bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conclusion: Equal Voice and the Promise of American Democracy
Authors: Schlozman Kay Lehman , Verba Sidney , Brady Henry E.
Published: November 2017

This chapter reiterates the findings so far discussed in this volume, and discusses how this book has helped to not only bring to light the persistent inequalities of political voice, but also contributed to the cause of equality of political voice and its tandem issues. After all, the inequalities of political voice this book has documented so extensively threaten the democratic principle of equal responsiveness to all. This chapter thus argues that to recognize the inequalities of political voice, to listen more carefully to the accent of the “unheavenly chorus,” and to take measures to include a more representative set of singers would be a step toward delivering on the promise of American democracy.
Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud
Authors: Vidas Moulie
Published: November 2017

This book offers a new perspective on perhaps the most important religious text of the Jewish tradition. It is widely recognized that the creators of the Talmud innovatively interpreted and changed the older traditions on which they drew. Nevertheless, it has been assumed that the ancient rabbis were committed to maintaining continuity with the past. This book argues on the contrary that structural features of the Talmud were designed to produce a discontinuity with tradition, and that this discontinuity was part and parcel of the rabbis‘ self-conception. Both this self-conception and these structural features were part of a debate within and beyond the Jewish community about the transmission of tradition. Focusing on the Babylonian Talmud, produced in the rabbinic academies of late ancient Mesopotamia, the book analyzes key passages to show how the Talmud's creators contrasted their own voice with that of their predecessors. It also examines Zoroastrian, Christian, and mystical Jewish sources to reconstruct the debates and wide-ranging conversations that shaped the Talmud's literary and intellectual character.
Meeting at Grand Central
Authors: Cronk Lee , Leech Beth L.
Published: November 2017

From the family to the workplace to the marketplace, every facet of our lives is shaped by cooperative interactions. Yet everywhere we look, we are confronted by proof of how difficult cooperation can be—snarled traffic, polarized politics, overexploited resources, social problems that go ignored. The benefits to oneself of a free ride on the efforts of others mean that collective goals often are not met. But compared to most other species, people actually cooperate a great deal. Why is this? This book brings together insights from evolutionary biology, political science, economics, anthropology, and other fields to explain how the interactions between our evolved selves and the institutional structures we have created make cooperation possible. The book begins with a look at the ideas of Mancur Olson and George C. Williams, who shifted the question of why cooperation happens from an emphasis on group benefits to individual costs. It then explores how these ideas have influenced our thinking about cooperation, coordination, and collective action. It persuasively argues that cooperation and its failures are best explained by evolutionary and social theories working together. Selection sometimes favors cooperative tendencies, while institutions, norms, and incentives encourage and make possible actual cooperation. This book should inspire researchers from different disciplines and intellectual traditions to share ideas and advance our understanding of cooperative behavior in a world that is more complex than ever before.
Cooperation and Organizations
Authors: Cronk Lee , Leech Beth L.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the role that institutions and organizations play in making cooperation possible as we go about our everyday lives. Successful organizations are often the ones that build on the successes of previous organizations, using their abilities to mobilize and motivate people and to frame issues to leapfrog over the collective action dilemma. One of the most important areas of research to grow out of this tradition is the study of how groups of people successfully manage common-pool resources. The chapter first considers the distinction between informal, decentralized norms and conventions on the one hand, and formal organizations on the other, before explaining why organizations succeed or fail. It also explores the process known as “cultural group selection,” an important new frontier in the evolutionary study of cooperation which may help explain our flexible coalitional psychology.
The Soviet-Egyptian Intervention in Yemen
Authors: Ferris Jesse
Published: November 2017

This chapter draws on declassified sources in Russian and Arabic to narrate the extraordinary tale of clandestine Soviet support for the dispatch of Egyptian forces to Yemen at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. The Egyptian intervention was made possible by logistical support from the Soviet government, which viewed the civil war in Yemen as an opportunity to advance the cause of revolution in a region critical for Western security. This revolutionary project in Yemen marked the triumphant emergence of the Soviet–Egyptian relationship from the slump of 1958–61, during which bitter disagreements over Arab Communists, the Qāsim regime in Iraq, and Egypt's union with Syria cast a pall over the partnership inaugurated at Suez.
Food for "Peace"
Authors: Ferris Jesse
Published: November 2017

This chapter analyzes the breakdown of Egypt's crucial relationship with the United States as a result of the intervention in Yemen. Contrary to conventional wisdom, which posits a later break in US–Egyptian relations over Lyndon Johnson's pro-Israel policy, the chapter highlights the primacy of the US–Saudi alliance and the early emergence of Yemen as the central bone of contention in the final year of the Kennedy administration. A fundamental assumption underlying the provision of massive assistance to Egypt was that it would solidify the basis for a long-term relationship founded on mutual interests. But in practice, the opposite occurred: US aid fostered an unhealthy dependency, which rendered relations with Egypt susceptible to serious crisis in the event of disruption.
On the Battlefield in Yemen—and in Egypt
Authors: Ferris Jesse
Published: November 2017

This chapter studies the interplay between the battlefield in Yemen and the domestic front in Egypt. It begins with a revisionist account of the Egyptian counterinsurgency campaign, based on Egyptian memoirs and captured documents, and then proceeds to discuss three Egyptian taboos—casualties, cost, and corruption—demonstrating that the pursuit of revolutionary politics abroad contributed significantly to the enfeeblement of the revolution at home. Although the direct cost of the war in lives and treasure may not have been as great as some have argued, the indirect costs of the war proved catastrophic for Egypt. Furthermore, a number of mutually reinforcing factors impressed upon Nasser the need to come to terms with Saudi Arabia in order to end the conflict in Yemen.
The Limits of Local Democracy
Authors: Ocejo Richard E.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the limitations of local participatory democracy, focusing on how the competing definitions of community and conflicting understandings of the appropriate use of the neighborhood that residents and bar owners hold play out during community boards' meetings. It begins with one of several episodes featured in the chapter of residents and bar owners debating liquor licensing and quality-of-life issues in their immediate area and surrounding neighborhood. It then considers the strategies that both neighborhood residents and bar owners use against each other to push forward their definition of community. It shows that early gentrifiers and the community board rely on their past experience in their neighborhood, with the New York State Liquor Authority (SLA), and with bar owners to hone their arguments and reshape their policies to protest bars. Participatory democracy serves as a powerful remedy for such processes as those that bring about advanced gentrification.
Theories of Democracy
Authors: Kelly Jamie Terence
Published: November 2017

This chapter develops a taxonomy of theories of democracy that maps the extent to which they rely on the judgment of citizens. It aims to achieve two things. First, it sorts the vast array of extant theories of democracy into a smaller number of useful, descriptive categories. Second, it hopes that these categories will be instructive insofar as they reflect the extent to which the phenomenon of framing effects will be regarded as damaging to particular theories of democracy. The discussions cover purely procedural theories, stability theories, modified procedural theories, and epistemic theories. There is an enormous range of epistemic demands placed on political judgment by different theories of democracy. As a result, one's assessment of the relevance of framing effects to democratic theory depends heavily on what kind of democratic theory one endorses.
Behavioral Democratic Theory Applied
Authors: Kelly Jamie Terence
Published: November 2017

This chapter assesses the relevance of framing effects for particular normative theories of democracy. It shows how the phenomenon of framing discussed in Chapter 1 ought to affect our thinking about democracy. Drawing on the characterization of the field of democratic theory from Chapter 2, it shows the relevance of framing effects for particular categories of normative theories of democracy. It uses the description of behavioral democratic theory from Chapter 3 to show that emphasizing moral reasons, feasibility constraints, and institutional design leads to important insights about the consequences of framing effects. The chapter's general aims are as follows. First, it shows that minimalist theories of democracy—those that place the fewest demands on the political judgment of citizens—can produce only weak moral reasons for endorsing democracy. Second, in order to be feasible, theories of democracy that incorporate more robust epistemic claims must endorse institutional mechanisms capable of counteracting the pernicious effects of framing.
Institutional Implications
Authors: Kelly Jamie Terence
Published: November 2017

This chapter identifies a number of plausible institutional reforms that could help to secure the epistemic value of democratic decision making even in the face of framing. In order to counteract the effects of framing, three broad strategies suggest themselves. First, increasing the number of competing frames for political issues (e.g., by ensuring a diversity of political and media perspectives) holds out the possibility of making us more responsive to reasons than to frames. Second, mechanisms designed to isolate democratic outcomes from flawed democratic decision making (e.g., constitutional review) might allow us to catch mistakes before they undermine the epistemic value of democratic arrangements. Third, public education programs aimed at eliminating framing effects could provide us with a direct means of improving the decision making of democracies.
Conclusion
Authors: Kelly Jamie Terence
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter summarizes key themes and presents some final thoughts. The book has demonstrated that a behavioral approach to democratic theory—one that rejects the rational actor model of decision making in favor of a picture of choice informed by empirical psychology—can yield important theoretical results. In order to do this, it focused on the phenomenon of framing effects and its relevance to normative theories of democracy. The author generated two results that will validate the behavioral approach. The first concerns democratic theories at the minimalist end of the spectrum. The second result applies to theories that place epistemic demands on the judgment of citizens.
Mirages and Mad Beliefs
Authors: Prendergast Christopher
Published: November 2017

Marcel Proust was long the object of a cult in which the main point of reading his great novel In Search of Lost Time was to find, with its narrator, a redemptive epiphany in a pastry and a cup of lime-blossom tea. We now live in less confident times, in ways that place great strain on the assumptions and beliefs that made those earlier readings possible. This has led to a new manner of reading Proust, against the grain. This book argues the case differently, with the grain, on the basis that Proust himself was prey to self-doubt and found numerous, if indirect, ways of letting us know. The book traces in detail the locations and forms of a quietly nondogmatic yet insistently skeptical voice that questions the redemptive aesthetic the novel is so often taken to celebrate, bringing the reader to wonder whether that aesthetic is but another instance of the mirage or the mad belief that, in other guises, figures prominently in In Search of Lost Time. In tracing the modalities of this self-pressuring voice, the book ranges far and wide, across a multiplicity of ideas, themes, sources, and stylistic registers in Proust's literary thought and writing practice, attentive at every point to inflections of detail, in a sustained account of Proust the skeptic for the contemporary reader.
Starting Anew
Authors: Swedberg Richard
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents the project of creative theorizing in social science. One can approach the topic of theorizing and its current situation with the help of the distinction between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The expression context of discovery refers to the stage at which new ideas for how to explain a phenomenon are generated. The context of justification refers to the stage that comes after this, or when these ideas are given the form that they should have when they are presented to the scientific community. The new type of theorizing advocated in this book primarily draws on a plurality of forms of thinking. These forms include analogies, pattern recognition, diagrams, and the like.
Practical Exercises
Authors: Swedberg Richard
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the role of practical exercises in teaching students how to theorize. The goal of exercises in theorizing is to help students to become skilled in theorizing and to acquire confidence in their skill. It is a skill that draws on a practical know-how of how to theorize, in combination with knowledge of social science. The chapter then explores two types of exercises: those that the reader can do himself/herself, and those that can be used to teach theorizing to students. Currently, established exercises in theorizing do not exist. What does exist, however, is a small number of suggestive exercises that have been developed by social scientists interested in their students doing creative work.
Which Way Forward for Macroeconomics and Policy Analysis?
Authors: Frydman Roman , Phelps Edmund S.
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter discusses the papers presented at the Center on Capitalism and Society conference held in the fall of 2010. The conference, which commemorated the fortieth anniversary of the Phelps microfoundations volume, featured researchers engaged in developing alternatives to the Rational Expectations Hypothesis (REH). The Phelps volume provided radically new accounts of the comovements of macroeconomic aggregates, including inflation and unemployment, while casting serious doubt on the validity of policy analysis based on then-popular Keynesian macroeconometric models. This chapter considers the various efforts to reinvent macroeconomics that were discussed at the Phelps conference, with a particular focus on non-REH alternatives and their implications for economic analysis. Topics include nonroutine change and imperfect knowledge, expectational coordination and market volatility, autonomous expectations in long swings in asset prices, and the natural rate of unemployment.
Warriors of the Cloisters
Authors: Beckwith Christopher I.
Published: November 2017

This book tells how key cultural innovations from Central Asia revolutionized medieval Europe and gave rise to the culture of science in the West. Medieval scholars rarely performed scientific experiments, but instead contested issues in natural science, philosophy, and theology using the recursive argument method. This highly distinctive and unusual method of disputation was a core feature of medieval science, the predecessor of modern science. We know that the foundations of science were imported to Western Europe from the Islamic world, but until now the origins of such key elements of Islamic culture have been a mystery. This book traces how the recursive argument method was first developed by Buddhist scholars and was spread by them throughout ancient Central Asia. It shows how the method was adopted by Islamic Central Asian natural philosophers—most importantly by Avicenna, one of the most brilliant of all medieval thinkers—and transmitted to the West when Avicenna's works were translated into Latin in Spain in the twelfth century by the Jewish philosopher Ibn Da'ud and others. During the same period the institution of the college was also borrowed from the Islamic world. The college was where most of the disputations were held, and became the most important component of medieval Europe's newly formed universities. As the book demonstrates, the Islamic college also originated in Buddhist Central Asia. Using in-depth analysis of ancient Buddhist, Classical Arabic, and Medieval Latin writings, this book will help to transform our understanding of the origins of medieval scientific culture.
Buddhist Central Asian Invention of the Method
Authors: Beckwith Christopher I.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Buddhist Central Asia's invention of the recursive argument method. Some Buddhist teachings, which are found in all Buddhist traditions—indicating that they may be inherited from early Buddhism—contain embedded sets in the form of linked lists, which are suggestive of recursion. The Buddhist fondness for explicitly numbered sets and lists is traditionally ascribed to Siddhārtha Gautama, or Śākyamuni Buddha, himself. The chapter first considers the enduring influence of Hellenism after Alexander's conquest and colonization of Bactria and Gandhāra before presenting examples of the Central Asian Buddhist recursive argument.
An Overview of Worlds A and B
Authors: Radin Margaret Jane
Published: November 2017

This book examines standardized form contracts, also known as boilerplate. In the past, “contract” was interpreted as a bargained-for exchange transaction between two parties who each consent to the exchange. Bargained-for exchange represents contract in a world of voluntary agreement—World A (for Agreement). Standardized form contracts, on the other hand, belong to World B (for Boilerplate). World B doesn't fit the theory, the rationale, of contract law. This book explores judicial oversight of boilerplate through the legal doctrines of unconscionability and voidness as against public policy, among others. It also considers the problem of boilerplate rights deletion schemes as well as attempts to bring such schemes under the aegis of traditional contract theories. This chapter provides an overview of worlds A and B as well as varieties of World B contracts, boilerplate as a method of contract formation, and two problems arising from boilerplate: normative degradation and democratic degradation.
Democratic Degradation
Authors: Radin Margaret Jane
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the democratic degradation that may be caused by the apparent replacement of the law of the state with the “law” of the firm when boilerplate is deployed in mass markets. It considers mass-market boilerplate rights deletion schemes and how the widespread use of boilerplate causes democratic degradation; for example, it threatens the distinction between public and private ordering, undermines the rule of law, and erases legal rights. The chapter also examines private law, the main legal infrastructure of the liberal notion of private ordering, and copycat boilerplate. Finally, it discusses technological protection measures (TPMs) and their implications for legal infrastructure, along with measures that might help to make TPMs less problematic from the point of view of the rule of law.
A Summary of the Philosophy of Contract
Authors: Radin Margaret Jane
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the main streams of contract philosophy in order to elucidate the extent to which boilerplate is a permissible means of creating contractual obligation. In particular, it considers the deep embeddedness—the ineradicability—of the notion of voluntariness. It also compares and contrasts the economic efficiency theory of contract with the various theories based more directly on freedom of the will. The chapter first provides an overview of contract theory, focusing on autonomy (rights) and welfare theories, reliance theory, and equivalence of exchange theory. It then describes the basic premises of the economic theory of law, the role of incentives in maximizing social welfare, contract law, and property and liability rules. It shows that the existing philosophical theories of contract depend on the core notions of voluntariness, freedom of choice, or consent, thus making it difficult to incorporate boilerplate into the theories of contract.
Evaluating Current Judicial Oversight
Authors: Radin Margaret Jane
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines current judicial oversight of contract law, and more specifically the extent to which boilerplate is regulated as contract. It first considers the three categories of the normal, traditional oversight doctrines for contracts: coercion or duress; fraud, deception, or misrepresentation; and invalid contract formation. It then explores the doctrine of unconscionability and a related wild-card doctrine that makes it possible for courts to declare a contract void because it undermines public policy. It also discusses the jurisprudential problem with “wild-card” doctrines before concluding with an analysis of how traditional oversight doctrines are faring with regard to boilerplate rights deletion schemes, with particular emphasis on arbitration clauses, choice of forum clauses, exculpatory clauses, and limitation of remedy.
Can Current Oversight Be Improved?
Authors: Radin Margaret Jane
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines whether the standard judicial oversight of contract law could be improved to do a better job of alleviating normative and democratic degradation. It first considers whether boilerplate rights deletion schemes are “sturdy indefensibles” and explains why it would be very difficult to enhance the ability of the standard oversight measures of traditional contract law. It then discusses possible improvements to other traditional methods of oversight, focusing in particular on the suggestions of Robert Hillman and Omri Ben-Shahar. It also explores the dilemma that arises when rights deletion is disallowed and concludes with the argument that current oversight measures might be improved by reducing the reliance on sweeping inferences based on assumptions and producing more empirical data that courts would actually take into account.
“Private” Reform Ideas
Authors: Radin Margaret Jane
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers “private” reform ideas or market solutions for improving the normative and democratic acceptability of boilerplate terms. It begins with a discussion of one potentially important “private” incentive: reputation. Some firms are likely to be especially cognizant of the need to maintain good relationships with their users, and therefore responsive to the threat of reputational harm. This is most likely to be true for firms that have users who are reasonably savvy about issues of user rights, such as data privacy or information copying. After outlining the conditions conducive to consumer pushback, the chapter examines other private or market approaches, such as those involving rating agencies, seals of approval, and certifications. Finally, it looks at automated filtering or “machine bargaining,” and especially the implementation of filtering systems for personal computers.
Reconceptualizing (Some) Boilerplate under Tort Law
Authors: Radin Margaret Jane
Published: November 2017

This chapter explains how abusive boilerplate could either be treated as a defective product, or else regulated under a new tort of intentional deprivation of basic legal rights. It argues that we should put boilerplate rights deletion schemes into the legal category—tort law—in which we can actually consider them as products, instead of considering them one at a time as a contract between two individuals. It also highlights boundary the fuzzy and shifting boundary between contracts and torts by focusing on doctrinal border areas such as fraud or misrepresentation, bad faith breach of contract, and warranty. A case study involving implied warranty of habitability in residential leases is presented. The chapter concludes with a comparison of tort and contract remedies, along with the common-law economic loss doctrine.
“Public” and Hybrid Regulatory Solutions
Authors: Radin Margaret Jane
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers “public” and hybrid regulatory solutions for boilerplate. It first examines the U.S. preference for private, market solutions, with particular emphasis on its tendency to provide for disclosure rather than substantive regulation of boilerplate, along with state legislation and judge-made law that goes beyond disclosure to create substantive regulations of contract law in particular areas. It then discusses issues associated with industry-specific regulation; piecemeal “fixes” to current law that may be enacted through legislation, imposed by agency rulemaking, or developed by judge-made law; and hybrid regimes in which private initiatives would be supported or protected by legislation or judge-made law. It also explores regulation in form of black lists, white lists, or grey lists and the problem of piecemeal adjudication. Finally, it looks at comprehensive regulation by drawing on the case of the European Union.
Heterogeneity: The art of averaging
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

This chapter first considers the case when individuals differ only in infectivity, which means that one can in a sense, simply work with the “average” individual. It then exposes a crucial, but hitherto hidden, assumption, namely that the contact process is uniform. If, in contrast, the population is represented by a spatial lattice or a social network, with contact restricted to sets of neighbors (partners, acquaintances, etc.), then all neighbors of a certain individual will experience the actual infectious pressure exercised by this particular individual, and not some kind of average. The chapter goes on to illustrate the key influence of dependence in experienced infectivity.
Dynamics at the demographic time scale
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the influence of the demography on the persistence of an infective agent, and vice versa on the influence of the agent on host population growth and persistence. When new “fuel” is provided through the replacement of immune individuals by newborn susceptibles, the infective agent may strike again at a later time or even persist and become endemic. Whether we observe repeated outbreaks or relatively small fluctuations around a steady endemic level depends on the temporal and spatial scale that we, as investigators of the system, choose to monitor and/or to model. The chapter also suggests that two parameters, rather than just one, are needed to distinguish between a single outbreak (which may reoccur much later by reintroduction of the agent from the outside) and the endemic situation.
Inference, or how to deduce conclusions from data
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

This chapter describes methods for making inferences about key epidemiological parameters from available data. The chapter presents the powerful statistical method called maximum-likelihood (ML) which is illustrated in the context of a simple transmission model for intensive care units (ICU). This is further developed to derive estimators for the parameter length of stay in an ICU. The chapter then returns to the prototype stochastic epidemic model of Chapter 3 and derives inference methods for key parameters of this model, both for the situation where the epidemic is observed continuously and the situation where only the final size of the outbreak is observed. Finally, the chapter returns to the ICU situation, but now considers a model with transmission leading to dependencies. Model parameters are again estimated by ML-inference with the aid of counting processes.
Other indicators of severity
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

This chapter is devoted to the initial real-time growth rate r, the probability of a major outbreak, the final size, and the endemic level, in structured populations, with special attention for computational simplifications in the case of separable mixing. Chapter 7 studied the basic reproduction number R₀ for epidemic models in populations manifesting various forms of heterogeneity. It was illustrated that R₀ depends on the transmission parameters, contact rates, the infectious period and on the community structure. The importance of R₀ lies in the fact that an epidemic can, and will in the deterministic setting, take off only if R₀ > 1, a characteristic referred to as supercritical. In a community having births or immigration of susceptibles, this also means that the disease can become endemic. If the parameters and community are such that R₀ < 1 (or R₀ = 1), we are in the subcritical (critical) regime and an epidemic outbreak cannot occur. The chapter examines important supplementary characteristic features and shows how they depend on the different parameters of the model.
Age structure
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

This chapter elaborates on the special case of age structure. Especially in the context of infectious diseases among humans, “age” is often used to characterize individuals. Partly this reflects our system of public health administration (and, perhaps, our preoccupation with age). There is, however, a more “mechanistic” reason to incorporate age structure: patterns of human social behavior and sexual activity correlate with age. In addition, the effect that the infective agent has on the host sometimes depends heavily on the age of the host (e.g., in polio) or it may depend on another aspect of the host, such as pregnancy, which correlates with age (e.g., in rubella). The chapter also discusses vaccination strategies as one of the major applied issues of age-structured epidemic models.
What is contact?
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the myriad ways in which one can model contacts between individuals. The two most important aspects of contacts for infection transmission are (1) the number of contacts per unit of time, and (2) the number of different individuals with whom these contacts occur. Aspect 1 is concerned not only with variation in the number of transmission opportunities during a pairing, but also with the duration of the pairing. Aspect 2 concerns spatial or social networks with variation in the set of potential “contactees.” This could be the entire population, a dynamic subset of the population, or a fixed subset of the population. The remainder of the chapter discusses the new aspects that arise in heterogeneous populations where different types of individuals are recognized; consistency conditions; populations that consist of very many small groups, like a community of households, with intense within-group contact; graphs and networks; and the pair approximation technique.
Estimators of R0 derived from mechanistic models
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents a selection of methods to estimate a value of the basic reproduction number R₀ from a variety of available data. The estimation of R₀ is important, as these play a major role, for example, in gauging outbreak potential, and in public health decisions on prevention and control effort. The chapter focuses on three topics: (i) generalizing estimators presented earlier in the book based on final-size epidemic data or age-structured endemic data; (ii) controlled (transmission) experiments performed to estimate transmission potential and duration of infectivity; and (iii) the infectious agent is emerging, either for the first time or for the first time in a particular host population, so very little is known and outbreak data are becoming available “in real time,” as the epidemic progresses.
Counting Confucians through Social Scientific Research
Authors: Sun Anna
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the long-standing problem of identifying Confucians in China (and East Asia in general) through social science research methods—a problem deeply rooted in the nineteenth-century conceptualization of Confucianism and the overall classification of Chinese religions. It investigates different types of empirical data—national censuses and surveys—from Mainland China, as well as from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, in order to answer two questions. First is about whether “Confucianism” is a category in religious classifications in these East Asian countries and regions; the second asks about how many people are counted as “Confucians” in China.
The Maze and the Masses
Authors: Landemore Hélène
Published: November 2017

This chapter argues that collective intelligence offers an attractive solution to the problem of the average citizen's ignorance and irrationality. It first illustrates this point by presenting the metaphor of the maze, inspired by Descartes' thought experiment in the Discourse on Method. Next, the chapter sets out the definition of “democracy,” which gains a certain meaning and relevance within the context of this book—as, primarily, an inclusive collective decision procedure, that is, a procedure for collective decisions characterized by the fact that it is inclusive, more or less directly, of all the members of the group for whom decisions need to be made. The chapter then considers the domain of democratic reason and politics, before turning to the concept of democratic reason as the collective intelligence of the people. Finally, the chapter closes with a brief overview of the following chapters.
First Mechanism of Democratic Reason: Inclusive Deliberation
Authors: Landemore Hélène
Published: November 2017

This chapter stresses that deliberation is best designed for problem solving, in which cognitive diversity turns out to be more crucial than individual ability. Because deliberation allows the weeding out of bad information and arguments from the good, it does not matter too much if the individuals taking part in the deliberation do not have maximal cognitive abilities. It matters more that the group is characterized by a high degree of cognitive diversity. If the group can be so characterized, the case can be made that including more people, which generally means including more cognitive diversity, will make the group smarter. The argument further translates into a defense of descriptive representation and the selection of representatives through random lotteries rather than election.
Epistemic Failures of Majority Rule: Real and Imagined
Authors: Landemore Hélène
Published: November 2017

This chapter addresses a series of objections to the claimed epistemic properties of majority rule and, more generally, aggregation of judgments. It first considers a general objection to the epistemic approach to voting, which supposedly does not take seriously enough the possibility that politics is about aggregation of interests, rather than aggregation of judgments. The chapter also considers the objection from Arrow's Impossibility Theorem and the doctrinal paradox (or discursive dilemma). Next, the chapter addresses the problem of informational free riding supposedly afflicting citizens in mass democracies, as well as the problem of the voting paradox (as a by-product). Finally, the chapter turns to a refutation of the objection that citizens suffer from systematic biases that are amplified at the collective level.
Political Cognitivism: A Defense
Authors: Landemore Hélène
Published: November 2017

This chapter offers a defense of one of the main and most controversial assumptions on which the epistemic case for democracy relies, namely that there exists a procedure-independent standard of correctness in political matters and that this standard can be approximated by human decision making. It calls this assumption “political cognitivism.” This chapter deals with various forms of political cognitivism and the so-called fact/value dichotomy, showing that political cognitivism is a position that can be embraced from a great number of perspectives and is compatible with a number of metaethical views. It also answers the antiauthoritarian objection that assuming a common good or a general interest requires an authoritarian and dangerous notion of truth.
Of Ski Trails and State Constitutions
Authors: Zackin Emily
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines why state constitutions have been so widely criticized and consistently excluded from descriptions of America's constitutional tradition. It seems that the people who wrote the state constitutions failed to grasp the purpose and the nature of constitutional law. Their recognizable features are surrounded, even engulfed, by hundreds of mundane administrative details. Indeed, many state constitutions contain provisions about policy choices as detailed as the construction of ski trails. In order to recognize the principled nature of state constitutionalism, the chapter analyzes the ubiquitous assumptions about “higher lawmaking” and states' idiosyncrasies that have animated its critics. It explores whether we should really revise our conception of American constitutional rights based solely on the state constitutions' (highly detailed) contents. It argues that the criticisms leveled against state constitutions are misplaced and demonstrates that they are actually constitutional.
Education
Authors: Zackin Emily
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the campaigns to add education rights to state constitutions, with particular emphasis on how the common school movement was able to establish the states' constitutional duty to provide education. The leaders of the common school movement insisted that government had a moral duty to expand opportunities for children whose parents could not otherwise afford to educate them, and that state legislatures should be legally obligated to fulfill it. This movement's central claim was that the value of constitutional rights lay in their potential to promote policy changes by forcing legislatures to pass the kinds of redistributive policies they tended to avoid. The chapter considers the evidence for an American positive-rights tradition that exists primarily at the state level and discusses Congress's motive for the creation of constitutional rights as a case of entrenchment. It argues that education provisions found in state constitutions are positive rights.
Public Capital and Education
Authors: Agénor Pierre-Richard
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the links among public capital, knowledge accumulation, and economic growth. It emphasizes the view, in line with the empirical evidence, that knowledge accumulation may depend critically on access to public capital. It also considers the possibility of a trade-off between public spending on education and investment in infrastructure. The point is that even though these expenditure components may be strongly complementary at the microeconomic or sectoral level, they may be substitutes at the macroeconomic level due to a financing constraint. The question that arises, then, is how to allocate optimally (limited) resources among alternative uses. It is addressed by assuming, as discussed earlier, that the government's goal is to maximize growth.
Public Capital and Health
Authors: Agénor Pierre-Richard
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines interactions among public capital, health, and economic growth, using both two- and three-period Allais–Samuelson Overlapping Generations models. The first model dwells on the large body of evidence that suggests that access to infrastructure may be critical to improving health outcomes. The second accounts, in addition, for the fact that there is persistence in health outcomes between childhood and adulthood, the first two stages of life. This creates the possibility that public capital may affect health in ways that are different than commonly thought: if, for instance, greater access to infrastructure services allows parents to devote more time to child rearing, and if children's health depends positively on parental time, their productivity and earnings in adulthood will also be affected. In effect, this analysis shows that time allocated to child rearing, which is often considered as unproductive in growth models, may turn out to be a critical channel through which public capital affects growth. The chapter concludes by noting that interactions between health and education, which are well documented, may serve to magnify the effect of public capital on growth and human welfare.
Public Capital and Innovation
Authors: Agénor Pierre-Richard
Published: November 2017

This chapter extends the Allais–Samuelson Overlapping Generations models presented in chapters 1 and 2 to study interactions between infrastructure and human capital with R&D activities and growth. It begins by providing some background evidence on these interactions. The model is then presented and solved, and the impact of public policy, including potential trade-offs associated with the provision of infrastructure and other services by the government, is discussed. Again, this is a critical issue; if governments have access to limited resources to cover their expenditure, different types of government interventions may entail (temporary or permanent) trade-offs at the macroeconomic level—even though at the microeconomic or sectoral level these interventions are largely complementary. In addition, different types of government intervention may generate spillover effects on other sectors, which may have an indirect impact on innovation capacity.
Public Capital and Poverty Traps
Authors: Agénor Pierre-Richard
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the role that public capital may play in helping a poor country escape from a poverty trap, that is, a low-growth equilibrium. The focus of the discussion is on the nonlinearities that may characterize the benefits associated with public capital: for instance, once an efficient, reliable, and uncongested transport network is in place, the direct benefits resulting from building yet another highway may be more limited. These nonlinearities, which may take the form of network externalities, are reviewed in the first part. The second part extends the basic model presented in Chapter 1 to account for network externalities. The possibility of multiple equilibria, and the role of a Big Push in public investment in infrastructure, is then examined. Several alternative channels through which public capital can produce an escape from a poverty trap are studied next, including effects through time allocated to education, health outcomes, and technology adoption, in a setting where the decision to switch technologies is endogenously determined through a rate-of-return arbitrage condition. The last section discusses how aid volatility, by adversely affecting public investment programs, can also lead to stagnation.
Falling Back In
Authors: Maurer Noel
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores how the United States' return to the empire trap played out, starting with Franklin Roosevelt in Mexico through Eisenhower in Guatemala and faraway Iran. Under Franklin Roosevelt, the United States began to provide foreign aid (in the form of grants and loans) and rolled out perhaps the first case of modern covert action against the government of Cuba. Both tools were perfected during the Second World War, which saw the creation of entire agencies of government dedicated to providing official transfers and covertly manipulating the affairs of foreign states. In addition, the development of sophisticated trade controls allowed targeted action against the exports of other nations. For example, after 1948 the United States could attempt to influence certain Latin American governments by granting or withholding quotas for sugar.
Escaping by Design?
Authors: Maurer Noel
Published: November 2017

This chapter recounts how over the course of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s a series of small legal and political innovations began to allow private investors to use international tribunals to sue foreign governments and then use American and European courts to enforce the decisions. Before 1945, the doctrine of absolute sovereign immunity held that no state could be held accountable for its actions in the courts of another state. After 1945, reforms began to chip away at sovereign immunity. Reforms arose from efforts to depoliticize investment disputes: first by giving private investors the right to take foreign governments to arbitration without the need to have their home government “espouse” the claim; then by giving national courts the right to enforce arbitration judgments against foreign governments.
Post-Occidental Reason: The Crisis of Occidentalism and the Emergenc(y)e of Border Thinking
Authors: Mignolo Walter D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter brings border thinking into conversation with postcoloniality through the colonial difference. Postcoloniality, and its equivalents—beyond Eurocentrism and Occidentalism—is both a critical discourse that brings to the foreground the colonial side of the “modern world system” and the coloniality of power imbedded in modernity itself, as well as a discourse that relocates the ratio between geohistorical locations and knowledge production. The reordering of the geopolitics of knowledge manifests itself in two different but complementary directions. The first is the critique of the subalternization from the perspective of subaltern knowledges. The second is the emergence of border thinking as a new epistemological modality at the intersection of Western and the diversity of categories that were suppressed under Occidentalism, Orientalism, and area studies.
“An Other Tongue”: Linguistics Maps, Literary Geographies, Cultural Landscapes
Authors: Mignolo Walter D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores the implications of national ideologies in the domain of languages and literatures intermixed with the colonial difference. It looks at the Haitian Revolution, wherein language was intrinsically related to community formation and to geopolitical configurations. Indeed, the Haitian Revolution is crucial for envisioning a new scenario of geopolitical configurations and for understanding the function of languages for political interventions and for building communities. “An other tongue” is the necessary condition for “an other thinking” and for the possibility of moving beyond the defense of national languages and national ideologies—both of which have been operating in complicity with imperial powers and imperial conflicts.