Suchergebnisse

Motivation crowding out can lead to a reduction of 'higher' virtues, such as altruism or public spirit, in market contexts. This article discusses the role of virtue in the moral and economic theory of Adam Smith. It argues that because Smith's account of commercial society is based on 'lower' virtue, 'higher' virtue has a precarious place in it; this phenomenon is structurally similar to motivation crowding out. The article analyzes and systematizes the ways in which Smith builds on 'contrivances of nature' in order to solve the problems of limited self-command and limited knowledge. As recent research has shown, a clear separation of different social spheres can help to reduce the risk of motivation crowding out and preserve a place for 'higher virtue' in commercial society. The conclusion reflects on the performative power of economics, arguing that the one-sided focus on models of 'economic man' should be embedded in a larger context.

Although parliamentary questions (PQs) are a feature of most legislatures, no two legislatures share exactly identical questioning forms. This research provides an overview of forms of questioning in European parliaments, covering variation in the main institutional features, the processing of questions and the impact of political parties on questioning. Cross-national and temporal variation in the behavioural trends in questioning is identified using more in-depth analysis of patterns of questioning in the national parliaments of the United Kingdom, France and Spain. The accountability game is found to have a general structure based on the principal-agent relationship and the fact that government must answer questions posed by MPs. PQs are conceived as formal mechanisms to combat information asymmetries and moral hazard, especially when there is hidden information, and by means of them MPs can give orientation or indirizzo (direction) to the executive. Adapted from the source document.

Governments increasingly seek to involve citizens in public policy and management, often appealing to their civic virtue. But why do people participate in civic and community-based actions? Drawing on theories of interpersonal behaviour, the article sets out four categories of citizen orientation that might influence participation: trust in government institutions, moral motivations, neighbourhood social norms and neighbourhood affect. Using the core sample component of the Home Office Citizenship Survey 2005, the analysis applies structural equation models (SEMs) to identify and explain four types of citizen act: influencing institutions individually, collective civic, citizen governance and community voluntarism. The results show that neighbourhood affect – having positive feelings about the neighbourhood – has a positive effect on civic behaviour. Citizens with low levels of political trust are more likely than others to engage in civic behaviour. Taking into account a range of socio-economic and other factors, there is no significant effect of neighbourhood social norms and moral motivations on civic behaviour.

Historians have long recognized that the 1977-8 debate surrounding the Panama Canal treaties constituted a formative moment in the history of the New Right. By closely analyzing the arguments both for and against the treaties, Natasha Zaretsky contends that the debate crystallized a broader struggle between two articulations of U.S. nationalism after Vietnam. Supporters believed that the treaties signaled the development of a post-Cold War, post-Vietnam framework for U.S. foreign policy, one that would reinsert moral considerations into the realm of policymaking. Meanwhile, opponents believed that what they called the "giveaway" of the Canal was symptomatic of a larger pattern of American retreat in the wake of military defeat in Vietnam. The essay traces the contours of the debate among members of the Carter Administration, Congress, grassroots organizers, and ordinary men and women. Adapted from the source document.

Justice, by and large, implies greater legitimacy and can persuade parties with conflicting interests to cooperate more closely on collective actions. Therefore, the aim of this article is to investigate the role that ethical arguments have played in restoring mutual trust between the developed and the developing countries in negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund and in transforming the patent failure of the Subsidiary Body for Implementation Bonn May 2006 meetings on its management into the encouraging success of the Nairobi December 2006 round. These meetings are analysed from the perspectives of procedural and distributive justice in order to interpret the negotiating dynamics and their outcomes. More specifically, procedural and distributive justice are, respectively, sought in the Bonn and Nairobi formal meetings through reference to, and the emergence of, principles and criteria of participation, recognition and distribution of power among Parties, and of Parties' responsibility for, and vulnerability to, climate impacts. Adapted from the source document.

Human beings are temporal and spatial beings. We cannot go back in time; whatever we do is an intervention in irreversible, on-going causal processes; physically, we cannot be in two places simultaneously; and the specific area of space we fill in cannot be occupied by anybody else simultaneously. While the nature of time has been theorised in philosophy, social theory and (world) political theory, in practice historians and social scientists tend to equate time with the modern linear conception of time, organising their narratives and explanations in a chronological order, without reflecting upon the complexities of time and temporalities of social being. I make four arguments, developing them in the context of concrete world historical events and processes. First, I ask what and when is "now"? The present cannot be punctual. Rather, the present is a moment of becoming, and makes reference to an on-going process. Second, because "now" is relative to the relevant processes, its meaning and characteristics depend on how these processes turn out. Thus, the past is, in part, undetermined, and at some level will remain so. Third, the futurized nature of the present is changing. Critical social sciences are involved in this process of transformation, especially through reflexive self-regulation of social systems. Fourthly, the move from predictions to reflexive scenarios about possible futures, and to open ethico-political discourse about unwanted and desired future possibilities, raises deep -- in effect, mythological -- questions about the meaning and purpose of world history as a whole. I argue that mythopoetic imagination can also be a means for critique. Adapted from the source document.