ABSTRACTChristopher Achen and Larry Bartels argue, in Democracy for Realists, that voters tend to be not only politically ignorant but irrationally attached to group identities. That they use group identities is not in dispute, but the irrationality of doing so is questionable. The instability and malleability of group identities suggests that they are more than primal, illogical attachments. While Achen and Bartels assume that they must be affective, they may in fact be rational. They may, for example, serve as heuristics (...) for individual interests. (shrink)

For more than two decades political scientists have discussed rising elite polarization in the United States, but the study of mass polarization did not receive comparable attention until fairly recently. This article surveys the literature on mass polarization. It begins with a discussion of the concept of polarization, then moves to a critical consideration of different kinds of evidence that have been used to study polarization, concluding that much of the evidence presents problems of inference that render conclusions problematic. The (...) most direct evidence‚Äîcitizens’ positions on public policy issues‚Äîshows little or no indication of increased mass polarization over the past two to three decades. Party sorting‚Äîan increased correlation between policy views and partisan identification‚Äîclearly has occurred, although the extent has sometimes been exaggerated. Geographic polarization‚Äîthe hypothesized tendency of like-minded people to cluster together‚Äîremains an open question. To date, there is no conclusive evidence that elite polarization has stimulated voters to polarize, on the one hand, or withdraw from politics, on the other. (shrink)

"What culture war? Abortion, gay marriage, school prayer, gun control. Is the nation really polarized on these hot-button moral, religious, and cultural issues? Should we believe the media pundits and politicians who tell us that Americans are deeply divided? No, says Morris Fiorina. At a time when the rift between the "red" and the "blue" states can seem deeper than ever, Fiorina debunks the assumption that Americans are deeply split over national issues. He presents quite a contrary picture (...) -- that most Americans stand in the middle of the political landscape and are in general agreement even on those issues thought to be most divisive. Poking holes in the concept of a "culture war," Fiorina explains that the majority of Americans are both moderate and tolerant, and that their greatest concerns are leadership and security, not moral values. Fiorina supports this position with newly released data from the 2004 election and a variety of other recent surveys. According to Fiorina, the view of a divided America is simply false. By recognizing our common ground, we have a basis for creating a more unified and moderate approach to government and politics in the near future."--. (shrink)

Don Green and Ian Shapiro's Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory, despite the impressive amount of work that has gone into it, is undercut by a number of serious misunderstandings of the use of the rational choice approach by students of American politics. Furthermore, Green and Shapiro adopt an extremely pinched notion of an empirical contribution and an outmoded and idealized view of the scientific method. If their standards were adopted, it would be difficult to allow that anyone in political science (...) has made an empirical contribution, or that political science is a scientific enterprise. (shrink)

How do firms make sense of creating shared value projects? In their sense-making processes, do they extend the meaning spectrum to include human rights? What are the dominant cognitive frames through which firms make sense of CSV projects, and are some frames more likely to have transformative power? We pose these questions in the context of small-scale firms in a low-to-middle income country—a context where CSV policies have been promoted extensively over the last decade in the expectation of improved economic (...) competitiveness, growth, and sustainable development processes. We employ a grounded theory approach to identify three dominant cognitive frames used by our respondents to make sense of CSV. The most prevalent frame prioritizes economic over social and environmental goals, and considers social, environmental, and human rights benefits to trickle down from economic growth and wealth generation. In the second frame, economic actors follow a win–win logic according to which environmental sustainability is pursued only if there are clear and foreseeable economic payoffs. The third frame is a niche that emphasizes the attainment of certain human rights goals, despite a perceived lack of immediate economic returns. Our work casts doubt on the capacity of CSV projects to stimulate sustainable development processes without radically changing entrepreneurs’ cognitive frames from growth first to humanizing the business. (shrink)

We examine whether, relative to their global peers, the financial performance of firms from developing countries leads to increases in human rights abuses. We also study the institutional conditions that qualify this relationship. Based on a combination of behavioral and neo-institutional theories, we suggest there is a positive relationship between financial performance and human rights misbehavior as home country liabilities motivate firms to misbehave to achieve their primary goal of economic leadership. We also suggest that strong regulatory and normative pressures (...) attenuate the abovementioned positive relationship, as failure to comply with norms endangers such firms’ secondary goal of achieving international legitimacy. Our analysis, based on a sample of 245 large companies from eight developing countries studied over a 20-year period, supports our hypotheses. Our empirical results suggest that such companies misbehave when they endeavor to strike a balance between maintaining their global economic leadership and sustaining their social legitimacy. (shrink)

A recent preoccupation in scholarly research is the capacity of firms in developing country industrial clusters to comply with international corporate social responsibility policies and codes of conducts. This research is at an early stage and draws on several—often quite distinct—scholarly traditions. In this paper, we argue that future work in this area would benefit from a more explicit examination of the connection between cluster firms and human rights defined according to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent (...) covenants and treaties. We argue that cluster firms’ adoption of CSR policies, often indiscriminately imposed by global buyers, should be differentiated from firms’ actual human rights practices. Based on this distinction, we elaborate a typology of industrial clusters and identify a set of factors likely to influence their practice. Against this background, we discuss an agenda for future research and elaborate on the potential methodological intricacies related to research on the interface between industrial clusters and human rights. (shrink)

In A Centaur in Auschwitz, Massimo Giuliani sheds new light on Primo Levi's rational, demythologizing approach to suffering and survival. Whether working in narrative or poetic form, Levi grappled with the ambiguities and complexities of innocence and guilt, triumph and loss. This unique book, with its concise overview of Levi's expression and development as a writer, reveals Primo Levi for what he was: scientist, intellectual, Jew, and dedicated seeker of the roots of human dignity.

Human–robot interactions are often affected by error situations that are caused by either the robot or the human. Therefore, robots would profit from the ability to recognize when error situations occur. We investigated the verbal and non-verbal social signals that humans show when error situations occur in human–robot interaction experiments. For that, we analyzed 201 videos of five human–robot interaction user studies with varying tasks from four independent projects. The analysis shows that there are two types of error situations: social (...) norm violations and technical failures. Social norm violations are situations in which the robot does not adhere to the underlying social script of the interaction. Technical failures are caused by technical shortcomings of the robot. The results of the video analysis show that the study participants use many head movements and very few gestures, but they often smile, when in an error situation with the robot. The results suggest that participants do not see the robot as a social interaction partner with comparable communication skills. Our findings have implications for builders and evaluators of human–robot interaction systems. The builders need to consider including modules for recognition and classification of head movements to the robot input channels. The evaluators need to make sure that the presence of an experimenter does not skew the results of their user studies. (shrink)

English summary: The present work demonstrates the important influence of Heidegger on the philosophical thought of Walter Benjamin, on his philosophy of history, as well as his philosophy of art and language. Concentrating on the formative periods for both philosophers, the work examines their early education, as well as the interlacing of the philosophy of art and history in their concept of art. The final section treats works by both philosophers on the philosophy of art from their early years. French (...) description: L'objectif principal de ce livre est de demontrer de quelle maniere la lecture de certains textes de jeunesse de Heidegger marqua profondement la pensee philosophique de Benjamin. Celui-ci aurait subi l'influence heideggerienne aussi bien au niveau de sa propre philosophie de l'histoire que de sa philosophie du langage et de sa philosophie de l'art. Le fondement theorique est l'approche de la periode de formation, encore peu etudiee, des deux philosophes. La philosophie neokantienne est le principal courant philosophique a l'epoque dans toutes les universites allemandes. C'est pourquoi le point de depart de la recherche, notamment pour la premiere et la deuxieme partie (histoire et langage), se centre sur la formation des jeunes Benjamin et Heidegger aupres de maitres tels que Heinrich Rickert, Edmund Husserl et Emil Lask. L'entrecroisement de philosophie de l'histoire et de philosophie du langage aura une projection decisive dans le debat concernant le concept d'art chez les deux philosophes. Le troisieme axe d'etude porte quant a lui sur la philosophie de l'art. Il traite du livre de Heidegger date de 1929 sur Kant et le probleme de la metaphysique, et du texte de jeunesse de Benjamin intitule L'arc-en-ciel. Entretien sur l'imagination (1915). (shrink)

The 1930-60s saw the beginning of a fertile stream of research based on a historical-comparative methodology focused on case-law viewed as the paradigm of the true living law. Today, the new frontier is in the information age and in thinking law as information.

Publié en janvier 2020, cet ouvrage de Claude Langlois puise son origine dans un « sentiment d’urgence, urgence civique et toute séculière, d’apporter [sa] part de vérité » (p. 7) après la publication, le 20 août 2018, de la Lettre au peuple de Dieu du pape François. Directeur d’étude à l’École pratique des hautes études, Claude Langlois est historien et sociologue, spécialiste du catholicisme contemporain. Il s’empare du sujet de la pédophilie après avoir déjà fait une incursion croisée dans...

Poor ability to regulate one's own food intake based on hunger cues may encourage children to eat beyond satiety, leading to increased risk of diet-related diseases. Self-regulation has multiple forms, yet no one has directly measured the degree to which different domains of self-regulation predict overeating in young children. The present study investigated how three domains of self-regulation (i.e., appetitive self-regulation, inhibitory control, and attentional control) predicted eating in the absence of hunger (EAH) in a community sample of 47 preschool-aged (...) children (Mage = 4.93, SD = 0.86). Appetitive self-regulation, as measured using a delay of gratification task, was significantly and negatively associated with EAH 1 year later (p< 0.5). Measures of inhibitory and attentional control did not significantly predict EAH. These results suggest that food-related self-regulation may be a better predictor of overeating behaviors than general measures of self-regulation. (shrink)

Il saggio presenta la definizione e l’interpretazione di Maimonide delle sette leggi noahidi come si trovano nel codice halakhico _Mishnè Torà, Hilkhot melakhim_, e come discusse ed elaborate dal pensatore ebreo contemporaneo (tedesco-americano) Steven S. Schwarzschild. Rispetto ad altre versioni rabbiniche, l’interpretazione di Maimonide aggiunge la condizione che l’osservanza di quelle leggi è valida solo se sono accettate e rispettate come leggi rivelate, non solo come _lex naturalis_. Su tale condizione esiste un disaccordo tra gli studiosi e i rabbini ebrei, (...) per esempio tra Marvin Fox e Aaron Lichtenstein (la loro posizione è un caso di studio presentato qui). Più specificamente, Schwarzschild argomenta a favore dell’interpretazione del Rambam e cerca di dimostrare che è coerente con la visione globale che Maimonide aveva dell’ebraismo in quanto tale. The essay presents Maimonides’ definition and interpretation of the seven Noahide laws as they are found in the halakhic code _Mishnè Torà, Hilkhot melakhim_, and as discussed and elaborated by the contemporary Jewish (German-American) thinker Steven S. Schwarzschild. In comparison with other rabbinical versions, Maimonides’ interpretation adds the condition that the observance of those laws is valid only if they are accepted and obeyed as revealed laws, not only as _lex naturalis_. About such a condition a disagreement exists among the Jewish scholars and rabbis, for example between Marvin Fox and Aaron Lichtenstein (their position is a case-study presented here). More deeply, Schwarzschild argues in favor of the Rambam’s interpretation and tries to demonstrate that it is consistent with the comprehensive vision Maimonides had on Judaism as such. (shrink)

L’interpretazione dei testi è il cuore del giudaismo e lo studio in ebraico della Torà scritta e orale è uno dei suoi precetti fondamentali. Ma interpretare è un’arte sviluppatasi sulla base di regole precise che fissano dei limiti logici e insieme potenziano la fantasia dei maestri di Israele. In questi dodici capitoli si esplorano tali middot o norme ermeneutiche, la dialettica tra senso letterale e approccio midrashico, gli sviluppi dell’esegesi rabbinica soprattutto in età medievale, i dibattiti sul valore delle aggadot (...) nella prima modernità e, infine, i diverbi tra ortodossia e riforma sul posto da assegnare al metodo storico-critico nella lettura dei testi sacri: Torà, Talmud, Zohar... Ma idee e prassi dell’interpretazione si applicano anche al mondo dei sogni, all’elaborazione della memoria e alla vasta produzione poetica e letteraria, rifiorita in ebraico nel corso del Novecento, in particolare nella società israeliana. Questo percorso mostra come, da sempre e mai come oggi, il giudaismo sia una interpreting tradition nel solco di una lunga storia che combina rigore e innovazione. Secondo il Midrash, Dio stesso, tracciando corone sulle lettere della Torà, ha cominciato questa storia. (shrink)

È possibile esporre e comprendere l’etica ebraica ‘stando su un piede solo’ ossia in poche e semplici formule? Non è piuttosto il giudaismo un cammino lungo e complesso, e dunque anzitutto halakhà, un insieme di norme tese a santificare la vita quotidiana e a rafforzare un’identità di popolo? Quali sono i nessi tra la sfera etica, di sua natura universale, e la sfera delle pratiche simbolico-rituali, che caratterizzano e rendono particolare lo stile di vita ebraico? Cosa dice poi il pensiero (...) rabbinico in merito all’etica del lavoro, o sulle attuali urgenze ecologiche, sull’esercizio del potere, sulla difesa dei diritti umani? In queste pagine la delicata questione del rapporto tra etica e halakhà viene indagata alla luce degli antichi dibattiti rabbinici fino alle discussioni contemporanee passando naturalmente attraverso la grande lezione etica di Maimonide. Uno studio affascinante e impegnativo, guidato dalla stella polare della giustizia, secondo il dettame della Torà: “La giustizia, la giustizia seguirai” (Deuteronomio 16,20). (shrink)

In the XVIIth century the conflict which opposed the jansenists to the jesuits involved the problem of the due process in theological matter. The jesuits heralded the thesis that the infallibility of the Church has to be extended from dogmatics (‘quaestio iuris’) to the historical facts (‘quaestio facti’). On the opposite side Arnauld maintained that such an opinion was ‘monstruous’: also in religious matters the ‘fact’ has to be proved according to the principles of a due process, and not by (...) authority. In this article the thesis pleaded by the jansenists is considered in connection with the model of argumentative procedure offered by the Port-Royal logic.The Logique ou Art de penser (1622) by Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole seems to have rediscovered the classical principles of the theory of argumentation: from the burden of proof to the idea of probable truth. But really a new model of adversary-system has been introduced into the modern mind, which is very different in concept from the topical tradition. The basic metaphor of combat, implying that the truth will prevail in the fight, is compatible with the epistemological premises of the modern logic (as the separation between ‘fact’ and ‘value’). Therefore the problem of the fact-finding seems to be attracted into the area of the logic of information, and not of the theory of argumentation. (shrink)