Social policy, broadly understood, is an intervention by government or other public institution designed to promote the well‐being of its members or intended to rectify perceived social problems. Governmental policy can issue from legislative, executive, or judicial actions. Regulations and rules governing major public establishments, such as universities or medical institutions, and directed at promoting the aims of the larger social body can also be considered instruments of social policy. Social policy is sometimes understood more narrowly as interventions of (...) the state in the domain of distribution or redistribution, when action has been thought necessary to correct for the instability inherent in a given social structure or created by pressures for social change. In this sense, it pertains to welfare policies aimed at the poor. In this article, we will deal primarily with social policy in the broad sense, reserving a brief discussion at the end on social policy in the narrow sense, as welfare policy. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the changes in the conceptual understanding of the institution of local self-government that has been taking place in the last three decades. The submission to the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the Draft Federal Law «On the general principles of the organization of local self-government in the unified system of public authority», which took place at the end of 2021, allows analyzing the trajectory of the development of the institute of (...) local self-government in post-Soviet Russia from the point of view of a more global time and conceptual perspective. The purpose of this work is to identify the trajectory of the development of the conception of local self-government in RF. Research attention is focused on identifying the conception of local self-government formulated in official documents, a gradual change in the conceptual interpretation of this institution. It is shown that the main shiftin the conceptual understanding of local self-government occurs along the axis of institutional independence / institutional dependence of local self-government on state authorities. The development of the conceptual understanding of local self-government in post-Soviet Russia proceeds along the trajectory from a public concept (local self-government as an independent activity) to a state one (local self-government as a form of exercising power) and to a hyperstate one (local self-government as a link in a unified system of exercising authority). (shrink)

After years of debate over the importance of ethical conduct in organizations, the federal government has decided to institutionalize ethics as a buffer to prevent legal violations in organizations. The key requirements of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (FSG) are outlined, and suggested actions managers should adopt to improve ethical compliance are presented. An effective compliance program is more a process and commitment than a specific blueprint for conduct. The organization has the responsibility to create an organizational climate (...) to reduce misconduct. The adoption of a FSG compliance program has the potential to substantially lessen organizational penalties if there is due diligence to prevent misconduct. Federal courts determine the effectiveness of an FSG program after a violation occurs. (shrink)

Research on federalism is rarely concerned with its philosophical foundations. However, arguments on why and how best to organise a plurality of states in a multilevel political order have first been discussed by philosophers and continue to inspire contemporary reasoning on international and supranational relations not only in political philosophy. This book offers a unique overview of the philosophical foundations of federalism from both a historical and a systematic perspective. The analyses proposed by renowned scholars from the US and from (...) several European countries cover classic writers such as Hobbes and the authors of the Federalist Papers, Kant and Rawls, and range from anthropological justifications of federal orders to contemporary problems of EU constitutionalism, the principle of subsidiarity and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights. The book is of relevance to anyone interested in philosophical justifications of federalism. (shrink)

This paper seeks to determine whether or not the divesture of Nigeria’s state-owned enterprises by the Federal Government of Nigeria is ethical. Towards this end, it employs an analytic methodology to undertake a conceptual examination of the divesture of Nigeria’s SOEs by the FGN. The paper’s findings are: A large proportion of the Nigerian citizenry is opposed to its government’s privatization policy. A conducive socio-economic environment for privatization is lacking in Nigeria.The paper concludes that although privatization in (...) general may be a “good” policy, it is ethically wrong for the FGN to privatize some of its SOEs, given the absence of a conducive socio-economic milieu. (shrink)

Ethical principles play an important part not only in the promulgation of regulations but also in their application, i.e., enforcement and adjudication. While traditional ethical principles – promotion of welfare, freedom, and fairness – play an important role in both elements of regulation, some other kinds of ethical principles are significant as well. Principles governing the structure of decision processes should shape the structure and actions of agencies; principles of wise application should govern the work of those whose responsibility it (...) is to apply regulatory language to particular situations. These points are demonstrated by investigating a case study: federal regulations designed to protect children involved in scientific research applied to a placebo study of the effects of recombinant human growth hormone on children of extremely short stature. Keywords: ethics, interpretation, regulation, research CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Not Only Sub Specie Aeternitatis, but Equally Sub Specie DurationisA Defense of Hegel's Criticisms of Spinoza's PhilosophyJ. M. Fritzman and Brianne RileyIn what seem like halcyon days, when William Jefferson Clinton was America's President, James Carville wrote We're Right, They're Wrong: A Handbook for Spirited Progressives, arguing against the Republican Party's "Contract with America" (derided by the Left as a "Contract on America") and for progressivism. In the present (...) philosophical conjuncture, what is required is a precisely analogous intervention—"Hegel's Right, Spinoza's Wrong: An Article for Spirited Hegelians." Hegel criticizes Spinoza's philosophy at various places in his writings.1 Spinozists have made several major challenges to Hegel's criticisms.2 Although there have been explications of Hegel's criticisms, there has been no effective response to the Spinozists' challenges.3 Until now. This article defends Hegel's criticisms of Spinoza's philosophy and shows that the challenges to his criticisms fail.This article presents a précis of Spinoza's system and shows the senses in which Hegel is not wholly enamored with it. It defends Hegel's criticism of Spinoza's system as an acosmism from Parkinson's challenges to it. It considers both Myers's view that Hegel's system begins where Spinoza's system ends and McMinn's charge that the systems of Spinoza and Hegel are fundamentally identical. Myers and McMinn misunderstand Hegel's dialectical method, and so they incorrectly believe that the methods of Spinoza and Hegel are complementary. Hegel's dialectics can sublate the systematic pluralism that Myers and Armour propose as its alternative. The penultimate section discusses the modifications that must be made to Spinoza's system to advance from his substance to Hegel's subject.Clinton successfully appropriated what was worthwhile in the "Contract with America," but he also effectively argued that the "Contract" would be a disaster for America. Similarly, Hegel assimilates the truth in his predecessors' philosophies while demonstrating how those philosophies remain [End Page 76] one-sided and partial. This article concludes by showing how this happens to Spinoza's philosophy.Everybody Loves SpinozaSpinoza's philosophy is a metaphysical monism. That is, he thinks that there is only one basic substance. Although there is only one substance, it necessarily expresses itself through an infinite number of attributes, and an attribute is the essence of substance as experienced by the intellect.4 Humans are capable of knowing only two of these attributes: thought and extension. Objects, ideas, and relations—Spinoza refers to all of these as "modes"—are presented through some attribute or other. Spinoza denies that a thing presented through one attribute can cause or be affected by anything presented through another attribute. Rather, each thing which is presented through an attribute has an infinite number of counterparts presented through the infinite number of attributes. Indeed, those infinite counterparts are that thing, presented through the other attributes. Substance necessarily expresses itself through the attributes and modes, according to Spinoza, and everything that is possible is also actual.5Spinoza's substance expresses itself through its attributes and modes, but what occurs at the level of the attributes and modes has no reciprocal effect on substance. Like unrequited love, expression is a one-way street. Not e pluribus unum (out of many, one), but e unibus plurum (out of one, many). Unlike the relation of the states to the federal government, the attributes and modes do not possess a relative or circumscribed autonomy vis-à-vis substance.6 Substance expressing itself through its attributes and modes is nature, according to Spinoza, and nature in turn is God. Hence, Spinoza's God is wholly immanent within the world—for him, God is the world—and so he rejects that traditional God of theism, who transcends and is wholly independent from the world. Spinoza rejects as illusory all notions of purpose and intention.7 Although individuals generally believe that their actions are performed in order to fulfill some goal, Spinoza instead maintains that human actions are entirely determined and necessary and that the belief that actions are done to accomplish something is entirely mistaken. He believes that all happenings—physical... (shrink)

This essay explains how to use the calculus of consent framework to think more rigorously about self-governance, and applies this framework to the issue of evaluating federal regulatory agencies. Robust political economy is the idea that institutions should be designed to work well even under weak assumptions about decision-makers’ knowledge and benevolence. I show how the calculus of consent can be used to analyze both incentives and knowledge problems. The calculus is simultaneously a theory of self-governance and a tool (...) for robust political economy analysis. Applying this framework to the case of public administration leads to the conclusion that private goods (such as medicine) tend to be over-regulated, public goods tend to be under-regulated (such as enabling too much pollution), and regulatory agencies tend to be over-centralized (and should in most cases either be replaced with certification markets or moved to state level). (shrink)

This article examines the possibility of establishing a Department of Peace (DOP) as a Department of the Government of Canada. The topic has been introduced in Parliament twice, as Bill C-447 in 2009 and as Bill C-373 in 2011, without any further actions beyond the formal First Reading. The introduction of the bills could only happen on the basis of significant support among Canadians. At present efforts to introduce the DOP continue, although in somewhat muted form. Based largely on (...) oral interviews, this article assesses the potential for establishing a DOP in the context of the Canadian peace tradition as well as global developments. It concludes that a DOP has great potential to move the peace agenda forward but that, in view of the priorities of the current government and the general mood in Canadian society, it is not realistic to expect a DOP to be implemented at present. (shrink)

In the following, the author presents a case for federally mandated gun control regulations. Specifically, the author argues—with reference to The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—that the principle of limited government often used against federal gun control laws actually provides legitimate justification for them. The aim is to persuade gun advocates to accept such regulations from their own point of view.

Today, there are several problems in the field of criminal law caused both by the emergence of new types of legal relations and by the imperfection of legislation. Due to the emergence of new challenges in the field of criminal law, many of them require theoretical understanding. Some of these challenges, generated in the light of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, revealed several reasons for discussion in the Ukrainian and international legal community. The purpose of the (...) study involves consideration of certain aspects of modern challenges in the field of criminal-legal relations, which arose against the background of the military aggression of the Russian Federation in Ukraine. The first part of the study is devoted to the question of the qualification of war crimes committed by the Russian Federation in Ukraine as acts of genocide. The second part of the work is devoted to the issue of using existing international legal mechanisms to hold the Russian Federation accountable for war crimes. There are convincing reasons to say that the actions of the Russian Federation during the war in Ukraine have signs of the crime of genocide. Even though Ukraine is not a party to the Rome Statute, the Ukrainian government can use another tool to bring the subjects of war crimes to justice, by creating a certain mixed investigative mechanism or a criminal tribunal that could deal directly with the crime of aggression. (shrink)

The article explores the phenomenon of polysubjectivity as a factor of social development from the perspective of post-non-classical scientific methodology. The author proposes conceptualizing polysubjectivity (multiple subjectivity) as a category describing the multifaceted nature, diversity, and dynamics of the social environment. This environment is formed through the dialogue of managed subjects who are bearers of diverse value-goal structures, possess certain resources, and are interconnected with other subjects of social action. Attention is drawn to the dual nature of poly-subjectivity. On one (...) hand, it is viewed as the subjectivity of multiple individuals and social groups united within a localized social environment, for example, in the context of interactions between government and business, authorities and the population, or the federal center and regions. On the other hand, polysubjectivity is interpreted as the multifaceted and plural subjectivity of an individual. The author draws upon the methodology for analyzing sociocultural modernization of regions (N.I. Lapin), the activity-structural paradigm (A.V. Tikhonov), concepts of mediation and sociocultural dialogue (A.S. Akhiezer, A.P. Davydov), and the subject-oriented approach in social systems management (V.E. Lepskiy). Special attention is given to the role of the polysubjective approach in the context of differentiation among Russian regions and the implementation of their socio-economic development strategies. The article argues that the objective complexity of the Russian Federation's regional composition and the unevenness of modernization necessitate a polysubjective approach to structuring relations between the center and regions. Invoking W.R. Ashby’s law of requisite variety, it is demonstrated that effective management of regional system diversity requires a corresponding diversity of management approaches at the central level. Barriers to the formation of polysubjectivity are analyzed, particularly the absence of genuine dialogue between the center and regions. The conclusion posits that polysubjectivity can serve as a key characteristic of a certain stage in the institutionalization of post-industrial type management and as a form of interaction that ensures an adequate measure of collaboration among representatives of government, business, science, and various communities. (shrink)

There exists a longstanding debate over the global institutional implications of Immanuel Kant's political philosophy: does such a philosophy entail a federal world government, or instead only a co...

The article is devoted to the analysis of the upcoming reform of local self-government initiated by amend­ments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation (2020) and the Draft Federal Law No. 40361-8 «On general principles of the organization of local self-government in a unified system of public author­ity», submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in December 2021. The purpose of the study is to identify and analyze trends in the development of the institutional organization (...) of local self-govern­ment, manifested in the context of the development of the new Draft Federal Law. It is shown that a special type of institutional organization is emerging in the sphere of domestic local self-government, which can be defined as institutional minimalism. Its main features are highlighted. It is concluded that the manifes­tations of institutional minimalism are possible only in the conditions of continuation of such trends as the strengthening state control and unification of local self-government, which previously existed, but were further strengthened in connection with the building of a unified system of public power. (shrink)

There is a growing sentiment that federal student loans should be allocated according to students’ expected earning potential. If federal student loans were given so that the government could make a profit, then such a system would make sense. But this is not so. Instead, the US government issues student loans with the goal of benefiting society—and, in particular, of benefitting the loan recipients themselves. Although some of this benefit is expressed in higher earning potential, much (...) of it is not. In this chapter, we argue that the federal student loan system should be structured to account for the intrinsic values that accrue to individuals both from increased education and from certain occupational choices. (shrink)

This article argues that the movement of dogs from pounds to medical laboratories played a critically important role in debates over the use of animals in science and medicine in the United States in the twentieth century, not least by drawing the scientific community into every greater engagement with bureaucratic political governance. If we are to understand the unique characteristics of the American federal legislation that emerges in the 1960s, we need to understand the long and protracted debate over (...) the use of pound animals at the local municipal and state level between antivivisectionists, humane activists, and scientific and medical researchers. We argue that the Laboratory Animal Care Act of 1966 reflects the slow evolution of a strategy that proved most successful in local conflicts, and which would characterize a “new humanitarianism”: not the regulation of experimental practices but of the care and transportation of the animals being provided to the laboratory. Our analysis is consistent with, and draws upon, scholarship which has established the productive power of public agencies and civil society on the periphery of the American state. (shrink)

Freedom of information laws promote transparency by permitting individuals and organizations to obtain government documents. However, exemptions from disclosure are necessary to protect privacy and to permit government officials to deliberate freely. Deliberative language is often the most challenging and burdensome exemption to detect, leading to high processing costs and delays in responding to open-records requests. This paper describes a novel deliberative-language detection model trained on a new annotated training set. The deliberative-language detection model is a component of (...) a decision-support system for open-records requests under the US Freedom of Information Act, the FOIA Assistant, that ingests documents responsive to an open-records requests, suggests passages likely to be subject to deliberative language, privacy, or other exemptions, and assists analysts in rapidly redacting suggested passages. The tool’s interface is based on extensive human-factors and usability studies with analysts and is currently in operational testing by multiple US federal agencies. (shrink)

Recent interpretations of Kant’s international political philosophy have argued that the formation of a coercive world-state (Völkerstaat) is morally required. While these interpretations highlight the importance of a strong world government, they ignore Kant’s alternative to a Völkerstaat, a world-federation (Völkerbund). For both theoretical and practical reasons, the Völkerbund plays a crucial role in cosmopolitan right, and Kant can only justifiably reject the formation of the Völkerstaat because of the structure of the Völkerbund. This article explains the constitution and (...) functions of the Völkerbund, and thereby shows why Kant was not ultimately committed to supporting a coercive world-state. (shrink)

Lincoln's First Inaugural Address was not designed to coax the seceded states back into the Union, because he never conceded that they had left. Rather, he sought to define the situation so that, if war broke out, the seceders would be cast as the aggressors and the federal government as acting in self-defense. To this end, he presented a principled case against the legitimacy or even possibility of secession while applying the arguments to the exigence at hand. He (...) identifies the cause of the trouble as “unwarranted apprehension” among the southern states, announces his policy as a minimalist assertion of national sovereignty, and urges that disaffected southerners not act in haste to threaten that sovereignty further. Not only does he explicitly call for slowing down the push to war but the speech itself enacts a slowing of time. In sum, the First Inaugural illustrates both Lincoln's philosophical grounding and his rhetorical dexterity. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the study of the development patterns of the local government system in the Russian Federation. The submission to the State Duma of the Russian Federation of the draft Federal Law «On the general principles of the organization of local self-government in the unified system of public authority» in December 2021 means the preparation of a new stage of municipal reform and makes it relevant to study long-term changes in the institutional organization of (...) local self-government. The purpose of the study is to analyze changes in the structure of local self-government bodies and the rules of their formation at each stage of the development of this institution, as well as to identify the main patterns of this process. The analysis of the legislative base regulating the structure and rules of formation of local self-government bodies has been carried out. The data related to the development of the local government system provided by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation were analyzed. It is shown that the structure of local self-government bodies has not undergone significant changes. However, there have been changes in the ways of forming local self-government bodies, which reflect the trend towards their loss of institutional independence and integration into a single system of public power. This trend appeared at the stage of implementation of the Federal Law on Local Self-Government in 2003 and was consolidated in the new Draft law on Local self-government submitted to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in 2021. It is concluded that there is a tendency to increase the dependence on federal and regional legislators of local self-government bodies. For the institute of heads of municipalities, the loss of institutional independence was clearly manifested by the introduction of the procedure for electing heads by competition, displacing both election at municipal elections and election from the Council of Deputies. The formation of representative bodies, having passed the stage of delegating deputies to higher levels, returns to the model of direct elections. However, this happens in the context of the rejection of a two-tier system of local self-government. (shrink)

The article analyzes the forms of public participation in the implementation of local self-government at various stages of municipal reform. It studies the consolidation of various forms of participation in federal laws on local self-government. The analysis of data from the annual Monitoring of the development of the local government system has been carried out, which makes it possible to assess the real prevalence of various forms of public participation. It is shown that the new Draft (...) Law on local self-government reinforces the general trend towards reducing the municipal sphere and simplifying the institutional organization of local self-government. This, in turn, leads to a reduction in the total number of forms of public participation in self-government, a reduction in their demand and a reduction in the space of deliberative democracy as a whole. At the same time, there is a reduction in both power and advisory forms of participation. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the 1986 Amendments to the False Claims Act of 1863, which offers whistle-blowers financial rewards for disclosing fraud committed against the U.S. government. This law provides an opportunity to examine underlying assumptions about the morality of whistle-blowing and to consider the merits of increased reliance on whistle-blowing to protect the public interest. The law seems open to a number of moral objections, most notably that it exerts a morally corrupting influence on whistle-blowers. We answer these (...) objections and argue that the law is not objectionable on these grounds. Since there are no compelling moral objections to the law, it is appropriate and acceptable to judge the law in terms of its economic costs and benefits. We assess the most salient of these and conclude that the benefits outweigh the costs. We suggest that a mechanism similar to the Act should be considered for protecting stockholders' interests in the private sector. We conclude by making several proposals for improving the existing legislation. (shrink)

Brent Kious has recently attacked several arguments generally adduced to support anti-doping in sports, which are widely supported by the sports medicine fraternity, international sports federations, and international governments. We show that his attack does not succeed for a variety of reasons. First, it uses an overly inclusive definition of doping at odds with the WADA definition, which has global, if somewhat contentious, currency. Second, it seriously misconstrues the position it attacks, rendering the attack without force against a more balanced (...) construal of an anti-doping position. Third, it makes unwarranted appeals to matters Kious considers morally ‘clear’, while simultaneously attacking a position many others take to be equally morally ‘clear’, namely that of anti-doping. Such an inconsistency, attacking and appealing to the moral status quo as befits one’s argument, is not acceptable without further qualification. Fourth, his position suffers from a general methodological flaw of over-reliance upon argumentation by analogy. Moreover, it is argued that the analogies, being poorly selected and developed, fail to justify his conclusion that the anti-doping lobby lacks philosophical and moral authority for its stance. These issues are symptomatic of a more fundamental problem: any attempt at providing a blanket solution to the question of whether doping is morally acceptable or not is bound to run up against problems when applied to highly specific contexts. Thus, rather than reaching any particular conclusion for or against doping products or processes in this article, we conclude that an increased context-sensitivity will result in a more evenhanded appraisal of arguments on the matter. (shrink)

The book compares Kant's and Hamilton's political thought. It highlights their complementarity in the development of federalism as a political theory. Contributions focus on issues such as sovereignty, the relationship between democracy and peace and viceversa, the democratic peace and the federalist peace, and the federal institutional model.

Just Shelter: Gentrification, Integration, Race, and Reconstruction is a work of political philosophy that examines the core injustices of the contemporary U.S. housing crisis and its relation to enduring racial injustices. It posits that what is required to achieve justice in social-spatial arrangements—what is otherwise called “spatial justice”—is to prioritize, in the crafting and enforcement of housing policy, individual moral equality and liberty; distributive justice; equal citizenship; and, due to history and continuing practice and effects of racial discrimination in housing (...) policy and the housing market in the United States, corrective justice in the form of rectification programs to address the history of racism in housing policy that should be implemented by local, state, and federal governments. To arrive at and illustrate this conclusion, it investigates aspects of the housing crisis closely related to the history of American racial injustice, such as gentrification, segregation, desegregation, integration, and, to a lesser extent, homelessness, and offers liberal reform gestures toward a broad view of reconstructive justice. (shrink)

A collection of essays, speeches, and conversations from a conference sponsored by Southwestern University Law Review and held in Los Angeles in 1977 in commemoration of the 190th anniversary of the Constitution, this book has some 36 contributors. The majority of these are law professors, including Laurence Tribe of Harvard, Bernard Schwartz of NYU, Ruth Bader Ginsburg of Columbia, Lino A. Graglia of the University of Texas, and Martin Shapiro of the University of California at Berkeley. Several contributions are by (...) Federal judges, including ones by Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr., and Constance Baker Motley. There is also a sprinkling of historians, political scientists, journalists, and lawyers. The contributors include a number of little known, as well as many well-known commentators on the Constitution. (shrink)

As with a previous colloquium at Moscow in 2004, when my topic was literature in the Federal Republic of Germany during the post-World War II decades, I want to speak about tensions between war and postwar generations in Russia and in Germany, and my perspective will again be largely autobiographical. Of course this convergence (bordering on repetition) is not random. For I believe that remarkably complex affinities exist between Germany after the twelve-year-short nightmare of National Socialism and Russia after (...) the long stagnation of the Soviet Union. In both cases, a national collapse made cultural circles and newly elected governments…. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article discusses recent scholarly endeavours to rethink form and principles of Rousseau's political theory. Michael Sonenscher's Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Division of Labour, the Politics of the Imagination and the Concept of Federal Government is in the limelight of the analysis. Following a brief introduction into the general debate on Rousseau's political thought, the article reconstructs Sonenscher's argument that Rousseau was essentially a theorist of a federal government system. While Sonenscher achieves what earlier interpretations have (...) failed to accomplish, that is, to give Rousseau's state a form, the discussion underscores that he leaves open the question how this federal government system is supposed to function. The article concludes that Rousseau's fragmentary ideas on constitutional government can provide an answer to this question, as they shed light on the framework that allowed him to combine will (the sovereign people) and force (the government) in the political organization of a democratic state. (shrink)

Pollitt and Bouckaert and their neo-Weberian state (NWS) have been chosen as the subject for this essay because the book has become a standard work in the public management movement. It is frequently cited and has been re-published in multiple editions (most recently in 2017). The authors also refer explicitly to Max Weber.This contribution seeks to draw attention to three important aspects, which inevitably overlap with one another:1. There is no Weber in the neo-Weberian State (introduction, 1; section II). Pollitt (...) and Bouckaert fail to grasp that Weber’s understanding of the state [the state as an “institution” (Anstalt); and the state as an “idea of validity” (Geltungsvorstellung)] is not identical to his ideal type of modern bureaucracy; it is the features of the latter on which they draw. The ideal type is a standard measure constructed in order to establish how close any concrete, given instance of bureaucracy comes to it (introduction, 3). Meanwhile, the “neutral official” insisted upon by Weber has “taken their leave” in Germany from important positions (section III, 3). Furthermore, Weber did not address those structures and processes internal to the administration which are precisely the object of interest for the new public management reformers. Weber’s lack of interest arises from the fact the members of anAnstalt, whether it is the state or the Church (WuG, § 15, no. 2), are subject to imposed orders (oktroyierte Ordnungen) and, as such, do not enjoy the “right to have a say”. Scharpf (1973a) was the first to pay particular attention to the problems brought about by specialisation and by the division of labour within the administration that are responsible for an incremental form of politics (section III, 3); even if he later ascribes advantages to the combination of “negative” and “positive coordination” (Scharpf 1991: 18ff.).2. The “legalistic culture” that characterises Germany will be considered in a more differentiated way, drawing on empirical studies which provide information, for example, on how laws (i.e. programmes)actuallyoriginate inside the ministerial apparatus (introduction, 2; section III, 2 and 3) or how use is made of the power of authority (Weisungsrecht) in practice (introduction, 2; section III, 2 and 3), even when, formally, it claims to have validity (section III). In this way, only empirical studies (Benz 1994; Bohne 1981; Dose 1997; Dose/Voigt 1995; Treiber 2007a) prove that the administration that implements laws has often, in practice, become a “negotiative administration” (introduction, 2). Such a phenomenon as a “co-operative administration”, which negotiates rather than rules, is a “foreign concept” in Weber’s discussion of the state and modern bureaucracy. Scharpf’s (1970) comparison between constitutional governance in Germany and legal relief in America is enlightening when it comes to the meaning of the constitutional state (Rechtsstaat) (introduction, 2; section III); the same applies to his discussion of the failed federalist reforms, which sought, among other things, to mitigate, if not entirely eliminate, the opportunities for blockades provided by political entanglement (Politikverflechtung) (section III). Neither was it possible to realise long overdue proposals to reform administrative law (Verwaltungsrecht) (section III, 1), which involved weakening or removing altogether three important assumptions in the dominant administrative doctrine (the “dogmatic normality”) and which also included the ambitious intention for the law to achieve tangible impact (Hoffmann-Riem 1994). Nonetheless, while no-one would dispute that reform of the federal government and administration remained “on the agenda” (Scharpf 1991, Mayntz/ Scharpf 1973), the priorities of such a reform were, and still are, different to those of new public management reform [the key terms here arePlanung(“planning”) and the term that replaced it,Steuerung(“management”)]1.3. Pollitt and Bouckaert ascribe to the neo-Weberian state extremely varied functions without providing any (theoretical) basis for them. In this way, the notion of public management reform that they present acquires the status of a “reformist philosophy” (introduction, 3; section IV). See Scharpf (1991) for a theoretically well-founded argumentation on the State’s ability to act in our days. Scharpf’s essay will be discussed briefly (section IV).ConclusionThere is no Weber in the neo-Weberian state. According to the discussion presented here, the neo-Weberian state can only mean: how would a modern state constituted by Weber look today? (shrink)

The Lancet stated in its editorial on the 9th of May 2020 that the situation in Brazil was very problematic insofar as the COVID-19 pandemic was concerned. More than a year later, Brazil already registered more than half a million deaths from complications of COVID-19, which places it in second place in the world ranking of deaths despite having the seventh-largest population in the world. Despite this utterly tragic situation, in July 2021, almost 40% of the Brazilian population approved of (...) the federal government's role in confronting the pandemic, and the Brazilian elites have defended openly the view that the economy was more important than individuals' lives. Given this context, in this article, we reflect on the issue of plutocracy, demonstrating its platonic authoritarian foundations, in order to understand the Brazilian elites' attitude toward the pandemic, which had no proper regard or care for the most vulnerable in society. Through this philosophical inquiry we indicate the importance of education, particularly of philosophy of education, in encouraging educationists and educational systems to reflect on problematic issues and self-reflect so as to identify possible educational deficiencies and shortcomings that created the conditions for individuals' attitudes of indifference to the victims of the pandemic and the vulnerable in society. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed the far-reaching significance of religion in shaping human interaction within social crises. Efforts to slow down the spread of coronavirus prompted different national governments, including the Federal Government of Nigeria to restrict large density gatherings, enforce lockdowns and promote social distancing, which were largely resisted initially. Organised religion may have influenced citizens’ compliance with government directives for curbing the pandemic. Focussing largely on providing economic assistance to people in need, it may have missed (...) out on the reason for recourse to faith. One outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic was the need to understand the application of religious faith in explaining epidemics and health crises. This work predominantly relies on data from secondary sources (library research and internet materials). Just as it critically investigates Christian-Muslim responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, it seeks also to justify reliance on religion during a health emergency. By the evaluative method of philosophy, we show that although the pandemic triggered dread of annihilation, it brought in its wake a search for ontological meaningfulness. This study therefore argues that Nigerians turned to religion to meet the deep-seated, individual need for meaningfulness (‘survivability’) that is primary to the need of soul and body, which includes material donations by organised religious entities. The primacy of fulfilling this need precedes sociality both ontologically and epistemologically because meaningfulness is an inalienable property of individuality.Contribution: This work presents religion as a rationally defensible need that is fundamentally rooted in individual human nature, even in a pandemic; religion pertains to meaningfulness, which counters human fear of annihilation and meaninglessness. (shrink)

The entropic state that engulfed the East Coast of Australia in the first eight months of 2020 followed thirty years of uninterrupted economic growth and 10 years of tenuous federal governments divided on the question of climate change. The twin geophysical crises of catastrophic bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic have led to a public reckoning around our guardianship of the environment, as well as our relationship with science and indigenous knowledge. Congruent with this was the rapid transformation of both (...) schools and universities to online learning, causing the most significant rupture to the traditional ‘grammar of schooling’ for decades. This unprecedented conflation of crises has resulted in the unusual situation where education can be radically transformed, as the material conditions that usually remain latent (thus negating the possibility for change) suddenly exist. As a result, there has been an increased openness to pedagogies of potentiality, as schools and universities resist the urge to ‘return to normal’. Amongst these pedagogies, the philosophy of Bernard Stiegler is unique in its direct response to the entropic state with a counter-impulse, negantropy, which seeks to harness our technological capacity under an ethos of care and unite it with our existential purpose to flourish and thrive. This paper will consider the possibilities of Stiegler’s utopian call for action in relation to the Australian context, as schools and universities reconceptualise the sharing of knowledge and the purpose of education that seeks to rectify the gaps of the past. (shrink)

The Canadian health care system is a publicly fundedsystem based on the philosophy that health is a right,not a commodity. The implementation of thisperspective is hampered by the fact that the CanadianConstitution makes health care a matter of provincialjurisdiction, while most taxing powers lie in thehands of the federal government. Further problemsarise because of Canada's geographic nature and a moveto regionalization of provincial health careadministration. The issue is compounded byrecent developments in reproductive technologies,aboriginal health, changes in consent law, (...) etc. (shrink)

The 3Rs framework in animal experimentation– “replace, reduce, refine” – has been alleged to be expressive of anthropocentrism, the view that only humans are directly morally relevant. After all, the 3Rs safeguard animal welfare only as far as given human research objectives permit, effectively prioritizing human use interests over animal interests. This article acknowledges this prioritization, but argues that the characterization as anthropocentric is inaccurate. In fact, the 3Rs prioritize research purposes even more strongly than an ethical anthropocentrist would. Drawing (...) on the writings of Universities Federation for Animal Welfare (UFAW) founder Charles W. Hume, who employed Russell and Burch, it is argued that the 3Rs originally arose from an animal-centered ethic which was however restricted by an organizational strategy aiming at the voluntary cooperation of animal researchers. Research purposes thus had to be accepted as given. While this explains why the 3Rs focus narrowly on humane method selection, not on encouraging animal-free question selection in the first place, it suggests that governments should (also) focus on the latter if they recognize animals as deserving protection for their own sake. (shrink)

Toward situating philosophical collaborations with government and Non‐Governmental Organizations (NGOs), the author distinguishes two definitional uses of the term “public philosophy”: a “shared vision” definition and a “professional activity” definition. As varied examples of work with NGOs, she offer her work with three women's health organizations, a mental health law group, a privacy advocacy group, and a national academy. The author then offer her work with NIH, a national bioethics commission, and state court judges as examples of work with (...) state and federal government. Genetic privacy was understood as a key ethical and legal issue to arise in anticipation of the complete mapping of the human genome. (shrink)

My dissertation defends W.E.B. Du Bois’s philosophy of modern freedom, which he grounds in the historical reconstruction of the American civic community on the moral basis of free and equal citizenship. Rather than ascribe to him an elitist politics of racial ‘uplift’ and assimilation to Anglo- American folkways, I instead argue that he defends black moral and political autonomy for securing state power and civic equality. Additionally, he challenges both historical and the contemporary political philosophers, including John Rawls, Axel Honneth, (...) and Philip Pettit, to articulate the racial dimension of the development of a social order that actualizes the moral meaning of free and equal citizenship. In establishing his novel philosophy of freedom, I adduce three critical components: (1) Contra standard interpretations of Du Bois that claim he espouses a controversial racialist doctrine, I argue that his racialism is best understood as conceptualizing the ethical salience of racial difference in the context of a democratic plurality. In the light of dominant accounts of plurality that do not foreground race, pace Margaret Gilbert and John Rawls, Du Bois deemphasizes individuals’ free choice in social group formation. In accepting the importance of free choice, he stresses collective historical experience as furnishing the normative salience of racial identity, which prefigures individuals’ free choice. A racialist model of racial difference in a democratic plurality exacts the civic obligation to confront the historical legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. (2) In advancing the moral value of citizenship, Du Bois affirms the moral obligation of the modern American state to represent black interests from Reconstruction onwards. Drawing on G.W.F. Hegel’s normative theory of the modern state, I justify Du Bois’s analysis of postbellum federal policies concerning black freedmen and refugees of the Civil War. Du Bois observes that the Freedmen’s Bureau – established with the passage of the 1865 Radical Reconstruction Amendments – democratically facilitated a ‘social revolution’ by promoting the integration of black freedmen on the moral basis of free and equal citizenship under the aegis of the federal government. Implicit in his analysis is a normative commitment to representational government that in attending to the needs of the postbellum black community incorporates black political will in the public adjudication of the common good – a historically unprecedented phenomenon. (3) With the rise of Jim Crow, when the U.S. federal government skirted its moral obligation to defend black interests, Du Bois argues that the black church and college assumed a civic function. Habits of citizenship flourished there, affirming the moral agency of African Americans as American citizens. Inasmuch as these institutions groomed disenfranchised black citizens for the assumption of political power, I articulate the challenge they present to John Rawls, Axel Honneth, and Philip Pettit to chart the civic dimension of ‘private’ social institutions. Because they neglect to theorize the historical experience of racial subordination, their views of freedom omit a formulation of social cooperation guided by the notion of the civic within the institutional context of civil society. Specifically, their accounts of the interrelation between citizens, social institutions, and the modern state fail to capture the civic function of the black church and college during Jim Crow. Thus, Du Bois’s dynamic, institution-based account of freedom highlights the racial dimension in the historical contestation of the legitimate scope and ends of the American civic community. (shrink)

On American Freedom critiques the value of freedom as it is now manifest in America's political, economic, and cultural life in light of a more robust value of freedom coordinated around human dignity and civic participation. Drawing from historic sources as diverse as James Madison, Adam Smith, and Catherine Beecher - as well as from contemporary sources like George W. Bush and Bob Dylan - the book paints a bleak picture of this most cherished American value. At the same time, (...) On American Freedom outlines a reform initiative that will secure a more preferred value of freedom by simply by reconfiguring the federal system to include reorganized and empowered city-states capable of serving as sites for a fuller form of freedom than Americans now enjoy. (shrink)

The management of radioactive waste, particularly of High-Level Radioactive Waste (HLW) containing isotopes, whose half-life exceeds one million years, is a wicked and aporetic problem. The amount of waste increases continuously, while the question of management remains technologically and politically unsolved. Not only do the technological challenges involved exceed the horizon of scientists, but the ethical problems raised by the use of nuclear power have been neglected from the beginning. The history of nuclear power is as well a history of (...) neglecting its consequences. No country is able to provide a suitable concept of storage for HLW. Instead, we have failing approaches: for example, decaying barrels in the Channel and the Atlantic Ocean, and in Germany two salt mines stuffed with unregistered amounts of waste on the edge of collapse.After the disaster at Fukushima Daiichi in March 2011, the German Federal Government decided for the second time to stop using nuclear power as an energy source, and on July 5th 2013, it passed a law mandating a new search for a storage site. In the beginning of 2013, an interdisciplinary project—ENTRIA—was launched to investigate options for radioactive waste management from the perspectives of the technical sciences and the humanities. ENTRIA is evaluating three possible options for storage: deep geological disposal, retrievable deep geological repository with monitoring, and permanent dry cask storage above ground. Each of the three options bears particular technological and ethical challenges. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 201-202 [Access article in PDF] Conference on Pure Land Buddhism in Dialogue with Christian Theology James Fredericks Loyola Marymount University As Charlie Parker devotees will attest, improvisation at its most thrilling, if not its most ingenious, is often the result of careful planning. Cannot something similar be said of interreligious dialogue? All our planning and study are best put to use when they suddenly become (...) mere prologue to an encounter that has forced us off the well-trodden path. A dialogue meeting at Loyola Marymount University, September 9-14, 2001, began with much planning and became highly improvisational on September 11th.The roots of this conference go back to discussions between Dennis Hirota and myself in Kyoto in 1998-1999. The two of us are interested in contributing to the future development of Shin Buddhism by placing it in dialogue with Christian theology. The focus here is on Christian theology as one aspect of Christianity's response to the modern world. We are both interested in investigating various theological methods as Christian responses to modernity, and the contributions these methods have made to the reform and renewal of Christian institutions. The ulterior purpose of these investigations is to think in new ways about how a Buddhist "theology" might contribute to the institutional reform and religious renewal of Shin Buddhism.A first dialogue meeting was held at Chikushi Jogakuen University (Dazaifu, Japan) in June of 2000. Participants included faculty from Chikushi Jogakuen, Charlie Hallisey (then of Harvard University), Peter McCormick (International Academy for Philosophy, Liechtenstein), and me (Loyola Marymount University). A second meeting was held at Loyola Marymount in September 2001. For one week, beginning September 6th, meetings were held at the Shin Buddhist temple and a neighboring Roman Catholic parish in the Little Tokyo district of Los Angeles, followed by an academic conference at Loyola Marymount starting on Monday, September 10th. These meetings brought together faculty from Chikushi Jogakuen and Loyola Marymount, Shin Buddhist specialists from the Eastern Buddhist Society in Tokyo, ministers from the Los Angeles Nishi and Higashi Honganji Temples, Charlie Hallisey (Wisconsin), and John Ross Carter (Colgate University). The visiting Buddhists had a chance to meet with the Buddhist-Catholic dialogue group in Los Angeles. Papers were presented on a number of subjects, including (1) Christian theology's [End Page 201] contribution to institutional reform and religious renewal in recent Roman Catholic history and its implications for Shin Buddhism in both the United States and Japan; (2) theological method and moral theology in relation to end of life issues from both a Shin and Christian perspective; (3) truth and history in interreligious understanding; (4) Shin Buddhism, Christianity and religious responses to social discrimination; and (5) Christian theology as a stimulus to the development of a Shin Buddhist theology.On the morning of September 11th, dialogue as formal academic presentations ended and dialogue as spontaneous improvisation began. With U.S. air transportation closed down by the federal government, prospects for return flights to Japan were indefinitely postponed. A planned outing to watch Ichiro Suzuki (of the Seattle Mariners) play the Angels had to be canceled (Anaheim stadium was also closed). Instead, Christians and Buddhists, Americans and Japanese suddenly were brought together in ways they could not have predicted and began to improvise. The campus ministry of Loyola Marymount organized an impromptu mass for the entire university on the evening of September 11th. The Buddhist visitors were given a place of honor at the liturgy and publicly welcomed as guests of the Catholic community. The psalm response for the mass was a musical setting of the words, "Shepherd me oh Lord, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life." In the days that followed, this text became the basis for very affecting conversations among the Buddhists and the Christians in response to the terrorist attacks. From the Shin perspective, Buddhists were able to bring a depth of meaning to these words even as they were interested in what the psalm might mean to Christians.Like improvisation in jazz, interreligious dialogue is sometimes at its... (shrink)

Research on economization processes is increasingly taking seriously the social and material processes through which various policy domains are transformed into economic problems and solutions. This article engages “Value Added Modeling” (VAM) in teacher evaluation systems as a case study in economization. VAM is a statistical technology for evaluating the effectiveness of schoolteachers using student test scores, which wrests authority for the determination of quality teaching away from education professionals and toward quantitative economic modelers. Mobilizing field theory, we trace a (...) half century of changing relationships among economists, other academics, and various policy audiences (from media to philanthropists to state and federal government) in struggles to define education policy concerning teacher quality. We show that economization is a set of overlapping, sometimes contradictory processes that can take different forms: in this case, the spread of an “economic style of reasoning” or the establishment of “economic policy devices.” The case of VAM shows stages of economization in which processes first proceeded independently of one another, then interacted in contradictory ways, and finally, mutually reinforced one another. What primarily drove these interactions was the struggle for scientific capital within the economics discipline and the changing place of education policy and VAM within it. Ultimately, VAM’s original role as a policy device for evaluating and selecting individual teachers has foundered even as it has become an important tool for economists to accrue scientific capital and expand their style of reasoning to broader audiences. (shrink)

John Hasnas’s fine article, “Up from Flatland: Business Ethics in the Age of Divergence,” fails in its stated goal of challenging the mainstream business ethics community’s methods of analyzing normative issues. However, it achieves what is likely Hasnas’s true goal of alerting both business ethicists and managers of the bigger stakes now in play when the federal government indicts employees and seeks their employers’ cooperation in establishing the prosecutor’s case. While prosecutorial overreaching is a legitimate concern that deserves (...) to be highlighted, it requires no qualitative change in normative ethical analysis. That analysis now involves different inputs (greater stakes for firms and employees), but continues to involve a familiar but complicated weighing of shareholder interests against employee interests and, sometimes, a weighing of both against the requirements of the law. (shrink)

BackgroundThe use of genetic test results in risk-rated insurance is a significant concern internationally, with many countries banning or restricting the use of genetic test results in underwriting. In Australia, life insurers’ use of genetic test results is legal and self-regulated by the insurance industry (Financial Services Council (FSC)). In 2018, an Australian Parliamentary Inquiry recommended that insurers’ use of genetic test results in underwriting should be prohibited. In 2019, the FSC introduced an industry self-regulated moratorium on the use of (...) genetic test results. In the absence of government oversight, it is critical that the impact, effectiveness and appropriateness of the moratorium is monitored. Here we describe the protocol of our government-funded research project, which will serve that critical function between 2020 and 2023.MethodsA realist evaluation framework was developed for the project, using a context-mechanism-outcome (CMO) approach, to systematically assess the impact of the moratorium for a range of stakeholders. Outcomes which need to be achieved for the moratorium to accomplish its intended aims were identified, and specific data collection measures methods were developed to gather the evidence from relevant stakeholder groups (consumers, health professionals, financial industry and genetic research community) to determine if aims are achieved. Results from each arm of the study will be analysed and published in peer-reviewed journals as they become available.DiscussionThe A-GLIMMER project will provide essential monitoring of the impact and effectiveness of the self-regulated insurance moratorium. On completion of the study (3 years) a Stakeholder Report will be compiled. The Stakeholder Report will synthesise the evidence gathered in each arm of the study and use the CMO framework to evaluate the extent to which each of the outcomes have been achieved, and make evidence-based recommendations to the Australian federal government, life insurance industry and other stakeholders. (shrink)

Catholics have been at the forefront of efforts over many years to secure universal access to health care in the United States. These efforts suf­fered a serious setback when the federal government enacted the Affordable Care Act and then quickly used it to assault rights of conscience. This assault has brought into serious question the once promising hope that a partnership might be forged between church and state to benefit those at the margins of society. Given recent events, (...) Catholics and others are compelled to reassess their willingness to trust the power of government to carry out this aim in a manner that respects fundamental human rights, including the rights of religious believers. The words of our founders and framers, who warned against the dangers of an overbearing government, merit renewed attention. (shrink)

More than two hundred cities in the United States have now declared themselves to be sanctuary cities. This declaration involves a commitment to non-compliance with federal law; the sanctuary city will refuse to use its own juridical power – including, more crucially, its own police powers – to assist the federal government in the deportation of undocumented residents. We will argue that the sanctuary city might be morally defensible, even if deportation is not always wrong, and even (...) if the federal government is legally permitted to demand that states participate in the process of deportation. We defend this conclusion with reference to a simple, but powerful, norm of international law: that of non-refoulement. As we will discuss, this norm articulates the idea that no state may rightly use its coercive power to move a person into a position in which their basic rights are at risk. We take this norm as a morally defensible principle, and ask what could follow from its acceptance. We argue that this norm has implications for a variety of actors – especially when we notice that those who are facing unjust risks of death are, in general, entitled to use defensive violence against their aggressors. This simple fact, we argue, can help offer a novel defense of the sanctuary city. (shrink)

As Canadian experience back to the Great Depression reveals, monetary policy can have potent impact on social welfare. Although in recent years Canadian monetary policy has been managed—with little public understanding—for the benefit of wealthy interests, earlier Canadian federal governments, largely through the monetary powers of the Bank of Canada established in 1935, not only financed participation in World War II, but also in the post-war period created the nation's remarkable social programs. Changes in monetary policy beginning in the (...) late 1970s have shifted control over the money system almost entirely to the private commercial banks, and have contributed substantially to severe erosion of those programs. Changes in current monetary policy, shown from past experience to be feasible, could play a key role in financing restoration and improvement of social programs. Some implications for the US and other nations are spelled out. (shrink)