bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Neoplatonists
Authors: Hankinson R. J.
Published: October 2003

Although the syncretism of the preceding Platonic tradition is still evident in the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, Plotinus’ system of reality, Hankinson argues, is a strikingly original achievement. Plotinus conceives reality as an ordered and causally inter‐related structure, according to which everything is explained in terms of its relationship with the supreme, transcendent One; this is taken over by his successors, such as Proclus, with whom Neoplatonism reaches its most formalized incarnation. The thought of Plotinus and Proclus is quite remote from the discussions of nature that had provided the context for earlier Greek theories of causation. But John Philoponus, a Christian philosopher, brings a Neoplatonic approach to physical explanation, in particular in his critique of Aristotle's physics and dynamics. Simplicius tried to combine physics and theology; as Christianity came to dominate the Graeco‐Roman world, however, scientific speculation on natural causes waned, and theology became the main concern.
Wage Bargaining, Union Power, and Economic Integration
Authors: Boeri Tito , Brugiavini Agar , Calmfors Lars , Booth Alison , Burda Michael , Checchi Daniele , Ebbinghaus Bernhard , Freeman Richard , Garibaldi Pietro , Holmlund Bertil , Naylor Robin , Schludi Martin , Verdier Thierry , Visser Jelle
Published: October 2003

Examines the determinants of union influence over wages. After a brief review of the existing literature on union wage effects, it describes the major factors conditioning the extent to which unions will be able to exert an influence on bargained wage outcomes. The likely impact of trade, economic integration, and FDI on union bargaining power are analysed in the following section.
Wider Dimensions of Unions' Presence
Authors: Boeri Tito , Brugiavini Agar , Calmfors Lars , Booth Alison , Burda Michael , Checchi Daniele , Ebbinghaus Bernhard , Freeman Richard , Garibaldi Pietro , Holmlund Bertil , Naylor Robin , Schludi Martin , Verdier Thierry , Visser Jelle
Published: October 2003

An analysis of union presence focusing only on union membership can be misleading, particularly so for European countries. Ch. 4 examines wider issues of union presence, including forms of bargaining (centralization and coordination of bargaining) and issues of coverage of collective agreements. Two key questions are addressed. First, what do unions do besides bargain over wages? Second, how do unions make their presence felt beyond mere density statistics (‘excess coverage’)?
Bargaining Structure and Macroeconomic Performance
Authors: Boeri Tito , Brugiavini Agar , Calmfors Lars , Booth Alison , Burda Michael , Checchi Daniele , Ebbinghaus Bernhard , Freeman Richard , Garibaldi Pietro , Holmlund Bertil , Naylor Robin , Schludi Martin , Verdier Thierry , Visser Jelle
Published: October 2003

The macroeconomics effects of various degrees of coordination in wage bargaining are analysed with a special focus on aggregate wage and unemployment levels. The extent of bargaining coordination may affect wage setting both directly and indirectly because it interacts with other factors, such as economic policy and macroeconomic shocks. The last section discusses how the EMU is likely to affect wage bargaining changing and wage setting.
The Future Prospects for Trade Unions in Europe
Authors: Boeri Tito , Brugiavini Agar , Calmfors Lars , Booth Alison , Burda Michael , Checchi Daniele , Ebbinghaus Bernhard , Freeman Richard , Garibaldi Pietro , Holmlund Bertil , Naylor Robin , Schludi Martin , Verdier Thierry , Visser Jelle
Published: October 2003

Discusses the future prospects for union presence and influence in Europe. Three major issues are discussed: (1) future membership trends; (2) the future development of bargaining structures; and (3) possible future union strategies. As a final point, the difficulties of predicting the future role of trade unions in Europe are stressed.
Introduction
Authors: Boeri Tito , Brugiavini Agar , Calmfors Lars , Booth Alison , Burda Michael , Checchi Daniele , Ebbinghaus Bernhard , Freeman Richard , Garibaldi Pietro , Holmlund Bertil , Naylor Robin , Schludi Martin , Verdier Thierry , Visser Jelle
Published: October 2003

In this part of the volume, the overall theme is the policy dilemma created by the many different activities of trade union in the field of welfare provision, notably pension policies and unemployment protection. Throughout the following chapters, a tension emerges between the role of unions as insurance providers, as institutions that facilitate agreements between different parties, and as rent‐seeking monopolists. By making use of an interdisciplinary approach, the analysis rationalizes a set of distinct features of the interaction between union activities and union structure on the one hand and welfare arrangements and welfare developments on the other.
Unions and Unemployment Insurance
Authors: Boeri Tito , Brugiavini Agar , Calmfors Lars , Booth Alison , Burda Michael , Checchi Daniele , Ebbinghaus Bernhard , Freeman Richard , Garibaldi Pietro , Holmlund Bertil , Naylor Robin , Schludi Martin , Verdier Thierry , Visser Jelle
Published: October 2003

Differences in unionization rates across countries appear to be related to how unemployment insurance is organized in different countries. The chapter presents the involvement of unions in the provision of unemployment insurance, highlighting theoretical considerations, policy arguments, and empirical evidence in favour of a particular unemployment insurance arrangement known as the ‘Ghent regime’.
The Welfare State as Piggy Bank
Authors: Barr Nicholas
Published: October 2003

This book applies economic theory to the welfare state. Its core message is that the welfare state exists not only to relieve poverty and redistribute income and wealth (the ‘Robin Hood’ function) but also as a series of institutions that provide insurance and consumption smoothing (the ‘piggy‐bank’ function). The book develops three central arguments about the role of the state in industrial countries and also in post‐communist and middle‐income developing countries.

First, the welfare state has an insufficiently understood piggy‐bank function that is additional to and separate from poverty relief. Even if all poverty and social exclusion could be eliminated, so that the entire population were middle class, there would still be a need for institutions to offer insurance (for example, unemployment insurance, long‐term care insurance, medical insurance) and consumption smoothing over the life cycle (for example, pensions and education finance in the form of student loans). Private institutions – though often effective in other areas – face pervasive problems of imperfect information, risk, and uncertainty, and attempts to address those problems inescapably involve state intervention.

Second, and consequentially, the welfare state is here to stay, since twenty‐first‐century developments do nothing to undermine those reasons – if anything, they do the reverse.

To argue that the welfare state is robust does not, however, mean that it is static. A third set of arguments concerns the ways it can and will adapt to economic and social change.
The Mirage of Private Unemployment Insurance
Authors: Barr Nicholas
Published: October 2003

Chapter 3 discusses unemployment insurance. Actuarial insurance faces a series of problems including adverse selection and – particularly – moral hazard. It is, therefore, not surprising that private insurance connected with unemployment – for example mortgage protection policies – is offered on only the most restrictive of conditions, and that no private policies offer cover remotely comparable to that of state schemes. The state, in contrast, can offer social insurance.
Problems With Medical Insurance
Authors: Barr Nicholas
Published: October 2003

This chapter explores the wide‐ranging and well‐known problems of medical insurance, including uncertainty about future probabilities, adverse selection, and moral hazard, which lead to uninsurable conditions and upward pressures on medical spending. The chapter goes on to discuss methods of cost containment, and to assess different strategies: private funding plus private production, public funding plus public production, and public funding plus private (or mixed) production. A key conclusion is that attempts to adapt private arrangements end up looking like social insurance, in the sense that premiums are not based on individual risk and insurers are not allowed to exclude high‐risk applicants. A second key conclusion is that different strategies for financing health care have different but largely predictable problems.
The Economics of Pensions
Authors: Barr Nicholas
Published: October 2003

In the world of certainty described in Ch. 2, people provide for their old age through saving, and those voluntary choices are efficient. Once the analysis is extended to allow for risk, uncertainty, and imperfect information, pensions based on voluntary saving are no longer necessarily efficient, opening up the possibility that state intervention might improve well‐being. This chapter sets out the simple economics of pensions and then discusses problems of risk, uncertainty, and imperfect information. Consumers are imperfectly informed about complex, long‐run contracts, necessitating stringent regulation of financial markets. Insurers are badly informed in a variety of ways, suggesting that social insurance might have a role. Consumers, insurers, and government all face uncertainty through demographic shocks and macroeconomic turbulence. Such shocks suggest a role for the state in addressing inflation and a potential role for consumption smoothing across generations.
Misleading Guides to Pension Design
Authors: Barr Nicholas
Published: October 2003

This chapter summarizes core controversies about pensions by focusing on ten persistent myths about pension design that have clouded discussion, many of them centred on the debate about the respective merits of funded pensions (in which today's pensions are paid out of previously accumulated contributions) and Pay‐As‐You‐Go arrangements (in which today's pensions are paid out of today's contributions). Analysis of pensions needs to draw on microeconomics, macroeconomics, financial economics, and an understanding of the theory of social insurance. Many of the myths – relating to demographic change, savings, economic growth, public spending, and labour supply – are based on analysis that is incomplete because it omits one or more of these components.
Pension Design: The Options
Authors: Barr Nicholas
Published: October 2003

This chapter sets out the wide range of options for pension design – funded or Pay‐As‐You‐Go, public or private, defined‐contribution or defined‐benefit – drawing on economic theory, the experience of different countries, and analysis of public and private institutional capacity constraints. Though the options vary in the form and extent of state involvement, even the most private arrangements require continuing government involvement, notably to ensure macroeconomic stability, to enforce contributions, and to ensure regulation of financial markets; and if reducing uncertainty is an objective – addressing inflation, pooling risks within a generation and across generations – the role of the state is to that extent larger.
Core Issues in the Economics of Education
Authors: Barr Nicholas
Published: October 2003

In the world of certainty described in Ch. 2, people finance their education by borrowing in perfect capital markets against their future income, and such voluntary choices are efficient. Once risk, uncertainty, and imperfect information enter the picture, that result no longer holds, requiring state intervention to give people a mechanism for moving resources to their younger years. This chapter and the next point to these problems as they apply to four sets of actors – policy‐makers, consumers of education, borrowers, and lenders. This chapter discusses the complex objectives of education and then explains why it is not possible to quantify the benefits of education, with two implications: policy‐makers cannot measure external benefits and hence the efficient level of subsidy; nor is it possible to quantify definitively the efficient level of spending on education.
Institutions and Democratic Citizenship
Authors: Hadenius Axel
Published: October 2003

The book contains two parts that have a broad theme in common. The aim in Part I is to contribute to the debate on democracy's preconditions. Drawing on a broad range of theories, the author specifies certain societal and institutional traits that can serve to further democracy. Democratic development in Africa, Latin America, and India is then compared. The conclusion is that democracy is not the product of social and economic forces first of all. To a greater extent, it is the consequence of prevailing institutional conditions, i.e. the nature of the state

The historical development of state structures is the object of analysis in Part II. The focus is mainly on Europe. The prospects for democracy in modern times have been greatly affected, the author maintains, by varying paths of institutional development. Moreover, the differing modes of state have displayed a variable capacity for governance and economic development. The evolution of state structures thus has consequences across broad areas of political and social life.
Parties: Denied, Dismissed, or Redundant? a Critique
Authors: Daalder Hans
Published: October 2003

Hans Daalder systematically analyses writings since the beginning of the twentieth century that have dealt with an alleged ‘crisis of parties’, or, as described since the 1970s, ‘party decline’. He criticizes the normative or ideological pseudoconcepts used implicitly or explicitly in this literature in generally negative assessments of the status of parties in Western Europe. The term ‘crisis of parties’, he finds, was commonly used as a euphemism to reflect a rejection of parties in general, or a party in particular, and he argues that in the debate on the crisis of party, at least four different bodies of writing are intermingled, which should be clearly distinguished. The chapter is devoted to discussing these: the first set of literature, which Daalder calls ‘denial of party’, denies a legitimate role for party, and sees parties as a threat to the good society; the second set of literature, called ‘the selective rejection of party’, incorporates the views of those who regard certain types of parties as ‘good’ but other types of parties as ‘bad’; the third set of literature, called ‘the selective rejection of party systems’, contains writings that propose that certain party systems are ‘good’ and others are ‘bad’; the last set of literature, called ‘the redundancy of party’, incorporates the views of those who regard parties as a transient phenomenon—products of a period of past mass mobilization—now becoming increasingly irrelevant in democratic politics as other actors and institutions have taken over the major functions that parties once played.
The Ascendancy of the Party in Public Office: Party Organizational Change in Twentieth‐Century Democracies
Authors: Katz Richard S. , Mair Peter
Published: October 2003

Concerned with the development of party organizations in twentieth‐century democracies, and deals specifically with the shifting balance of power between what has earlier been termed the three organizational ‘faces’ of party: the party on the ground, the party in central office, and the party in public office. An evaluation is made of the changing balance among these three faces in the context of four models of party organization: the cadre (or elite) party, which was the dominant form of party organization prior to mass suffrage; the mass party, which emerged with, or in anticipation of and to militate for, mass suffrage, and which was widely regarded, particularly in Europe, as the ‘normal’ or ‘ideal’ form of party organization for most of the twentieth century; the catch‐all party, development towards which was first commented upon in the literature in the 1960s, and which has come to rival the mass party not only in prominence but also in the affections of many analysts; and finally, what is called here the cartel party, a new and emerging model of party organization, which Katz and Mair believe to be increasingly evident among established democracies in recent years. In tracing the shifting balance of power among the three faces and across the four models of party organization, the authors contend that the most recent stage of development has resulted in the ascendancy of the party in public office, and the concomitant ‘relegation’ or subordination of the other two faces. Moreover, while parties on the ground sometimes continue to flourish, they suggest that the ostensible empowerment of party memberships, or even their greater autonomy, may nevertheless, be compatible with an increased privileging of the party in public office. Finally, both the sources and implications of party organizational change are briefly discussed, and it is suggested that there is an association between the most recent shifts in the internal balance of intra‐party power, on the one hand, and the apparent growth in popular feelings of alienation from parties, on the other.
Beyond the Catch‐All Party: Approaches to the Study of Parties and Party Organization in Contemporary Democracies
Authors: Wolinetz Steven B.
Published: October 2003

There are good reasons for re‐examining existing classifications of parties and seeing if others can be developed. However, reworking categories is a complex process, requiring further research and interaction between theory and data. This chapter is a preliminary effort, and focuses primarily on parties in established liberal democracies. The first half examines the adequacy of existing party categories in light of the literature in sections entitled: Categories and concepts in the comparative literature; Cadre versus mass parties; and Parties of mass integration, catch‐all parties, and beyond’ (to the cartel party). The second half considers ways in which contemporary parties might be compared in sections entitled: New bases for classification? Vote‐seeking, office‐seeking, and policy‐seeking parties; and Patterns of change in Western European parties.
Party Organization and Party Performance: The Case of the French Socialist Party
Authors: Sferza Serenella
Published: October 2003

Much of the literature on parties centres on decline and failure, but recently the decline hypothesis has come under attack on both empirical and theoretical grounds, and this has exposed major shortcomings in dominant views (models) of party development, which mostly have offered an externalist view of party development and cast political parties as passive takers of their environment. This view of parties is markedly at odds with the considerable leeway attributed to other political actors and organizations, and whatever the solution to this impasse maybe, it clearly requires looking at party development not only from ‘without’, but also from ‘within’, in ways that capture the two‐ways link between intra‐party politics and resources and inter‐party competition; this perspective brings back not only intra‐party politics as a crucial political arena but also parties as central political actors. Explores this possibility by applying the emerging ‘new’ organizational approach to the trajectory of the French Socialist Party (SFIO, the Section Française de l’lnternationale Ouvrière, until 1971, PS afterwards), which, in the 1970s, staged a spectacular renaissance, and within a decade brought it from near extinction to power—although since then, policy and moral failures have dissipated much of this popular enthusiasm. However, the left's victory at the 1997 elections, the popularity of the current Socialist‐led government, and the weak challenge posed by new politics formations, suggest that much of the capital the PS accumulated in the previous decade remains in place. Provides an internalist account of the PSs jagged trajectory in four parts: the first summarizes externalist approaches to party development; the second analyses the trajectory of the PS over the last three decades in terms of the match and mismatch between party organization and the environment; the third looks at regional variations within this national pattern; and the fourth discusses the resilience of factionalism and draws the implications of this case for the study of political parties.
Parties in Contemporary Democracies: Problems and Paradoxes
Authors: Linz Juan J.
Published: October 2003

Juan Linz examines the same theme of anti‐party sentiments among citizens in contemporary democracies as did the previous chapter, but from an entirely different perspective. He starts by looking at the fundamental differences between the roles played by parties in presidential and parliamentary democracies, and notes that each type of party system also generates different critiques of parties. Notwithstanding, these differences among party systems and between presidential and parliamentary democracies, Linz notes that parties everywhere have become the focus of a remarkably similar litany of complaints and criticisms, and asks to what extent these represent expressions of reasoned concerns over the shortcomings of the actual performance of parties, and conversely, to what extent they reflect ambiguous, confusing, or even self‐contradictory evaluations by citizens based upon unreasonable expectations or a lack of understanding of the complexities and cross‐pressures that parties are subjected to in performing their many roles in democratic politics. On the basis of survey data from Spain and Latin America, he suggests that the increase in negative attitudes towards political parties maybe less attributable to the behaviour of parties themselves than it is to inconsistencies or outright contradictions among relevant beliefs held by citizens, to unrealistic expectations concerning the extent to which parties can achieve a series of demanding objectives, or to the increasing number of the functions that parties must play in representative democracies. The main sections of the chapter are: Attitudes towards parties: paradoxes, contradictions, and ambiguities; Personalization of politics and professionalization of politics; Parties, money, and party democracy; and Distrust of parties and the legitimacy of democracy.
Federalism, Democratization, and the Rule of Law in Russia
Authors: Kahn Jeffrey
Published: October 2003

This book examines the development of Russia's current federal system of government from its Soviet origins, through Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, to the presidencies of Boris Yeltsin and the early years of Vladimir Putin. The theoretical relationship between democracy, law, and federalism is examined with a focus on its application to the study of post‐authoritarian state systems. Federal institutions shape political agendas in the constituent units of a federation just as much as those units influence the shape of the federal whole. Case studies focus on Russia's 21 ethnic ‘republics’ (out of 89 units in a complicated multi‐level federal hierarchy) using previously unpublished primary source materials, including official documents and interviews with key participants on a variety of institutional levels.
The Process of Federal Transition
Authors: Kahn Jeffrey
Published: October 2003

The Soviet regime's political successors intended, from the start, a transition to a genuine federal system. An examination of the formal debates and conflicts between political elites reveals that Russia's project of ‘renewed federation’ developed on several different institutional levels and cut across many different political interests. Three of four stages in the process of federal transition are examined in detail: the ‘Parade of Sovereignties’, development of the Federation Treaty, and the crisis over a new federal Constitution. The content of these documents and their relationship with power struggles in and between Moscow and the constituent units of the new Russian Federation are examined in detail. The Republic of Tatarstan is a special case study.
The Federal Reforms of Vladimir Putin
Authors: Kahn Jeffrey
Published: October 2003

The first year of Putin's presidency resulted in the most concerted and fundamental shake‐up of federal relations since 1993. Putin ended the bilateral treaty process and vowed to create a ‘Dictatorship of Law’. Putin's reforms are examined in detail, including the creation of presidential envoys (polpredy) and federal districts, the quasi‐judicial use of presidential decrees (ukazy), reform of the Council of the Federation, growing federal influence of regional executives and legislatures, and local self‐government. These dramatic changes led to the reform of republican constitutions and a new stage in federal‐regional relations.
Frege: Truth and Composition
Authors: Neale Stephen
Published: October 2003

Looks at the work of Gottlob Frege on truth and composition. It investigates Frege's idea that a sentence refers to a truth‐value, his Principle of Composition, and his abandonment of what Donald Davidson calls ‘semantic innocence’. Neale explains what kinds of slingshotian considerations prevented Frege from accepting facts as denotations of sentences and made him see sentences rather as names of truth‐values. The three sections of the chapter are: Reference and Composition; Innocence Abandoned; and The Reference of a Sentence.
Russell: Facts and Descriptions
Authors: Neale Stephen
Published: October 2003

Examines the work of Bertrand Russell. It looks at Russell's idea that true sentences stand for facts (rather than truth‐values) and the philosophical and formal details of his Theory of Facts (the theory of facts as complexes) and Theory of Descriptions, both of which Neale describes as being poorly understood to this day. The six sections of the chapter are: Facts and their Parts; Representing Russellian Facts; The Theory of Descriptions; Abbreviation; Scope; Quantification and Notation. An appendix to the book looks further at Russell's definition of descriptions as incomplete symbols.
Extensionality
Authors: Neale Stephen
Published: October 2003

Chs. 6 and 7 set out and clean the formal tools that are needed in the remaining chapters to prove that Donald Davidson's and Richard Rorty's cases against facts and the representation of facts are unfounded, and their slingshot (collapsing) arguments for discrediting the existence of facts unsatisfactory. Clarifies what is meant by such terms as ‘extensions’, ‘extensionality’ and ‘scope’, and the next separates various inference principles. The four sections of the chapter are: Extensions and Sentence Connectives; Scope; Extensional and Non‐Extensional Connectives; and Intensional Connectives.
Logical Equivalence
Authors: Neale Stephen
Published: October 2003

Chs. 8 and 9 convert the two basic forms of slingshot (collapsing) argument—one used by Alonzo Church, W. V. Quine, and Donald Davidson, the other by Kurt Gödel—into knock‐down deductive proofs that Donald Davidson's and Richard Rorty's cases against facts and the representation of facts are unfounded, and their slingshot arguments for discrediting the existence of facts unsatisfactory. The proofs are agnostic on key semantic issues; in particular, they assume no particular account of reference and do not even assume that sentences have references. Using this procedure, Ch. 8 shows that cleaned‐up versions of the slingshot arguments used by Davidson, Church, and Quine demonstrate theses weaker than those their authors were seeking—the impossibility of facts and non‐truth‐functional (e.g. modal and causal) connectives. This is primarily because the arguments depend upon (a) logical equivalences and (b) theories of definite descriptions (or class abstracts) that must satisfy certain semantic conditions if the aforementioned logical equivalences are to obtain. The four sections of the chapter are: Introductory Remarks; The Quinean Strategy; An Incomplete Connective Proof; and A Complete Connective Proof.
Description and Equivalence
Authors: Neale Stephen
Published: October 2003

Revolves around the matter of whether the stronger results that W. V. Quine and Donald Davidson were attempting to derive from slingshot (collapsing) arguments over facts might be forthcoming if other theories of descriptions were assumed. This also provides an opportunity to evaluate various theories as potential competitors to Bertrand Russell's theory. The four sections of the chapter are: Introductory Remarks; Hilbert and Bernays (David Hilbert and Paul Bernays’ system of descriptions); Fregean Theories (Gottlob Frege's theories of description); and Strawsonian Theories (Barry Taylor's version P. F. Strawson's theory of descriptions).
Facts Revisited
Authors: Neale Stephen
Published: October 2003

With the Descriptive Constraint discussed in Ch. 9 at hand, Ch. 11 examines diverse theories of facts with a view to establishing how viable they are, and then turns to claims about the semantics of causal statements that have been used to motivate ontologies of facts and events. Neale makes the point that there is considerable confusion in the literature on the matter of whether causal statements are extensional, but shows that once the clarifications effected in earlier chapters are brought to bear, almost all of the confusion can be eradicated and decisive results obtained. There are still some extensional causal statements, and these can be delimited on the basis of their superficial grammatical forms, but there are other causal statements for which it is, as far as Neale can ascertain, still an open question whether extensional or non‐extensional treatments are to be preferred, much turning on the position taken on the overall shape of a semantic theory. If non‐extensional treatments prove appealing, the resulting theories will have to satisfy the strictures imposed by the Descriptive Constraint. The six sections of the chapter are: Identity Connectives; Fact Identity; Events; Events and Causes; Facts and Causes; and Fact Identity Again.
State‐Building Nationalism
Authors: Hechter Michael
Published: October 2003

The rise of the modern state extended direct rule, in which central authorities assumed ever‐greater responsibility for governing all the territory within the state's boundaries. Although direct rule made all individuals increasingly dependent on the centre for the provision of public goods, at the same time it threatened the power of local authorities. To legitimize the new order, central rulers embarked on state‐building nationalism that aimed to transform multinational states into national ones.
Other Types of Nationalism
Authors: Hechter Michael
Published: October 2003

A discussion of peripheral and unification nationalisms. Peripheral nationalism is directly spurred by the onset of direct rule: increasing political centralization threatens local leaders and provides an incentive for them to mobilize nationalist opposition to central authorities. Unification nationalism is a more indirect by‐product of direct rule. Since states adopting direct rule attain geopolitical advantages, the rulers of culturally homogeneous but politically divided territories have an incentive to merge their separate territories into a single political unit for defensive purposes.
The Notion of Well‐Being
Authors: Dasgupta Partha
Published: October 2003

A pluralist conception of personal well‐being is advanced. The conception includes the material sources of well‐being and the ability of a person to exercise various kinds of freedom. It is argued that social well‐being is an aggregate of individual well‐beings. It is shown that, if undertaken with care, the aggregation exercise doesn’t blunt human rights.
Why Measure Well‐Being?
Authors: Dasgupta Partha
Published: October 2003

Reasons for seeking an index of social well‐being are identified in this chapter. Four are given prominence: (1) to compare well‐being across countries (or communities); (2) to compare well‐being across time and generations for the same country (or community); (3) to check if well‐being is sustainable; and (4) to derive a criterion for judging if a policy is worth undertaking (e.g. if it is socially beneficial to accept a proposed investment project). There is no a priori reason why the same index would be appropriate for the four sets of exercises.
Theory
Authors: Dasgupta Partha
Published: October 2003

Studies a comprehensive, but operational, notion of current well‐being, and develop ways of measuring it. In order to find a usable measure of current well‐being, I appeal to an overarching idea of citizenship, with its three constituent spheres: the civil, the political, and the socio‐economic. The classification is useful for identifying the constituents of well‐being. The idea of citizenship is useful also in that it directs us to study the kinds of institutions that are best suited to protect and promote human interests. Political scientists have shown that democracy is neither necessary nor sufficient for civic co‐operation and the benefits that come with it.
Intergenerational Well‐Being
Authors: Dasgupta Partha
Published: October 2003

This chapter offers a framework for developing the notion of inter‐generational well‐being, or ‘social well‐being’ for short.
Valuing Goods
Authors: Dasgupta Partha
Published: October 2003

Practical problems of estimating accounting prices are discussed in Ch. 8. Their resolution requires attention to ecological matters, such as the role of biodiversity in creating substitution possibilities among various kinds of natural resources. The chapter also summarizes methods for estimating the accounting prices of environmental resources.
Wealth and Well‐Being
Authors: Dasgupta Partha
Published: October 2003

Develops the concept of sustainable development and shows how it is related to the maintenance of social well‐being through time. It is shown that wealth, estimated in terms of accounting prices, serves admirably as an index of well‐being over time and across generations. A country's wealth measures the social worth of its capital assets. The notion of wealth developed here is a comprehensive one, including in it the social worth of manufactured and human capital, public knowledge, and natural capital. Given that movements in wealth over time measure movements in social well‐being, the object of study is then shown to be genuine investment, the social worth of net changes in an economy's capital assets. Thus, ensuring that social well‐being is sustainable involves taking care that the economy's assets are managed well. The theory is also put to work on contemporary data from the poorest countries in the world. Movements in the wealth of nations present a vastly different picture from the one gleaned from the two most popular measures of social well‐being. A substantial reassessment of the post‐war development experience among poor countries is now needed if sustainable development is to be anything more than a slogan at national and international conferences.
Policy Reforms
Authors: Dasgupta Partha
Published: October 2003

It is shown that the correct way to evaluate a public project is to compare reductions in consumption arising from the investment outlay with the increase in wealth that the investment helps to create. Putting it in other words, projects should be accepted if they add to wealth, but not otherwise. It is also shown that for public projects this amounts to estimating the present discounted value (PDV) of the flow of the project's social profits. A project whose PDV is positive should be accepted; one whose PDV is negative should be rejected. The correct measure of social well‐being, even for purposes of project evaluation, is wealth. The finding unifies valuation and evaluation.
Discounting Future Consumption
Authors: Dasgupta Partha
Published: October 2003

Scrutinizes a class of accounting prices that has been the object of regular misunderstanding: social discount rates. The topic is over 40 years old, yet controversy rages over matters that have long been settled, involving as they do technical economics. Many who express views on social discount rates overlook the literature and make incorrect claims. I point to a few as the occasions warrant.
Institutional Responses to Policy Change
Authors: Dasgupta Partha
Published: October 2003

Discusses policy change in the midst of markets and non‐market institutions. Accounting prices are particularly difficult to estimate in non‐market institutions because of an absence of market prices to serve as guide. Moreover, changes in public policy (e.g. changes in the structure of taxes and trade) frequently affect the macro‐economy. Involving as they do large changes to an economy, their evaluation requires more complex estimation procedures. Accounting prices don’t suffice. By means of three examples, I offer a sketch of how social cost–benefit analysis is useful for identifying what the evaluator ought to try to measure and why. The first example is a miniature, involving communal management of irrigation systems in Nepal; the latter two are altogethergrander, illustrating some of the environmental implications for poor countries of structural adjustment programmes and trade liberalization.
Some Views
Authors: Dasgupta Partha
Published: October 2003

This chapter reviews a widely discussed theory of population ethics, Average Utilitarianism. Its ethical foundation as a population policy seems to have fundamental problems.
Classical Utilitarianism and the Genesis Problem
Authors: Dasgupta Partha
Published: October 2003

Reviews a widely discussed theory of population ethics, Classical Utilitarianism. It is less vulnerable to scrutiny than Average Utilitarianism, though it may recommend population levels that may seem excessive to many.
Actual Versus Potential Lives
Authors: Dasgupta Partha
Published: October 2003

Offers an outline of a theory of population ethics, based on an especially strong conception of personhood that performs well when put to work in a world facing environmental constraints. The subject is controversial, and the treatment of it possibly is even more so.
On Location
Authors: Morison Benjamin
Published: October 2003

Aims to explain as carefully as possible Aristotle's account of place given in the Physics, Book IV, Chs. 1‐5. Also aims to rehabilitate it as a piece of philosophy, after many centuries of its being dismissed as inadequate. Discusses the importance of the concept of place to natural philosophy, including the role of so‐called ‘natural’ places in the explanation of the natural motion of the elements. Offers a full reconstruction and interpretation of Zeno's paradox of place, which Aristotle took to be a crucial challenge to the coherence of the notion of place, as well as an assessment of Aristotle's treatment of Plato's account of space in the Timaeus. Outlines the different ways in which things are somewhere, implicit in Aristotle's solution to Zeno's paradox of place. This corresponds to the various meanings of the word ‘in’. The concept of being somewhere is of the first importance in understanding our practice of asking and answering where‐questions. The most fundamental way of being somewhere is to have a place––most bodies have a place, according to Aristotle. For a body to be somewhere, it must have a proper place, i.e. a place that only it occupies. Aristotle's definition of proper place (‘the first immobile limit of that which surrounds’) has been found wanting by many philosophers: the author offers an interpretation of the definition which overcomes the classic objections, including ancient worries about whether the universe is somewhere.
Introduction
Authors: Morison Benjamin
Published: October 2003

Natural Science cannot do without the concept of change, which is central to Aristotle's concept of nature, since according to him nature is a principle of change and rest. Motion is the most important type of change, and motion is change of place. Places are items specified in answers to where‐questions, i.e. in predications that state where something is. Such predications are canonically those that state what something is in.
Aristotle's Concept of Place
Authors: Morison Benjamin
Published: October 2003

Aristotle's final definition of the proper place of something is: the first immobile limit of the surrounding body. Something's surroundings can be specified in a more or less precise way, but everything is surrounded by the universe. The limit at which a body is in contact with its surroundings should be defined with reference to the limit at which the whole universe is in contact with the body; this limit is the body's proper place and can be picked out in a variety of ways. This interpretation solves the traditional problems of the immobile boat on the moving river water, and the rotation of the universe. Aristotle's concept of place is not straightforwardly either an absolute conception of place, or a relative one. He provides the metaphysical underpinning necessary for an understanding of how things are somewhere.
Intellectual Founders of the Republic
Authors: Hazareesingh Sudhir
Published: October 2003

This innovative study of nineteenth‐century French political thought explores the republican theory and political practice of five intellectuals: Jules Barni, Charles Dupont‐White, Emile Littré, Eugène Pelletan, and Etienne Vacherot. Through their writings and political activities these figures made major contributions to the founding of the Third Republic in France after 1871. Drawing on a range of archival and published sources, Intellectual Founders of the Republic sheds new light on modern French political thought. It focuses on key issues that continue to resonate in French political and philosophical debates up to the present day: such questions as the interpretation of the 1789 Revolution, the definition of citizenship, the meaning of patriotism, the relationship between central government and local democracy, the value of individual liberty, and the place of education and religion in public and private life. Through its evaluation of the contributions of these thinkers, the book offers a new perspective on the making of modern republican ideology. It shows that the influence of positivism was far from hegemonic, and that republican political thought was also permeated with Saint‐Simonism, socialism, Doctrinaire liberalism, and neo‐Kantianism. It also demonstrates that republicans were far less hostile to Bonapartism than is often believed. It thus emerges that the ideological potency of republican doctrine lay in its complexity and sophistication, as reflected in its capacity to effect a synthesis among a range of overlapping doctrines. The book is essential for all those seeking to understand modern republicanism, and its distinctiveness as a French political tradition since the Revolution of 1789.
Centralist Defender of the State: The Eclectic Republicanism of Charles Dupont‐White
Authors: Hazareesingh Sudhir
Published: October 2003

Examines the complex range of influences that came together in Dupont‐White's political thought. Long remembered for his passionate commitment to centralization, Dupont‐White was also a sophisticated republican thinker, who drew upon liberal and socialist notions to articulate a distinct and powerful doctrine.
From Democratic Advocate to Monarchist Critic of the Republic: The Ambiguous Republicanism of Étienne Vacherot
Authors: Hazareesingh Sudhir
Published: October 2003

Traces the evolution of the political thought of Vacherot, who began his intellectual life as a Doctrinaire liberal and then converted to republicanism under the Second Empire, during which he wrote La Démocratie, one of the most successful republican works of the 1860s; in the final years of his life he became a monarchist.
A Republican Saint‐Simonian: Eugène Pelletan and the Transformation of Nineteenth‐Century Republicanism
Authors: Hazareesingh Sudhir
Published: October 2003

In this chapter the life and writings of Pelletan are examined, with particular emphasis on his articulation of republican doctrine during the 1850s and 1860s. The chapter challenges the prevailing account of Pelletan as a dreamy idealist and utopian thinker and shows his effective contributions to the transformation of republican thinking; it also draws attention to his continuing commitment to Saint‐Simonism.
Engaging Reason
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

The book offers a penetrating examination of a set of fundamental questions about human thought and action. In these essays, Joseph Raz examines the nature of normativity, reason, and the will; the justification of reason; and the objectivity of value. He argues for the centrality, but also demonstrates the limits of reason in action and belief. He suggests that our life is most truly our own when our various emotions, hopes, desires, intentions, and actions are guided by reason. He explores the universality of value and of principles of reason on one side and their dependence on social practices on the other side, and their susceptibility to change and improvement. He concludes with an illuminating explanation of self‐interest and its relation to impersonal values, in general, and to morality, in particular.
When We Are Ourselves: The Active and the Passive
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

One's sense of self and control over our actions and intentions shape the form and direction of one's life. We are responsible for not only our actions but also for all that which is our own and under our control (e.g. beliefs, desires, character traits, etc.). Raz explores the active/passive distinction for questions of responsibility and how our life becomes our own when it is under our control and guided by reason. We are ourselves when we are responsive to reasons—when we act for intentional reasons with respect to objects of value.
Agency, Reason, and the Good
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

The connection between action, reason, and value is explored by examining the connection between reasons and intentions, and between reasons and what we take to be good. This is done in comparison to the classical view, which maintains that valuable aspects of the world constitute reasons for agents. In attempting to explain common features of what it is for people to be rational agents, Raz examines whether there are reasons, which are neutral in values, the explanatory and justificatory role of reasons, the intelligibility of acting for reasons (both good and bad), and the ability to intentionally act in an expressive, yet unreasoned fashion.
Incommensurability and Agency
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

Human agents act for reasons that contribute to their good. However, in our explanation of why agents act for reasons that depend on what they value, we encounter the problem of situations in which goods are neither better than others nor are of equal value. The incommensurability of value can then be seen to lead to an incommensurability of reasons for action. Examining rationalist and classical conceptions of human agency, Raz uses the presence of incommensurability to understand how this affects the relation between reasons and the will, and its effects on our practical reasoning and deliberation. A proper understanding of human agency will take for granted that the goodness of options are incommensurate and that explanations concerning what we want cannot solely be accomplished in terms of reasons.
Moral Change and Social Relativism
Authors: Raz Joseph
Published: October 2003

The fact of multiculturalism cannot have much bearing on moral epistemology unless it bears on moral truths. It is argued that the existence of some values is dependent on the practices that sustain them, and as a result, these practices will figure in an explanation of why we value particular values. If this is true, it is also considered to what extent such an account is consistent with the universality of values.