The relevance of social norms for understanding appropriate behaviour in context has taken central stage in politeness research in recent years, and particularly in studies of workplace interaction. As an example of this research, this paper explores the way in which a group of nurses interacting with their colleagues negotiates complaints. The data were collected in a ward of a public healthcare institution in New Zealand and consist of audio and video recordings of four roster meetings involving nurses and (...) nurse managers. Instances of nurses’ complaints are explored from an interactional sociolinguistic point of view, allowing the researcher to investigate emergent facework. The findings suggest that multiple ingroup and outgroup memberships, achieved through the dynamic use of personal pronouns, enact preferred politic behaviour for both, transactional and relational goals. In addition, nurses’ convergence in their display of socio-pragmatic norms governing their complaining practices suggests that this group of nurses belongs to the same workplace community. Finally, strong emphasis is placed on the role that complaining plays in the positive presentation of nurses’ identities. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Democracy for Realists, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels argue provocatively that the public falls far short of ideals of democratic citizenship, and they turn to political psychology to explain the empirics of mass political behavior. But their model of group identity fails to shed much light on the origins of political behavior and gives members of the public less credit than they deserve, for three reasons. First, group politics is not a hollow exercise; it depends on (...) the identification of a collective grievance that has a potential political solution. Second, concerns about group economics, status, and respect are more likely than individual economic considerations to animate political behavior, yet the former concerns are no less rational than the latter. Third, individuals vary in how strongly they identify with politically relevant groups, masking considerable variation in the degree to which group affiliations shape political behavior. Therefore, group identification is not a monolithic, irrational force that affects people regardless of their perceptions of political reality. (shrink)

I present a theory of alienation that accounts for the cognitive processes involved with moral thinking and political behavior in modern societies. On my account, alienation can be understood as a particular kind of atrophy of moral concepts and moral thinking that affect the ways individuals cognize and legitimate the social world and their place within it. Central to my argument is the thesis that modern forms of social integration—shaped by highly institutionalized, rationalized and hierarchical forms of social life—serve (...) to constrain the moral- cognitive powers of subjects leading to a condition of alienation as moral atrophy. This state results from the withering of the subject's internal powers of moral reflection and an overriding predisposition to rely on external value schemas to make sense of moral and political problems. I then present an analysis of alienated moral consciousness and its implications for modern social theory. (shrink)

A political act is a typical self-serving behavior that works to promote or protect self-interest. However, limited research explores its relationship with daily downstream behavior. Based on the ego depletion theory, the present study attempts to clarify when and how daily political acts will be transformed into interpersonal deviance. We collected 760 cases nested in 152 full time workers in mainland China through the experience sampling method. Via a multilevel structural equation model and hierarchical linear model, we tested (...) the mediated moderation model. The results showed that political acts correlated with interpersonal deviance on a daily basis. Moral self-efficacy buffers the relationship between political acts and interpersonal deviance, whereas chronic job strain amplifies the relationship. Furthermore, moral self-efficacy can mediate the moderating role of chronic job strain. (shrink)

The relevance of social norms for understanding appropriate behaviour in context has taken central stage in politeness research in recent years, and particularly in studies of workplace interaction. As an example of this research, this paper explores the way in which a group of nurses interacting with their colleagues negotiates complaints. The data were collected in a ward of a public healthcare institution in New Zealand and consist of audio and video recordings of four roster meetings involving nurses and (...) nurse managers. Instances of nurses’ complaints are explored from an interactional sociolinguistic point of view, allowing the researcher to investigate emergent facework. The findings suggest that multiple ingroup and outgroup memberships, achieved through the dynamic use of personal pronouns, enact preferred politic behaviour for both, transactional and relational goals. In addition, nurses’ convergence in their display of socio-pragmatic norms governing their complaining practices suggests that this group of nurses belongs to the same workplace community. Finally, strong emphasis is placed on the role that complaining plays in the positive presentation of nurses’ identities. (shrink)

Cognitive biases that affect decision making may affect the decisions of citizens that influence public policy. To the extent that decisions follow principles other than maximizing utility for all, it is less likely that utility will be maximized, and the citizens will ultimately suffer the results. Here I outline some basic arguments concerning decisions by citizens, using voting as an example. I describe two types of values that may lead to sub-optimal consequences when these values influence political behavior: moralistic (...) values (which people are willing to impose on others regardless of the consequences) and protected values (PVs, values protected from trade-offs). I present evidence against the idea that voting is expressive, i.e., that voters aim to express their moral views rather than to have an effect on outcomes. I show experimentally that PVs are often moralistic. Finally, I present some data that citizens’ think of their duty in a parochial way, neglecting out-groups. I conclude that moral judgments are important determinants of citizen behavior, that these judgments are subject to biases and based on moralistic values, and that, therefore, outcomes are probably less good than they could be. (shrink)

Political participation : the debate so far -- A brief history of agency -- Agency : the neglect of the unconscious -- Talking heads? : the internal political conversation -- Exploring internal political conversations -- Rioting : criminal, political or post-political act?

The work is based on a two-year analytic review of the literature followed by a one-year synthesis of the findings. The one-year synthesis of the findings. The result, in the words of a pre-publication reviewer, "is an attempt to redirect research in this whole area by examining the demonstrated utility of various approaches, urging that we discard some and adopt others as promising." _The Effects of Mass Communication on Political Behavior_ will be indispensable for all students of communication, (...) class='Hi'>political behavior, speech, journalism, political sociology, and social psychology. (shrink)

One of the more perplexing problems in American historiography is the search for group identity. Writing about a group, the historian is unable frequently to describe precisely what it is. The American patriciate is no exception to the general problem of defining group identity.The historian approaches group definition, or an approximation of it, through interaction between historical evidence bearing upon group membership and analytic constructs imposed upon the data. Some of these are borrowed from the social sciences and seem to (...) su$er as a consequence of the seemingly unnatural transplant. Others rise more naturally from the data. One strives for the correct synthesis of data and theory that, somehow, is never as satisfactory as the historian and his critics would like it to be. (shrink)

The corporate scandals of the twenty-first century have necessitated ethical behavior as a major component of the organizational process. These scandals occurred despite the ethical rules and laws in place, implying that rules and laws might not be effective in ensuring the ethical behavior of organizational participants at all times. Hence, a better approach to handling ethical decisions may be virtue ethics which demand the building of ethical character that intrinsically drives ethical behavior. Prudence was studied as a virtue which (...) builds character and can moderate ethical behavior. The moderating role of prudence was studied in the context of organizational political behavior. Employee political behavior in organizations can have either positive or negative consequences; hence, it is in the realm of ethical decision-making. Since studies have not identified how individuals can self-regulate their desire for political behavior, the study proposed political prudence, a character-building virtue, as a self-regulating variable which can be used by individuals to avoid drifting to the dark side of political behavior. The study participants were drawn from three organizations in Lagos, Nigeria, and a cross-sectional research design was adopted for data collection. The results confirmed that political prudence moderated the effects of political will on political behavior such that individuals engaged in benevolent political will and avoided self-serving political will. The importance of the findings is that organizations have a means of steering participants away from the dark side to the bright side of political behavior which is useful for productivity. (shrink)

Is the corrupt behaviour of public officials a politically relevant kind of wrong only when it causes the malfunctioning of institutions? We challenge recent institutionalist approaches to political corruption by showing a sense in which the individual corrupt behaviour of certain public officials is wrong not only as a breach of personal morality but in inherently politically salient terms. To show this sense, we focus on a specific instance of individual corrupt behaviour on the part of (...) public officials entrusted with the power to implement public rules in a liberal democracy. Although not necessarily unlawful, their behaviour is politically wrong qua corrupt when it contradicts surreptitiously the requirement of public justification that undergirds the public order. Then, we distinguish this form of corruption as surreptitious action from such unlawful but publicly justifiable kinds of political misbehaviour as civil disobedience. (shrink)

Based on a framework that integrates job demands-resources theory, social cognitive theory Handbook of personality, Guilford Press, New York, pp 154–196, 1999) and regulatory focus theory, the purpose of this research is to investigate the relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and subsequent moral disengagement and unethical behavior. We conducted a laboratory study and also collected data in two separate surveys 6 weeks apart from 206 individuals working full time to investigate the relationships presented in our model. In both studies, (...) we examined the direct relationship of politics perceptions on unethical behavior in organizations as well as the indirect relationship through the influence of moral disengagement. We investigated the moderating effect of regulatory focus on the relationship between moral disengagement and unethical behavior using the survey data. Results indicated that perceptions of politics were significantly related to our mediator, moral disengagement, which was significantly related to our dependent variable, unethical behavior. However, only prevention-focus moderated the relationships examined. Implications for future research and managerial practice are discussed. (shrink)

As an exploration of 'beautiful behavior' in theory and practice, this ground-breaking volume explores the incredible diversity and dynamism of Islam in Southeast Asia, both past and present. Amid the dazzling complexity of Islamic civilization, the concept of adab provides Muslims with a shared sense of sacred history, identity, and morality. In the context of Islamic ethics, adab defines the rules of personal and public etiquette: good manners, moral conduct, civility, humaneness, beautiful behavior. Spotlighting the interdisciplinary research of ten prominent (...) scholars, the book offers new perspectives on adab's multiple meanings and myriad applications for Muslim communities in Malaysia and Indonesia. The chapters examine a wide range of texts including the writings of key Muslim thinkers and contexts, focusing on the everyday experiences of lay Muslims. Drawing on a variety of theoretical and methodological lenses, the essays reveal how 'beautiful behavior' impacts local institutions, cultural practices, and religious imaginations via politics and law, spirituality and piety, ethics and experience. (shrink)

Political sociologists interested in corporate power have focused increasingly on the extent to which the business community is cohesive. Studies of cohesion, however, frequently contain either no definition or operational definitions with little theoretical rationale. This paper examines the uses of the term cohesion in the power structure literature as well as in classical and contemporary sociological theory. I argue that: (1) cohesion is most appropriately defined as an objective characteristic of a social structure; (2) to understand a group's (...) power, we should focus on the extent to which its members behave similarly; and (3) the concept of structural equivalence may be as likely to capture the processes of interest to power structure researchers as the concept of cohesion. Findings from a study of corporate political behavior are presented to illustrate this argument. (shrink)

Ignorance about political related issues has long been considered a threat to democracy. This paper revolves around the concept of political ignorance, focusing especially on Ilya Somin’s book Democracy and Political Ignorance and going beyond his standpoint in two ways. First of all, it moves away from the notion of factual knowledge by showing that political ignorance cannot be limited to a matter of information quality. On the contrary, it shows that ignorance concerns the formation of (...) opinions about political facts, which are the bricks with which disagreement is built. Then, using the insights of the Moral Foundation Theory by Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues, the paper argues that moral intuitions represent an additional source of bias that current research on the problem of voters’ ignorance should address. While Somin argues that biased moral values are the outcome of ignorance, Moral Foundation Theory suggests that moral intuitions are a robust determinant of people’s political views as they make factual knowledge partially irrelevant and also make people with different moral minds unable to understand the basis of reciprocal factual argumentations. (shrink)

This study aims to reveal patterns of e-petition co-signing behavior that are indicative of the political mobilization of online “communities”. We discuss the case of We the People, a US national experiment in the use of social media technology to enable users to propose and solicit support for policy suggestions to the White House. We apply Baumgartner and Jones's work on agenda setting and punctuated equilibrium, which suggests that policy issues may lie dormant for periods of time until some (...) event triggers attention from the media, interest groups, and elected representatives. In the case study presented, we focus on 21 petitions initiated during the week after the Sandy Hook shooting in opposition to gun control or in support of policy proposals that are alternatives to gun control, which we view as mobilized efforts to maintain stability and equilibrium in a policy system threatening to change. Using market basket analysis and social network analysis we found a core group of petitions in the “support law-abiding gun owners” theme that were highly connected and four “communities” of e-petitioners mobilizing in opposition to change in gun control policies and in favor of alternative proposals. (shrink)

Ignorance about political related issues has long been considered a threat to democracy. This paper revolves around the concept of political ignorance, focusing especially on Ilya Somin’s book Democracy and Political Ignorance and going beyond his standpoint in two ways. First of all, it moves away from the notion of factual knowledge by showing that political ignorance cannot be limited to a matter of information quality. On the contrary, it shows that ignorance concerns the formation of (...) opinions about political facts, which are the bricks with which disagreement is built. Then, using the insights of the Moral Foundation Theory by Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues, the paper argues that moral intuitions represent an additional source of bias that current research on the problem of voters’ ignorance should address. While Somin argues that biased moral values are the outcome of ignorance, Moral Foundation Theory suggests that moral intuitions are a robust determinant of people’s political views as they make factual knowledge partially irrelevant and also make people with different moral minds unable to understand the basis of reciprocal factual argumentations. (shrink)

A major new statement on how we do, and we ought to do, political philosophy.

This book is about the conceptual foundations of an intermediate way between liberalism and socialism: a synthesis of classical and Keynesian political economy. Classical theory deals with proportions between individuals or collectives and society in tackling problems of distribution and value. Keynesian theory is concerned with the scale of economic activity as explained by effective demand. The economy considered is primarily a monetary production economy, not a market or a planned economy. The author sets up a system linking (...) class='Hi'>political economy with other social sciences, i.e. sociology, law and politics in the traditional sense, thus establishing the unity of the social sciences. To complete the picture, issues of method associated with the theory of knowledge in the social sciences and the problem of linking theory with historical reality are also covered. (shrink)

While support for corporate political activity (CPA) is well echoed in the literature, little has been done to empirically examine its ethicality. Moreover, existing ethical CPA frameworks assume normative and rational leanings that are insufficient to provide a comprehensive account of CPA ethicality. Utilizing the Ghanaian context, adopting a multiple case study design involving 28 Directors from 22 firms, and employing a grounded theory approach, I explore how the ethicality of CPA is determined in weak institutional environments. The findings (...) reveal that business executives evaluate ethics at three levels (i.e. context, organizational and strategy) using three principles (i.e. utilitarianism, justice and institutions). Leveraging this knowledge, I present an eclectic framework that bridges the long-standing gap between normative ethical prescriptions and lived ethical realities. In doing so, I move away from abstraction to give “voice” to the actors involved in CPA. I also present a model that shows how the ethical judgement process is influenced by managerial intuition and interactive personal and organizational experiences. This article has important theoretical and practical implications for ethical business-government relations in developing countries. (shrink)

Today, digital piracy remains a growing challenge for both legislators and businesses operating in the entertainment industry. This study explores when and why consumers make trade-offs between illegal and legal streaming services. By drawing on protection motivation theory, we find that consumers' threat and coping appraisals increase their adaptive behavior, i.e., lower intention to consume illegal and higher intention to consume legal streaming services. We also show that the strength of consumers' inherent ethical (relativism) and political (economic liberalism) identities (...) conditions adaptive behavior through social identity theory. We find that low relativism strengthens the adaptive behavior through threat appraisal, while economic liberalism strengthens the adaptive behavior through coping appraisal. Our robustness checks show that these results hold when the model accounts for the level of consumers' digital piracy attitudes. We used a scenario-based approach to test our hypotheses and surveyed 244 consumers who use streaming services. Our study contributes to the literature by showing that consumers' adaptive behavior envisioned through protection motivation theory can be weakened or strengthened by their ethical and political identities. (shrink)

This book attempts to understand the conditions under which men obey in those situations in which there is no obvious return or satisfaction for their obedience. This obedience, it is argued, is based on men's needs to "control" the more remote environment or polity, not to control other men directly. This control is based on an indirect reciprocal relationship between man and the polity. After an initial conceptual clarification of this concept of control, the author goes on to an explanation (...) of methods of control, instruments of control, and response to control. In so doing he argues that the concepts of "control" and "persuasion" are more useful than those of power and authority, as the former are dynamic and concern themselves with reciprocal acts, not static concepts suggesting the possessions of specific things.—S. W. (shrink)

Blatantly observable in the U.S. currently, the political chasm grows, representing a prototype of political polarization in most if not all western democratic political systems. Differential political psychology strives to trace back increasingly polarized political convictions to differences on the individual level. Recent evolutionary informed approaches suggest that interindividual differences in political orientation reflect differences in group-mindedness and cooperativeness. Contrarily, the existence of meaningful associations between political orientation, personality traits, and interpersonal behavior has (...) been questioned critically. Here, we shortly review evidence showing that these relationships do exist, which supports the assumption that political orientation is deeply rooted in the human condition. Potential reasons for the premature rejection of these relationships and directions for future research are outlined and implications for refinements and extensions of evolutionary informed approaches are derived. (shrink)

_Retrieving Political Emotion _engages the reader in an excursion through our ancient Greek heritage to recover a concept of emotion useful for enriching political philosophy today. Focusing on _thumos_, Barbara Koziak reveals misinterpretations of the concept that have hampered recognition of its possibilities for normative theory. Then, drawing especially on Aristotle's construal of it as a general capacity for emotion and relating this to contemporary multidisciplinary work on emotion, she reformulates _thumos_ to provide a more adequate theory of (...) political emotion, as an antidote to the modern fixation on rational self-interest as the key to explaining political behavior. The book proceeds by recounting the way _thumos_ is used in Homer's _Iliad_ and Plato's _Republic_ and then showing how, while borrowing from both, Aristotle went substantially beyond them. From the _Nicomachean Ethics and Politics_ we can see the activity of _thumos_—how a person with good _thumos_ acts and through which institutions. Through the _Poetics_ we observe the characteristic disposition of _thumos_—what patterns and objects typify a person's emotional capacity in the best regime. Her reconstructed Aristotelian theory of political emotion allows Koziak in the concluding chapter to show how it can help us better understand political behavior today, as manifested in recent congressional debates on welfare reform, and through constructive engagement with feminist thinking on the "ethics of care" lead political theory to pay more attention to the importance of passions in political life. (shrink)

This paper examined the integrity, impact and good governance value of election prophecies (EPs) in the last 20 years in selected African countries juxtaposed with President Donald Trump’s EPs in America. As a primary source, empirical research was conducted alongside a historical survey. The data collected from 519 respondents revealed that a majority believe in prophecies, but they queried the integrity, impact and value of EPs due to the inconsistency, inaccuracy, confusion and unhealthy public panics engendered. Despite the adverse effects, (...) many adherents still subscribe to the phenomenon due to the psychological and emotional influence. Subsequently, this article critiqued the research outcome through Biblical Theology. It held that EPs remain vital in the public life of nations, but the current approach in Africa needs some review. These include: (1) the need to revisit the tasks of prophets as Hope givers, Reformers and those who speak truth to power in pre- and post-election seasons; (2) the scrutiny of EPs by the plurality of Prophets, ecumenical leaders and the public, with the four suggested evaluation indices; and (3) the need to curb the negative effect of EPs on healthy electoral processes using enacted public account policies. Contribution: This article contributes to an interdisciplinary religious aspect of research covering Biblical theology, psephology and politics. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBehavioural economics provides a more realistic model of man than neoclassical economics. But ‘behavioural economic man’ likewise has his shortcomings. An important aspect is the neglect of...

The study discusses the paradox of the failure of the Romanian Church United with Rome, Greek-Catholic (RCUR) to assert itself after 1990, in the context of a revival of the life of all other religious communities. The significant decrease in the number of Greek-Catholic believers and the difficulties in exercising their rights are germane to the limits of democracy in Romania. No other vulnerable communities, neither immigrants, gays, Roma,nor Jehovah's Witnesses, have been denied, all this time, the protection of the (...) Romanian state, as Greek-Catholics have been. The systematic denial of the rights of the Romanian Church United with Rome (Greek-Catholic) is explained by the feature which distinguishes RCUR faithful from the members of other vulnerable communities: their organisation is perceived by the Romanian Orthodox Church (ROC) as an adversary. The Romanian Orthodox Church constantly proclaimed the illegitimacy of the RCUR in the first half of the twentieth century, and participated in its dissolution when the opportunity arose in 1948. It holds today the same explicit goal. The societal circumstances, specific to anarchic democracy, allow a major player like the ROC to impose its policy of undermining the RCUR. In accordance with Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith's concept, the material and symbolic competition between the RCUR and the ROC is interpreted as an example of "bad behavior as good politics". The ROC strategy finds an optimal framework for maximizing gain in the circumstances of the Romanian anarchic democracy. (shrink)

After a short description of the economic model of behaviour it is shown that there are two reasons why problems arise if this model is applied to political processes and decisions. First, such decisions are often ‘low cost’, i.e. ‘wrong’ decisions have hardly any impact on the decision maker. Second, the behaviour of single individuals or small groups of individuals is to be explained. The common root of this problem is the difficulty to predict behaviour which (...) is mainly preference governed and not guided by (changing) restrictions. Nevertheless, this should not lead to abolish the economic model because (i) it can be usefully applied also in this area and (ii) a better alternative is hardly available. (shrink)

The development of collective beliefs via informational and reputational cascades represents a way of shortcircuiting the difficulties related to the collective action of ‘latent groups’ to ensure the promotion of their particular interests. This essay focuses on the protection of consumers, whose quality of the life has never been so high, despite the prevalence of hazardous products.Rationally ignorant individuals form their opinions by conforming to those of others; this can take two forms, either by consolidating their personal judgement or their (...) private information, or by pure conformist behaviour. It may even be that such individuals rarely hesitate, if necessary, to admit beliefs that they do not actually hold in order to avoid being ostracised by others. ‘Latent groups’ activists manipulate the process of formation of beliefs in order to bring about a predominant opinion on any given issue. Armed with the asset of the prevailing opinion, pressure can be exerted upon politicians in view of obtaining regulations and subsidies which would protect the ‘latent group’ of which they claim to be the representatives.This is the new face of collective action where the “politically correct” replaces physical violence or the strike. This way of shaping public opinion could have a beneficial outcome if it were not founded on erroneous information or led to a violation of individual rights due to regulation. However, this not the case. The very leitmotif of this method is, in fact, to bring about regulation which, by definition, violates private lives. In any case, it is dangerous because the manipulation of public opinion by these activists implies an intensive use of rhetoric, distorting the perception of risk, which in turn involves the circulation of misleading information in order to create a cascade modifying public opinion in favor of the proposed regulation, rather than informing the public on the potential risks and letting them insure freely against it if they judge to do so. But for the activist the end justifies the means. Thus, this manipulation of public opinion is a danger to the notion of modern democracy, already so sensitive to the pertaining to the majority.La formation des croyances par le biais des cascades d’information et de réputation est un moyen de courtcircuiter les difficultés liées à l’action collective des groupes latents pour assurer la promotion de leurs intérêts particuliers. Dans le cadre de cet essai est analysée la protection des consommateurs, dont la valeur de la vie est élevée, contre les produits à risque.Les individus rationnellement ignorants forment leurs opinions en se conformant aux croyances des autres, soit pour conforter leur jugement personnel ou leurs informations privées, soit par conformisme pur. Il se peut même que les individus n’hésitent pas, s’il le faut, à afficher de fausses croyances, pour ne pas être frappés d’ostracisme par les autres.Les activistes des “groupes latents” manipulent le processus de formation des croyances pour faire émerger une opinion majoritaire sur un problème spécifique. Grâce à cette opinion majoritaire ils vont pouvoir faire pression auprès des hommes politiques pour obtenir une réglementation et des subventions à leur propre profit dans le but de protéger le “groupe latent” dont ils prétendent être les représentants. Ce sont les nouvelles formes d’action collective où le politiquement correct remplace la violence physique ou le piquet de grève.Cette façon de former l’opinion publique pourrait avoir des conséquences bénéfiques si elle n’était pas fondée sur des informations erronées et si elle n’aboutissait pas à une violation des droits individuels par la réglementation. Or ce n’est pas le cas. Elle est faite justement pour faire émerger une réglementation qui par définition viole la vie privée des gens. Par ailleurs, elle est dangereuse parce que la manipulation de l’opinion publique par ces activistes implique un usage intensif de figures de rhétorique, de biais dans la perception des risques, de diffusion de fausses informations dans le but d’enclencher une cascade qui va modifier l’opinion publique en faveur de la réglementation et non pas dans le but d’éclairer le public sur les véritables risques encourus, la fin justifiant les moyens.Cette manipulation des croyances est alors un danger pour la démocratie politique contemporaine déjà si sensible à l’opinion majoritaire. (shrink)

This pioneer work in comparative political analysis manifests once more the growing influence of behavioral approaches on the study of politics. In this case the general topic is the voting pattern of justices on the highest courts of several Pacific nations and India. Various heuristic and explanatory models are employed to determine the influence of such variables as age, culture, and political orientation on the adjudicative behavior of these men over a determinate period. Although the articles by twelve (...) different authors are not all of the same analytic caliber as those contributed by the editors themselves, they collectively offer an insight into the possibilities as well as into the pitfalls of behavioral studies of the judiciary. As the editors note, such a work is necessarily hypothetical and exploratory, raising more questions than it answers. Philosophers will be interested mainly in the methodological problems of concept formation and explanation which this book raises and seeks to resolve. The article by Edward J. Weissman, "Mathematical Theory and Dynamic Models," is particularly valuable from that point of view. Moreover, by classifying and comparing the other contributions to this volume, Weissman's article furnishes a certain unity which the book as a whole sorely lacks. Geared primarily for those who are familiar with such techniques as smallest-space analysis and the use of recursive causal models, this work nevertheless can be read with profit by social philosophers, philosophers of law and those interested in general questions of methodology.--T. R. F. (shrink)

A growing literature looks at how the design of the electoral system shapes the voting behavior of politicians in parliaments. Existing research tends to confirm that in mixed-member systems the politicians elected in the single-member districts are more likely to vote against their parties than the politicians elected on the party lists. However, we find that in South Korea, the members of the Korean National Assembly who were elected on PR lists are more likely to vote against their party leadership (...) than the members elected in single-member districts (SMDs). This counterintuitive behavior stems from the particular structure of candidate selection and politicians' career paths. This suggests that any theory of how electoral systems shape individual parliamentary behavior needs to look beyond the opportunities provided by the electoral rules for voters to reward or punish individual politicians (as opposed to parties), to the structure of candidate selection inside parties and the related career paths of politicians. (shrink)

Although it is widely accepted that personal values of Self-Transcendence are a positive predictor of environmentalism, and Self-Enhancement values are a negative one, these results are not conclusive for all cultural contexts. Regarding political ideologies, research concludes that liberals tend to be more concerned about the environment than conservatives. However, this two-dimensional take on political ideologies does not grasp the diversity of political views, which could be achieved by focusing on political values. In this research, we (...) studied the role of personal and political values in predicting environmental attitudes and behavior in Kazakhstan, a developing country in Central Asia. Using an online survey, we found that Security was a strong predictor of both environmental concern and New Environmental Paradigm, overshadowing the effect of traditionally accepted value dimensions of Self-Transcendence and Self-Enhancement. While Self-Direction positively predicted environmental concern, Universalism and Benevolence were positive predictors of NEP. Among political values, Civil Liberties predicted NEP positively, and had no significant effect on environmental concern, while Free Enterprise predicted environmental concern negatively, and had no significant effect on NEP. Environmental concern was a strong predictor of all pro-environmental behaviors included in the study, fully mediating the effect of NEP. Based on personal and political values, three profiles of Kazakhstanis who engaged differently in pro-environmental behavior were identified. (shrink)

Discusses how social justice for the mad can be accomplished without stigmatization and marginalization. This title offers theories of continental European thought and answers the questions of how there can be political action in a postmodern era.

Boyer & Petersen lay out a compelling theory for folk-economic beliefs, focusing on beliefs about markets. However, societies also allocate resources through mechanisms involving power and group decision-making, through the political economy. We encourage future work to keep folkpoliticaleconomic beliefs in mind, and sketch an example involving pollution and climate change mitigation policy.

Even though potential impacts of political and legal environments of business on ethical behavior of firms (EBOF) have been conceptually recognized, not much evidence (i.e., empirical work) has been produced to clarify their role. In this paper, using Bayesian causal maps (BCMs) methodology, relationships between legal and political environments of business and EBOF are investigated. The unique design of our study allows us to analyze these relationships based on the stages of development in 92 countries around the world. (...) The EBOF models structured through BCMs are used to explain how EBOF in a given country group are shaped by how managers perceive political, legislative, and protective environments of business in these countries. The results suggest that irregular payments and bribes are the most influential factors affecting managers’ perceptions of business ethics in relatively more advanced economies, whereas intellectual property protection is the most influential factor affecting managers’ perceptions of business ethics in less-advanced economies. The results also suggest that regardless of where the business is conducted in the world, judicial independence is the driving force behind managers’ perceptions of business ethics. In addition, the results of this study provide further support for scholars who argue that business ethics is likely to vary among countries based on their socio-economic factors. In addition to its managerial implications, the study provides directions for policy makers to improve the ethical conduct of businesses in their respective countries. (shrink)