In the 1993 general election the Liberal Democratic Party lost power for the first time since it was founded in 1955. The coalition government that followed enacted the most far-reaching political reforms Japan has experienced since the American Occupation. The country has now experienced two elections since these reforms so we can begin to analyze trends and dynamics. It is now possible to make a preliminary evaluation of the effects of these reforms. I evaluate the reforms under three headings: (...) (1) reducing the cost of elections and levels of corruption; (2) replacing candidate-centered with party-centered campaigns; and (3) moving toward a two-party system which would produce alternation in power between the parties of the government and the parties of the opposition. In conclude that, with some notable exceptions, the reforms are working well, about as well as should have been expected. (shrink)

Bien que John Stuart Mill et Jeremy Bentham aient été considérés comme d’illustres exemples de « Philosophes radicaux », leurs exigences en matière de réforme sociale et politique étaient basées sur des points de vue différents. Comparée à celle de Bentham, l’analyse de Mill concernant le principe d’utilité et de démocratie représentative présente certains traits « perfectionnistes » et « élitistes ». La présente étude se propose d’examiner ceci à la lumière de la réception et de la réponse de Mill (...) aux idées de Bentham sur la politique. Bien que Mill fût, en partie, un partisan enthousiaste de Bentham, et qu’il lui attribuât le mérite de promouvoir les réformes juridiques et politiques, il semble avoir commencé, à partir de 1833, à évaluer ouvertement Bentham de façon critique. Ceci peut être perçu dans ses discussions et sa relation intellectuelle avec George Grote, qui était aussi un politicien et un historien utilitariste. L’accent mis par Mill sur le rôle essentiel de « l’éducation sociale du peuple » dans la promotion de l’esprit public fut développé dans des dialogues avec Grote et l’examen de ses études historiques. La présente étude conclut que Grote fit preuve de plus de sympathie envers Bentham que Mill, dans l’approche théorique aussi bien que dans l’approche pratique. Bien que tous les trois fussent vraiment dévoués à la même cause radicale, ils avaient toutefois des visions différentes de la crise de la démocratie parlementaire. L’examen du contexte de sa relation intellectuelle avec Grote fournit l’une des sources permettant de comprendre le défi jeté par Mill aux idées de Bentham relatives à la réforme politique. (shrink)

Students of Mill's political theory know that he was both a political reformer and a social philosopher. An important part of Mill's life involved political struggles over the electoral franchise and schemes of parliamentary representation, the legal and social emancipation of women, land law and economic policy, and freedom of speech and the press. When turning to his best known writings such asOn Liberty, Considerations on Representative Government, Principles of Political EconomyandThe Subjection of Women, issues of (...) reform intrude at almost every point. Even his more philosophical writings—Utilitarianism, An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's PhilosophyandSystem of Logic— can be seen as attacks on or supports for those theories of man and society which Mill sees as hindering or furthering ‘the improvement of mankind’. Moreover, Mill's subsidiary careers as a journalist, editor of theLondon and Westminster Reviewand member of parliament further demonstrate his commitment to political reform. (shrink)

This article employs a simple model of sophisticated voting under incomplete information and explores the strategic contexts of the vote on political reform bills in Japan. The government-sponsored political reform bills were voted down by the defection of government coalition members in the House of Councillors before a final compromise was reached in the joint committee of both houses and passed subsequently. In contrast to the accepted view that the defectors were short-sighted sincere voters, I show (...) that Japan's institutional arrangements created an uncertainty about the agenda in the legislative process and led to the sophisticated voting behavior of pivotal voters whose preferences were different from the party leadership. The analysis underscores the importance of sophisticated voting for the empirical study of Japanese legislative politics. (shrink)

Introduction. The trial; the right to a lawyer; double jeopardy; the electoral college; the senate; presidential pardon; judicial review; lifetime appointment; campaign finance reform; the right to political leave; the democratized corporation -- The right to a lawyer -- Abolish double jeopardy -- Empower the jury -- The electoral college -- Abolish presidential pardon -- Abolish the Senate -- Limit the power of the Supreme Court -- Abolish lifetime tenure of Supreme Court justices -- Reduce private money in (...) election campaigns -- Expand the right to run for political office -- Expand employee rights -- The contradictions of libertarianism. (shrink)

Introduction At the 4th Plenum of the Communist Party of China (CPC), held in September 2004, the CCP set out on a new self-declared path to establish itself as a permanent “governing party” (zhizheng dang) instead of remaining a “revolutionary” party.1 The 36-page resolution on the Enhancement of the Party's Governance Capability says that China's reform and development have reached a critical stage in which new situations and new problems are mushrooming.2 The CPC concedes that it needs to enhance (...) its governance capability to consolidate its ruling status and meet domestic and global challenges. A new…. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 126.1 (2005) 138-142 [Access article in PDF] Kathy L. Gaca. The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reformin Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity. Hellenistic Culture and Society 40. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003. xviii + 359 pp. Cloth, $60. As the current attention to same-sex marriage attests, religious communities and politicians today are concerned with sexual activity and rules, (...) viewing [End Page 138] them as correlated with particular kinds of social orders and values. Since second-wave feminism and Foucault, classicists and historians of early Christians have given considerable attention to how ancients themselves were concerned with sexual activity and its bearing on social, political, and religious life. Kathy Gaca's study contributes fresh insights about the saliency of religious ideology to understanding the different kinds of "sexual blueprints" produced by Greek philosophers, biblical authors and their interpreters, and early Christians. The Making of Fornication takes as its starting point a challenge to Foucault's argument for fundamental continuity in sexual morality between Greek and early Christian thought. Gaca argues instead that historically successful forms of Christianity are more discontinuous than continuous with Greek philosophy.Porneia exemplifies the break Gaca charts: "the Greek biblical sense of 'fornication' should not be confused with in the non-biblical Greek sense.... as 'fornication' requires biblical monotheism to be intelligible as a sexual rule, insofar as sexual intercourse and procreation are fornicating, and forbidden, by virtue of not being dedicated to the Lord alone. In the non-biblical Greek sense, however, means 'prostitution' and has nothing to do with worshipping God alone" (20). Sexual activity in non-biblical Greek understandings was nonetheless closely linked to piety, and philosophers crafted their moral sexual visions in accordance with their understandings of how sexual desires, practices, and reproduction relate to the gods and cosmic order. Gaca argues that the combination of Greek biblical ideas and non-biblical Greek associations of sex with the gods led to Christian "practices of intense sexual asceticism among converted Greeks and other gentiles.... Since alien gods such as Aphrodite remained so potent a presence in human sexuality, it seemed critical to put an end to exercising her sexual energy rather than to defy God" (304). She sees this ascetic trend differently expressed in the first-century writings of Philo of Alexandria and Paul of Tarsus and the second-century writings of the Christians Tatian and Clement of Alexandria.This three-part work unfolds as a study of different views about sexual activity, even as it builds a larger argument about "the motivating philosophical and religious principles behind Christian sexual asceticism" (9). In each part's chapters, Gaca charts the range of visions for how sexual activity does and should correlate with social order held by Greek philosophers (Part 1: Platonic, Stoic, and Pythagorean), biblical texts and their interpreters (Part 2: Septuagint, Paul of Tarsus, and Philo of Alexandria), and three second-century Christians (Part 3: Tatian, Clement of Alexandria, and Epiphanes).For Gaca, Tatian and Clement of Alexandria craft their respective Christian ideals in monogamous heteroerotic, reproductive terms adapted from biblical traditions as well as some aspects of Platonic and Pythagorean thought (notably an emphasis on the regulation of sexual desire and procreative ideal for sex, respectively); their two versions of sexual norms (Tatian rejecting all sexual activity, Clement conceding only non-libidinous procreative marital sex) should be understood as a response to the religious associations of sex and sexual desire [End Page 139] among gentiles, especially Greeks (303-304). Epiphanes represents a historically unsuccessful alternative trajectory for early Christian sexual norms, in its basic presuppositions (of egalitarianism as a norm for community which extends to a rejection of marriage), in its relationship to Greek philosophy (in continuity with many early Stoic ideals about egalitarian communalism), and in its interpretation of Paul (using Gal. 3:28 as an interpretive key over 1 Cor. 6:18).In Part 1 Gaca aims to correct for a lack of attention to early Stoic material among classicists and ancient historians... (shrink)

This provocative work provides a radical reassessment of the emergence and nature of Christian sexual morality, the dominant moral paradigm in Western society since late antiquity. While many scholars, including Michel Foucault, have found the basis of early Christian sexual restrictions in Greek ethics and political philosophy, Kathy L. Gaca demonstrates on compelling new grounds that it is misguided to regard Greek ethics and political theory—with their proposed reforms of eroticism, the family, and civic order—as the foundation of (...) Christian sexual austerity. Rather, in this thoroughly informed and wide-ranging study, Gaca shows that early Christian goals to eradicate fornication were derived from the sexual rules and poetic norms of the Septuagint, or Greek Bible, and that early Christian writers adapted these rules and norms in ways that reveal fascinating insights into the distinctive and largely non-philosophical character of Christian sexual morality. Writing with an authoritative command of both Greek philosophy and early Christian writings, Gaca investigates Plato, the Stoics, the Pythagoreans, Philo of Alexandria, the apostle Paul, and the patristic Christians Clement of Alexandria, Tatian, and Epiphanes, freshly elucidating their ideas on sexual reform with precision, depth, and originality. Early Christian writers, she demonstrates, transformed all that they borrowed from Greek ethics and political philosophy to launch innovative programs against fornication that were inimical to Greek cultural mores, popular and philosophical alike. The Septuagint's mandate to worship the Lord alone among all gods led to a Christian program to revolutionize Gentile sexual practices, only for early Christians to find this virtually impossible to carry out without going to extremes of sexual renunciation. Knowledgeable and wide-ranging, this work of intellectual history and ethics cogently demonstrates why early Christian sexual restrictions took such repressive ascetic forms, and casts sobering light on what Christian sexual morality has meant for religious pluralism in Western culture, especially among women as its bearers. (shrink)

The shroud of secrecy that the American administration has wrapped around Guantanamo Bay creates a kind of Rorschach test of political views that tell us much more about those holding these views than about the prison and interrogation center itself. But for those less interested in political propaganda, a review of statements on Guantanamo in the Arab country of Yemen reveals some interesting contradictions and complexities. Yemeni statements on Guantanamo reflect contemporary tensions in people's conceptions of national sovereignty, (...) the political interests of a weak state in global geopolitics and a developing conception of human rights in an emerging global social modernity. (shrink)

Machiavelli's ambiguous treatment of religion has fueled a contentios and long-standing debate among scholars. Whereas some insist that Machiavelli is a Christian, others maintain he is a pagan. Sullivan mediates between these divergent views by arguing that he is neither but that he utilizes elements of both understandings arrayed in a wholly new way. She develops her argument by distinguishing among the three Romes that can be understood as existing in Machiavelli's political thought: the first is the Rome of (...) the Christian era, dominated by the pope; the second is the republican Rome of pagan times, which Machiavelli praises; and the third is an idealized Rome that is neither entirely pagan nor entirely Christian. Sullivan draws primarily from the Florentine Histories, The Prince, and the Discourses to offer a unique study of Machiavelli's political thought. Her examination of Machiavelli's three Romes will engage readers concerned with political thought, philosophy of the state, and Machiavelli. (shrink)

Focusing on the interaction of religion and politics, this is a comprehensive chronological survey of the political thought of post-Reformation Britain which examines the work of a wide range of thinkers.

This reissued work, originally published in 1985, is a uniquely broad and original survey of theories and beliefs about the growth, behaviour, performance and reform of the governments of modern Western democracies. After analysing the external pressures which have shaped modern governments, the author examines four different schools of political thought which seek to explain the behaviour and performance of governments, and which offer different remedies for the pluralism, corporatism and bureaucracy. To examine and test these general theories, (...) the author looks closely at how governments actually work. The book is illustrated with examples drawn from various Western societies. The final chapters present the author’s own conclusion about the future role of government, the limits of market philosophy, the future of politics, and the principles and problems of institutional reform. (shrink)

In the 1990s a rise of populist or regionalist parties in Western democracies has challenged the ruling centrist consensus.1 There are, however, only a few similarities between them. Thus it is impossible to equate, e.g., Austria's Jörg Haider or France's Jean-Marie Le Pen with Canada's Preston Manning. Diverse political cultures produce different political figures, programs and ideologies. When all is said and done, Manning's Reform Party remains idiosyncratically Canadian, and it is necessary to examine the Canadian context (...) within which it arose in order to understand it. Generally speaking, the Reform Party offers little to traditionalists, while its “populism” often…. (shrink)

A striking paradox underlies corporate governance reform during the past fifteen years: center-left political parties have pushed for pro-shareholder corporate governance reforms, while the historically pro-business right has generally resisted them to protect established forms of organized capitalism, concentrated corporate stock ownership, and managerialism. Case studies of Germany, France, Italy, and the United States reveal that center-left parties used corporate governance reform to attack the legitimacy of existing political economic elites, present themselves as pro-growth and pro-modernization, (...) strike political alliances with segments of the financial sector, and appeal to middle-class voters. Conservative parties’ established alliances with managers constrained them from endorsing corporate governance reform. (shrink)

When Taylor Swift's record label was sold in 2019, the six studio albums she recorded for them came under the control of a person with whom she has had years of bad blood: Kanye West's former manager Scooter Braun. But rather than move on, Swift chose to take the unprecedented step of re-recording duplicate versions of those albums. With all of the profits made from selling, streaming, and licensing these “Taylor's Versions” going directly to Swift, she could deprive Braun of (...) potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. The gambit has already paid off. The first two Taylor's Versions (of Fearless and Red) debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard charts and have sold over one million copies so far; and four more are still on the way. In this book, nine philosophers and one music producer explore the philosophical richness of Swift's project and the questions it raises: Are Swift's re-recordings new works of art or mere copies of the originals? Do the Taylor's Versions of the songs have the same meanings as the original versions, or do they now mean something different? Is her re-recording project genuinely artistic or merely commercial? Is Swift standing up for artists' rights or looking out for herself? Does the music industry exploit artists, and, if so, how should it be reformed? Together they show the philosophical dividends one of the most famous and acclaimed recording artists of her generation is capable of producing. For anyone interested in the complicated relationship between popular art and commerce this book is a must-read. (shrink)

In the history of religious organizations of Western Ukraine in the 20-30th years of the XX century. The activity of such an early protestant denominational formation as the Ukrainian Evangelical-Reformed Church occupies a prominent position. Among UCRC researchers there are several approaches to the preconditions for the birth of the Ukrainian Calvinistic movement in Western Ukraine. In particular, O. Dombrovsky, studying the historical preconditions for the formation of the UREC in Western Ukraine, expressed the view that the formation of the (...) Calvinist cell should be considered in the broad context of the Ukrainian national revival of the 19th and 20th centuries, a new assessment of the religious factor in public life proposed by the Ukrainian radical activists, and significant socio-political, national-cultural and spiritual shifts caused by the events of the First World War. Other researchers of Ukrainian Calvinism, who based their analysis on the confessional-polemical approach, interpreted Protestantism in Ukraine as a product of Western cultural and religious influences, alien to Ukrainian spirituality and culture. (shrink)

In this ground-breaking analysis, Terry Moe treats Hurricane Katrina as a natural experiment that offers a rare opportunity to learn about the role of power in the politics of institutional reform. When Katrina hit, it physically destroyed New Orleans' school buildings, but it also destroyed the vested-interest power that had protected the city's abysmal education system from major reform. With the constraints of power lifted, decision makers who had been incremental problem-solvers turned into revolutionaries, creating the most innovative (...) school system in the entire country. The story of New Orleans' path from failure to revolution is fascinating, but, more importantly, it reveals the true role of power, whose full effects normally cannot be observed, because power has a “second face” that is hidden and unobservable. Making use of Katrina's analytic leverage, Moe pulls back the curtain to show that this “second face” has profound consequences that stifle and undermine society's efforts to fix failing institutions. (shrink)

The recent wave of rebellions in the Middle East, commonly referred to as the “Arab Spring,” has stirred up a revival of scholarly interest in the phenomenon of political reform in the Arab world and Muslim-majority states in general. Speculation on the causes of revolution, the provenance and function of political authority, and the means for reshaping or refashioning the existing political or social order had a rich legacy in medieval and early modern Arabic political (...) thought. Islamic history itself provides examples of reforms and revolts that can be seen as antecedents to events associated with the Arab Spring as well as with religious conflicts in Northern Nigeria and Sudan. Thus, a study of the past can.. (shrink)

According to a standard picture in the educational policy and educational ethics literature, justice requires significant alterations to higher-education arrangements, in order to equalize opportunity and benefit badly-off social groups. I argue that, if political liberalism is correct, then a range of higher-education reforms favored by the standard picture lack support. After canvassing the standard picture (section 2), I explain why political liberalism entails that some institutions have a special status that prohibits certain kinds of interventions on them (...) (section 3), and I explain why this means that political liberalism cannot vindicate the standard picture (sections 4 and 5). (shrink)

Abstract:The problem this paper is concerned with is the politics of reforming embedded, parasitic, sometimes predatory, network-based, corruption subsystems. The politics of corruption subsystems is often embedded in social structures sustained by the collective action of interest groups who benefit from the corruption. Therefore, the long-term effectiveness of approaches that focus solely on isolated, individual acts of corruption are limited. The politics of long-term corruption reform can benefit from a combined action-learning and social movement–based collective approach.

This article argues that major cases of electoral reform across democracies in Asia in recent years can be explained as institutional measures aimed at curbing corruption and . More specifically, Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand rid themselves of their extreme candidate-centered electoral systems as a means to encourage politicians to invest in collective party labels, while Indonesia discarded its extremely party-centered electoral system to increase the accountability of individual politicians. The article thus disagrees with scholars who argue that recent electoral (...) reform should be understood as part of a wider project by Asian governments to engineer a majoritarian form of democracy. Instead, the comparative analysis shows that democracies across Asia, in line with global trends in institutional design, have been their electoral systems, moving them closer towards the ideal of electoral. (shrink)

Feminist science studies scholars have documented the historical and cultural contingency of scientific knowledge production. It follows that political and social activism has impacted the practice of science today; however, little has been done to examine the current cultures of science in light of feminist critiques and activism. In this article, I argue that, although critiques have changed the cultures of science both directly and indirectly, fundamental epistemological questions have largely been ignored and neutralized through these policy reforms. I (...) provide an auto-ethnography of my doctoral work in a neuroscience program to a) demonstrate how the culture of science has incorporated critiques into its practices and b) identify how we might use these changes in scientific practices to advance feminist science agendas. I critically analyze three areas in current scientific practice in which I see obstacles and opportunities: 1) research ethics, 2) diversity of research subjects and scientists, and 3) identification of a project's significance for funding. I argue that an understanding of the complicated and changing cultures of science is necessary for future feminist interventions into the sciences that directly challenge science's claim to epistemic authority. (shrink)

A review of the book Logic for Justice by Isaac Wilhelm.

Robert Darnton has recently found that L.S. Mercier's utopia, L'An 2440, was the most widely sold clandestine work of the late eighteenth century. This article first attempts to explain the appeal of the book to contemporaries. It then notes the sudden and complete eclipse of the work and offers an explanation for this based on the political achievements of the French Revolution on the one hand and on a shift in the climate of opinion on the other.

The success of political efforts to create a more open economy in Brazil over the past decade has depended crucially on support from the industrial sector, which long enjoyed the benefits of protection by the state from economic competition. Why businesses previously so sheltered would back neoliberal reform, and why opposition arose at times from sectors least threatened by free trade, are the puzzles this book seeks to answer. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with industrialists and (...) business association representatives, as well as a wide range of other sources, Peter Kingstone argues that the key to understanding the behavior of industrialists lies in the impact of four factors on their preferences for reform: the effect of economic crisis on industrialists' perception of the viability of the earlier development model; the sectoral location of their firms in the economy and the advantages historically accruing therefrom; the adjustment options available to them given their position in the market; and the credibility of the government's promises about reform and its tactical choices for getting them implemented through the political system. The mix of these four factors, Kingstone shows, left business preferences relatively malleable and thus available for support of reform, even in the face of potentially high costs. Whether such support was forthcoming depended on industrialists' perceptions of the ability of government leaders to deliver on their promises. Widespread resistance to reform occurred when leaders lost their credibility. Under Fernando Collor's leadership, that credibility was never recovered; under Fernando Henrique Cardoso's, it was recovered through increasing concessions to industrialists on the character of the reform program. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with Rawls's (1993) account of an overlapping consensus and recent proposals to introduce citizenship education in parts of the UK. It is argued that both Rawls and the proposals mistake the significance and nature of such a consensus. Partly as a result of this mistake the proposals are insufficiently radical.

The release of the Final Report of the Lyons Inquiry into Local Government in England, entitled Place-shaping: A shared ambition for the future of local government (Lyons Inquiry into Local Government) was a significant milestone in the debate on local government reform. Place-shaping is a sophisticated piece of rhetoric and policy making and can be seen to have relevance far beyond its own jurisdiction. This paper traces its theoretical antecedents alongside developments in the debate on local government in England. (...) Despite its broad appeal, we argue that problems familiar to local government such as rent-seeking and cost shifting will be heightened rather than resolved with any take-up of the place-shaping agenda. (shrink)

When explaining the causes of structural variations in local governance reform, regional studies scholars face a trilemma: how to avoid voluntarism that over-inflates individuals’ power to ‘heroically’ reorganize local governance regimes; how to avoid determinism that denies the prowess of local actors in the face of institutional constraints; and how to avoid constructivism that denies the separate existence of both individual actions and local institutions. The question they must answer is: if individuals are embedded in institutions that define their (...) interests and shape their cognitions, how can they ever be able to change institutions? Critical realism suggests a suitable answer to this question by seeing institutional dynamics as consisting of structures, institutions, and actions, each with a distinct existence but nevertheless irreducible to each other. The practical value of this ontology – which avoids voluntarism, determinism and constructivism – is illustrated by an English devolution case study. (shrink)

Volume 25, Issue 2, February - March 2020, Page 225-226.

The average annual profits before fees of the $10 billion plus Renaissance Technologies’ hybrid Medallion “Leveraged, High Frequency, Artificial Intelligence ” trading hedge fund between 1988 and 2019 were about 66 percent. Total trading profits during this period were over $100 billion. The fund has never had a losing year. The fund is not open to the general public. First, distinctions among, in more or less historical order, the traditional market-maker trading model, the hedge fund trading model, the artificial intelligence (...) trading model, and the hybrid LHFAI trading model are discussed. Second, the micro components of the LHFAI trading model are explained in the context of Renaissance Technologies’ Medallion Fund. Third, key positive contributions of the model with respect to profitability, low annual volatility, market liquidity, and intellectual property development; negative ethical issues concerning exclusive access, tax fairness, financial transparency, shared responsibility for losses and systemic risk, and short vs. long-term capital allocation are discussed. Potential reforms that retain the positives, reduce the negatives, and that could positively transform the model are discussed. Fourth, potential impacts that the potential reforms might have on the macro LHFAI form of finance capitalism and the larger finance capitalism political-economic system are considered. Fifth, conclusions are offered and discussed. (shrink)

Introduction. The paper contains political and psychological profiles of the local self-government deputies in the city of Chelyabinsk. The purpose of the study is to examine how municipal reform in 2014 influenced institutional opportunities for creating a new model of political leadership in terms of its effectiveness on political and psychological level. Methods. The author’s approach is based on the combination of political and psychological techniques, such as qualitative content analysis, psychobiography and in-depth interview (for (...) assessing politicians’ images in mass consciousness). Scientific novelty. The author presumes that political leadership is a complex phenomenon based on institutional and psychological factors. Its institutional framework for the purpose of the research is determined by the municipal reform. The deputies’ psychological profiles are viewed as individual patterns of political behavior shaped as a result of adopting individual psychological characteristics to the demands of political role presumed by the reform’s conceptual foundations. Results. The data contain evidence that political and psychological profiles of the deputies under analysis in general lack features which make it possible to uncover the institutional potential of the reform. A new model of political leadership presumed by the reform’s conception was supposed to possess such attributes as: 1) widening political representation; 2) enhancing effectiveness of communication between leaders and followers; 3) depoliticizing agenda. The analysis shows that deputies elected under reform on the “inner” level are rigid and reproduce inertial model of political behavior. On the “outer” level their perception is superficial and does not have explicit potential to improve due to revealed unconscious parameters. Conclusions. Two electoral cycles within the reform did not fully reveal the leadership potential of the deputies. Therefore, the perspectives of its prolongation are viewed by the author as highly problematic. (shrink)