The expulsion of party members for the expression of dissent is a common practice in democratic states around the world, which can have momentous consequences for individual parties and the political system at large. In this article, we address the question of whether limitations on party members' free speech can be defended on normative grounds. Drawing on a conception of parties that sees them as broader membership organisations that allow citizens to exercise political agency in a unique fashion, as well as on insights from the broader normative-theoretical literature on organisations, we build a strong presumptive case that interference with party members' political freedoms is normatively problematic. Exploring numerous weighty arguments in favour of limiting freedom of speech within parties, we find that none of them provides a knock-down argument against our case. The argument we advance has important implications for contemporary theoretical debates about parties and partisanship, and for the regulation of parties' internal affairs more generally.
The expulsion of party members for the expression of dissent is a common practice in democratic states around the world, which can have momentous consequences for individual parties and the political system at large. In this article, we address the question of whether limitations on party members' free speech can be defended on normative grounds. Drawing on a conception of parties that sees them as broader membership organisations that allow citizens to exercise political agency in a unique fashion, as well as on insights from the broader normative-theoretical literature on organisations, we build a strong presumptive case that interference with party members' political freedoms is normatively problematic. Exploring numerous weighty arguments in favour of limiting freedom of speech within parties, we find that none of them provides a knock-down argument against our case. The argument we advance has important implications for contemporary theoretical debates about parties and partisanship, and for the regulation of parties' internal affairs more generally.
We distinguish between three sets of rights – property rights, political rights, and civil rights – and provide a taxonomy of political regimes. The distinctive nature of liberal democracy is that it protects civil rights (equality before the law for minorities) in addition to the other two. When democratic transitions are the product of a settlement between the elite (who care mostly about property rights) and the majority (who care mostly about political rights), they generically fail to produce liberal democracy. This is because the minority has neither the resources nor the numbers to make a contribution to the settlement. We develop a formal model to sharpen the contrast between electoral and liberal democracies and highlight circumstances under which liberal democracy can emerge. We show that liberal democracy requires quite special circumstances: mild levels of income inequality as well as weak identity cleavages. We provide some evidence consistent with this result, and also present a new classification of countries as electoral or liberal democracies.
Decades of research across several disciplines have produced substantial evidence that labor unions, on balance, reduce economic disparities. But unions are complicated, multifaceted organizations straddling markets and politics. Much of their equality-promoting influence occurs through their ability to reduce class-based inequity in politics and public policy. Declining unionization across much of the developed world is eroding workers' bargaining power. Reduced economic leverage puts pressure on union solidarity and weakens labor-based political movements. Important research design problems and significant heterogeneity across unions, regions, countries, and time imply a continued need for more work.
Globalization and evolving knowledge society are the major fundamental challenge to the social science. Diversification of social life on the all levels of reality - individual, family, community, state, mankind - opens new opportunities and give birth to the new threats. To grasp these two - positive and negative - sides of our life the more precise, relevant cognitive means are needed. Better conceptualized, free of ideological and political influences, cleaned from elements of common sense, conventional wisdom social knowledge would better conform to the requirements of "pure" science and would become more reliable source of viable, effective policies pursued by national states and international organizations.One of preconditions of the success of social science is the settlement of old paradigmatic competition between methodological individualism and methodological holism. Both have mooted historical records. Soviet experiment was based mainly on holistic assumptions; market fundamentalism is the natural outcome (product) of individualistic thinking.Methodological (metatheorical) exploration of all these problems faced by social sciences, though costly they are, would give better cognitive perspective to them, would "harden" them.Having said this we would like to stress that social sciences will never achieve the level of "hardness" attributed to natural sciences and first of all physics. Social sciences explore social reality which is qualitatively differs from non-living world. The latter is much more weakly structured, less deterministic, pulsating, the link between action and response is not linear etc.The quality social knowledge is a public good, which can contribute substantially to the social progress. Unfortunately in the framework of individualistic thinking the notion of public good is marginalized and knowledge is not treated as economic resource. Author of this article join those researchers who argue for holistic perception of social reality which provides better, wider understanding of modern world and thereby provides more solid foundation for relevant state and global policies. ; Globalizacijos ir žinių visuomenės sąlygomis visuomeninė pažanga, galimybės gauti didesnę naudą ir užkirsti kelią besikaupiančioms grėsmėms vis labiau priklauso nuo mokslų apie visuomenę būklės. Deja, ta būklė nėra patenkinama. Tai susiję su tuo, jog tiems mokslams turi didelės įtakos ideologiniai, politiniai ir buitinės sąmonės veiksniai. Nesušvelninus šių veiksnių įtakos, taip pat neišsprendus paradigminio pobūdžio problemų, susijusių su metodologinio individualizmo ir metodologinio holizmo konkurencija, sunku tikėtis, kad visuomenės mokslai galėtų tapti adekvačių laikmečiui politinių sprendimų pagrindu. Tam, kad didėtų socialinių mokslų vykdomų tyrimų rezultatyvumas, būtinos didesnės pastangos tiriant meta-teorines (metodologines) socialinių mokslų problemas.
The efforts of the Reagan Administration to cut government funding for the arts and the social sciences reflects not only a general desire to curtail government spending but also a specific conservative effort to "defund the Left" by eliminating especially those programs regarded by conservatives as the basic source of liberal and radical social change in the United States. This paper examines the conservative animus against government support for the arts and the social sciences. The discussion has four parts: The first traces the history of contemporary American conservatism and identifies its central ideological themes. The second argues that the belief that government and intellectuals are the two main sources of liberal social change has led conservatives to target government programs allegedly guilty of social activism and to develop their own relatively autonomous counterintellectual network. The third examines how this political agenda and institutional structure have influenced conservative opposition to government funding of the social sciences and the arts. The final part suggests some implications our analysis has for defending the social sciences and the arts.
Abstract Open Science paradigm involves transformations throughout the entire cycle of scientific research. Decision-makers play the key role of paradigm change facilitators. Consequently, the promotion of Open Science requires a political commitment. Even though Open Science movement emerged at the international level back in 2002, its principles are being implemented quite slowly in the Republic of Moldova. Thus, the current study aims to analyze the importance and benefits of Open Science policy implementation, the strategic priorities of the Republic of Moldova on Open Science, barriers in transition to Open Science in the Republic of Moldova, and identification of the key actors in development, adoption, and implementation of Open Science policies in the Republic of Moldova. The study employed a mixed method: survey among members of the scientific community (quantitative data collection) and semi-structured interviews of the key informants in Open Science policies and practices (qualitative data collection).
In 2005, a new scheme differentiating between standard and special grants for University of Malta students was launched to increase enrollment in science, engineering and information technology (IT) courses. The Government considered: the country's socio-economic development; the Lisbon agenda; and OECD standards. The courses identified were: B.Sc.(Business & Computing); B.Sc.(Hons) (IT, Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, Statistics & Operations Research, Computer Science, Informatics); B.Eng.(Hons); and B.Ed.(Hons)/PGCE (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science). At age 12/13, students make subject choices that eventually provide them with the Secondary Education Certificate (SEC) qualifications for Sixth Form and, later, University. The least popular Science is Chemistry. ; peer-reviewed
The study is dedicated to analyzing, structuring and systematizing different The article structures the theorizations available in Ukrainian Political Science on the factors, stages and varieties of migration and migration processes, in particular at the back- ground of a number of political and socio-economic events of the past decades of the early 21st century. This period was chosen taking into account the fact that at this time different and divergent migration processes were gradually expressed both within Ukraine and from Ukraine to other countries in Europe and the world. It was shown that the migration process necessarily includes four stages – initial or preparatory, basic, residence stage and return stage. The author revealed that these stages are inherent in different types of migration, although due to quite different factors, including economic, social, political/political-legal, environmental, cultural/ethno cultural, demographic and so on. In general, it was found that the topics of factors, stages and varieties of migration processes are well developed and structured in Ukrainian science.
A fresh understanding of Henry Adams' political career is offered with this book. The author argues that Adams sought influence and power, not office, and shows how the young republican sabotaged his career as a journalist and lobbyist by offending the people he sought to influence.
International audience ; The paths via which university-generated knowledge reaches final users and creates value are traditionally considered to be the supply-side channels of the commercialisation of inventions, consultancy, and R&D contracts. Yet, this focus limits universities to being "providers" of knowledge and technology for industrial applications and fails to account for the diversity of mechanisms responsible for the diffusion of academic activities. This paper aims to complete the existing understanding of the contribution made by universities to the corporate innovation process by recognising the impact of university demand on the innovative performance of firms in the scientific value chain. We study the impact of a large French public university on the innovative performance of its suppliers of scientific equipment. We perform micro-econometric analyses showing that university suppliers have a higher propensity to introduce new-to-the-market product innovations than do other firms belonging to the same sectors and with similar characteristics. Our results provide support to the conjecture that innovations and technological changes are the result not only of scientific and technical discoveries, but also of a complex chain reaction triggered by the interplay between specific demands and solutions designed to overcome technology bottlenecks.
International audience ; The paths via which university-generated knowledge reaches final users and creates value are traditionally considered to be the supply-side channels of the commercialisation of inventions, consultancy, and R&D contracts. Yet, this focus limits universities to being "providers" of knowledge and technology for industrial applications and fails to account for the diversity of mechanisms responsible for the diffusion of academic activities. This paper aims to complete the existing understanding of the contribution made by universities to the corporate innovation process by recognising the impact of university demand on the innovative performance of firms in the scientific value chain. We study the impact of a large French public university on the innovative performance of its suppliers of scientific equipment. We perform micro-econometric analyses showing that university suppliers have a higher propensity to introduce new-to-the-market product innovations than do other firms belonging to the same sectors and with similar characteristics. Our results provide support to the conjecture that innovations and technological changes are the result not only of scientific and technical discoveries, but also of a complex chain reaction triggered by the interplay between specific demands and solutions designed to overcome technology bottlenecks.
