bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Business of Economics
Authors: Kay John
Published: October 2003

The first section of the book is concerned with how economics is, and should be used, in business. It stresses that the value of economics lies in being able to provide us with a better understanding of social and commercial issues, rather than help us forecast economic trends. Similarly, it provides a direction for the development of management science as a means of understanding the behaviour of firms.

The second section of the book examines the application of economics to the central strategic issues facing firms – their choice of activities and markets. It provides an exposition of the resource‐based theory of strategy, which examines the dynamics of the successes and failures of firms by reference to their distinctive capabilities.

The next section develops some broader themes that are suggested by the resource‐base view of strategy that recognizes the importance of corporate personality. This perception implies that large companies are fundamentally social institutions and the economic and social consequences of this result are examined.

The final section is a collection of shorter essays, which are designed to illustrate how business economics can be used to analyse a range of individual commercial issues such as pricing positioning and the evolution of industry structure.
Economic Models
Authors: Kay John
Published: October 2003

Building bigger and more elaborate models will neither help us arrive at more realistic descriptions of the world nor help make our predictions more accurate. Mathematical models are just a more accurate way of describing certain complex systems and even though such a model can enhance our understanding of the problem and help us check the internal consistency of our assumptions, it will not tell us something we have not already told it.
Adding Value
Authors: Kay John
Published: October 2003

This chapter describes financial relationships between competitive advantage, economic rent, added value, and various other measures of firm performance.
Corporate Governance
Authors: Kay John
Published: October 2003

This chapter explores some of the policy implications of the view that the large successful corporation is a social institution rather than the creation of private contract, embodying a corporate personality and incapable of being “owned” by any one. It puts forward a series of proposals whose objective is to give executive management the greatest possible freedom to develop the business over a period of years in whatever way they think fit, while holding them rigorously responsible to all the parties involved in the business for their performance in the long run.
Applying Economics
Authors: Kay John
Published: October 2003

This chapter explores the economics of several everyday issues. The first part explains the determinants of different salaries, while the second explains why brands are so valuable. The next part discusses the differences in prices across countries and the overall trend of falling prices. Finally, the last part discusses an example of what David Henderson has called ‘DIY economics’ – the fallacies which people who have not studied economics know to be self‐evident truths.
Pricing the Tunnel
Authors: Kay John
Published: October 2003

This chapter is concerned with the pricing decisions facing Eurotunnel. This is a simple company with one production facility, a narrow pre‐defined product range and even a limited lifespan and enables the game theoretic issues of pricing policies to emerge clearly.
On Custom in the Economy
Authors: Schlicht Ekkehart
Published: October 2003

Custom is an integral part of the institutional matrix of modern economies. Market processes hinge crucially on custom, which in turn affect these processes. The book proposes a theory of custom that emphasizes the motivational force that arises from the individual's striving for coherence and justification. It depicts custom as comprising habitual, cognitive, and emotional aspects and explains that market transactions rely on customary entitlements and obligations. The motivational force of custom emerges from a preference for regularity and a desire for coherence that tie cognition, emotion, and action together. The view is applied to the theory of property, the theory of the law, the theory of the firm, and the problem of the division of labour and the conditions under which that division of labour is better organized by the firm or by the market.
Introduction
Authors: Schlicht Ekkehart
Published: October 2003

Custom is important in moulding social and economic interaction. It eases them in some dimensions and constrains them in others. A widespread view of custom is to interpret it as a self‐sustaining system of conventions. The view presented here goes further and accounts for the behavioural impact of custom beyond competitive success. The theory proposed is neither ‘economistic’ in the sense of looking only for external instrumental reasons for the growth and decay of customs, nor ‘culturalistic’ in the sense of exclusively emphasizing cognitive and emotional regularities that bring about custom. Rather, it views custom as flowing from fundamental cognitive, emotional, and behavioural dispositions of human beings, thereby integrating economistic and culturalistic aspects.
A Web of Reinforcements
Authors: Schlicht Ekkehart
Published: October 2003

Custom comprises habitual, emotional, and cognitive aspects that mutually reinforce each other. This chapter concentrates on conservatism and conformity as important elements in the formation of custom, and it emphasizes the—largely tacit—interplay of cognitions and emotions that stabilize a custom.
Smooth and Lumpy Changes
Authors: Schlicht Ekkehart
Published: October 2003

Conservatism and conformity lead to inertia and critical mass phenomena. As a consequence, smooth changes in circumstances may induce discontinuous changes in custom and give rise to phenomena of hysteresis.
Adaptive Custom
Authors: Schlicht Ekkehart
Published: October 2003

Because custom is only vaguely defined with respect to its scope and content, this gives rise to the problem of erosion: people will bend the rules of custom in ambiguous cases by slightly underperforming or overperforming. This changes what is normal and thereby shifts the custom in response to other motives and incentives over time. A constraining custom must be expected to eventually disappear, for instance. Critical mass effects can be expected to be undermined by such erosion.
Attribution and Motivation
Authors: Schlicht Ekkehart
Published: October 2003

There exists not only a preference for rule following, but also a strong tendency for moulding motives that fit perceived regularities. In this way, customary patterns of behaviour engender motives and convictions.
Custom and Style
Authors: Schlicht Ekkehart
Published: October 2003

Surveys the view developed so far. The human mind has a propensity to form rules. This makes learning possible. At the same time, humans are endowed with a preference for rule following, for making rules, and for a match between emotion, cognition, and action. Emotion can be interpreted as brought about by this desire.

The view maintained in this book is contrasted with the prevailing (‘strategic’) interpretation of custom as a system of conventions. Because rule formation is not an exclusively social phenomenon, it is erroneous to interpret rules exclusively in terms of interaction. Interaction builds on rules and their cognitive, emotional, and habitual entailments, but cannot explain rule formation itself. The emergence of entitlements and obligations may be understood from this perspective, giving rise to transactions. Further, the rules of custom form a system. Overall coherence is brought about as a matter of style.
Property
Authors: Schlicht Ekkehart
Published: October 2003

The theory of property proposed by David Hume can be interpreted as an application of the theory developed in this book. The tension between instrumental and moral aspects of property can be traced to principles of clarity. Hume's theory is outlined, discussed from an ethological perspective, and related to the theory of property rights. The tension between ‘moral’ and ‘instrumental’ aspects of property is particularly pronounced in long‐term contracts.
The Law
Authors: Schlicht Ekkehart
Published: October 2003

The law is closely related to custom. It may be understood as brought about by the same tendencies that bring about custom. The tension between natural law and legal positivism may be understood in terms of these tendencies. The view is contrasted with the evolutionary view of the law that overemphasizes instrumental concerns and largely neglects the ‘organic’ aspects of the system of law.
The Firm
Authors: Schlicht Ekkehart
Published: October 2003

Starts with some general comments on the fuzziness of theoretical concepts that point to real phenomena and defends the view that the firm may be understood as a social entity, rather than a nexus of contracts among individuals. The firm uses several mechanisms of control at once: authority, rewards, and duty. These mechanisms relate to each other and support each other. The productivity of the firm is brought about by this type of tight alignment that builds on the same cognitive, behavioural, and emotional tendencies that shape custom.
The Division of Labour
Authors: Schlicht Ekkehart
Published: October 2003

Smith's theorem—that the division of labour is limited by the extent of the market—is explained. But there exists another limitation to the division of labour that relates to the nature of the task. Further, the division of labour can be coordinated alternatively by markets or by the coordination mechanisms available within firms that rely heavily on custom. It is argued that coordination within firms entails productivity advantages at the expense of inflexibility in certain dimensions, whereas the market requires standardization of some sort, but is more flexible in other ways.
Inefficient Markets
Authors: Shleifer Andrei
Published: October 2003

This book describes an approach, alternative to the theory of efficient markets, to the study of financial markets: behavioural finance. It begins by assessing the efficient market hypothesis, emphasising how some of its foundations are contradicted by psychological and institutional evidence. It then introduces the theory of behavioural finance and devotes the rest of the book to explore its main aspects, concentrating on the role and characteristics of noise traders, arbitrageurs, and investors. Chapters 2 through 4 focus on the limits imposed on arbitrage by factors such as risk aversion or agency problems. Two crucial conclusions are reached. First, plausible theories of arbitrage do not lead to the prediction that markets are efficient—quite the opposite. Second, the recognition that arbitrage is limited, even without specific assumptions about investor sentiment, generates new empirically testable predictions, some of which have been confirmed in the data. Chapters 5 and 6 centre on how investor sentiments are built, emphasising some empirical violations to the idea of efficient markets such as price bubbles. The book concludes suggesting that the theory of behavioural finance is indeed more effective that the efficient market theory in explaining some financial evidence.
The Closed End Fund Puzzle
Authors: Shleifer Andrei
Published: October 2003

Begins by describing the closed end fund puzzle and enumerating some of the standard accounts that have been used to explain it. Then, applying the model developed in the previous chapter, the author comes to the conclusion that the apparent puzzle could be interpreted in terms of the influence of (individual) investors sentiments on securities prices. This interpretation, in turn, provides some useful hypotheses that are tested with evidence from the US, proving that behavioural finance theory can provide testable predictions.
A Model of Investor Sentiment
Authors: Shleifer Andrei
Published: October 2003

Studies how investors form their beliefs. It begins with an overview of some of the empirical violations of market efficiency that recent models of investor sentiment try to address. It then presents an alternative model motivated by the idea that, in forecasting future earnings, investors interpret data on recent past earnings conservatively and using the representativeness heuristic. The simple model is consistent with both psychological evidence and the evidence from security price. At the end, some possible extensions are discussed.
Open Problems
Authors: Shleifer Andrei
Published: October 2003

Summarises some of the successes of behavioural finance and shows how this field can inform the analysis of broader questions in economics. It begins with some of the open issues in security valuation. It then moves to the study of real consequences of financial markets on corporate finance and real investment, and evaluates the role of public policies. It concludes by enumerating 20 broad problems in behavioural finance.
Working in a Federal Agency: Social Ostracism and Discrimination
Authors: King Desmond
Published: October 2003

King explains how segregated race relations, tolerated by the federal government, facilitated discrimination and inequality of treatment for Black Americans in federal departments and agencies. He focuses particularly on the two decades after Franklin Roosevelt's 1932 election and the effects of wartime mobilization. Moreover, King presents an occupational profile of the almost universally lowly positions attained by Black employees in government, and uses hearings from the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) and its successor bodies to examine how discrimination flourished and persisted within the ‘separate but equal’ framework.
‘A Great Shadow Over Our “Civil Rights” ’: Fighting for the Government
Authors: King Desmond
Published: October 2003

Explores segregation in the military and resistance to its abolition ever since the founding of the country and the War of Independence to President Truman's 1947 Committee on Civil Rights and well into the 1960s. King examines original transcripts of testimony before Truman's committee and other investigations into segregation especially prior to and during the Second World War. He also looks at the policies and reports of the American Navy, Marine Corps, and the Army as well as those of Black American soldiers stationed abroad in Britain and Europe. Throughout the chapter, he traces the tensions arising from the war's premise to promote democracy in the new global community while tolerating the suppression of civil rights domestically.
The Federal Government in a Segregated Society: Public Employment Exchanges and Housing Programmes
Authors: King Desmond
Published: October 2003

King examines how interventions of the American federal government—namely, the United States Employment Service (USES), federal mortgage assistance, and public housing programmes—mirrored the segregationist order in which they were installed, thus consolidating residential separation by race. According to King, not only did USES discriminate in their job placements but also in its field office facilities and staff; he also shows how the anti‐discrimination policies of the USES were failures and explores the reasons. Next, King traces the evolution of federal public housing and mortgage assistance programmes, focusing especially on the policies of the US Federal Housing Authority (FHA) and responses from organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Conclusion
Authors: King Desmond
Published: October 2003

King explores the position of Black Americans in the Federal government since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which he claims empowered the US Department of Justice extensively to investigate and prosecute discrimination and other abuses of citizens’ rights. He provides numerous table and data documenting improvements for Black Americans, both in terms of numbers and promotions within federal government employment positions. King concludes by examining multiple legacies of the US federal government's collusion in maintaining segregated relations for contemporary American politics.
Education and the Politics of Virtue
Authors: Callan Eamonn
Published: October 2003

Liberal politics is often misrepresented as repugnant to state support—e.g. through educational policy—for any particular ideal of virtuous character. This is a misrepresentation because liberal institutions can only flourish given the widespread social currency of liberal ideals of character, and this in turn presupposes that educational institutions are wedded to that ideal. This point undermines much communitarian criticism of liberalism. The tension between democratic and liberal ideals in political education is briefly explored.
Justice, Care, and Community
Authors: Callan Eamonn
Published: October 2003

The ethic of care has been advocated by some feminist scholars as an alternative to justice, and hence, as the aim of an alternative conception of political education. This view is shown to be mistaken because it rests on an artificial bifurcation of justice and care: neither the justice nor moral care worth having can be characterized adequately in abstraction from each other. That said, the idea of care insofar as it figures in caring attachment to a particular community of self‐rule—patriotism, in other words—may significantly augment virtue of justice by mitigating the conflicts of interest that threaten a stable liberal regime.
The Great Sphere and Rights
Authors: Callan Eamonn
Published: October 2003

If we agree on the ends of political education, we may yet disagree about what the state may permissibly do to prosecute those ends. Disagreement on the latter is often prompted by considerations of parents’ rights. By according a necessary role to autonomy among the ends of political education, the theory defended in this book conflicts with the educational aspirations, and hence potentially with the rights, of parents who seek to perpetuate a way of life at odds with the demands of autonomy. It is shown that if a liberal political education respects the rights of children, it will at least require a degree of autonomous development necessary to surmount the state of ethical servility.
Virtue, Dialogue, and the Common School
Authors: Callan Eamonn
Published: October 2003

Moral dialogue in schools would seem necessary if we are to cultivate the respect for reasonable differences, as well as the consensus on matters of basic justice, that a liberal political education requires. This chapter shows how the fact of reasonable pluralism creates insuperable difficulties for the practice of moral dialogue in schools if dialogue is modelled on Noddings's ethic of care or Mill's conception of the marketplace of ideas. Rawls's notion of reasonable agreement as the object of politico‐moral dialogue is shown to represent a better alternative to Noddings or Mill, albeit one that makes dialogue a difficult and delicate endeavour that may be beyond the competence of many teachers.
The Formation of Econometrics
Authors: Qin Duo
Published: October 2003

This book traces the formation of econometric theory during the period 1930–1960. It focuses upon the process of how econometrics was formed from mathematical and scientific processes in order to analyse economic problems. The book deals with the advances that were achieved as well as the problems that arose in the course of the practice of econometrics as a discipline. Duo Qin examines the history of econometrics in terms of the basic issues in econometric modelling: the probability foundations, estimation, identification, testing, and model construction and specification. The book describes chronologically how these issues were formalized. Duo Qin argues that, while the probability revolution in econometrics in the early 1940s laid the basis for the systematization of econometric theory, it was actually an incomplete revolution, and its incompleteness underlay various problems and failures that occurred in applying the newly established theory to modelling practice. Model construction and hypothesis testing remained problematic because the basic problem of induction in econometrics was not properly formalized and solved. The book thus links early econometric history with many issues of interest to contemporary developments in econometrics. The story is told from the econometric perspective instead of the usual perspective in the history of economic thought (i.e. presenting the story either according to different schools or economic issues), and this approach is clearly reflected in the classification of the chapters.
The Probability Foundations of Econometrics
Authors: Duo Qin
Published: October 2003

Records the fundamental event of the probability revolution in econometrics. Focuses upon how probability theory was brought into econometrics in relation to the main econometric modelling issues, such as estimation, identification, and testing, and shows that this laid the basis for the formalization of those issues, which is reported in later chapters. The first section sketches the eve of the probability revolution. An introduction to probability methods follows in the second section, and the third section is dedicated to the ‘Haavelmo revolution’: the thorough adoption of probability theory in econometrics. The following section turns to alternative approaches to the adoption of probability theory, and the final section discusses the after‐effect and especially the incompleteness of the probability revolution.
Model Construction
Authors: Duo Qin
Published: October 2003

This chapter recounts the evolution of econometric models up to the 1940s, discussing the common criteria and principles used for model choice, and the generalization of model construction as econometrics focused on the structural modelling procedure. The first section reviews the pre‐model period, and the second looks at the emergence of models and the structural method of model construction. The initial generalization (formalization) efforts of the model‐building strategy and criteria are dealt with in the third section. Concludes with the establishment of the structural modelling procedure (the maturity of simultaneous‐equations model formulation).
Testing
Authors: Duo Qin
Published: October 2003

Addresses the issue of testing, and reveals some intrinsic problems pertaining to hypothesis testing beneath the achievements of formalizing econometrics. Theory verification through applied studies forms one of the main motives for formalizing methods of model estimation and identification, and the statistical theory of hypothesis testing was accepted without much dispute quite early as the technical vehicle to fulfil this desire. However, during the adoption of the theory into econometrics in the 1940s and 1950s, the achievable domain of verification turned out to be considerably reduced, as testing in econometrics proper gradually dwindled into part of the modelling procedure and pertained to model evaluation using statistical testing tools; in the applied field, empirical modellers took on the task of discriminating between and verifying economic theories against the model results, and carried this out in an ad hoc and often non‐sequitur manner. Describes how the desire to test diverged into model evaluation in econometric theory on the one hand, and economic theory verification in practice on the other, as econometric testing theory took shape. The story begins with the early period prior to the formative movement in the first section of the chapter; the following section looks at the period in which the theme of hypothesis testing was introduced, and the first test emerged in econometrics; the last two sections report, respectively, on how model testing in applied econometrics and test design in theoretical econometrics developed and moved apart.
Model Construction Revisited
Authors: Duo Qin
Published: October 2003

Looks at problems associated with econometric model construction for the period immediately after the formative phase, and tries to link up the previous chapters and to show what has been left unsolved in the formation of econometrics. The structural modelling procedure explained only how to estimate and identify a priori given structural models, while many of the empirical studies involved searching for the appropriate structural models from the given data. This mismatch of the two sides gave rise to many problems and disputes, mostly in connection with the roles that modellers attributed to individual tools of testing, identification, and estimation in the integrated process of empirical model construction, as the procedure and the associated techniques spread and formed the core of orthodox econometrics. Revisits the issue of model construction with particular respect to the roles of testing, identification, and estimation, depicting how controversies arose as econometricians were swung back to more data‐based positions, away from the emphasis on a priori considerations; back to statistical results, away from reliance on economic theory; and back to dynamics, away from concerns over contemporaneous interdependency. The first section looks at modelling issues associated with hypothesis testing; the second examines problems about model formulation with respect to identification; the third turns to the estimation aspect of modelling; and the fourth leads the discourse to the focal issue of the probability approach underlying established econometrics by illustrating that most of the problems could be viewed as due to the incompleteness of the probability approach (as suggested in Chapter 1).
Smith's Intention
Authors: Fitzgibbons Athol
Published: October 2003

Dismisses the Adam Smith Problem, and explains that Smith was not in two minds but had a commitment to grand systematizing.
The Character of Smith's System
Authors: Fitzgibbons Athol
Published: October 2003

Considers Smith's eighteenth‐century context and discusses the relation between his religion, his philosophy, and his economics. It provides an abstract of how the system worked, and explains the overall purpose.
God and Nature
Authors: Fitzgibbons Athol
Published: October 2003

Describes Smith's methodology, and considers how he combined his Stoic view of the world with his commitment to Newtonian science. Smith's concept of Nature was supposed to reconcile the two.
The Historical Spiral
Authors: Fitzgibbons Athol
Published: October 2003

Discusses how Smith understood the moral foundations of political states, considers his theory that political power moved in a cycle, and discusses his theories of democracy, monarchy, and military power. It rejects the theory that Smith had an economic theory of history.
The Celestial Model
Authors: Fitzgibbons Athol
Published: October 2003

Points out that there are analogies between Isaac Newton's theory of the solar system and Adam Smith's theory of society.
The Principles of Economic Science
Authors: Fitzgibbons Athol
Published: October 2003

Laments that many economists are ignorant of Smith's ideas. It explains that Smith's objective was not to increase international trade, and briefly considers his theories of value and money.
Smith's Contribution
Authors: Fitzgibbons Athol
Published: October 2003

This concluding chapter explains the heterogeneity of ‘classical economics’, and locates him in his true category of economic thinkers. It discusses the errors in his scientific method, the merits of his moral theory, and the relevance of his economics.
The Practice of Power
Authors: Foot Rosemary
Published: October 2003

In its reconstruction of evolving US positions on key issues in the relationship with China, this book is able to explain the change in American–Chinese relations after 1949 from hostility to rapprochement, and to the full normalization of ties in 1979. The author then goes on to examine the relationship after normalization, a period when the United States has come to view China as less of a challenge, but still resistant to certain norms of the current international order. After an introductory chapter, the next three chapters of the book examine US efforts to build, and then maintain an international and domestic consensus behind its China policy, noting the steady erosion of support in both policy arenas. The next four chapters look at changing US perceptions of China’s capabilities, and show how US officials came to have a deeper appreciation of the overall restraints on Beijing’s power, especially as a result of the Sino-Soviet rift and the failure of policies associated with the Great Leap Forward. Finally, in the last chapter, it examines the effects on the relationship of China’s fuller exposure after 1979 to the ideas and values that predominate in the global system. Whilst many previous explanations of US relations with China have given primacy to the conditioning influence of the strategic triangle, this book recognizes the need to embed an understanding of American–Chinese relations within a wider structure of relationships at the global and domestic levels.
US Hegemony and International Legitimacy: The Chinese Representation Issue at the United Nations
Authors: Foot Rosemary
Published: October 2003

This is the first of three chapters that analyse the connections between legitimacy and power, and seek to demonstrate the erosion of international and domestic support for America’s China policy. It presents an analysis of the evolution of the American position on the representation of China at the UN. This started as a determination to exclude the People’s Republic of China (PRC) when it was first proclaimed as an independent state in 1949, in favour of retaining the pro-American Republic of China (Taiwan). The period from 1951 to 1960 was one when the US managed to block debate on the question of PRC representation; after this, until 1971, the UN gradually enlarged and US interests became less guarded, so that in 1971 the PRC was finally admitted to the UN. The different sections of the chapter examine, in turn, the PRC’s objectives in becoming a member of the UN, the American attitude to the PRC and the impact on this of the Korean war, and shifts in international attitudes to the US position on the PRC. The final section discusses the impact of China’s entry to the UN on America, and notes that while Washington’s PRC exclusion policy had first led the US to suffer serious erosion of its international legitimacy, that erosion did cease, and the presence of the PRC in the UN began to bolster certain American interests.
Trading With the Enemy: The USA and the China Trade Embargo
Authors: Foot Rosemary
Published: October 2003

This is the second of three chapters that analyse the connections between legitimacy and power, and seek to demonstrate the erosion of international and domestic support for America’s China policy. The topic addressed here is the changing status of American trade with China from the period before 1950 (when China had been a major post-war trading partner) until 1979. The first section of the chapter discusses the total trade embargo placed by the USA on trade with China in relation to the ‘China differential’ : the fact that international trade controls with China were harsher than those imposed on the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The next section looks at the status of the American embargo in the period 1950–58 (the China differential was removed in 1957), and the following section at changing international and American policy on trade with China in the period 1958–1971, which culminated in Nixon’s decision in April 1971 to end the embargo on non-strategic sales to China. The last section of the chapter looks at trade patterns in the period 1972–79, which began with Nixon’s historic visit to China and the signing of the Shanghai Communiqu” in February 1972.
‘We the People’: US Public Opinion and China Policy
Authors: Foot Rosemary
Published: October 2003

This is the last of three chapters that analyse the connections between legitimacy and power and seek to demonstrate the erosion of international and domestic support for America’s China policy. It presents a historical account of changing US public (domestic) opinion on the country’s China policy in the period 1949–79, and describes this as going through four main phases. There was an uncertain first phase from the last stages of the Chinese civil war until October 1950, when the mass public were indifferent, this was followed by the phase when China’s entry into the Korean war dramatically shaped attitudes, generating criticism of those in government who in an earlier period had failed to identify China as an implacable enemy. In the next ‘transitional’ phase, the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, doubts about the rigid quality of America’s policy towards the People’s Republic of China (PRC) surfaced, articulated most strongly within Congress, but also among the wider public and at various levels within the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. From then on through to the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979, there was a widespread consensus that China should neither be left in ‘angry isolation’ nor diminished through a Soviet attack; thus, for reasons of world order and American political and security interests, many in the USA came to believe that Beijing needed to be brought into the international community.
The Politics of Nuclear Weapons: China as a Nuclear Power
Authors: Foot Rosemary
Published: October 2003

This is the third of four chapters focusing on America’s perceptions of China’s capabilities, and dwelling on the correspondence between those perceptions and the projected consequences. It presents an assessment of America’s perceptions of China as a nuclear power, discussing the new complexities that this brought to the Sino-American relationship and to their respective broader foreign-policy agendas. The different sections of the chapter look at the process of China’s acquisition of the atomic bomb (the first atomic device was exploded by them in October 1964), the US response to this, US and international assessments of China’s nuclear power and the impact on non-proliferation, and US assessments of China’s nuclear weapons programme.
A System of Rights
Authors: Martin Rex
Published: October 2003

The justification of political authority (the authority of the state) is one of the long‐standing issues of political philosophy, and one that persistently defies satisfactory solution. This book sets out to provide an original justification by establishing a background framework for dealing with the problem.

The book begins (in Ch. 1) by identifying the main elements of authority, arguing that they need to be linked in order to create a political authority that can be described as justified. It then sketches a framework—–a sample system of political institutions and conceptions that are internally coherent—to link these elements.

The rest of the book fills in this outline. Chs. 2–5 argue that rights are established patterns of acting or of being treated and are hence essentially institutional in character. The institutions that tend to be the most reliably supportive, and productive, of individual rights are, the book argues, democratic ones, and the central section of the book (in Chs. 6 and 7) is devoted to the connection of rights with majority rule, democratic political institutions, and conceptions. From this nexus, secondary lines of connection are traced to political obligation (or allegiance), in Ch. 8, and to an eligible justification for using punishment to enforce the rights of individuals (in Chs. 9–11).

The final chapters of the book return to the issue of the justification of authority raised in the introductory chapter. Here, the book looks first at internal political justification (in Ch. 12). Then, after the question of the justification of political authority, on the grounds of internal coherence, has been canvassed within confines set out in the book to date, the book turns, last of all (in Ch. 13), to the difficult subject of the possibility and character of an ultimate and nonpolitical vindication for what has been called a system of rights.

Thus, the book's overall analysis forms a distinctive and systematic approach to one particular style of governmental institutions and ideas.
On the Logic of Justifying Political Authority
Authors: Martin Rex
Published: October 2003

Three elements of authority are identified—a government's rightful title to issue rules, a reasonable expectation of compliance with them, and the propriety of using coercive enforcement to back them up—and the book argues that these elements need to be linked together in order for one to speak of political authority as justified. It argues, further, that the connection of these elements requires us to move to a background theory, which is itself a sketch of an internally coherent system of political institutions and conceptions (in the case at hand one that centres on rights). All this is set out in deliberate contrast to what might be called ‘external grounds of justification’, as found, for example, in what might be called the ‘obligationist tradition’ (e.g. social contract theory). Thus, an introduction to the character of this book and an overview of its main themes is provided in the book's first chapter.
Human Rights
Authors: Martin Rex
Published: October 2003

The chapter first discusses the different ways in which human rights are moral rights. The notion of valid claims (initially discussed in Ch. 2) has more purchase as an account of human rights; for one thing it provides a clear sense to what one means in saying that a human right is a moral right: one means that the right follows from, or comports with, accredited normative moral principles or with accredited procedures for moral reasoning. Nonetheless, three points are raised in challenge to the idea that human rights are essentially morally valid claims: (1) a valid claim can be normatively sound as regards its justification, but without widespread acknowledgement or affirmation, it won’t function as an effective right; (2) what the right requires must be conformed to by second parties, the duty holders—otherwise it’ll be at best a merely nominal right; (3) it isdesirable for ‘rights’ to have the same sense when we talk either about human rights or about legal rights.

The really controversial part of the chapter is the claim that human rights hold principally against organized societies (and their governments); the job of governments here is to respond to these moral demands by formulating what is being demanded as civil rights, rights of all persons in that society, and then by enforcing these rights. A putative right that lacked these things would slip back into being a merely valid moral claim; thus, full‐bodied human rights are ways of acting or ways of being treated that have sound normative justification, that have authoritative political recognition or endorsement, and that are maintained by conforming conduct and, where need be, by governmental enforcement.
Democratic Institutions
Authors: Martin Rex
Published: October 2003

It was argued earlier that active civil rights require agencies to formulate, maintain, and harmonize them; the question arises then, whether there are any kinds of governmental agencies that would be apt to produce and enforce rights. It could plausibly be argued that democratic institutions—universal franchise (on a one‐person, one‐vote basis), regular and contested voting operating at two distinct levels (the level of parliament and the level of general elections), and majority rule—can effectively perform this job and thus provide the setting required by civil rights. Democratic procedures are a stable and relatively reliable way of identifying, and then implementing, laws and policies that serve interests common to the voters or to a large number of them, presumably, at least a majority.

This key argument is deeply ambiguous; it covers several disparate options. We do not want to eliminate any of them from the list altogether; the best solution, then, would be to try to rank these options in some definite order. The chapter concludes by laying out the idea of a ranking procedure that would be acceptable to all the voters: the theme advanced here is that we should go to the basic practice itself (as outlined in the three democratic institutions and their various rationales, as found in Condorcet and Duncan Black and others) to try to establish an internal ground, one that can be located in the practice itself, for deciding on a ranking; the resultant ranking of options, if it could successfully be achieved, would thereby become part of the very justification for having and relying on democratic institutions.
Democracy and Rights
Authors: Martin Rex
Published: October 2003

Arguments are developed here that allow us to rank the relevant disparate options. This ranking involves two main steps: (1) putting option (a) ahead of option (b) – that is, putting (a) policies and laws that are in the interests of each and all ahead of (b) policies and laws concerned with things that are in the corporate or collective interest, such as GDP, though these things are not necessarily in the interests of each person there; and then (2) putting options (a) and (b) ahead of option (c), putting them ahead of policies and laws that help mere majority interests or even hurt minority interests (with the proviso added that allowed instances of (c) must be compatible with the first two options—otherwise they are simply excluded).

Thus, where democratic institutions stay in line with that which justifies them, they will in fact tend to produce civil rights laws and they will not act so as to supersede such rights. There is a deep affinity between the idea of civil rights as justified and that of justified democratic institutions; the two are mutually supportive; accordingly, they can form a coherent system. In this system, democratic institutions must, where they stay true to their own justifying rationale, be constrained so as to observe the established priorities; taking such an approach has implications for institutional design (it can, for example, provide for a justification of judicial review that is compatible with democratic ideals).

The chapter concludes by considering certain troubling problems that arise for democratic theory: problems such as cyclical majorities and strategic voting; these problems are not negligible but they can be dealt with given the resources of a democratic system of rights.
The Right of Inmates to Work
Authors: Martin Rex
Published: October 2003

The chapter argues that treatment and rehabilitation can be a mode of punishment only if it is required of convicted offenders, either in virtue of a legal sanction imposed on them or in virtue of their status as adjudged violators, and it can exhibit an essential tie with civil rights (as do the other two modes, penalty and compensation) only if convicts are, in virtue of their status, required to receive certain services or benefits that the violator (along with other citizens) has a right to. The argument is developed by reference to work in prisons.

One problem faced by this analysis is the widespread belief that convicts qua adjudged violators have forfeited certain important rights (or, indeed, all rights); this claim about forfeit is challenged. Another problem is to distinguish beneficial and rehabilitative work in prisons from hard labour conceived as a penalty or from remunerative work designed to help prisoners pay compensation to their victims. The case for work in prisons as

beneficial and rehabilitative, rests on the idea that work there can be not only a general expectation attached to prisoner status but also a putative right of prisoners (as one feature of a policy of full employment for all citizens, which is itself justified by the idea of a right to work).

This line of analysis completes the turn, begun with the discussion of compensation, toward emphasizing coercion of the adjudged law breaker (rather than emphasizing causing them pain) in one's characterization of punishment and, ultimately, of treating punishment in all its modes as integral to a system of rights. The chapter concludes by summarizing the place of punishment in such a system and the reforms needed to make it optimally suitable there.
Critical Justification
Authors: Martin Rex
Published: October 2003

The internal coherence of any system of political institutions and ideas is only one of the considerations we must have in mind in an account of ultimate justification; there is also the idea of a critical moral justification for it. Thus, the book turns, last of all, to the subject of the possibility and character of such vindication for a system of rights.

Two principal theories are canvassed in this regard: the indirect utilitarianism of J. S. Mill and more recent utilitarian thinkers and the contractarian moral justification elaborated by John Rawls in his Theory of Justice (and for several years thereafter). The utilitarian theory is set aside first; it is fundamentally unable to provide a principled justification for the priority of basic rights over policies justified by considerations of aggregate benefit or general well being. And Rawls's contractarianism is set aside as failing in one of its own self‐appointed tasks: it cannot provide an objective basis for assessing competing political or moral theories

These two failures to provide, from among leading contemporary moral theories, a critical moral grounding for a democratic system of rights do not serve to establish the creditability of philosophical anarchism; but it is clear, nonetheless, that more than was initially thought to be involved will be required in order to do the job effectively.

The chapter and the book, conclude with a brief survey of the tasks of political theory and of what has been accomplished to date. The idea of a system of rights is one of the great ideas of political philosophy and, unlike many of these ideas, it is still a living one; so, some suggestions are made about the way forward.
Employment Protection
Authors: Saint‐Paul Gilles
Published: October 2003

This chapter studies the political support for employment protection. It is shown to be stronger, the larger the employed's rents. Another result is that if employment protection is the sole instrument, and is a continuous variable, its welfare‐maximizing level is strictly positive. However, that level is lower than the one that the employed want to choose. Also, a more intense process of obsolescence reduces the support for employment protection.
The Identifiability Effect
Authors: Saint‐Paul Gilles
Published: October 2003

Discusses another source of status‐quo bias, namely the identifiability effect. This refers to the fact that the gainers and losers from an institution currently in place are better identified than those from an institution not currently prevailing. The identifiability effect leads to status‐quo bias provided uncertainty redistributes losses from non‐decisive to decisive voters. The concept is then applied to analysing the impact of business cycles on the optimal timing of labour market reform.
The Evolution of Constitutional Monarchy
Authors: Bogdanor Vernon
Published: October 2003

The British monarchy is by far the oldest of all the constitutional monarchies. Its origins can be traced back to before the Norman Conquest. The influence of Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights are discussed. Cabinet government and the expansion of the suffrage in the nineteenth century affected the monarchy profoundly. It was during the reign of Queen Victoria that the monarchy took on its recognizably modern form. This was noticed and analysed by the most brilliant journalist of the age, Walter Bagehot, and by its most imaginative politician, Benjamin Disraeli. Bagehot laid down various constitutional precepts to which sovereigns after Queen Victoria sought to adhere.