Cet article propose de lire Le commun de la liberté (2022) de Catherine Colliot-Thélène comme une contribution majeure à la manière nouvelle de faire de la philosophie politique propre à ce que l’on peut appeler les « Lumières radicales ». Il part de l’idée que le livre s’inscrit dans le même projet politico-philosophique que La démocratie sans « demos » (2011), celui de reconstruire la démocratie sur une base nouvelle et radicale. Colliot-Thélène propose une défense audacieuse de l’individualisme méthodologique des (...) droits dont elle fait l’élément clé de la grammaire de la politique démocratique, en même temps qu’elle examine les lacunes des systèmes démocratiques existants du point de vue de deux figures symptomatiques, le pauvre et le réfugié. La deuxième partie de la contribution aborde trois aspects qui sont au cœur du Commun de la liberté, à savoir la conception de la propriété, la conception de la citoyenneté et des statuts personnels, et la théorie des droits. (shrink)

In the aftermath of the Second World War, effective handling of scientific information was identified as crucial for advancement and international competitiveness. Here, we study how the Soviet Union, through the founding of _The All-Union Institute for Scientific and Technical Information_ (VINITI), developed its own grandiose system which served researchers and engineers throughout the USSR. By studying its inception, the way it was structured, and how it relates to similar grand visions of how to organise knowledge, we provide rare insights (...) into a partly alternative history of how scientific information was organised in the latter half of the 20 th century. Based on available sources in English and Russian, we consider the ideas behind this grand initiative for acquiring international literature, as well as how it was received and presented to a foreign audience. In this effort, we put particular emphasis on the first 25 years of VINITI (1952–1977) while at the same time focusing on central ideas in its organisation such as “enrichment”, “abstracting” and “pre-printing”. A key principle emerging from our analysis is how the notion of concentration becomes a fundamental principle for its operations. Overall, the activities of VINITI can today appear as both old-fashioned, bordering on the utopian, and as visionary and modern in its abandonment of journals and traditional forms of peer review. (shrink)

In the new debate about economic planning, the question of whether new forms of comprehensive planning might inadvertently encourage a relapse into authoritarianism must be central. The article analyzes the proposal of a “Participatory Economy” because it is the most sophisticated model for comprehensive planning without the need for centralized institutions. Planning is carried out in a participatory manner, enabling worker and consumer councils to coordinate their interrelated economic activities themselves. The danger of a relapse into authoritarianism appears to be (...) averted. However, the paper argues that the Participatory Economy doesn’t live up to the goal it set for itself to a satisfying degree, because it requires more centralized institutions than it initially suggests. Centralization tendencies arise for strong normative reasons and are therefore difficult to avoid. Even worse, council-democratic remedies to centralization tendencies don’t offer an easy answer, as these remedies come with their own set of problems. (shrink)

This essay reviews recent debates over the allocation of regulatory authority in three separate fields of financial regulation: corporate governance, securities regulation, and the regulation of financial institutions. In each field, the essay argues, reform proposals can be organized into three basic groups: those that advocate centralization of regulatory authority; those that favor competition among governmental bodies; and those that recommend the privatization of regulatory standards. While this debate is most familiar in the field of corporate governance, highly analogous (...) policy discussions are currently taking place in securities regulation and the regulation of financial institutions. This essay traces the development of arguments over the proper allocation of regulatory authority in various sectors of the financial services industry, noting differences both in the contexts in which the issue has arisen in various sectors of the industry and also in the ways regulatory authority is currently allocated in each sector. The essay concludes with several tentative thoughts about normative grounds on which debates over the proper allocation of regulatory authority might ultimately be resolved. (shrink)

This article offers a comparative study of the views of Alexis de Tocqueville and those of several Chinese thinkers of the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644)—primarily Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi—on the socio-political processes of centralization. My central claim is that their views of political centralization and of the decentralized polycentric society that preceded it in their respective countries exhibit a remarkable array of analogous structural features. More specifically, both Tocqueville and his Chinese counterparts perceive in centralization (...) an inherent unsustainability driven by its self-destructive nature: since the foundation and strength of statism depends on its social resources, the centralization of power inevitably results in the weakening of its own basis. I conclude that through their nuanced reinterpretation of self-interest, both parties advocate a “small-community-oriented communitarianism” instead of the increasingly centralized modern state. (shrink)

This article offers a comparative study of the views of Alexis de Tocqueville and those of several Chinese thinkers of the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644)—primarily Gu Yanwu, Huang Zongxi, Wang Fuzhi—on the socio-political processes of centralization. My central claim is that their views of political centralization and of the decentralized polycentric society that preceded it in their respective countries exhibit a remarkable array of analogous structural features. More specifically, both Tocqueville and his Chinese counterparts perceive in centralization (...) an inherent unsustainability driven by its self-destructive nature: since the foundation and strength of statism depends on its social resources, the centralization of power inevitably results in the weakening of its own basis. I conclude that through their nuanced reinterpretation of self-interest, both parties advocate a “small-community-oriented communitarianism” instead of the increasingly centralized modern state. (shrink)

In this paper for the Aspen Institute, the author illustrates again his own wisdom and lucidity as well as the enduring nature of many of Tocqueville's questions and judgments.

Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) development teams provide an interesting and convenient setting for studying distributed work. We begin by answering perhaps the most basic question: what is the social structure of these teams? We conducted social network analyses of bug-fixing interactions from three repositories: Sourceforge, GNU Savannah and Apache Bugzilla. We find that some OSS teams are highly centralized, but contrary to expectation, others are not. Projects are mostly quite hierarchical on four measures of hierarchy, consistent with past research (...) but contrary to the naive image of these projects. Furthermore, we find that the level of centralization is negatively correlated with project size, suggesting that larger projects become more modular, or possibly that becoming more modular is a key to growth. The paper makes a further methodological contribution by identifying appropriate analysis approaches for interaction data. We conclude by sketching directions for future research. (shrink)

Global antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is currently governed by a decentralized regime complex composed of multiple institutions with overlapping and sometimes conflicting principles, norms, rules, and procedures. Such a decentralized regime complex provides certain advantages and disadvantages when compared to a centralized regime. A pandemic instrument can optimize the regime complex for AMR by leveraging the strengths of both centralization and decentralization. Existing climate treaties under the UNFCCC offer lessons for achieving this hybrid approach.

Drawing on extensive Thai literary and oral history sources this article sets out to explain the complex social, political, ethnic and religious framework within which the opening by ‘the Irish Buddhist’ U Dhammaloka of a free, bilingual and multi-ethnic Buddhist school at Wat Ban Thawai, Bangkok in May 1903 acquires a broader and deeper significance. The article documents the mutual relationships between the local Buddhisms of Tai, Burmese and Lao ethnic minorities and the politics of British-Siamese alliance in the period (...) before and during the First World War. It examines the British-Siamese support of these Buddhist communities in Bangkok and explores the British-Siamese use of their diplomatic relationship with the Tai, Burmese and Lao ethnic minorities in Ban Thawai and elsewhere (i.e. across the borders between Siam and Burma) in order to centralize power. It also discusses the anomalous effect of British and French influence in Ban Thawai which allowed local resistance to Siamese centralization and saṅgha reform. (shrink)

In their recent book The colonial machine, James McClellan III and François Regourd detail how ancien regime France’s government marshalled science in the service of colonial expansion. By focusing on the local and long distance struggles to make the Isle de France (present day Mauritius) a globally significant centre during the long eighteenth century, this essay suggests an alternative to McClellan and Regourd’s geography of metropolitan centre and colonial periphery, as well as their claim that the investigation of nature was (...) tied to colonial expansion by state centralization. Rather than view centralization as a double process whereby a metropolitan state is able to dominate increasingly peripheral territory by concentrating power and the means of its production and management under state authority, this essay argues that centralization occurred in numerous places and involved the organization, pursuit and management of various sorts of accumulation, with geographically extensive consequences. The goal is to present centralization as historically open and multi-centred, inviting examination of both its local dynamics and long-distance entanglements from various perspectives, which in turn reveals the multi-centred dynamics of empire building and governance, including the organization and pursuit of natural inquiry. (shrink)

The growing interest in Africa as well as concerns about negative deviant behaviors and ethnic structures necessitates examination of the effect of ethnic expectations on behavior of employees. In this study we leverage insight from ethnos oblige theory to propose that centralization of ethnic norms moderates the relationship between benevolence expectations and negative deviant behavior. Using a cross-sectional design and data from two countries as well as moderation and cross-cultural analytic techniques, we find support for three-way interactions where the (...) relationship between benevolence and negative deviant behavior is moderated by centralization and culture. We discuss the implications of the findings which support the dynamic perspective of management in Africa. (shrink)

This article argues that centralized wage bargaining alters the causal logic in explanations of wage inequality, in the sense that common explanatory factors have different effects, given the degree of bargaining centralization. The evidence presented supports the theoretical argument. Using aggregate time-series cross-country data from fifteen capitalist democracies, the article shows that—given decentralized bargaining—trade with less developed countries, resources devoted to research and development, and government employment have inegalitarian effects on the wage distribution, whereas leftist governments and unionism compress (...) wages. However, given centralized wage bargaining these effects gradually disappear or, in some cases, change direction. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to analyze the underlying economic structures which have led to the rise of the tech giants. In their book Capitalism without Capital: The Rise of the Intangible Economy, economists Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake outline the four fundamental features of the technocapitalist (or what they consider the intangible) economy. Key to the emerging intangible economy, they suggest, are the four “S’s” of this new form of capitalism, viz., scalability, sunkenness, synergies, and spillovers. In the (...) following, I explicate the ways in which, if taken seriously, these four features of the technocapitalist economy tend towards heightened levels of economic centralization and economic inequality as compared to those experienced under industrial capitalism. (shrink)

Contemporary society is dominated by the reality of the Anthropocene ecological crisis. In a certain subset of the ecopolitical literature, however, this topic is framed as a problem of governance. Supposedly, the unintended consequences of numerous micro-level human actions can be addressed by macro-level government interventions. Such discourses of eco-governmentality are informed by an emphasis upon the ‘planetary’ and the desirability of political centralisation. Our article seeks to critically engage with both the notion of a supposedly ‘planetary’ community of interests, (...) and also reject the idea of global eco-governmentality. In our view, not only does the misguided emphasis on global ecological governance oversimply the planetary predicament, obscuring differences between cultures and social power structures; but it also runs the risk of obviating local democracy and could also lead to an ecologically legitimated undemocratic global technocracy. Instead of centralisation, further decentralisation could be key to both thinking and acting ‘glocally’, without expecting too much from political systems. We make the case against eco-authoritarianism and also reject ecomodernism. Recent critiques relating to the pitfalls of ecomodernism can help us construct a more inclusive, bottom-up form of ecopolitics. (shrink)

In the Global North, Urban Agriculture is being considered as a way to overcome malnutrition and promote local, ethical production. UA can be understood through two phenomena integral to the capitalist mode of production: capital centralisation and rent. Centralisation explains why capitalist agriculture industrialises, while rent provides a theoretical framework for understanding how social and spatial relations structure urban land uses. Urban farming can occupy niches of the capitalist marketplace; however, its prospects for replacing large-scale agriculture and providing similar use-values (...) are limited. Its expansion is bounded by rising land values expressed in rent, as Detroit’s urban farm, Markham’s food belt, Los Angeles’s community garden, and initiatives in other cities demonstrate. The key tasks for political ecologists are two-fold: situating UA within capital’s drive to accumulate and proposing strategic perspectives that challenge these inherent tendencies. (shrink)

This contribution deals with Bakunin’s materialistic conception of human interests and its relationship to his harsh criticism of any idea of general interest, political representation and centralisation, especially in his late work Mazzini’s Political Theology and the International. The purpose of the article is to show how, by considering human interests and their role in society and history from a materialistic point of view, Bakunin also thinks general interest as something impossible, so that any legitimate foundation for political representation in (...) a centralist assembly. The first part of the contribution deals with this materialistic conception of interests and its relationship to Marx’s materialistic conception of history. The second part is about the very criticism of general interest as a mere fiction, so that any legitimate representation in the framework of a centralised system becomes impossible, even if the members of such an assembly are limited by imperative mandates. (shrink)

Cette contribution examine les rapports entre le matérialisme des intérêts que revendique Bakounine dans ses derniers textes et la critique qu’il propose des notions d’intérêt général, de représentation politique et de centralisation dans La théologie politique de Mazzini et l’Internationale. Son objet est de montrer que la prise en compte du rôle social et historique des intérêts rend caduque toute possibilité d’un intérêt général qui viendrait à son tour fonder la légitimité d’une représentation politique dans une assemblée centraliste. La première (...) partie de l’article examine le rapport entre ce matérialisme des intérêts et la conception matérialiste de l’histoire proposée par Marx et Engels. La seconde insiste sur la critique de l’intérêt général comme fiction et sur l’impossibilité qui en découle de toute représentation dans le cadre d’un système centralisé, la reconnaissance de cette impossibilité débouchant même sur une critique du mandat impératif. (shrink)

Cutler et.al. declare themselves opposed to the epistemological privileging of any level of discourse, but prefer, instead, to engage in discursive analyses of specific problems. Nevertheless, their critique of specific laws of tendency in Marx's texts - concentratlon and centralisation of capital, the falling rate of profit, etc. - relies almost exclusively on a single epistemological argument: there can be no such 'thing' as a law of tendency.

Could Soviet federalism provide a pattern for a European Union? The similarity between the national diversity of the Soviet Union and that of Europe could lead us to think so.A careful examination of Soviet federalism reveals certain particularities which could be adapted to a federal Europe, but the most powerful element of centralisation and unity in the USSR is the Communist Party, besidesa tough political police and a common language - Russian - another cement of the Union.Bearing in mind the (...) present institutions of the European Community, it is difficult to imagine an evolution towards such a federal state.Nevertheless, if some principles were applied, such as the safeguard of the common interest as well as that of the member-states, it may be hoped to go further than a timid confederation.In such a prospect, some institutions of the Soviet Union could be taken as examples and an institutionalisation of the present «summit» conferences could be imagined to act as a European collective head of state, in the same way as the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.Furthermore, Europe would need a common language and this should be a neutral one, so as to achieve among member-nations strict equality, for this is an element of success as are two other basicprinciples of federalism : autonomy and participation. Since the Communist Party just would not fit within a free and democratic Europe, it is in the above principles that the Community should seek the ferments of itsunion. (shrink)

Summary The paper discusses the political thought of Cesare Balbo (1789?1853), a leading Risorgimento moderate liberal and politician, in the context of the efforts by the Piedmontese political elite to support and legitimise the constitutional regime introduced by King Charles Albert in 1848. Revising current interpretations of Risorgimento moderate liberalism as backward and provincial, it seeks to locate the political thought of Balbo and his colleagues at the heart of contemporary European, and particularly French, debates regarding liberty and aristocracy. In (...) particular, it argues that the views of Balbo and more broadly Piedmontese moderate liberals on centralisation, the importance of a social elite to defend freedom, and equalisation, were conversant with the ideas of Guizot, Chateaubriand, Burke and Tocqueville. Their harsh condemnation of republican virtue, on the other hand, rendered their liberalism peculiar in the Italian context, where Tuscan moderate liberals continued to resort to the language of civic humanism after 1848 to defend their political and social model. (shrink)

Chinese cities are increasingly using digital technologies to address urban problems and govern society. However, little is known about how this digital transition has been implemented. This study explores the introduction of digital governance in Shenzhen, one of China's most advanced smart cities. We show that, at the local level, the successful implementation of digital systems faces numerous hurdles in long-standing data management and bureaucratic practices that are at least as challenging as the technical problems. Furthermore, the study finds that (...) the digital systems in Shenzhen entail a creeping centralisation of data that potentially turns lower administrative government units into mere users of the city-level smart platforms rather than being in control of their own data resources. Smart city development and big data ambitions thereby imply shifting stakeholder relations at the local level and also pull non-governmental stakeholders, such as information technology companies and research institutions, closer to new data flows and smart governance systems. The findings add to the discussion of big data-driven smart systems and their implications for governance processes in an authoritarian context. (shrink)

The Crisis of Capitalism and the Crisis of Political Representation History has taught us that there is no direct link between economic crisis and political revolution. Thefailure of Soviet socialism and the failure of European social-democracies can be traced to a commonorigin : the lack of intervention by the popular masses in the processes of social transformation whichhave been monopolised by the bureaucratic or technocratic elites. For want of a genuine democratisation of the political representation and of the modes of (...) government, state centralisation has createda persistent fracture between a caste of professional politicians and the mass of citizens, workers, andrecipients. A new bond must be created between the social movement “from below” and the instancesof political representation. (shrink)

Le présent article revient sur l’expression en vieil islandais vargr í véum (« loup dans les sanctuaires »). En comparant différents récits de tels loups, notamment le mythe de l’enchaînement de Fenrir, l’article montre que plutôt qu’une vieille catégorie préchrétienne dénotant le sacrilège, l’expression doit être comprise comme un moyen discursif servant à marginaliser son objet. Elle devait ainsi s’avérer utile pour des auteurs médiévaux et donc chrétiens au moment où ceux-ci pensaient des problèmes tels que les hiérarchies sociales ou (...) encore la centralisation de l’état. (shrink)

In this book, Benoît Dubreuil explores the creation and destruction of hierarchies in human evolution. Combining the methods of archaeology, anthropology, cognitive neuroscience and primatology, he offers a natural history of hierarchies from the point of view of both cultural and biological evolution. This volume explains why dominance hierarchies typical of primate societies disappeared in the human lineage and why the emergence of large-scale societies during the Neolithic period implied increased social differentiation, the creation of status hierarchies, and, eventually, political (...) centralisation. (shrink)

Biobanks correspond to different situations: research and technological development, medical diagnosis or therapeutic activities. Their status is not clearly defined. We aimed to investigate human biobanking in Europe, particularly in relation to organisational, economic and ethical issues in various national contexts. Data from a survey in six EU countries were collected as part of a European Research Project examining human and non-human biobanking. A total of 147 institutions concerned with biobanking of human samples and data were investigated by questionnaires and (...) interviews. Most institutions surveyed belong to the public or private non-profit-making sectors, which have a key role in biobanking. This activity is increasing in all countries because few samples are discarded and genetic research is proliferating. Collections vary in size, many being small and only a few very large. Their purpose is often research, or research and healthcare, mostly in the context of disease studies. A specific budget is very rarely allocated to biobanking and costs are not often evaluated. Samples are usually provided free of charge and gifts and exchanges are the common rule. Good practice guidelines are generally followed and quality controls are performed but quality procedures are not always clearly explained. Associated data are usually computerised. Biobankers generally favour centralisation of data rather than of samples. Legal and ethical harmonisation within Europe is considered likely to facilitate international collaboration. We propose a series of recommendations and suggestions arising from the EUROGENBANK project. (shrink)

This paper provides an argument in favour of federal institutional design on the basis that it is more congenial to the preservation and promotion of normatively desirable societal diversity than its unitary alternative. Seeking inspiration in the work of three of the most influential liberal thinkers of the nineteenth century: John Stuart Mill; Alexis de Tocqueville; and Lord Acton, I construct a novel case for federalism that focuses on the inherent benefits of a dual/multi-layered governmental structure. Section one argues for (...) the value of diversity, stating that it can both improve the authenticity of individually exercised autonomy, and improve the quality of individually espoused moral views. Section two considers the potential dangers posed by the unitary state to the flourishing of diversity through the centralisation of key institutions. Section three shows how the federal model sidesteps these pitfalls, and offers a more auspicious environment for the cultivation and enjoyment of diversity. (shrink)

SUMMARYDuring the years he was involved in French parliamentary politics, Alexis de Tocqueville was obsessed with the issue of political corruption. This article presents the first sustained analysis of Tocqueville’s speeches and writings on French corruption. It examines Tocqueville’s initial encounter with corruption during his run for parliamentary office, his sophisticated account of the sources of corruption, and his strategies for reforming French politics. The article contends that taking seriously Tocqueville’s struggle against corruption has the effect of complicating several conventional (...) interpretations of his thought. In his speeches and writings on corruption Tocqueville shows himself remarkably willing to compromise with, even to work with, centralisation. And he argues that in a nation like France which lacks substantial local self-government, a vibrant parliamentary politics could be an effective means for promoting energetic civic participation. (shrink)

With the recent Clinical Trials Directive, a degree of harmonisation into research ethics committees across Europe, including the time taken to assess a trial proposal and the kinds of issues a committee should take into account, has been introduced by the European Union . How four different member states—Hungary, Portugal, Sweden and the UK—have chosen to implement the directive is shown. Although this has resulted in four very different ways of structuring RECs, similar themes are present in all four cases, (...) such as centralisation of control over RECs within member states, harmonisation of REC procedures across the EU and increased role of political decision making with regard to such committees. (shrink)

This article explores the financialisation of the world’s most important commodity, oil. It argues that much of the literature on the financialisation of commodities tends to adopt a dualistic approach to financial markets and physical producers, where financial and non-financial activities are assumed to be externally-related and counterposed to one another. The article locates the roots of this analytical separation in a mistaken acceptance of the fetish character of interest-bearing capital (IBC) – a view that the exchange of loanable sums (...) of capital represents a relationship between money-capitalists rather than a relationship to the moment of production. Against such dichotomous readings, the article argues that the financialisation of oil needs to be understood as part of the reworking of ownership and control across the oil commodity circuit, expressed through the combined centralisation and concentration of capital over the money, productive and commercial moments. This argument is demonstrated through an original empirical investigation of the US oil industry, including 20 years of weekly trading data on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and a detailed study of more than 160 oil and energy-related firms in the US. By mapping the structural weight and connections between different capitalist actors involved in accumulation across the oil sector, we gain a better understanding of the ultimate dynamics (and beneficiaries) of the carbon economy. (shrink)

L’installation en couple induit des transformations importantes de la structure du réseau personnel. Le conjoint prend alors souvent une position centrale entre différentes composantes du réseau qui, sinon, seraient isolées. Mais cette centralité d’intermédiarité n’est pas générale et les positionnements différents du conjoint sont corrélés en particulier avec le genre, l’origine sociale et l’ancienneté du couple. Dans quelle mesure les relations avec les amis et les membres des familles sont-elles partagées ou non lors de l’installation en couple? Quelle part des (...) réseaux relationnels des conjoints est mise en commun, quelle part reste dissociée? Il s’agit ici, sur la base d’une enquête qualitative longitudinale, d’examiner les divergences sociales en la matière et d’éclairer les différentes séquences aboutissant à la centralisation du réseau autour du conjoint ou à sa décentralisation. (shrink)

In this paper we discuss how Australian feminism has contributed to a better understanding of women’s economic position within Australian society. Through this analysis we seek to shed some light on the current implementation of the ‘women in business’ policy in Australia. We trace the development of this position from the early beginnings of unionism and wage centralisation through to the social change movements of the 1960s and 1970s. We then examine how the neo-liberal turn of the 1990s manifested itself (...) in a move from a focus on numerical representation of women, through Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action policies and initiatives, to one that concentrated on an individualist approach to women in business. We conclude that feminism has had its most significant impact at the level of public policy. However, recent epistemological turns in Australian feminism appear to have resulted in less attention being paid to materialist concerns, and furthermore have not been able to resolve the sameness/difference divide that continues to haunt feminist philosophy. (shrink)

The fear that the border municipalities would be overwhelmed by the larger entity of the central city of Ghent was countered by a number of accompanying measures such as the stimulation of organised activities, the offering of opportunities for participation, and the provision of decentralised services. The equitable representation of the sub-municipalities in the new administrative organs and the opportunities for contact that derived therefrom reassured the residents of the outskirts. The effortwas made with the reorganisation of the municipal apparatus (...) to achieve a balance between external decentralisation and internal centralisation. In spite of an increasingly difficult financial situation, Ghent has succeeded 'up till now in maintaining a balanced budget. The amalgamation certainly had a negative impact in this regard, probably primarily because of the increased personnel costs. The amalgamation of the Ghent agglomeration can, however, be considered a success. The preparatory time for such a profound reorganisation was too brief, however. An adequate administrative model, rationalisation of the financial situation, application of the municipal law, and implementation of modern working methods are factors that loom large for the optimisation of the developmental chances of an amalgamated large city. (shrink)