right materialist value orientations, so the analysis only uses data on the materialist and post‐materialist value orientation. After a brief summary of environmentalist political thinking, the chapter presents an operationalization of ‘greenness’ and a typology of green attitudes. It concludes with a discussion of greenness and post‐materialism, at the aggregate as well as the individual level.
Status Tensions
Authors: Schweisguth Etienne
Published: October 2003

The central hypothesis of this chapter is that members of the middle class are conservative on socio‐economic issues but progressive on cultural issues, whereas members of the working class are progressive on socio‐economic issues but conservative on cultural issues. This can create contradictory effects within an individual's political orientation, in terms of three value orientations – left‐right materialism, libertarianism/post‐modernism, and materialism/post‐materialism.
Political Efficacy and Trust
Authors: Gabriel Oscar W.
Published: October 2003

In public opinion research, only meagre attention has been given to the impact of value orientations on public confidence and trust in the efficacy of the political system. Whereas the implications of materialist and post‐materialist orientations have been studied extensively, the impact of value orientations (such as religiosity, secularism, egalitarianism, and libertarianism) has been almost completely ignored. This chapter therefore investigates some neglected problems in empirical research into the political impact of value orientations. After clarifying the concepts of trust and efficacy, it proposes and tests some hypotheses for a set of Western European democracies.
Political Interest
Authors: Gabriel Oscar W. , Van Deth Jan W.
Published: October 2003

This chapter examines the relations between value orientation and shifts in levels of political concern and engagement in Western Europe. First, it considers some interpretations of the link between ‘new’ value orientations and increasing political interest. Second, it discusses various operationalizations of the complicated concept ‘interest in politics’. Third, it presents empirical data revealing the salience of post‐materialism as a predictor of political involvement. The small numerical size of post‐materialists, combined with the relative intensity of their interest in politics, suggests that they will constitute a strident and vociferous minority, though likely to exercise only modest influence on government.
Grass‐Roots Activity
Authors: Gundelach Peter
Published: October 2003

The aim of this chapter is to examine the significance of social factors and value orientations for people's involvement in protest activity and social movements in Western Europe. It uses the standard social variables (gender, age, education, and occupation) alongside the ‘old’ value orientations (left‐right materialism and secular‐religious orientation), the ‘new’ (materialism/post‐materialism), and two additional value orientations – political and social libertarianism. The analysis concludes that, if protest is understood as a critique of government, grassroots activity (at least since the early 1980s) cannot be construed as protest, but more as a form of self‐differentiation of limited political impact.
Party Choice
Authors: Knutsen Oddbjørn
Published: October 2003

The focus of this chapter is the impact on party choice of the three value orientations central to this volume: religious‐secular, left‐right materialism, and materialism/post‐materialism. These values might be thought of, although not exclusively, as representing the pre‐industrial, industrial and post‐industrial stages of development in Western European societies. Its bivariate approach addresses first the comparative impact of each of these value orientations on party preferences across Western Europe; and second, how the distribution of votes for different party families correlates with them.
Cleavage Politics
Authors: Knutsen Oddbjørn , Scarbrough Elinor
Published: October 2003

This chapter assesses the plausibility of claims about the changing dynamics of mass politics in Western Europe, by contrasting the ‘cleavage’ and ‘values’ models of voting behaviour. These represent the disintegrative and integrative functions of political affiliation. The article then sets out a model of party choice that is empirically tested against voting statistics for the period from the early 1970s to 1990. The findings, while mixed, point to the general conclusion that the basis of party choice is more stable than has been suggested by ‘new politics’ accounts.
Perspectives on Value Change
Authors: Van Deth Jan W. , Scarbrough Elinor
Published: October 2003

This chapter offers a general assessment of the extent to which the foregoing chapters have helped achieve the objectives set out at the start of the book. The general conclusion is that while changing value orientations are certainly affecting the attitudes and priorities of governments, they are themselves being changed by the political environment to which they contribute. While the tasks of government are becoming more complex, there is no evidence to support the view that the countries of Western Europe are becoming less governable in consequence.
Social Justice and Environmental Goods1
Authors: Miller David
Published: October 2003

David Miller grapples with the sustainability question in the context of liberal theories of justice. He believes that environmental goods are as appropriately related to theories of justice as any other type of good, but that no systematic attempt has been made to do so. He reaches this conclusion after examining the work of Ronald Dworkin and John Rawls. Miller argues that some environmental goods can be regarded as Rawlsian primary goods, and that others may possess sufficiently universal value to present few problems of justice. Where conflicts do occur, Miller suggests that a modified form of cost‐benefit analysis can be used to resolve disputes.
An Extension of the Rawlsian Savings Principle to Liberal Theories of Justice in General
Authors: Wissenburg M. L. J.
Published: October 2003

Marcel Wissenburg makes a close analysis of John Rawls's ‘savings principle’ as articulated in Political Liberalism, and argues that, properly understood, it is a necessary condition for the survival of liberal democracy. If so, then liberalism and sustainability are more compatible than is often claimed. Much depends on what savings the present generation is obliged to make, and Wissenburg generates a ‘restraint principle’ that enjoins any given generation not to destroy goods unless unavoidable, to replace with identical ones if not, to replace with equivalent ones if identical ones are not available, and to offer compensation as a last resort. Much depends on what ‘unless unavoidable’ means, and this will be a normative as well as a technical issue.
Sustainable Development and the Accumulation of Capital: Reconciling the Irreconcilable?
Authors: Benton Ted
Published: October 2003

Here Ted Benton gives a guarded welcome to the normative intentions of sustainable development, arguing that its commitment to the poor as well as to the meeting of future generations’ needs are worth building on. He exposes, though, the deep tensions between these normative commitments and the key tendencies and features of the global economy. In his view, there is a ‘dynamic tendency’ in market systems for over‐exploitation. This can be counteracted, he suggests, by using the normative foundations in sustainable development to argue for radical changes in economic organization and ideology. Benton also argues for a reconceptualization of the idea of ‘need’, suggesting that it take account of demands made on behalf of non‐human nature.
Big Bills Left on the Sidewalk: Why Some Nations Are Rich, and Others Poor
Authors: Olson Mancur
Published: October 2003

The idea is advanced that it is the rationality of individuals in societies that makes them achieve their production potential rather than their per capita productive resources, and that the low‐income countries of the Second and Third Worlds are poor mainly because they are much further below their potential incomes than are rich countries. If these countries were to improve their governance and institutions sufficiently, there would be huge gains from foreign investment and advanced technologies, which are for the most part, available at relatively modest cost to poor countries. The evidence for this view is taken from studies of the borders of countries and the flows of labour (migration) and capital that cross them, and data on per capita income in relation to population density.
Justice and the Environment
Authors: Dobson Andrew
Published: October 2003

Environmental sustainability and social, or distributive, justice are both widely regarded as desirable social objectives. But can we assume that they are compatible with each other? This book analyses the complex relationship between these two pressing objectives. Environmental sustainability is taken to be a contested idea, and three distinct conceptions of it are explored and described. These conceptions are then examined in the context of fundamental distributive questions. Among whom or what should distribution take place? What should be distributed? What should the principle of distribution be? The book contains a critical examination of the claims of the ‘environmental‐justice’ and ‘sustainable‐development’ movements that social justice and environmental sustainability are points on the same virtuous circle, and suggests that radical environmental demands involving the preservation of ‘nature’ are only incompletely served by couching them in terms of justice. The conclusion is that inter‐generational justice is the context in which distributive and sustainability agendas are most closely aligned.
‘Critical Natural Capital’ and Social Justice (Part I)
Authors: Dobson Andrew
Published: October 2003

Explores the relationship between the first conception of sustainability and distributive justice, and examines the compatibility between them. The key sustainability question is ‘what is to be distributed?’ and the answer in this first case is ‘critical natural capital’. Concludes that compatibility will only ever be contingent, since sustainability is about preserving or conserving natural capital while justice is about distributing it fairly.
‘Critical Natural Capital’ and Social Justice (Part Ii)
Authors: Dobson Andrew
Published: October 2003

Continues the examination of sustainability as the maintenance of critical natural capital, and its compatibility with the objective of social justice. Suggests that the tendency of justice to deal in substitutability (e.g. through compensation) works against the tendency of sustainability to eschew it (nothing can compensate for the loss of critical natural capital in this first conception of environmental sustainability).
‘Natural Value’ and Social Justice
Authors: Dobson Andrew
Published: October 2003

Examines the third conception of sustainability, involving the maintenance of ‘natural value’ into the future, for its compatibility with social justice. Substitutability is wholly rejected, as the original is to be preferred to any substitute, procedural justice is likely to be only very contingently compatible with the objective of sustaining natural value, and views of justice that are impartial as to views of the human good may often be at odds with sustaining natural value, as this objective is driven by a view of the good. All this explains why environmental activists and justice activists seem sometimes to speak past—rather than to—each other.
Conclusion
Authors: Dobson Andrew
Published: October 2003

Establishes that discourses of sustainability and justice may be related in three ways: the environment as something to be distributed; justice as functional for sustainability; ‘justice to the environment’. Eight theses on the relationship between justice and sustainability are developed. Two contrasting approaches to developing an overarching theory of justice that will be compatible with as many conceptions of environmental sustainability as possible are discussed: Peter Wenz's ‘concentric circles’ and Bryan Norton's ‘intergenerationalism’. A modified version of the latter is regarded as the best way of bringing social justice and environmental sustainability into discursive compatibility.
Political Economy and the Politics of Virtue: US Public Philosophy at Century's End
Authors: Galston William A.
Published: October 2003

A public philosophy is rooted in, and addressed to, a particular public in a specific historical situation. One of the most important tasks before us is to restore the public’s confidence in government as the instrument of their purposes rather than as what it now appears–an alien, intrusive, unresponsive power. While few question the appropriateness of the recognition of long-denied rights, some public intellectuals are now expressing doubts about the general “culture of rights” to which it has given rise. A liberal democracy should be prepared to allow wide though not unlimited scope for diverse group practices, with the understanding that membership in certain groups may involve the voluntary renunciation of certain otherwise enforceable individual rights. If we go farther, if we press too hard on moral ideals such as liberal autonomy, democratic individuality, or direct participation in public affairs, if we require subgroups to reorganize their internal affairs in accordance with liberal democratic principles, we run the risk of exacerbating the conflicts we set out to abate.
Civic Republicanism and Civic Pluralism: The Silent Struggle of Michael Sandel
Authors: Connolly William E.
Published: October 2003

Abstractly drawn to William Bennett’s invocation of national unity, civic virtues, and the reformation of mediating institutions, Sandel skates too lightly over the connection between Bennett’s quest to reinstate old unities and his conversion of republican virtues into contemporary weapons of cultural war in the domains of race, ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexuality. If Sandel, in the early pages of Democracy’s Discontent, pursued pluralist reservations about the republican vision he expresses in the last chapter, he would be required to rework significantly his history of the republican impulse in America. Sandel concedes that the court’s civic concerns for the welfare of the family and heterosexual normality previously functioned to criminalize homosexuality, but a voluntarist defense of legalization, as Sandel reads it, supports sexual freedom in private without interrogating the larger cultural tendency to demean homosexual unions. Contemporary civic pluralism needs citizens who affirm comparative elements of contingency and contestability in those identities–those “encumbrances”–that define them most dramatically; who establish relations of agonistic respect with faiths, even those of a philosophic and non-theistic bent, that challenge their own sources of moral inspiration; who cultivate critical responsiveness to surprising social movements that propel new identities into being out of old injuries, differences, and energies; and who acknowledge the state to be but one site of political identification among several others in the late-modern age. The silent struggle of Michael Sandel between civic republicanism and civic pluralism is more fundamental than the explicit debate he stages between republicanism and voluntarism, for the most urgent task of political thought today is to pursue the agenda Sandel belatedly sets in the last chapter: to articulate a vision of civic pluralism appropriate to the distinct conditions of contemporary life.
Fusion Republicanism
Authors: Rosenblum Nancy L.
Published: October 2003

“Fusion republicanism” is a fluid mix of democratic ideology, potential militancy, and invocation of civic virtue prevalent in American political life, a conglomeration of disparate elements of political thought and practice, manifest in many quarters of political life: it is institutionalized in “our localism,” for example; it is latent in the conduct of juries with their potential for nullification; and it is overt in self-styled citizen militias permanently poised for armed resistance. Perhaps the most important question raised by Sandel’s stance as an advocate of a public philosophy is what responsibility he has to acknowledge the spectrum of related ideas, to recognize convergence between the republican high ground he stakes out and its dangerous, improbable expressions, and to draw sharp moral and political distinctions. Three recognizable themes provide points of convergence among advocates, and give fusion republicanism its emotional force: a perception of powerlessness, a perception of political demoralization, and a propensity for direct political action. Understandably, even leaders who indulge in republican charges against their political opponents do not want to be held to account for excesses and abominations committed in the name of democratic discontent. We should not permit ourselves the comforting assumption that fringe groups are responsible for the climate of hostility that transforms democratic discontent into anti-government hatred; “extremists” are the beneficiaries of a diffuse climate of hostility and of widespread agitation to correct the sense of disempowerment.
Federalism as a Cure for Democracy's Discontent?
Authors: Tushnet Mark
Published: October 2003

Federalism holds out the possibility of mutually profitable economic and cultural exchanges that gradually erode differences over fundamental interests, and that, given enough time, people may come to see that the benefits of those exchanges outweigh the incremental changes in fundamental interests that accompany each exchange, until the incremental changes accumulate into a larger transformation in fundamental views. The Court rejected the possibility of using centralized national power to protect religious communities as locations of value pluralism, once in 1990 when it abjured the use of its own centralized authority, and again in 1997 when it barred Congress from using its authority. Professor Sandel sees federalism as a valuable institution not because it promotes or protects value pluralism as such but because it offers the possibility of a transformation of values from those we do not approve into universalist values of which we do approve. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution’s Preamble set the nation on a course to realize something that can be summarized somewhat inaccurately as a set of universal human rights justified to other people by reason. This account makes American universalism distinctive, to the extent that it connects that universalism to a project with roots not in the abstract philosophical theorizing that Professor Sandel argues cannot motivate appropriate citizen behavior, but in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and more generally in the working out of the project of American constitutionalism through the course of United States history.
Reply to Critics
Authors: Sandel Michael J.
Published: October 2003

There are reasons to doubt that the civic aspirations of the republican tradition will be realized in our time, but there are equally compelling reasons to reject the alternative: a public life that gives up on the project of freedom as self-government, that abandons the aim of calling economic power to democratic account, that fails to form in citizens the qualities of character that equip them for self-rule. Of the two versions of republicanism–the modest, instrumental one and the strong, intrinsic, Aristotelian one–the second seems most persuasive. Unless citizens have reason to believe that sharing in self-government is intrinsically important, their willingness to sacrifice individual interests for the common good may be eroded by instrumental calculations about the costs and benefits of political participation. The republican tradition has long considered an excessive preoccupation with consumption a moral and civic vice, inimical to self-government; from the standpoint of procedural liberalism, what matters is fair access to the fruits of consumption. Since imagining ways of reorganizing the relation between family and work so that the distinctive goods of each are accorded the social recognition and prestige they deserve requires explicit social choices about the place of family and work in a good life, it is unlikely to be advanced within the terms of procedural liberalism. The best response to the intolerance that fuels the culture wars is not to deconstruct the identities of the combatants but to challenge the economic forces and cultural tendencies that enervate citizenship and erode the dispositions that equip us for self-rule.
Integrity, Opportunity, and Vulnerability
Authors: White Stuart
Published: October 2003

This chapter advances a conception of justice that serves as the basis of discussions on the rights and obligations of economic citizenship. First, there is commitment to respect and protect citizens’ integrity interests and to maintain a scheme of basic liberties and securities adequate to this task. Second, there is commitment to prevent discrimination, and prevent, correct, or compensate for significant forms of brute luck disadvantage. Third, there is commitment to protect citizens from market vulnerability, and the exploitation and abuse that it spawns.
The Contributive Obligation
Authors: White Stuart
Published: October 2003

This chapter addresses the question of what citizens must do to fulfil their contributive obligation as a matter of fair reciprocity. This obligation should be understood in terms of the citizen’s duty to meet a basic work expectation: a minimum number of hours and years of paid employment, adjusted for specific care work responsibilities. The supply of capital is also a form of productive contribution, and will require adjustment of the citizen’s work expectation.
Basic Income
Authors: White Stuart
Published: October 2003

This chapter considers the debates over unconditional basic income (UBI). Debates over welfare reform rage between advocates of welfare contractualism and supporters of UBI. When judged against standards of non-ideal fair reciprocity, there is good reason to be wary of both types of policies on their own. Policymakers guided by the distributive aims to fair reciprocity and legitimate paternalistic considerations should consider the combination of the two.
Basic Capital
Authors: White Stuart
Published: October 2003

This chapter explores the idea of basic capital – that the state endow each citizen upon maturity with a generous capital grant. It presents the right to basic capital as the centrepiece of a new, formed model of social inheritance. Under this model, the basic capital grant is linked to the support of productive participation in the community, i.e. that the relevant funds be available for purposes such as education, training, setting up a new business, or moving to a new job.
Conclusion: The Politics of Fair Reciprocity
Authors: White Stuart
Published: October 2003

This chapter addresses the question of whether a politics of fair reciprocity, aimed at enacting the civic minimum, would be feasible in capitalist societies such as Britain or the United States. It contests two versions forms of feasibility scepticism: globalisation scepticism and populist scepticism. It then presents some closing comments about intergenerational equity, international equity, and the civic minimum.
The North As/and the Other: Ecology, Domination, Solidarity
Authors: Haila Yrjö
Published: October 2003

Argues that the holistic notion of the ‘whole earth’ as a protectable entity is too insensitive to, and remote from, real human life‐worlds. It works as a poetic vision but not as a framework for sound environmental policy. The examples of Russian colonization of Yakutia in eastern Siberia and of Spanish colonization in Central and Latin America illustrate the conceptual dangers that attend such an ‘objectifying’ attitude. The chapter cites stages in Western philosophy depicting the ‘otherness’ of the natural world as a domain to be conquered, and suggests that a more sympathetic understanding of humanity's place in it is required. This in turn requires greater mutual respect between human beings.
Nature in Spiritual Traditions: Social and Cultural Implications for Environmental Change
Authors: Egri Carolyn P.
Published: October 2003

Concerns spiritual discourse as a means of constructing and reconstructing humankind's relationship with the natural environment. After a brief historical review, the chapter explores the spiritual and philosophical lessons implicit in ancient and modern accounts of relationships between humankind and nature. Focusing on humankind's need to find modes of social organization that allow it to survive with nature, it shows how different cultures have searched out and constructed different meanings and purposes for nature. It discusses the ways in which spiritual communities and religious organizations have worked to further environmental causes and how ecological consciousness has evolved in consequence. Finally, it discusses the implications of spiritual discourse for such organizations working at a global level; these involve the development of a more pluralistic recognition of the need to respect diversity of outlook.
Mapping Complex Social‐Natural Relationships: Cases from Mexico and Africa
Authors: Taylor Peter J.
Published: October 2003

Focuses on the levels of complexity underlying the construction of environmental issues and on the ways in which scientific techniques tend to simplify reality in an effort to control them. To demonstrate how such simplifications take place, it explores the cultural politics involved in constructing scientific knowledge in this field. It presents two case studies: firstly, a political–ecological description of an analytical study of soil erosion in the Oaxaca region of Mexico; secondly, of a computer‐based model of ecological and social arrangements in nomadic pastoral regions in sub‐Saharan Africa. These examples illustrate the process of simplifying abstraction at work and how investigative practice can itself affect policy‐relevant outcomes. The chapter concludes with recommendations for a more explicit approach to the assumptions and choices that simplifying abstractions can involve and shows how such an approach could enrich the understanding of socio‐natural phenomena under investigation.
Security and Solidarity: An Anti‐Reductionist Analysis of Environmental Policy
Authors: Thompson Michael
Published: October 2003

Argues that excessive concern with environmental security at the national level obfuscates necessary attention to the plurality of environmental security concerns at the micro‐level at which Hobbesian competition is actually conducted. An environmental policy framework that reduces plurality will merely serve to destroy the network of trust and cooperation that needs to operate at the micro‐level, and upon which macro‐level security architectures are ultimately based. To avoid this, it is necessary to devise an anti‐reductionist approach based on two objectives: first, to dismantle the ‘realist’ model of international relations (and of security generally) that focuses on states as unitary actors in sole occupation of the policy stage; second, to introduce a more comprehensive concept of security as a spectrum of interlocking entities, from the macro‐ to the micro‐level, each requiring the development and consolidation of trust relationships. Taken together, these objectives imply that environmental security be considered as a mainstream component of a stable international order and not as a mere sideshow. The chapter concludes with an analysis of four behavioural styles, which form a key cultural aspect of the micro‐level dimension of anti‐reductionism–hierarchist, individualist, egalitarian, and fatalist. Each of these implies a different approach to self‐organization, a different sort of social solidarity, and a different set of expectations from environmental security.
The Environment of Justice
Authors: Harvey David
Published: October 2003

Takes up the issues of social class raised by the environmental justice movement in the US. The discussion begins with the primary issue that has given rise to the movement, namely, the dumping of toxic wastes in poor communities or countries. The inhabitants affected are those least able to absorb the resultant dangers to health, and such dumping practices can be seen as both discriminatory and neo‐imperialist. The levels of protest engendered have resulted in US federal government measures to address the issues of environmental justice involved, and the dumping debate can be generalized to a wider and higher level of social justice. On this level, a debate on environmental ethics is unfolding; it is essentially unresolvable because there is no philosophical method of resolving disagreements between different viewpoints regarding the social relations, power imbalances, beliefs, and institutions that underlie the environmental problem. The current rhetoric of environmental justice is not adequate to the task of reconciling competing visions of the rights that it purports to extend. Inability to adjudicate between rival arguments of ‘not in my back yard’ thus produces the unsatisfactory stalemate ‘not in anybody's back yard’. If environmental justice is to be more than an assemblage of particularist postures, some form of embracing socialist plan of action has to be formulated.
Computable Economics
Authors: Velupillai K.
Published: October 2003

In a discipline such as economics, increasingly devoted to its computational content, the mathematical underpinnings of the computability assumptions of economic fundamentals have not been investigated systematically or reasonably exhaustively. In this book, such an attempt is made for the first time. Choice theory, adaptively rational behaviour, induction, learning, arithmetical games, computational complexity of decision processes, growth theory, and the theory of economic fluctuations are given recursion theoretic (i.e, computable) interpretations. Economic theoretic questions, posed recursion theoretically, lead to answers that are ambiguous: undecidable choices, uncomputable learning processes, algorithmically unplayable games, etc., become standard answers. The book also claims that a recursion theoretic formalization of economic analysis makes the subject intrinsically inductive and computational.
Introduction and Overview
Authors: Velupillai Kumaraswamy
Published: October 2003

The first chapter gives a summary of the methodological and epistemological underpinnings of computable economics. There are, in addition, concise chapter summaries and a brief excursion into a discussion of the mathematical method in the formalization of economic theory.
Adaptive Behavior
Authors: Velupillai Kumaraswamy
Published: October 2003

Two counter‐intuitive points are made in this chapter. The first is the claim, demonstrated formally, that orthodox definitions of rationality, when viewed in a dynamic context, turn out to be approximations to adaptively rational behaviour. The second, related point – illustrated with a formal example – is that bounded rationality is not an approximation of any sort to the full rationality of standard theory; rather, it is the other way about.
Learning in a Computable Setting
Authors: Velupillai Kumaraswamy
Published: October 2003

Learning rational expectations equilibria in an overlapping generations model is given a recursion theoretic formalization and the results of the previous chapter are applied. More specifically, it is shown that such a formalization leads to a direct interpretation in terms of Gold's learning paradigm, described in Ch. 5. Furthermore, the model is also given a computable analytic formalization and relevant computability results obtained.
Notes on Computational Complexity
Authors: Velupillai Kumaraswamy
Published: October 2003

A characterization of dynamic choice attributable to Marshall is used as the vehicle through which to discuss the computational complexity of sequentially rational behaviour. Khachiyan's famous results on polynomial time complexity of an ellipsoid algorithm is also described and used in the context of the choice by a ‘Marshallian consumer’. Some general background remarks on the computational complexity of the simplex algorithm are also given.
Conclusions: Reflections and Hopes
Authors: Velupillai Kumaraswamy
Published: October 2003

In the concluding chapter, the themes broached in the first chapter are reconsidered in the light of the results and framework developed in the book as computable economics. In particular, the idea of economics as problem solving and economic agents as problem solvers is taken up for a methodological discussion. More generally, the discussion in this chapter centres on the philosophical and epistemological implications of the kind of mathematical methodology used in the formalization of economic theory.
Economic Democracy
Authors: Archer Robin
Published: October 2003

Sets out the basic argument for economic democracy. It shows that capitalist companies are associations that exercise authority and that workers are the only people subject to that authority. It argues, therefore, that it is workers, and not capitalists, who should exercise direct decision‐making control over these companies. Like consumers, and other affected individuals, capitalists should only exercise indirect control: in their case through capital and stock markets. The chapter also considers other ways in which the freedom of labour is compromised by capitalism, and shows that economic democracy can also address these problems.
Feasibility
Authors: Archer Robin
Published: October 2003

Seeks to clarify the concept of feasibility and distinguish it from concepts of viability and efficiency. It focuses on the question of whether there is a feasible strategy that would enable the labour movement to move step by step towards economic democracy, beginning with circumstances as they exist at present. The chapter suggests that discussion should be limited to advanced capitalist countries with politically significant labour movements.
Industrial Relations
Authors: Archer Robin
Published: October 2003

Identifies unions, capitalist employers, and the government as the three actors with the most influence over the feasibility of any strategy for achieving economic democracy. The chapter considers the different ways in which these actors can organize both themselves and relationships between themselves. The degree of organizational centralization, the degree of class cooperation between unions and employers, and the degree to which the government and the two class actors are involved in each other's affairs, can be used to specify a wide variety of industrial relations systems. The chapter focuses special attention on one of these systems: corporatism.