Online research in philosophy

Abstract An individual's beliefs can be seen as rationally related to one another in a kind of web. These beliefs, however, may not form a single, seamless web. There may exist smaller, largely self-contained webs with few or no rational relations to the larger web. Such ?webs of faith? make it possible for reasonable deliberators to persist in a disagreement even under ideal deliberative conditions. The possibility of reasonable disagreement challenges the assumption that rationality should lead to consensus and presents (...) an obstacle to the goals of liberal democracy. (shrink)

Abstract Before the establishment in the early 1800s of France's Sûreté Nationale and England's Scotland Yard, the detection of crimes was generally regarded as supernatural work, but the rise of modern science allowed mere mortals to systematize and categorize events?and thus to solve crimes. Reducing the amount of crime, however, did not reduce the fear of crime, which actually grew in the late-nineteenth century as the result of globalization and media sensationalism. Literary detectives offered an imaginary cure for an imaginary (...) disease. Sherlock Holmes, the most famous literary detective, retained many of the characteristics that earlier ages had attributed to superhuman ?detectives?; a wondrous and a social being, he nonetheless was able to reassure an anxious public that even the most heinous crimes could be solved. His ability to calm the fears of the globalizing Victorian era was an early version of what later became a proliferation of imaginary characters serving similar public functions. (shrink)

Abstract Marcel Gauchet's theory of democracy focuses on the secularization of Western societies and the emergence of ?autonomy? in them?Weber's ?disenchantment of the world.? The nineteenth-century liberalism that resulted failed to generate a sense of collective purpose that could fill the gap left by the retreat of religion. Totalitarian ideologies achieved this by harnessing the passions unleashed by World War I, but at the cost of radicalization. Conversely, the (unexpected and lasting) post-1945 ?social state? set the groundwork for modern individualism (...) and established new legitimacy for the regulatory and protective nation-state, conceptually bonded directly with its voter-citizens. Democracy is thus impossible to disentangle from social democracy?regardless of its actual effectiveness. If Gauchet is right, the left's embrace of ?voice? over ?exit? mixes a deep insight with flawed prescriptions, as it overlooks the national nature of the experience of citizenship, whereas classical liberals favoring the ?exit? option risk undermining the core of the democratic compact. (shrink)

Abstract Scholars find that political elites are badly polarized over a large range of policy issues, but they tend to agree that the mass public is much more ambivalent. The abortion war in particular is regarded as one in which millions of ambivalent citizens are caught in the crossfire of polarized activists. Yet even abortion activists struggle to escape the very ambivalent sentiments that plague ordinary Americans. These common sentiments even exert a moderating influence on both movements in ways that (...) are consistent with the preferences of the American public. They also suggest that liberalism may be mired in permanent conflict and ambivalence over the scope of basic human rights. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The Swedish case bears out Lewin's contention, in Self-Interest and Public Interest in Western Politics, that public spiritedness is much more important than is suggested by public-choice theories positing the universal dominance of self-interestedness. However, in Sweden we find that public spiritedness on the part of the public?as evidenced, for example, in sociotropic voting?was cultivated by political institutions, policies, and rhetoric that transformed a divided, conflictual society into one in which the ?public interest? was both coherent and desirable. In (...) turn, this cultivation was the result of decisions by politicians that were, in the most simplistic sense, self-interested, because they secured the politicians? election and re-election. But the goal of election and re-election was to create a just society. In short, the politicians, too, were public spirited. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Twenty years ago Leif Lewin made the case that altruistic motives are more common than selfish motives among voters, politicians, and bureaucrats. We propose that motives and beliefs emerge as reactions to immediate feedback from technical-causal, material-economic, and moral-social aspects of the political task environment. In the absence of certain kinds of technical-causal and material-economic feedback, moral-social feedback leads individuals to the altruism Lewin documents, but also to righteousness (moralized regard for the in-group and disregard for the out-group) and (...) myopia (disregard for distant consequences). The mix of altruism, righteousness, and myopia increases the focus on winning the next high-stakes election rather than on discovering or enforcing socially productive institutions. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Contrary to Laurel Gleason's assertions, Deliberative Polling among random samples is not a process that is dominated by ?experts? or by certain categories of deliberator; it produces genuine gains among the participants in knowledge of information that has been verified as true and relevant; it does not cause ideological polarization; and it is not intended as a substitute for, rather than a supplement to, deliberation on the part of the general public.

ABSTRACT Political scientist James Fishkin has devised ?deliberative polling? as a means to better informed, more autonomous, and more reflective participant opinion. After a deliberative poll, this improved form of public opinion can be disseminated to the general public and to policy makers so as to influence public opinion (as it is normally construed) and public policy. Close examination of the results of deliberative polling, however, suggests no evidence of a normatively desirable gain in informed, autonomous, or considered opinion?as opposed (...) to minor gains in participants' general political knowledge and in ideological constraint, which is likely attributable to the pre-packaged ?expert? views set forth in the briefing materials provided to the participants. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Four decades ago, Gerald Kramer showed that economic conditions affect electoral outcomes. Some researchers took this to mean that voters were self-interested, voting their ?pocketbooks,? while others, such as Leif Lewin, took it to mean that voters were sociotropic, motivated by the public interest?and therefore altruistic. It is important, however, to avoid conflating sociotropic voters with altruistic ones. Voters might be voting in favor of politicians or parties that they think will further the public interest as an indirect (...) route to furthering their own interests, as members of the public. More research, perhaps conducted using novel methodologies, is needed in order to settle the extent to which voters are motivated by self-interest or by the public interest. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The ?symmetry assumption? in public-choice theory?the idea that people act just as selfishly in the political sphere as they do in the economic sphere?is a good theory that runs afoul of much of the evidence. The public-choice theorists in this symposium, Munger and Mueller, have thus retreated from claiming that public choice explains most political behavior, with Munger positing it as an ideal type that, in principle, might explain no behavior at all. For example, Berman suggests that even politicians (...) who say and do ?anything? to be elected or re-elected may well do so in order to acquire the power they think they need if they are to enact policies that will serve the public good. The normative project of ?constitutional political economy? into which the original, empirical version of public choice seems to have evolved may or may not tell us how to structure institutions to prevent greedy actors from using politics as a means to their personal aggrandizement. But that project cannot, even hypothetically, produce the public-choice ?findings? of widespread self-interestedness in politics that my book found were nonexistent. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In its attempt to prove that voters, politicians, and bureaucrats are motivated by the public interest, Self-Interest and Public Interest in Western Politics overlooks a great deal of public-choice research, to which much has been added during the two decades since it was published. The importance of self-interest at both the micro and macro levels of politics becomes clear once one looks not simply at the ?inputs? of a democracy but at its ?outputs? as well. The prevalence of interest (...) groups, the dysfunction of the United States tax code, the lobbying by unions for their members? self-interest, the earmarks in the Patriot Act, the numerous cases of corruption in Western democracies, and the dissatisfaction of citizens with their governments? failings all point to the importance of self-interest in politics. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Self-Interest and Public Interest in Western Politics showed that the public, politicians, and bureaucrats are often public spirited. But this does not invalidate public-choice theory. Public-choice theory is an ideal type, not a claim that self-interest explains all political behavior. Instead, public-choice theory is useful in creating rules and institutions that guard against the worst case, which would be universal self-interestedness in politics. In contrast, the public-interest hypothesis is neither a comprehensive explanation of political behavior nor a sound basis (...) for institutional design. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Laurel Gleason contends that deliberative polling constrains the autonomy of participants and substitutes the ideas and agendas of ?experts? for those of the deliberators. However, the format and informational constraints faced by participants in deliberative forums are no worse, and are in many ways better, than those faced by ordinary citizens. The real problem with deliberative polls is that if they were to become popular, it would be tempting for interest groups and partisan elites to create polls in which (...) the constraints and briefing materials subtly tilted the participants in a desired direction. Public criticism of biased deliberative polls would, in turn, invite biased criticism of unbiased polls. In short, ?policing? the quality of deliberative polls could recreate the very pathologies of real-world democratic discourse that the polls are designed to rectify. However, this problem is not insurmountable, because the participants themselves can police the proceedings by questioning the veracity and balance of the briefing materials. (shrink)