bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Nazi Fordismus
Authors: Link Stefan J.
Published: May 2021

This chapter investigates Nazi Germany's efforts to acquire American mass production technology in order to create their own version of Fordism in the Thirties. Unlike the Soviet Union, Germany boasted a highly developed industrial base in its own right, centered around classic producer goods, such as coal, steel, machine tools, and instruments. Though Germany's machine tool builders were a proud and venerable branch with considerable export clout, they were unequipped to supply mass production factories. Acquiring automotive mass production was of neuralgic significance: it not only harbored the potential of a growth-generating consumer and export sector, but it was also — more immediately urgent to the Nazi regime — of primary military-strategic significance. Accordingly, the Nazi regime did not purchase bulk machinery and entire technological systems wholesale, Soviet-style. Instead, it resorted to targeted industrial reconnaissance and the recruitment of American specialists — that is, to Detroit missions such as those of Ferdinand Porsche, Otto Dyckhoff, and William Werner. The Nazi regime ensnared the American multinationals operating in Germany in a web of political pressure and economic incentives, and in doing so found ways to appropriate the Americans' technology without spending significant amounts of US dollars.
Women and Prose Poetry
Authors: Hetherington Paul , Atherton Cassandra
Published: May 2021

This chapter highlights the tradition of English-language prose poetry by women. It explores what women's prose poetries may be — not only in terms of content and approach but in terms of technique and emphasis. The chapter begins by looking at Holly Iglesias's seminal text, Boxing Inside the Box: Women's Prose Poetry (2004), which is the most comprehensive study of women's prose poetry to date. Iglesias advocates for the liberation of women prose poets, using the prose poem box as a metaphor for their containment. Beginning with Carolyn Forché's famous and disturbing prose poem about male power and brutality, “The Colonel,” and ending with C. D. Wright's hybrid prose poem essay, Iglesias's book celebrates women prose poets by giving them space and prominence. Ultimately, the neglect of many women prose poets did not occur because women were not writing prose poems; it is just that many women were not writing the kinds of prose poems that fit the prevalent critical view of what successful prose poems might look like.
The Myth of Direct Democracy
Authors: Landemore Hélène
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines the alternative to representative democracy sometimes defended by its democratic critics: direct (or unmediated) democracy. For all its appeal, direct democracy, whether face-to-face or enabled by new technologies, is not a viable solution to the problems of representative democracy because it is either feasible but normatively undesirable or, if it is defined in normatively desirable terms, entirely unfeasible. The chapter pushes back against three common beliefs: the Rousseauvian (originally Hobbesian) idea that sovereignty is essentially about having the final say; the historical claim that representation was rendered necessary by the size of mass societies; and the view of Classical Athens as the archetype of a direct democracy. It argues that direct democracy is a false alternative, one that is credible only if one accepts the mistaken Rousseauvian view of sovereignty as limited to having the final say — and a non-deliberative one at that. In the end, direct democracy is parasitic on non-democratic forms of agenda-setting and deliberation, or else must turn representative — i.e., involve a delegation of authority — to some degree. Even Classical Athens was not the paragon of “direct” democracy as it is often portrayed and functioned along broadly representative or proto-representative (though non-electoral) lines.
The Principles of Open Democracy
Authors: Landemore Hélène
Published: May 2021

This chapter builds on the previous chapters to sketch the alternative paradigm of “open democracy.” It first draws on a stylized contrast between Classical Athens and modern representative democracy. The chapter then theorizes a new model of democracy — open democracy — which layers new principles on top of the most normatively appealing ones found in the previous models, expanding the scope of some principles and occasionally replacing or reformulating others entirely. It goes on to offer a list of five core institutional principles. These include participation rights, deliberation, the majoritarian principle, democratic representation, and transparency. These principles are supposed to inform institutional design without over-determining it.
On the Viability of Open Democracy
Authors: Landemore Hélène
Published: May 2021

This chapter addresses some understandable worries about the feasibility and desirability of open democracy. It discusses the fact that the Icelandic constitutional process ultimately did not succeed in putting in place a democracy closer to the open democracy model this book advocates for; the issue of whether the size and heterogeneity of a country would get in the way; and the issue of the competence of non-elected representatives. The chapter then examines the risk of capture of open institutions by powerful bureaucracies and interest groups, as well as the possible illiberalism of more majoritarian institutions. It also considers the lack of accountability of a non- or less electoral democracy at the systems level and the possibly time-consuming nature of decision-making under open democracy. The chapter ends on a more general reflection about the transition from classically representative to open democracy.
The Puzzling Resilience of Neoliberalism
Authors: Madariaga Aldo
Published: May 2021

This chapter begins with a militarized cell from the Chilean Communist Party that tried to kill General Augusto Pinochet, who was known for having participated in the bloody putsch against President Salvador Allende in 1973. It recounts how Pinochet explicitly broke the pact of succession in a military junta, successfully maneuvering to oust the other members of the junta and instituting a series of regulations that made him the dictatorship's strongman. It also mentions the united political opposition that defeated Pinochet in a referendum, forcing a return to democratic rule after seventeen years of dictatorship in October 1988. The chapter explores the association between a political system based on permanent repression and a public philosophy premised on the idea of individual liberty. It argues that the connection between neoliberal economics and less-than-liberal political regimes are a philosophical digression that is rooted in history.
Neoliberal Resilience and the Crafting of Social Blocs
Authors: Madariaga Aldo
Published: May 2021

This chapter shows how the policy preferences of major actors developed into concrete government coalitions and social blocs that supported neoliberalism as a long-term political project. It examines how business actors pursued their policy preferences and gained political influence in different historical settings. It also discusses initial coalitions that transformed into durable social blocs and defended neoliberalism as a political project. The chapter highlights the importance of actors supporting neoliberalism, as well as the experience and fate of actors who supported alternative development projects. It confirms that the strength of the financial, competitive, and noncompetitive economic sectors was crucial to explaining the resilience of neoliberalism.
Smuggling Kidneys and Uranium
Authors: Mandić Danilo
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines the exposure of two nefarious criminal episodes — organ smuggling in Kosovo and highly enriched uranium (HEU) smuggling in South Ossetia — which tested the resolve, organization, and patriotism of specialized mafias. Caught red-handed, the traffickers tainted separatists' legitimacy as the public scandals provoked repression from international military authorities (in Kosovo) or the host state (in South Ossetia). Damage control was necessary — but only one separatist movement managed it. The chapter compares three dimensions of mafia capacity: infrastructure, regarding control of borders and sites; autonomy, concerning the ability to leverage separatist ideology and instrumentalize movement institutions; and community, apropos levels of fear, discipline, and clan-based solidarity. Nefarious crime harmed Kosovo's separatists less because mafia capacity was greater, thereby containing the damage.
Jewish and Christian Time
Authors: Gribetz Sarit Kattan
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines rabbinic discussions of the Sabbath in light of Roman pagan critiques of and competing Christian claims to a weekly sacred day and other weekly worship practices. It begins by analyzing a section of Mekhilta de-Rabbi Ishmael that contains an extended exegetical discussion about the Sabbath. This midrash offers passionate engagement with ideas that were popular in Second Temple and early Christian debates about Sabbath observance. The chapter then looks at a series of rabbinic stories that explore the sanctity of the Sabbath, found in fifth-century rabbinic sources compiled after Sunday became an imperially sanctioned day of rest and worship. It appears that rabbis proactively promoted the Sabbath as a day with distinct qualities that were inherent to it and persuaded Jews of this dimension of the Sabbath precisely because they worried that Jews might be drawn to other weekly temporal rhythms or that they could be susceptible to Roman Christian and non-Christian disparagement of the Sabbath and might therefore stop observing the Sabbath altogether.
Communicative Doubt
Authors: McIvor Méadhbh
Published: May 2021

This chapter studies the use of biblically inflected speech in political debate. It begins by examining the arguments raised by conservative Christian activists in their campaign to prevent the passage of the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013. Introducing the concept of 'communicative doubt', the chapter argues that there is a sense in which neither 'religious' nor 'secular' arguments are thought to be an appropriate means of conveying Biblical Truth to those who are not (yet) Christian, for what is needed is the intervention of a speaking God. It then explores this doubt as it manifested in the lives of two Christ Church members who had been involved in one of the Christian Legal Centre's earliest cases. Five years on, they remained unsure of whether or not it communicated the Good News they had hoped to share. These doubts, hesitations, and ambivalences speak to the contested place of public Christianity in contemporary England, and to the difficulties faced by those who insist that their faith must go public: the challenge of rendering Christianity legible not only to law and politics, but to the individual men and women who are subject to these worldly institutions.
The Industrial Estate
Authors: Wetherell Sam
Published: May 2021

This chapter tackles the emergence and spread of the industrial estate as a new type of twentieth-century space. It discusses the history of this space and its beginning in the 1890s on the outskirts of Manchester. The chapter also mentions a monumental planned industrial complex called Trafford Park, which was a significant development in this age. It examines how industrial estates came to be promoted by a new kind of developmental state in the twentieth-century and offered the possibility of remaking both Britain's workers and its economy. It then shows how industrial estates had a radical logic, one unforeseen by its creators and even many of its early promoters. The success and portability of this new type of space was infectious, and within a few years after the opening of the first government-financed estates, they were pulling politicians, planners, colonial administrators, and international development agencies behind them in their slipstream.
The Shopping Mall
Authors: Wetherell Sam
Published: May 2021

This chapter tackles the history of the shopping mall in Britain. It argues that unlike shopping malls in the United States or nations that were urbanizing for the first time, shopping malls in Britain emerged in tense negotiation with a state-directed and developmental retail infrastructure established a generation earlier. The chapter discusses the distinction between two types of space: the shopping mall and shopping precinct in order to show how a qualitatively new urban form arose in Britain in the last third of the twentieth-century. It presents the history of the shopping mall which allows us to see how during this period a new relationship between the consumer, state, and economy emerged in Britain. The chapter explores the shopping mall's distinctive contribution to late-twentieth-century British life by historicizing three of its most important features. Ultimately, the chapter demonstrates how the shopping mall in Britain emerged from the ashes of a developmental compact between urban planning and the management of consumer demand. It investigates how shopping mall developers in Britain replicated a globally standardized type of urban space, aligning parts of Britain's built environment with that of the United States and world.
Americanizing the World
Authors: Bell Duncan
Published: May 2021

This chapter explores how W. T. Stead and Cecil J. Rhodes imagined the future of the “English-speaking peoples.” It offers an analysis of Stead's views on utopia and religion, before tracing his early political endeavors. Stead argued in 1896 that the English-speaking race had a “world mission” to accomplish, and the “supreme thing for the English-speaking man is to recognize his place in what may be called the economy of the universe.” His self-appointed task was to reveal and disseminate this providential truth. The chapter also shows how he utilized the Review of Reviews to advocate a series of interconnected policies during the 1890s, including international arbitration, imperial consolidation, and increased naval spending, all of which were bound up with his dream of Anglo-America. The chapter then shifts to Stead's proposals for a federal racial union, focusing in particular on his arguments in The Americanization of the World, his most elaborate account of the dream. The remainder of the chapter discusses Rhodes' conception of empire, race, and Anglo-America, as well as his fantasy of a secret society to proselytize the cause of the “English race.” While Rhodes was clearly an advocate of a racial union, the chapter argues that the character of his vision, as well as its public presentation, was shaped by Stead.
Artists in Reality
Authors: Bell Duncan
Published: May 2021

This chapter traces H.G. Wells' shape-shifting account of the New Republic, as well as offering a novel interpretation of the philosophical foundations of his political thought, focusing in particular on his commitment to an idiosyncratic version of pragmatism. The author's “heretical metaphysical scepticism” — and in particular his nominalism — infused his writings on society and politics, underwriting his critique of both nationalism and racial science. Wells' antinationalism helped motivate a recurrent demand for the creation of vast “synthetic” political associations, including the New Republic, while his hostility to racial theorizing distinguished him from most other unionists. The chapter also discusses the strict distinction between the “English-speaking peoples” and “AngloSaxonism,” while explaining Wells' account of the New Republic in a shared language. Ultimately, it concludes with a discussion of Wells' conflicted attitude to imperial rule, exploring how he struggled to reconcile his early support for the continuation of the British Empire with his dream of Anglo-America.
A Messenger of Peace to the World
Authors: Bell Duncan
Published: May 2021

This chapter traces the Anglotopian visions of universal peace in the context of fin-de-siècle debates about democracy, empire, race, and war. It contends that the most ambitious projects for Anglo-American synthesis promoted the idea of global racial peace — the abolition of war through the unification of Britain and the United States. Recognizing the character and significance of such arguments requires a reappraisal of the genealogy of modern peace discourse. After delineating several popular visions of peace that circulated during the nineteenth century, the chapter introduces the “democratic war thesis” and the “democratic empire thesis.” The former posited that democratic political structures caused or exacerbated inter-state conflict, while the latter suggested that vast empires could cooperatively govern the world and eradicate war. The chapter examines the racial peace thesis, which was propounded, albeit in different forms, by Andrew Carnegie, Cecil J. Rhodes, W. T. Stead, and H. G. Wells, many of the science fiction writers discussed in Chapter 5, and an array of other unionist political thinkers. This was the utopian core of the Anglo-racial dreamworld.
Conclusion
Authors: Manekin Rachel
Published: May 2021

This chapter reviews notifications about female Jews intending to convert to Christianity, which were sent to the Kraków rabbinate by the office in charge of Jewish records in the Kraków magistrate. It looks at relevant news items in the contemporary press about the stories of young Jewish women runaways who found shelter in a Kraków convent, which had often involved police investigations, court cases, ministerial intervention, and parliamentary debates. It also highlights the runaway phenomenon that touched upon several internal and external aspects of Jewish life that were unique to Galicia during this period. It examines the broader social, religious, political, and legal contexts in order to explain the runaway phenomenon.
An overview
Authors: Kreps David M.
Published: May 2021

This chapter provides an overview of some basic concepts and philosophy in microeconomic theory. Microeconomic theory concerns the behavior of individual economic actors and the aggregation of their actions in different institutional frameworks. This description introduces four categories: the individual actor, traditionally either a consumer or a firm; the behavior of the actor, traditionally utility maximization by consumers and profit maximization by firms; an institutional framework, which describes what options the individual actors have and what outcomes they receive as a function of the actions of others, traditionally the price mechanism in an impersonal marketplace; and the mode of analysis for modeling how the various actors' behaviors will aggregate within a given framework, traditionally equilibrium analysis. Ultimately, the purpose of microeconomic theory is to provide a better understanding of economic activity and outcomes. The chapter then considers the levels of scope, detail, emphasis, and complexity of the theories and models presented in the book.
The theory choice and of consumer demand
Authors: Kreps David M.
Published: May 2021

This chapter discusses the theory of consumer choice and demand. It focuses on the behavior of an individual, called the consumer, who is faced with the problem of choosing from among a set of objects. The chapter considers how choice behavior might be induced from preferences, before presenting the standard model of consumer behavior. It then explains the theory of Marshallian (consumer) demand, which has played a central role in the development of microeconomic theory. It is traditionally viewed as among the most important subjects to study in microeconomics, and the results obtained are useful in many applied contexts. The chapter looks at Marshallian demand without derivatives and with derivatives.
Social choice and efficiency
Authors: Kreps David M.
Published: May 2021

This chapter evaluates the theory of social choice. The theory of social choice is concerned with the selection of some social outcome that affects a number of individuals, when those individuals have diverse and conflicting preferences. The chapter characterizes desirable properties of the outcome that is to be selected, properties that usually involve notions of efficiency and equity. In some cases, those properties are insufficient to fix on a single social outcome, but instead restrict attention to some subset of the feasible outcomes. Adding more properties can sometimes pin down a single social outcome that has all the desired attributes. And in some contexts, there is now a way to satisfy simultaneously all the properties thought to be desirable.
Moral hazard and incentives
Authors: Kreps David M.
Published: May 2021

This chapter discusses the problem of moral hazard. In the problem of moral hazard, one party to a transaction may undertake certain actions that (a) affect the other party's valuation of the transaction but that (b) the second party cannot monitor/enforce perfectly. A classic example here is fire insurance, where the insuree may or may not exhibit sufficient care while storing flammable materials. The “solution” to a problem of moral hazard is the use of incentives — structuring the transaction so that the party who undertakes the actions will, in their own best interests, take actions that the second party would (relatively) prefer. For example, fire insurance is often only partial insurance so that the insuree has a financial interest in preventing a fire.
The Historical Origins of Authoritarian Repression
Authors: Nugent Elizabeth R.
Published: May 2021

This chapter discusses how authoritarian regimes come to repress their opposition in different ways. It offers evidence for how differences in colonial coercive institutions in the Middle East conditioned coercive institutions in their independent counterparts in the post-colonial period, and thus how this specific type of colonial legacy influences the nature of repression used by the regimes that follow. The chapter then theorizes the colonial origins of coercive institutions, the path dependence of these institutions, and the constraining nature of inherited institutions for leader behavior and the prospects of institutional reform. It considers how the interaction between the centrality of coercion and variation in the nature of colonial projects provides significant explanatory power for the coercive institutions inherited by Middle East political leaders in the mid-twentieth century upon independence, and then lays out a typology of coercive institutions and the nature of state repression. Finally, the chapter traces the historical development of coercive institutions in Egypt and Tunisia to demonstrate institutional continuity and path dependence through independence.
Polarization during Democratic Transitions
Authors: Nugent Elizabeth R.
Published: May 2021

This chapter reviews the literature on polarization during democratic transitions to highlight how polarization prevents the compromise and cooperation that is vital to successful transitions. It then discusses the timeline of events between 2011 and 2014 in Egypt and Tunisia to chart how these transitions progressed, and documents where affective and preference polarization contributed to the divergence. The chapter focuses on the debates and decisions related to drafting and approving a new constitution, holding the first elections, and creating a transitional justice initiative. High levels of polarization derailed Egypt's transition, while significantly more agreement in Tunisia facilitated cooperation and compromise in parallel processes. However, as with any social phenomenon, the divergence in these transitions is likely due to multiple causes. While affective and preference polarization among elite actors clearly played a major role in this divergence, the chapter also highlights other factors, such as structural predecessors, continued protests, the emergence of new political actors, and ongoing events in other countries, that were important for political developments.
Conclusion
Authors: Nugent Elizabeth R.
Published: May 2021

This concluding chapter outlines the book's key findings and considers their broader implications for the literatures on polarization, repression, and elite behavior during democratic transitions. Without oversimplifying the culmination of many complex events and historical precedents, elite polarization is central to any explanation of the divergence between Egypt and Tunisia after the Arab Spring uprisings. Egyptian and Tunisian political parties emerged from the authoritarian period differently polarized in 2011, both in terms of affect towards competing groups as well as in political preferences. In Egypt, high levels of polarization prevented the cooperation and compromise necessary to successfully navigate the complexities of a democratic transition, while lower levels of polarization facilitated forward movement on political issues of central importance in Tunisia. The chapter then extends the book's argument in three different directions. First, it looks at transitions in Algeria and Indonesia. Second, it explores the relationship between elite and mass polarization. Finally, the chapter highlights the importance of identity and polarization as conditioned by repressive experiences in political developments across different political regime types.
Chimpanzee Culture Wars
Authors: Langlitz Nicolas
Published: May 2021

In the 1950s, Japanese zoologists took note when a number of macaques invented and passed on new food-washing behaviors within their troop. The discovery opened the door to a startling question: Could animals other than humans share social knowledge, and thus possess culture? The subsequent debate has rocked the scientific world, pitting cultural anthropologists against evolutionary anthropologists, field biologists against experimental psychologists, and scholars from Asia against their colleagues in Europe and North America. This book presents first-hand observations gleaned from months that the author spent among primatologists on different sides of the controversy. The author travels across continents, from field stations in the Ivory Coast and Guinea to laboratories in Germany and Japan. As he compares the methods and arguments of the different researchers he meets, he also considers the plight of cultural primatologists as they seek to document chimpanzee cultural diversity during the Anthropocene, an era in which human culture is remaking the planet. How should we understand the chimpanzee culture wars in light of human-caused mass extinctions? The book takes the reader on a journey into high-tech laboratories and wilderness, all in pursuit of an answer to the question of the human–animal divide.
Introduction
Authors: Langlitz Nicolas
Published: May 2021

This introductory chapter provides a background of the ensuing controversy over chimpanzee culture. Japanese and Euro-American primatologists have come to question whether humans are the only primates capable of culture — that is, whether culture amounts to human nature. In the 1950s, Japanese primatologists around Kinji Imanishi proposed to attribute “subhuman culture” — or kaluchua, as they called it — to nonhuman primates. In the course of the 1970s and 1980s, a growing number of European and American primatologists and evolutionary anthropologists chimed in with Japanese anthropomorphism and wondered how unique the cultural nature of Homo sapiens really was. Just as cultural anthropologists have struggled to account for the loss of cultural diversity during five centuries of Euro-American domination (currently on the wane), cultural primatology is now confronted with the question of how to make sense of the eradication of nonhuman cultural and biological diversity in light of modern humans' savage success.
Controlling for Pongoland
Authors: Langlitz Nicolas
Published: May 2021

This chapter investigates how Christophe Boesch's colleague and codirector Michael Tomasello derived truth claims about the anthropological difference between Homo sapiens and Pan troglodytes from controlled experiments comparing the social cognition of human children with that of grown chimpanzees. Tomasello's claim that humans were the only primates capable of culture and cooperation received an enthusiastic reception by German philosophers. Yet Boesch called into question the validity of Tomasello's findings by pointing out that the social behavior of both humans and apes was too contingent on local circumstances for Leipzig kindergarten children and zoo chimpanzees rescued from a Dutch pharmaceutical company to represent all of humanity and chimpanzeehood. He accused Tomasello of not controlling for the different conditions under which Tomasello tested humans and apes. The ensuing controversy over the relationship between laboratory work and fieldwork happened at a time when new statistical methods were opening up vast new possibilities for chimpanzee ethnography, even fostering hopes that experimentation with captive animals would become superfluous because uncontrolled observations in the wild would allow the establishment of causal relations. The chapter then assesses whether Boesch's cultural primatology could inform a different philosophical anthropology than the one drawing from Tomasello's comparative psychology.
Field Experiments with a Totem Animal
Authors: Langlitz Nicolas
Published: May 2021

This chapter follows Tetsuro Matsuzawa and his coworkers to their outdoor laboratory in Bossou, Guinea. Revered as the totem animal of the Manon and deprived of almost all primary rainforest, the Bossou chimpanzees had learned to live on human crops in an agricultural landscape. In contrast to Christophe Boesch's emphasis on so-called wild cultures, Matsuzawa speculated that historically, this chimpanzee community might have learned from the human population how to crack the oil palm nuts that local farmers cultivated. Field experiments allowed the primatologists to study how female immigrants passed on their knowledge of how to crack other kinds of nuts within the group. At this point, Japanese cultural primatology contradicted the Manon's mythological understanding of “their” apes as a bounded community of nonnatural animals. Chimpanzee road crossings provided an opportunity for a natural — or really “naturecultural” — experiment in an anthropogenic environment. Ethnoprimatologists collaborating with Matsuzawa studied the ecological interface between humans and primates and used their insights for conservationist ends. After a political conflict over the protection of a small patch of primary forest on a sacred hill, the Japanese primatologists took over the Manon's position that the livelihood of the Bossou chimpanzees was better served by plantations than by a nature reserve.
The Duties of Private Providers
Authors: Cordelli Chiara
Published: May 2021

This chapter shifts from independent private donors to contracted private providers. It looks at strong reasons to extend to the internal conduct of many private organizations the same demands of political justice and democratic governance that many political philosophers would instead confine to political institutions alone. It also talks about the transitional duty of democratic justice for nonpolitical associations that pursue justice as government's proxies. The chapter explains the collapse of a division of moral labor between political institutions and nonpolitical associations comes at great costs for the members' associative independence. It analyzes strong reasons that are grounded on associative independence that limit privatization and reestablish a sharper division of both institutional and moral labor between the political and the associational.
Neighborhoods and Cities as Arenas of Social Influence
Authors: Baker Andy , Ames Barry , Rennó Lúcio
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines the relationship between political discussion and the geography of the vote. Social influences induce many citizens to cast votes that differ from the ones they would have cast if they lived elsewhere. The chapter considers neighborhood effects on vote choice in two Brazilian cities. Nearly two-thirds of discussion partners in the two cities are residents of the same neighborhood. Neighborhoods with a stable and relatively homogeneous partisan leaning assimilate, over the course of a campaign, initially disagreeing residents toward that leaning. The chapter then shows that this effect occurs through discussion between neighborhood coresidents in the politically polarized city of Caxias do Sul. In other words, the clustering of political preferences by neighborhood in Caxias is partly due to social influences and not, as in the case of the United States, mere self-sorting . By contrast, the same level of political discussion in Juiz de Fora, a less polarized city where the partisan leanings of neighborhoods are amorphous, yields no assimilation effect.
Clientelism as the Purchase of Social Influence
Authors: Baker Andy , Ames Barry , Rennó Lúcio
Published: May 2021

This chapter assesses elite behavior, demonstrating that clientelistic party machines try to pay off hubs — that is, voters with large political discussion networks who frequently engage in persuasion. In seeking to buy votes, the best strategy a party can pursue is to target citizens who are well-connected opinion leaders in informal networks. These voters represent the machine's highest potential yield because they can magnify the effect of the payoff by diffusing positive information about the machine through their large social networks. The chapter uses the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and the Mexico 2006 Panel Study to show that party machines do target well-connected voters throughout Latin America. It also shows that a finding central to previous theories — namely, that loyal partisans are the most likely targets of clientelism — is driven by omitted-variable and endogeneity bias. In other words, scholarly expectations of party activity change when one recognizes that parties operate in a world of horizontally networked voters.
The Apocalyptic Cosmos
Authors: Payne Mark
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines how Mary Shelley refashions Hesiod's search for a continuous ground of humanness that persists through catastrophic transformations of the foundations of social life. It looks at Hesiod's Works and Days, which consists of survival instructions and ontological reflections on what it means for human beings to have to repeatedly rediscover themselves in the occupations of survival. It also mentions Shelley's critics who saw willful cruelty toward humankind in The Last Man. The chapter explains how Shelley brackets the question of motive in the destruction of humankind and makes herself a proxy of Nature in bringing the era of human occupation of the earth to an end. It mentions Olaf Stapledon, an English writer of speculative fiction that focuses on how human beings relate to cosmic forces that produce drastic transformations in their physical being and form of life.
Attribution
Authors: Fleming Sean
Published: May 2021

This chapter discusses issues of ownership, such as whether the actions of dictators and rogue officials ought to be attributed to states and whether states can commit crimes. With some modifications, Thomas Hobbes' account of attribution provides an intuitive and compelling answer to the Question of Ownership: an action counts as an act of state if and only if the agent who performed it was an authorized representative of the state. The chapter distinguishes two types of responsibilities and two corresponding modes of attribution. Whereas general responsibilities are attributed to states according to their types, personal responsibilities are attributed to states according to the actions of their authorized representatives. The chapter then divides Hobbes' account of attribution into its two components: representation and authorization.
A Spatial Modeling Framework
Authors: Voeten Erik
Published: May 2021

This chapter proposes a simple spatial modeling framework to analyze how variations in interdependence and ideology shape incentives for cooperation and competition. The goal is to present a framework that is as simple as the prisoner's dilemma, coordination dilemma, battle of the sexes, and other two-by-two games that have served as mental models for rationalist analyses of cooperation. The spatial model easily accommodates multiple actors and distributive conflict and allows for analyses of how institutions structure choices. It starts from the assumption that actors have ideal points in a common low-dimensional ideological space. Yet their utilities are determined not just by their own policies but also by the policies of other actors. This interdependence creates incentives for cooperation. In this context, institutions may help actors achieve mutually beneficial outcomes, but they also have distributive implications. Institutions help shift policy status quos in particular directions.
Introduction
Authors: McConnell Michael W.
Published: May 2021

This chapter provides a background on the nature and limits of executive power under the US Constitution. It closely examines the constitutional text bearing on presidential power together with its historical context to discern its meaning and internal logic. It also cites the phenomenon of Donald Trump that made thinking seriously about the institution of the presidency more difficult than ever before as there has never been so polarizing a figure at the apex of politics. The chapter attempts to reconstruct the framers' design for the presidency based on the text they wrote, their experience of royal authority in colonial times, and the interpretative battles in the early years of the republic. It identifies the framers that wanted an effective president who would not be a king and points out how a republican executive was meant to function.
Foreign Affairs and War
Authors: McConnell Michael W.
Published: May 2021

This chapter reviews the king's powers of peace and war as of 1787, which included the power to make war, declare war, command troops and the Navy during war, summon and employ the militia, and erect forts and other military installations. It recalls Charles Pinckney, who warned that the Convention was creating an elective monarchy. It also discusses how the Convention vested the bulk of the war and foreign affairs powers in Congress and the Senate, except the executive, and how the presidency gained most of its foreign affairs authority only toward the end of the Convention. The chapter cites the king's prerogative power over foreign affairs that was absolute, at least in theory, under the post-1688 settlement. It talks about the Confederation Congress that typically issued detailed instructions to its envoys regarding what positions to take on behalf of the United States, suggesting that the power to send ambassadors included the power to instruct them.
The Executive Power Vesting Clause
Authors: McConnell Michael W.
Published: May 2021

This chapter recalls the fundamental structural decisions made by the Committee of Detail about the powers of the executive, such as allocating the established prerogative powers of the British executive to Congress or to the president. It examines the important changes by the Convention in parceling out prerogative powers, which subjected some of them to senatorial advice and consent. It also talks about the Committee beginning of Article II with a sentence vesting the “Executive Power” in a single person — the president. The chapter investigates the Executive Vesting Clause that has engendered lively debate since the earliest years of the republic and caused the Supreme Court to grapple with the two possible meanings for it. It argues that the Vesting Clause vests all national powers of an executive nature in the president, except for that portion of the executive power that is vested elsewhere.
Two Classic Cases
Authors: McConnell Michael W.
Published: May 2021

This chapter reviews the text, history, and logical structure of Article II, which provides an objective answer on what approach makes any difference in deciding cases without any need to delve into issues of motive or policy. It covers two leading Supreme Court cases that pitted executive against congressional authority and fractured the Court into multiple opinions. It also discusses the Steel Seizure Case, an executive order that seized the United States' steel mills to impose a labor settlement that would avert a strike and keep armaments flowing to America's military. The chapter looks at Zivotofsky v. Kerry, the first and only case in American history in which the Court held that the President is constitutionally entitled to disobey a congressional statute based on his own supervening powers. It explains that passports are formal communications between the State Department and foreign nations, asking that an American citizen be given egress and protection.
Luxemburg on Popular Emancipation
Authors: Vergara Camila
Published: May 2021

This chapter focuses on Rosa Luxemburg, who proposed to embrace workers' councils as a political infrastructure of emancipation at a moment when the modern party system had begun to consolidate. It explains the Social Democratic Party as a party in support of the interests of the working class, which had gained partial control of the German government. It discusses Luxemburg's realization that the liberty of the working class demanded a different political infrastructure. The chapter cites the betrayal of the revolutionary party that proved to Luxemburg the truth of Karl Marx's argument that the “working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes.” It highlights Luxemburg's proposal to alter the foundation and base of the social constitution by institutionalizing workers, soldiers, and peasant councils and establishing a national council of workers as part of a revolutionary constitutional political order.
Constitutionalizing the Power of Those Who Do Not Rule
Authors: Vergara Camila
Published: May 2021

This chapter contributes to plebeian constitutional theory by proposing to constitutionalize popular power in a “plebeian branch” that is thought through Hannah Arendt's model of parties and councils, incorporating features from the proposals that established plebeian institutions. It lays out a way to separate the few from the many that would in principle conform to the current liberal constitutional framework. It also describes institutions that would make up the proposed plebeian branch, such as a network of primary assemblies with the power to initiate and veto or repeal any law, public policy, judicial decision, and appointment as well as to update the constitution. The chapter offers a tentative juridical framework for the plebeian branch, which is meant to be incorporated into any existing representative democratic regime and is aimed at empowering plebeians. It suggests a more enduring solution to the systemic corruption of representative systems and the oligarchic domination that inevitably comes with it.
The Good Adventure
Authors: Hull Katy
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines how American sympathizers with fascism reacted against the prevailing culture of disillusionment in the wake of World War I. By 1922, they could tell Italy's story in a satisfying narrative arc, starting with despair and ending with redemption. According to their perceptions, Italians in 1920 were extreme embodiments of the modern mood. These observers argued that fascist squads excited senses numbed by the apathetic atmosphere left in the wake of the war. Richard Washburn Child and Herbert Schneider both suggested that fascist violence was not necessary for the suppression of communism. Anne O'Hare McCormick, by contrast, insisted that the fascists prevented a Bolshevik-style revolution in Italy. But whatever their position on the relationship between the biennio rosso and fascism, all three of these observers admired squadrist violence qua violence.
The Garden of Fascism
Authors: Hull Katy
Published: May 2021

This chapter addresses how American fascist sympathizers used Italo Balbo's 1933 North Atlantic flight to insist on the peaceful intentions of Benito Mussolini's regime. While it had been easy for most Americans to agree with fascist sympathizers' characterizations of Italo Balbo in July of 1933, the claims that Italy represented beauty, transcendence, and peace felt more farfetched as the decade progressed. Balbo alighted in Chicago only a few months after Adolf Hitler assumed dictatorial powers in Germany. The Italian airmen's flight helped to distance Italy under Mussolini — seemingly so beautiful and benign — from Germany under Hitler — blatantly brutal and threatening. These distinctions between Nazism and fascism became increasingly important for fascist sympathizers over the course of the mid-1930s, under mounting evidence that the two regimes were drawing closer together, both in style and in fact. Metaphors of the garden, which seemed so natural for many Americans on the occasion of Balbo's flight in 1933, felt increasingly false, forced, and strained by 1937, given the realities of life in Italy and the foreign policy of the fascist state.
General Relativity and Cosmology
Authors: Peebles P. J. E.
Published: May 2021

This chapter discusses the development of physical sciences in seemingly chaotic ways, by paths that are at best dimly seen at the time. It refers to the history of ideas as an important part of any science, and particularly worth examining in cosmology, where the subject has evolved over several generations. It also examines the puzzle of inertia, which traces the connection to Albert Einstein's bold idea that the universe is homogeneous in the large-scale average called “cosmological principle.” The chapter cites Newtonian mechanics that defines a set of preferred motions in space, the inertial reference frames, by the condition that a freely moving body has a constant velocity. It talks about Ernst Mach, who argued that inertial frames are determined relative to the motion of the rest of the matter in the universe.
The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe
Authors: Peebles P. J. E.
Published: May 2021

An instant landmark on its publication, this book remains the essential introduction to this vital area of research. Written by one of the world's most esteemed theoretical cosmologists, it provides an invaluable historical introduction to the subject, and an enduring overview of key methods, statistical measures, and techniques for dealing with cosmic evolution. With characteristic clarity and insight, the author focuses on the largest known structures — galaxy clusters — weighing the empirical evidence of the nature of clustering and the theories of how it evolves in an expanding universe. A must-have reference for students and researchers alike, this edition introduces a new generation of readers to a classic text in modern cosmology.
Homogeneity and Clustering
Authors: Peebles P. J. E.
Published: May 2021

This chapter traces the history of the development of ideas on the large-scale structure of the universe. Modern discussions of the nature of the large-scale matter distribution can be traced back to three central ideas. In 1917, Albert Einstein argued that a closed homogeneous world model fits very well into general relativity theory and the requirements of Mach's principle. In 1926, Edwin Hubble showed that the large-scale distribution of galaxies is close to uniform with no indication of an edge or boundary. In 1927, Georges Lemaître showed that the uniform distribution of galaxies fits very well with the pattern of galaxy redshifts. The chapter then assesses several questions. The first is whether the universe really is homogeneous. Could the homogeneity of the universe have been deduced ahead of time from general principles? Or might it be a useful guide to new principles? It also asks how clustering evolves in an expanding universe, what its origin is, and what this reveals about the nature of the universe.