Government, Misc

Although the economic thought of Marshall and Pigou was united by ethical positions broadly considered utilitarian, differences in their intellectual milieu led to degrees of difference between their respective philosophical visions. This change in milieu includes the influence of the little understood period of transition from the early idealist period in Great Britain, which provided the context to Marshall’s intellectual formation, and the late British Idealist period, which provided the context to Pigou’s intellectual formation. During this latter period, the pervading (...) Hegelianism and influences of naturalism arising from the ideas of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer were challenged by Hermann Lotze, a key transitional thinker influencing the Neo-Kantian movement, who recognised significant limits of naturalism, on the one hand, and the metaphysical tenor of absolute idealism, on the other, and attempted to provide a balance between the two. The goal of this paper is to make the provisional case for the argument that Pigou’s views on ethics were not only directly influenced by utilitarian thinkers like Mill and Sidgwick, but they were also indirectly influenced by Hermann Lotze, via the influence of the Neo- Kantian movement on late British idealism. To that end, Pigou’s essays in The Trouble with Theism (1908), including his sympathetic consideration of the ethics of Friedrich Nietzsche, reflect the influence of Lotze indirectly through the impact at Cambridge of: James Ward’s critique of associationist psychology, and consideration of the limits of naturalism including the critique of evolutionary ethics; Bertrand Russell’s rejection of neo-Hegelianism and, together with Alfred North Whitehead, the development of Logicism; and G.E. Moore’s critique of utilitarian ethics on the basis of the naturalistic fallacy and the development of his own intuitionist system of ethics. (shrink)

Proponents of the public goods argument ('PGA') seek to ground the authority of the state on its putative indispensability as a means of providing public goods. But many of the things we take to be public goods – including many of the goods commonly invoked in support of the PGA – are actually what we might term publicized goods. A publicized good is any whose ‘public’ character results only from a policy decision to make some good freely and universally available. (...) This fact poses complications for the PGA, insofar as the set of possible publicized goods is quite extensive indeed. (shrink)

The corruption of public officials and institutions is one of the most obvious problems that affects developed and developing countries alike. Because this view is largely shared, most current studies of this phenomenon—‘political corruption’—have been dedicated either to measuring or counteracting the negative political, social, and economic effects that this form of corruption may have in society. Albeit significant and urgent, these studies have distracted the attention of commentators from a somewhat more basic analysis of the nature and wrongness of (...) this phenomenon. This lacuna has resulted in the formulation of a multiplicity of actions that address a very heterogeneous set of issues, including such diverse phenomena as bribery, embezzlement, institutional malfunctioning, the inadequacy of political leaders, and clientelism. This situation is unsatisfactory because it muddles important distinctions between different pathologies that may affect the public order. But it matters also for the design of anti-corruption strategies that risk to either misfire or be too vague by lacking a clear target and an account of the exact kind of wrong these strategies are meant to prevent and/or correct. In our research on this topic, we have addressed this issue by offering a normative analysis of political corruption as surreptitious public action. Our account explains the distinguishing traits of political corruption and makes sense of its inherent wrongness as a contradiction of the logic of publicity that undergirds political interactions in a rights-based system. In this chapter, we draw on this research and expand it with a view to enhancing the identification of relevant instances of political corruption and the design of policies to counteract them. (shrink)

The paper discusses the normative grounds for recognizing a watchdog role to the news media as concerns the dissemination of information about an institutional failure menacing a well-ordered society. This is, for example, the case of the news media’s role in the diffusion of whistleblowers’ disclosures. We argue that many popular justifications for the watchdog role of the news media (as a ‘fourth estate’; a trustee of the people’s right to know; expert communicator) fail to ground that role in some (...) unique feature that makes the news media special as concerns the performance of the role. We offer an alternative argument that shows how the watchdog role of the news media shares a justificatory ground with the role that any member of a well-ordered society has in terms of a general duty of answerability in the face of institutional failures. Although this duty does not bear only on the news media, we concede that in some contingent circumstances the news media might be better positioned to discharge it and, therefore, to initiate corrective actions of institutional failures effectively and conscientiously. However, the establishment of the news media’s responsibility in this sense is an empirical, not a conceptual or a normative matter. (shrink)

In all probability, future generations will outnumber us by thousands or millions to one. In the aggregate, their interests therefore matter enormously, and anything we can do to steer the future of civilization onto a better trajectory is of tremendous moral importance. This is the guiding thought that defines the philosophy of longtermism. Political science tells us that the practices of most governments are at stark odds with longtermism. But the problems of political short-termism are neither necessary nor inevitable. In (...) principle, the state could serve as a powerful tool for positively shaping the long-term future. In this chapter, we make some suggestions about how to align government incentives with the interests of future generations. First, in Section II, we explain the root causes of political short-termism. Then, in Section III, we propose and defend four institutional reforms that we think would be promising ways to increase the time horizons of governments: 1) government research institutions and archivists; 2) posterity impact assessments; 3) futures assemblies; and 4) legislative houses for future generations. Section IV concludes with five additional reforms that are promising but require further research: to fully resolve the problem of political short-termism we must develop a comprehensive research program on effective longtermist political institutions. (shrink)

The nursing community in the United States polarized in September 2020 between Dawn Wooten's whistleblowing about forced hysterectomies at an immigration center in Georgia and the American Nurses Association's refusal to endorse a presidential candidate despite the Trump administration's mounting failures to address the public health crisis posed by the COVID‐19 pandemic. This reveals a need for more attention to political aspects of health outcome inequities. As advocates for health equity, nurses can join in recent scholarship and activism concerning the (...) political determinants of health. In this paper, we examine recent work on the political determinants of health with an aim to add two things. First, we seek to build further on the notion of “political” determinants of health by distinguishing policy and governance structures from dynamics of politicization through appeal to critical disabilities studies. Second, we seek to apply this further nuanced approach to challenge rhetorical uses of “vulnerable populations,” where this phrase serves to misrecognize systemic institutionalized forces that actively exploit and marginalize people and groups. By refocusing attention to political systems organized around and perpetuating inequitable health outcomes, nurses and other health care professionals—as well as those whom they serve—can concentrate their effort and power to act on political determinants of health in bringing about more equitable health outcomes. (shrink)

It’s people who gave the authority and resources to the government, for the purpose to serve them at achieving desired social life, otherwise, the government itself is nothing. The fundamental responsibility of government is to ensure our freedom, and its role of people to dictate the government and make it answerable according to their agreed demands. Claiming all power for the purpose of prosperity and justice in society is conflicting to its own cause, rather authorizing individual authority is the just (...) way toward a better society, because each individual has the right to decide about himself, and for collective decision making in society, all individual has the right to provide their input in it, after that majorities’ rule and minorities’ rights is the key to move forward, otherwise its destruction of society. (shrink)

At the centre of Powers' (2019) China and England is an extraordinary forgotten episode in the history of political ideas. There was a time when English radicals critiqued the corruption and injustice of the English political system by contrasting it with the superior example of China. There was a time when they advocated adopting a Chinese conceptual framework for thinking about politics. So dominant and prevalent was the English radicals' use of this framework, that their opponents took to dismissing their (...) points as 'the argument from the Chinese'. In my review of Powers' book, I welcome the profound reconfiguration of our political understandings that knowledge of this historical episode brings. However, I question Powers' framing presumption that the generic problems of any complex society lead to convergence on a single master political value of 'social justice'. Surely there are deep and enduring differences amongst thinkers of political value, even within a single society, let alone across different societies. Taking this point seriously would challenge the simple linear directionality of Powers' story of moral and political progress. (shrink)

Integrity is often conceived as a heroic ideal: the person of integrity sticks to what they believe is right, regardless of the consequences. In this article, I defend a conception of ordinary integrity, for people who either do not desire or are unable to be moral martyrs. Drawing on the writings of seventeenth century thinker Huang Zongxi, I propose refocussing attention away from an abstract ideal of integrity, to instead consider the institutional conditions whereby it is made safe not to (...) be servile. (shrink)

Sometimes citizens disagree about political matters, but a decision must be made. We have two theoretical frameworks for resolving political disagreement. The first is the framework of social choice. In it, our goal is to treat parties to the dispute fairly, and there is no sense in which some are right and the others wrong. The second framework is that of collective decision-making. Here, we do believe that preferences are truth apt, and our moral consideration is owed not to those (...) who disagree but to the community that stands to benefit or suffer from the decision. In this chapter, I describe and explore these two frameworks. I conclude two things. First, analysis of real-world disagreement suggests that collective decision-making is the right way to model politics. In most, possibly even all, political disagreement, all parties believe (if implicitly) that there is an objective standard of correctness. Second, this matter is connected to the concept of pluralism. If pluralism is true, then collective decision-making cannot be applied to some political disagreements. More surprisingly, pluralism may rule out the applicability of social choice theory as well. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSome have recently argued that the current generation dominates future generations by causing long-term climate change. They relate these claims to Philip Pettit and Frank Lovett’s neorepub...

Larry Temkin draws on the work of Angus Deaton to argue that countries with poor governance sometimes rely on charitable giving and foreign aid in ways that enable them to avoid relying on their own citizens; this can cause them to be unresponsive to their citizens’ needs and thus prevent the long-term alleviation of poverty and other social problems. I argue that the implications of this “lack of government responsiveness argument” (or LOGRA) are both broader and narrower than they might (...) first appear. I explore how LOGRA applies more broadly to certain types of charitable giving in developed countries, with a focus on medical crowdfunding. I then highlight how LOGRA does not apply to charitable giving aimed at alleviating the suffering of the absolutely politically marginalized, or those especially vulnerable people to whom governments are never responsive. (shrink)

The concept of economic rent is among the oldest in political economy. This reflects the fact that economies have always included parties whose income appears more parasitic than productive. The concept of rent-seeking refers to the efforts of parties seeking to secure such income by way of gaining influence over economic regulation or otherwise gaining favors from government. In spite of its intuitiveness, however, it has proven difficult to precisely distinguish rent from other categories of income. This chapter seeks to (...) acquaint readers with this problem. The privatization of incarceration is then supplied as an important case study in current rent-seeking behavior. (shrink)

Abstract: This article addresses shortcomings in the way that philosophers and cultural critics have considered propaganda by offering a new genealogical account. Looking at figures such as Marx, Adorno, Marcuse, Habermas, Bourdieu, and Stanley, this article finds that their consideration of propaganda has not necessarily been wrong but has missed some of the most significant and important functions of propaganda. This text draws on archival and published materials from propagandists, most notably Edward Bernays, to elaborate a new governmentality of propaganda (...) and public relations. Through focusing on the concept of public opinion, I argue that propaganda is best thought of as an apparatus whose function it is to construct, modify, counter, and destroy relations of force within public opinion in order to produce the subjectivities and conduct that its disseminators and their clients desire. (shrink)

It is now generally recognized that Earth is at risk of a devastating collision with an asteroid or a comet. Impressive strides in our understanding of this threat have been made in recent decades, and various efforts to deal with it have been undertaken. However, the pace of government action hasn’t kept up with the advance of our knowledge. Despite the daunting dimensions of planetary defense, one intrepid NGO has stepped up to the plate: The B612 Foundation has embarked on (...) a half-billion-dollar project, called Sentinel, to map the estimated one million near-Earth objects that could wipe out a city or even end civilization. This article offers an explanation of how it came to be that private citizens have assumed what is arguably government’s primary mandate to "provide for the common defence." It then examines some of the practical – or, if you will, ethical – risks that may be attendant on such a shift of responsibility. Finally, a new policy emphasis is proposed. (shrink)

I present three versions –Grimm, Offe and Streeck—of a general argument that is often used to establish that the EU-institutions meets a legitimacy-disabling condition, the so called “no demos” argument (II), embedding them in the context of the notorious “democratic deficit” suspicions against the legal system and practice of the EU (I). After examining the logical structure behind the no-demos intuition considered as an argument (III), I present principled reasons by Möllers and Habermas that show why the “no demos” argument (...) fails to have bite in discussions of the legitimacy and status of the supranational level in the multi-level EU-architecture. These are complemented by another principled reason arising from John Dewey’s conception of the “public” as a clearer alternative for the “popular” requirement of democratic legitimation (IV). I conclude that all three conceptions together suggest that the hunt after pre-politically existing peoples as foundations of democratic legitimacy expresses no more than methodological nationalism without any footing in the material and conceptual requirements of democratic legitimation. Given the absence of a principled problem with the legitimacy of the priority and interference of supranational EU-law in the national legal and political orders, there are thus also no principled reasons to abandon or discredit the European project in the absence of a European nation or society. (shrink)

One of the most important challenges for political theory is to identify the extent to which corporations should be facilitated and restricted in law. By way of background to that challenge, we need to develop a view about the nature and potential of corporations and corporate bodies in general. This chapter discusses two fallacies that we should avoid in this exercise. One, a claim popular among economists, that corporate bodies are not really agents at all. The other, a claim associated (...) with US jurisprudence, that not only are they agents, they are persons whose rights call in the same way as the rights of individual persons for legal recognition and protection. (shrink)

This article investigates the technical rationalities of modern forms of government. Conceived in a Foucauldian vein, the paper argues for an interpretation of security dispositifs which sustain the structures of modern government. The main argument developed in the article is that there is a difference between two securities diagrams: the preventive and the anticipatory. The first one is using rational devices like the actuarial table while the second is aiming to instrumentalise the imagination.

This paper offers a conceptually novel contribution to the understanding of the distinctive governance challenges arising from the increasing reliance on formalized knowledge in the governance of research activities. It uses the current Australian research governance system as an example – a system which exhibits a comparatively strong degree of formalization as to its knowledge mechanisms. Combining theoretical reflections on the political-administrative and epistemic dimensions of processes of formalization with analyses of interview data gathered at Australian universities, it is suggested (...) that such a strong reliance on formalized knowledge has rather ambivalent governance ramifications. On the one hand, it allows for a seemingly rational and efficient form of the control and coordination of research activities. Yet on the other hand, it also increases the risk that knowledge is used in governance contexts in superficial, unconsidered and ultimately unreasonable ways. It is further suggested that there are a range of indications that precisely such use elicits and reinforces a range of dysfunctional behaviors on part of relevant individual and organizational actors in the public science system. (shrink)

Rural India comprises 73 %of the country’s population, but its share in the total national income is less than 45 %. The rural sector is characterized by low income levels, poor quality of life and a weak human capital-base. There are many problems in rural India related with the health, agriculture & drinking water. Generally rural public health facilities across the country are having a difficult time attracting, retaining, and ensuring regular presence of highly trained medical professionals. The higher the (...) level of training required for the position, the greater is this need gap. It is true that providing drinking water to such a large population is an enormous challenge. The health burden of poor water quality is enormous. It is estimated that around 37.7 million Indians are affected by waterborne diseases annually, 1.5 million children are estimated to die of diarrhoea alone and 73 million working days are lost due to waterborne disease each year. Indian agriculture has taken a big leap in the last 60 years. Agriculture which had the responsibility to feed 350 million in 1947 has now 1,100 million people to feed, which is a huge responsibility. Indian agriculture is facing a policy paradox. In spite of that we should discuss on these three elements. -/- . (shrink)

The term “polity” is used casually today to describe almost any political community. It is so broad that it has lost any theoretical import. In contrast, it had a much more focused – even technical – meaning in ancient, and especially Aristotelian thought.

The paper offers a systematic analysis of the phenomenon of civil religion. It reconstructs its historical preconditions and explains that civil religion is advocated when a pluralist society seems about to lose a traditional religion or ideology perceived as former guarantor of social stability. Civil religion is then propagated as a means to create a new equilibrium. The text aims to clarify that this notion is based on the idea that morality depends on religion. The conclusion is that the morality (...) civil religion strives to promote needs to be non-universalist in order to meet civil religion’s purpose, namely to foster unity within a specific community. (shrink)

Formal, informal and material institutions constitute the framework for human interaction and communicative practice. Three ideas from institutional theory are particularly relevant to technical change. Exclusion cost refers to the effort that must be expended to prevent others from usurping or interfering in one’s use or disposal of a given good or resource. Alienability refers to the ability to tangibly extricate a good or resource from one setting, making it available for exchange relations. Rivalry refers to the degree and character (...) of compatibility in various uses for goods. The paper closes with a note on how attention to these factors might be useful ways toconceptualize what Langdon Winner has called “the technological constitution of society,” and what Andrew Feenberg has theorized as “secondary rationalization,” as well as within more practical contexts of technical research, development and design. (shrink)

This article considers the application of utilitarian and deontological theories to questions that arise in the conduct of government, including whether a government may mislead the public without actually lying, how far civil servants should maintain political neutrality, whether civil servants should leak information to the press, and whether a government should avoid getting legal advice that it might not like.

Soon after taking power, three leaders of nonviolent African independence movements, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia immediately turned to violent means to suppress internal opposition. The paper examines the reasons for the success of their Gandhian nonviolent tactics in ousting British colonial governments and argues that these new heads of state lost confidence in nonviolence due to a mixture of self-serving expediency, a lack of understanding of nonviolence's many different forms, and the (...) constraints of inheriting a state already dependent on the use of force. (shrink)

The United States Government does not mandate that US based firms follow US social and environmental law in foreign markets. However, because many developing countries do not have strong human rights, labor, and environmental laws, many multinationals have adopted voluntary corporate responsibility initiatives to self-regulate their overseas social and environmental practices. This article argues that voluntary actions, while important, are insufficient to address the magnitude of problems companies confront as they operate in developing countries where governance is often inadequate. The (...) United States can do more to ensure that its multinationals act responsibly everywhere they operate. First, policymakers should define the social and environmental responsibilities of global companies. They must consistently make their expectations for global business clear – and underscore that this objective can often be accomplished without mandates. Second, the US should closely examine the policies that undermine global Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and address the many conflicting signals sent by policymakers. Third, the President should make the US government a CSR model by examining how to use its purchasing power to promote human rights. Finally, the US government should require pension funds to report on the social and environmental consequences of their investments. In these ways, Americans can mind our business – and thus make sure that US based firms do not undermine social and environmental progress when they operate in the developing world. (shrink)

There is an argument that government cannot be good for individuals because it causes them to act through fear of punishment, hence for nonmoral reasons. The obvious responses of accepting the conclusion (anarchism) and denying the premiss about moral motivation (utilitarianism) are first considered. Then the strategy of accepting the premiss but denying the conclusion is pursued at greater length. Some arguments of T. H. Green and B. Bosanquet which attempt to do this are considered before an independent resolution is (...) proposed. (shrink)

A Treatise on Political Philosophy expounds upon the nature of government and its relationship with the citizen. We see how this relationship regresses towards class warfare and the egregious error made by government that makes such warfare possible. The Treatise also examines the role of the citizen and their importance in the dictation of the State.

This is an essay discussing the ideal of Information Socialism. Information Socialism is an ideology inspired by Aaron Swartz and is the belief that information should be redistributed freely across the globe. I argue that such a practice would not only strengthen our reins on government here in the U.S., but can also have beneficial economic effects both at home and abroad.

This paper examines the effect of fiscal policy and provision of productive public goods on the dynamics of growth and inequality. A model is developed in which public infrastructure is both an engine of growth and a determinant of the distributions of wealth, income, and welfare. The design of government spending and taxation policies is a critical source of (i) the growth-inequality relationship, and (ii) the efficiency-equity trade-off, both in transition as well as the steady-state. For example, growth-enhancing government spending (...) policies can generate sharp intertemporal trade-offs in the evolution of income inequality: inequality falls in the short run, but gradually increases over time to worsen in the long-run. The existence of an efficiency-equity trade-off depends on the taxation policy used to finance government spending. In this respect, the capital income tax serves as an effective tool of egalitarian redistribution. The redistributive effects of the consumption tax as an alternative to the more conventional labor income tax are also highlighted. (shrink)

A review of Michael Ignatieff's book, 'Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics', published by Harvard University Press, 2013.

We urgently need to bring about a revolution in academic inquiry so that the basic aim becomes, not just knowledge, but rather wisdom, construed to be the capacity and active endeavour to realize what is of value in life for oneself and others, wisdom thus including knowledge and technological know-how, but much else besides. A basic task of academia ought to be to help humanity learn how to make progress towards as good a world as possible.