The debate over encumbered versus unencumbered selves that characterized the dialogue between liberalism & republicanism did not end well. Neither side seemed enlightened by its encounter with the other, as it became increasingly difficult to pin down the differences between the sides, never more so than when Michael Sandel was violently agreeing with Richard Dagger. Drawing on the work of novelist & philosopher Iris Murdoch, this essay argues that Sandel could have made a much stronger argument for his view than he did. Sandel need not have conceded or concluded that encumbered selves are unable to choose freely. Freedom is a more subtle & complicated concept that either Sandel or Dagger recognize. 34 References. Adapted from the source document.
DISORDER IS A CONSTANT THEME IN JOHN CALVIN'S POLITICAL WORK. BY EXPLORING MOB AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE, HE DRAWS ATTENTION TO THOSE FORCES SUSTAINING ORDER. NATURAL SENSIBILITIES, CONSCIENCE, AND DIVINE PROVIDENCE RESTRAIN THE WORST EXCESSES IN HUMAN BEINGS.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many governments have taken drastic measures to avoid an overflow of intensive care units. Accurate metrics of disease spread are critical for the reopening strategies. Here, we show that self-reports of smell/taste changes are more closely associated with hospital overload and are earlier markers of the spread of infection of SARS-CoV-2 than current governmental indicators. We also report a decrease in self-reports of new onset smell/taste changes as early as 5 days after lockdown enforcement. Cross-country comparisons demonstrate that countries that adopted the most stringent lockdown measures had faster declines in new reports of smell/taste changes following lockdown than a country that adopted less stringent lockdown measures. We propose that an increase in the incidence of sudden smell and taste change in the general population may be used as an indicator of COVID-19 spread in the population.
The political thought of the Spanish exile of 1939 offers, seventy years later, fruitful and current perspectives. Besides a systematic and well-known work, linked to critical Marxism, such as the one of Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, include other expressions, fragmented and meandering character, which focuses this paper. These were, namely, the early genealogy of fascism pointed out by Eugenio Ímaz and María Zambrano using different hermeneutical keys, but overlapping in linking it to the secularizing progression of modern reason. Second, the memory of own exile to both appealed against a complacent present about the victims of his more recent past, thereby leading to a debate between history and memory impregnated of political meaning. And third, the critique of contractarian logic pointed out by Eduardo Nicol on the horizon of a global techno-scientific rationality whose political implications affected the Spanish democracy instituted after the dictatorship. ; El pensamiento político del exilio español de 1939 ofrece, setenta años después, perspectivas fecundas y actuales. Junto a una obra sistemática y bien conocida, ligada al marxismo crítico, como la de Adolfo Sánchez Vázquez, cabe destacar otras expresiones, de carácter fragmentado y sinuoso, en las que se centra este trabajo. Tales fueron, concretamente, la temprana genealogía del fascismo que apuntaron Eugenio Ímaz y María Zambrano valiéndose de claves hermenéuticas diferentes aunque coincidentes en ligar dicho fenómeno a la progresión secularizadora de la razón moderna. En segundo lugar, la memoria del propio exilio a la que tanto uno como otro apelaron a contrapelo de un presente autocomplaciente respecto a las victimas de su pasado mas reciente, suscitando así un debate entre la historia y la memoria impregnado de significación política. Y, en tercer lugar, la crítica de la lógica contractualista apuntada por Eduardo Nicol en el horizonte de un racionalismo tecno- científico global, cuyas implicaciones políticas no dejaron de afectar a la democracia española instaurada tras el fin del franquismo.
Objective evidences of geographical-political unbalance in Ukraine, which is clearly manifested in the electoral and political activity of the population and is the result primarily of historical and geographical differences and ethno-geographical regions of the state, are characterized. Twelve political and geographic areas with the characteristics of the party-political preferences and geopolitical consciousness are allocated on the basis of a comparative analysis of presidential elections in Ukraine.It is concluded that the regional mental-political differentiation does not have the character of intercivilizational contrasts. Objective historical and cultural base integrity are defined. Complications of regional-political situation in Ukraine at the beginning of the XXI century was not immanent conditioned and caused by subjective factors such as a lack of effective internal geopolitics during the 90s and targeted large-scale geopolitical pressure from Russia at the beginning of the XXI century. ; Схарактеризовано об'єктивні ознаки територіально-політичної незрівноваженості України, яка виразно проявляється в електорально-політичній активності населення і є наслідком насамперед історико-географічних та етногеографічних відмінностей регіонів держави. На підставі порівняльного аналізу виборів президента України виділено дванадцять політико-географічних районів з характерними рисами партійно-політичних уподобань та геополітичної свідомості. Зроблено висновок про те, що регіональна ментально-політична диференціація аж ніяк не має характеру міжцивілізаційних контрастів. Визначено об'єктивні історико-культурні підстави цілісності держави. Ускладнення регіонально-політичної ситуації в Україні на початку ХХІ ст. не було іманентно зумовленим, а спричинене такими суб'єктивними чинниками, як відсутність ефективної внутрішньої геополітики впродовж 90-х років ХХ ст. і цілеспрямованим масштабним геополітичним тиском Росії на початку ХХІ ст.
AbstractAn important rationale for the creation of semi‐autonomous agencies is to create some distance between politics and administration. As such, agencies are expected to shield policy implementation from the daily concerns of political life. However, political actors and politically controlled ministries still influence agencies in various intended and unintended ways. This article focuses on intensive long‐term series of structural reforms and how they may undermine the original design philosophy underpinning agencification. We utilize a dataset combining staff surveys and a structural reform database to perform multilevel analyses of employees nested in organizations. We find that the frequency with which agencies have experienced structural reform affects the weight that employees attach to signals from political and ministerial principals. Frequent structural reform may lead to heightened perceptions of the importance of political signals. Hence, frequent structural reforms may increase the risk of political influence on agencies that were designed to operate impartially.
Much of literature on the Sahel-savannah region of West Africa centres on whether the region is a degraded version of a former densely wooded landscape and whether it is becoming further desertified. The dominant view of many West African parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification asserts that this zone is increasingly being desertified due to climate change and destructive practices of peasant agriculture. Other researchers have challenged this claim and argued that the high climate variability characterising the savannah zone is responsible for fluctuations in vegetation cover. Although recent research supports the latter view, this perspective has been ignored by Ghana's National Action Plan in favour of the desertification discourse. The Plan also ignores the cumulative effects of colonial and postcolonial government policies and market forces in influencing land use and vegetation changes in the savannah zone. This thesis investigates the changing patterns of land use and land cover changes in the savannah region of northeast Ghana. It adopts a long-term historical perspective for understanding the interactions and combined influences of climate variability, political-economic factors and perceptions of local communities on changes in vegetation cover. It uses archival records, in-depth interviews and social participatory GIS mapping techniques to examine the combined influences of political-economic factors and rainfall variability on vegetation distribution and cropping patterns. The historical analysis shows that pre-colonial traditional knowledge systems were ignored by the colonial authorities who altered the organisation of settlements and agriculture to benefit the interests of colonial enterprise. In the early twentieth century, the colonial government sought to increase agricultural production by imposing strict environmental 'conservation' measures on peasants, claiming that these communities had destroyed a previously dense forested region and turned it into a degraded savannah. The postcolonial governments continued to assert this claim against local communities and pushed for agricultural industrialisation to promote economic development. During the 1970s and the early 1980s, the Sahel droughts and bushfires severely affected agricultural production and reduced tree cover in northeast Ghana. This reinforced and institutionalised the prevailing view that traditional farming methods of local peasant communities under severe drought conditions were threatening to turn the savannah into a desert. The long-term rainfall analysis showed high inter-annual and intra-seasonal variability. This variability was reflected in the cropping patterns, areas under cultivation and tree cover. In wetter years, agriculture extended into areas that had developed tree cover, while in drier years, tree cover extended into previously cultivated land. Agriculture and tree cover showed similar variation between the annual wet and dry seasons. The GIS analysis and perception-based mapping also confirmed this variability in seasonal and annual variations in rainfall, showing 'greening' and afforestation in some areas and tree cover reduction in other areas. Changes in the government's agricultural and land management policies were also critical drivers in altering crop and tree cover. Local communities highlighted government policies and market conditions as prime factors influencing their land use decisions, and emphasised that these factors reduced their capacity to respond effectively to the climate fluctuations typical of the Sahel-savannah region. The thesis concludes by showing that northeast Ghana has never been a zone of desertification, but rather a natural savannah zone characterised by high fluctuation in rainfall and vegetation cover both in the short and longer terms. It supports the arguments that high climate variability affects fluctuations in vegetation cover in the savannah zone. In addition, the thesis shows that the long-term influences of colonial and postcolonial government policies and market forces have contributed to greater variability in vegetation cover within this highly variable climatic zone.
The complex dynamics between technological niches and regime &ldquo ; lock-in&rdquo ; are critical in determining the pace and outcomes of energy transitions. The socio-technical transitions literature has received growing scholarly attention, but it lacks consideration of the broader political and economic contexts. This paper aims to advance understanding of socio-technical transitions by conceptualizing niche&ndash ; regime dynamics from a political economic perspective, with reference to a case study of solar in Seoul. Based on in-depth face-to-face interviews with 18 key stakeholders, we have three findings. Firstly, the politico-economic contexts have created an embedded environment in which five factors have a clear influence on niche&ndash ; regime dynamics. Secondly, the politico-economic contexts created conducive conditions for niche developments on the one hand, but, on the other hand, have created inhibitive conditions that have cancelled out the positive forces and reinforced &ldquo ; lock-in&rdquo ; . Thirdly, the processes occur at multi-scalar levels: Community solar niches in Seoul are conditioned by the broader politico-economic contexts at city and national levels. We conclude that sufficient policy attention should be given to the political economy of a national energy system in order to create conducive conditions for community-led niches to realize the full potential that they could offer in energy transitions.
As sociological neo-institutionalist theories have shown, social and political institutions are not only a set of rules, procedures, organizational routines and governance structures (see March and Olsen 1984), but they also provide norms and habits that determine individual choices and behaviours. in this chapter, we would like to apply this line of reasoning to propose a theoretical framework for the study of collective action in the field of unemployment politics. We propose a framework for analysis based on the idea that the form and content of political claim-making on issues relating to unemployment are influenced in important ways by the prevailing conceptions of the welfare state and the consequent institutional approaches to unemployment.
"This dissertation . will constitute part of a complete study of the g̲e̲n̲r̲e̲ to be published under the title: The political novel--its development in England and in America." ; Vita. ; Thesis (PH. D.)--Johns Hopkins university, 1923. ; Mode of access: Internet.
