The laws that legislatures adopt provide the most important and definitive opportunity elected politicians have to define public policy. But the ways politicians use laws to shape policy varies considerably across polities. In some cases, legislatures adopt detailed and specific laws in efforts to micromanage policy-making processes. In others, they adopt general and vague laws that leave the executive and bureaucrats substantial autonomy to fill in the policy details. What explains these differences across political systems, and how do they matter? The authors address this issue by developing and testing a comparative theory of how laws shape bureaucratic autonomy. Drawing on a range of evidence from advanced parliamentary democracies and the American states, they argue that particular institutional forms have a systematic and predictable effect on how politicians use laws to shape the policy making process.
This text seeks to analyse and explain inequality, challenging traditional conceptions and providing a new critical perspective. The authors provide a comprehensive historical account of inequality, and show how that account no longer adequately explains the new and different forms experienced in recent decades. They argue that transformations in industrial, familial and political relations since the 1970s must be taken into account when trying to come to grips with the 'new' inequalities. As society has changed, new forms of inequality have emerged, conditioning the subject's very experience of identity, embodiment and politics. Inequality is understood, then, not as something that can be determined only with reference to traditional categories such as class but as that which works more insidiously. The authors demonstrate, for example, how bio and medical technologies produce inequalities. The book is at once a critical overview of contemporary inequality and a thorough-going textboo
Behavioral Social Choice looks at the probabilistic foundations of collective decision-making rules. The authors challenge much of the existing theoretical wisdom about social choice processes, and seek to restore faith in the possibility of democratic decision-making. In particular, they argue that worries about the supposed prevalence of majority rule cycles that would preclude groups from reaching a final decision about what alternative they prefer have been greatly overstated. In practice, majority rule can be expected to work well in most real-world settings. Furthermore, if there is a problem, they show that the problem is more likely to be one of sample estimates missing the majority winner in a close contest (e.g., Bush-Gore) than a problem about cycling. The authors also provide new mathematical tools to estimate the prevalence of cycles as a function of sample size and insights into how alternative model specifications can change our estimates of social orderings.
There is a mystery at the heart of Plato's Parmenides. In the first part, Parmenides criticizes what is widely regarded as Plato's mature theory of Forms, and in the second, he promises to explain how the Forms can be saved from these criticisms. Ever since the dialogue was written, scholars have struggled to determine how the two parts of the work fit together. Did Plato mean us to abandon, keep or modify the theory of Forms, on the strength of Parmenides' criticisms? Samuel Rickless offers something that has never been done before: a careful reconstruction of every argument in the dialogue. He concludes that Plato's main aim was to argue that the theory of Forms should be modified by allowing that forms can have contrary properties. To grasp this is to solve the mystery of the Parmenides and understand its crucial role in Plato's philosophical development.
What should the people expect from their legal officials? This book asks whether officials can be moral and still follow the law, answering that the law requires them to do so. It revives the idea of the good official - the good lawyer, the good judge, the good president, the good legislator - that guided Cicero and Washington and that we seem to have forgotten. Based on stories and law cases from America's founding to the present, this book examines what is good and right in law and why officials must care. This overview of official duties, from oaths to the law itself, explains how morals and law work together to create freedom and justice, and it provides useful maxims to argue for the right answer in hard cases. Important for scholars but useful for lawyers and readable by anybody, this book explains how American law ought to work.
The Ethics of Deconstruction, Simon Critchley's first book, was originally published to great acclaim in 1992. The first book to argue for the ethical turn in Derrida's work, it powerfully shows how d
This is the first book to tackle the controversial history of prostitution in Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Maria Luddy uncovers the extent of prostitution in the country, how Irish women came to work as prostitutes, their living conditions and their treatment by society. She links discussions of prostitution to the Irish nationalist and suffrage movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, analysing the ways in which Irish nationalism used the problems of prostitution and venereal disease to argue for the withdrawal of the British from Ireland. She also investigates the contentious history of Magdalen asylums and explores how the infamous red-light district of Dublin's 'Monto' was finally suppressed through the actions of the Legion of Mary in the 1920s. Revealing complex social and religious attitudes towards prostitution in Irish society, this book opens up a new world in Ireland's social and political history.
Australia has traditionally lacked a strong 'rights' culture. While fairness and equality have been proudly exalted as trademarks of the national mindset, the authors of The Politics of Human Rights in Australia argue that these same characteristics may equate to a form of cultural complacency. The book offers the first comprehensive account of Australia's protection of human rights from a political science perspective. Addressing the key debates surrounding human rights in Australia, the authors ask: Why are voting rights so critical in the Australian context? Should Australia adopt a bill of rights in an 'age of terror'? What are Australia's responsibilities to global and regional refugee crises? How can reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians be facilitated? Written by three respected academics at the forefront of their fields, The Politics of Human Rights in Australia offers clarity and insight into the complex issues surrounding the human rights debate in
This book demonstrates how rigorous mathematical thinking can be fostered through the development of students' cognitive tools and operations. This approach seems to be particularly effective with socially disadvantaged and culturally different students. The authors argue that children's cognitive functions cannot be viewed as following a natural maturational path: they should be actively constructed during the educational process. The Rigorous Mathematical Thinking (RMT) model is based on two major theoretical approaches – Vygotsky's theory of psychological tools and Feuerstein's concept of mediated learning experience. The book starts with general cognitive tools that are essential for all types of problem solving and then moves to mathematically specific cognitive tools and methods for utilizing these tools for mathematical conceptual formation. The application of the RMT model in various urban classrooms demonstrates how mathematics education standards can be reached even by the s
When the young Charles Darwin landed on the shores of Tierra del Fuego in 1832, he was overwhelmed: nothing had prepared him for the sight of what he called 'an untamed savage'. The shock he felt, repeatedly recalled in later years, definitively shaped his theory of evolution. In this original and wide-ranging study, In this book Cannon Schmitt shows how Darwin and other Victorian naturalists transformed such encounters with South America and its indigenous peoples into influential accounts of biological and historical change. Redefining what it means to be human, they argue that the modern self must be understood in relation to a variety of pasts - personal, historical, and ancestral - conceived of as savage. Schmitt reshapes our understanding of Victorian imperialism, revisits the implications of Darwinian theory, and demonstrates the pertinence of nineteenth-century biological thought to current theorizations of memory.
Neorealists argue that all states aim to acquire power and that state cooperation can therefore only be temporary, based on a common opposition to a third country. This view condemns the world to endless conflict for the indefinite future. Based upon careful attention to actual historical outcomes, this book contends that, while some countries and leaders have demonstrated excessive power drives, others have essentially underplayed their power and sought less position and influence than their comparative strength might have justified. Featuring case studies from across the globe, History and Neorealism examines how states have actually acted. The authors conclude that leadership, domestic politics, and the domain (of gain or loss) in which they reside play an important role along with international factors in raising the possibility of a world in which conflict does not remain constant and, though not eliminated, can be progressively reduced.
We know Shakespeare's writings only from imperfectly-made early editions, from which editors struggle to remove errors. The New Bibliography of the early twentieth century, refined with technological enhancements in the 1950s and 1960s, taught generations of editors how to make sense of the early editions of Shakespeare and use them to make modern editions. This book is the first complete history of the ideas that gave this movement its intellectual authority, and of the challenges to that authority that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s. Working chronologically, Egan traces the struggle to wring from the early editions evidence of precisely what Shakespeare wrote. The story of another struggle, between competing interpretations of the evidence from early editions, is told in detail and the consequences for editorial practice are comprehensively surveyed, allowing readers to discover just what is at stake when scholars argue about how to edit Shakespeare.
Scholars argue over where Hebrews fit in the first century world. Kenneth L. Schenck works towards resolving this question by approaching Hebrews' cosmology and eschatology from a text-orientated perspective. After observing that the key passages in the background debate mostly relate to the 'settings' of the story of salvation history evoked by Hebrews, Schenck attempts to delineate those settings by asking how the 'rhetorical world' of Hebrews engages that underlying narrative. Hebrews largely argue from an eschatology of two ages, which correspond to two covenants. The fresh age has come despite the continuance of some old age elements. The most characteristic elements of Hebrews' settings, however, are its spatial settings, where we find an underlying metaphysical dualism between the highest heaven, which is the domain of spirit, and the created realm, including the created heavens. This creation will be removed at the eschaton, leaving only the unshakeable heaven.
This is the first book to tackle the controversial history of prostitution in Ireland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Maria Luddy uncovers the extent of prostitution in the country, how Irish women came to work as prostitutes, their living conditions and their treatment by society. She links discussions of prostitution to the Irish nationalist and suffrage movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, analysing the ways in which Irish nationalism used the problems of prostitution and venereal disease to argue for the withdrawal of the British from Ireland. She also investigates the contentious history of Magdalen asylums and explores how the infamous red-light district of Dublin's 'Monto' was finally suppressed through the actions of the Legion of Mary in the 1920s. Revealing complex social and religious attitudes towards prostitution in Irish society, this book opens up a new world in Ireland's social and political history.
What did 'home' mean to men and women in the period 1200–1500? This volume explores the many cultural, material and ideological dimensions of the concept of domesticity. Leading scholars examine not only the material cultures of domesticity, gender, and power relations within the household, but also how they were envisioned in texts, images, objects and architecture. Many of the essays argue that England witnessed the emergence of a distinctive bourgeois ideology of domesticity during the late Middle Ages. But the volume also contends that, although the world of the great lord was far removed from that of the artisan or peasant, these social groups all occupied physical structures that constituted homes in which people were drawn together by ties of kinship, service or neighbourliness. This pioneering study will appeal to scholars of medieval English society, literature and culture.
What matters most to voters when they choose their leaders? This book suggests that performance politics is at the heart of contemporary democracy, with voters forming judgments about how well competing parties and leaders perform on important issues. Given the high stakes and uncertainty involved, voters rely heavily on partisan cues and party leader images as guides to electoral choice. However, the authors argue that the issue agenda of British politics has changed markedly in recent years. A cluster of concerns about crime, immigration and terrorism now mix with perennial economic and public service issues. Since voters and parties often share the same positions on these issues, political competition focuses on who can do the best job. This book shows that a model emphasizing flexible partisan attachments, party leader images and judgments of party competence on key issues can explain electoral choice in contemporary Britain.
Pedagogy and Power is a volume of interdisciplinary essays which explores the political dimensions of Graeco-Roman education and of its subsequent models. Seeking to make the various structures and discourses of intellectual authority more apparent, the essays argue that there is a social context for the knowledge imparted by classical models of pedagogy. They examine how such pedagogues instruct their pupils to function as citizens who rule or are ruled, privileging certain knowledge over others, and including some individuals while excluding others. Overall the book shows that the complex and plural authorities and power that have been associated with classical learning and knowledge are not part of a legacy to be unproblematically inherited or reproduced.
Examining the literature of slavery and race before the Civil War, Maurice Lee, in this 2005 book, demonstrates how the slavery crisis became a crisis of philosophy that exposed the breakdown of national consensus and the limits of rational authority. Poe, Stowe, Douglass, Melville, and Emerson were among the antebellum authors who tried - and failed - to find rational solutions to the slavery conflict. Unable to mediate the slavery controversy as the nation moved toward war, their writings form an uneasy transition between the confident rationalism of the American Enlightenment and the more skeptical thought of the pragmatists. Lee draws on antebellum moral philosophy, political theory, and metaphysics, bringing a different perspective to the literature of slavery - one that synthesizes cultural studies and intellectual history to argue that romantic, sentimental, and black Atlantic writers all struggled with modernity when facing the slavery crisis.
The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism traces how individuals fare over time in each of the three principal types of welfare state. Through a unique analysis of panel data from Germany, the Netherlands and the US, tracking individuals' socio-economic fate over fully ten years, Goodin, Headey, Muffels and Dirven explore issues of economic growth and efficiency, of poverty and inequality, of social integration and social autonomy. It is common to talk of the inevitability of tradeoffs between these goals. However, in this book the authors contend that the social democratic welfare regime, represented here by the Netherlands, equals or exceeds the performance of the corporatist German regime and the liberal US regime across all these social and economic objectives. They thus argue that, whatever one's priorities, the social democratic welfare regime is uniquely well-suited to realizing them.
The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism traces how individuals fare over time in each of the three principal types of welfare state. Through a unique analysis of panel data from Germany, the Netherlands and the US, tracking individuals' socio-economic fate over fully ten years, Goodin, Headey, Muffels and Dirven explore issues of economic growth and efficiency, of poverty and inequality, of social integration and social autonomy. It is common to talk of the inevitability of tradeoffs between these goals. However, in this book the authors contend that the social democratic welfare regime, represented here by the Netherlands, equals or exceeds the performance of the corporatist German regime and the liberal US regime across all these social and economic objectives. They thus argue that, whatever one's priorities, the social democratic welfare regime is uniquely well-suited to realizing them.
