Education effects on authoritarian-libertarian values: a question of socialization

Over the past decades an authoritarian–libertarian value dimension has become increasingly important to electoral behaviour across western countries. Previous analyses have shown that education is the most important social antecedent of individuals' positions on this value dimension; high education groups tend towards the libertarian pole and low education groups tend towards the authoritarian pole. It remains an open question, however, what aspects of education cause this relationship. The article examines a range of explanatory models: a psychodynamic, a cognitive, a socialization, and an allocation effects model. The results strongly favour the socialization model in which the relationship between education and authoritarian–libertarian values is explained as a result of differences in the value sets transferred to students in different educational milieus. The value differences between the educational groups should thus not be seen as reflecting economic differences between the groups but rather as the result of a more fundamental value conflict.     

On the voluntary exchange of libertarian rights

Harel and Nitzan recently formulated a resolution scheme for Sen's Pareto libertarian paradox, where libertarian decision-making entitlements actually change hands through the voluntary exchange of rights-endowments. Being a rigorous formalization of the strong libertarian tradition of free contract as advocated by Buchanan and Barry, this scheme serves as a natural target for our attempt to evaluate the logical capability and ethical nature of this tradition. It will be shown that this proposed scheme can hardly qualify, logically as well as ethically, as a libertarian resolution of the Pareto libertarian paradox.This paper was presented at the Murphy Conference on Liberty and Rights, Murphy Institute of Political Economy, Tulane University, September 16–17, 1989 and the VIth World Congress of the Econometric Society, Barcelona, August 22–28, 1990. Thanks are due to Professors Wulf Gaertner, Jerry S. Kelly, Prasanta K. Pattanaik, Amartya K. Sen, and K. Suga for their helpful comments and discussions. Thanks are also due to the referees of Social Choice and Welfare, whose comments greatly helped me to improve my exposition. By the time I completed the first draft of this paper, I was unaware of a related paper by Breyer (1990). I will comment on the partial overlap between our works at a later stage.     

A model of deliberation based on Rawls��s political liberalism

In this article, we present a model of deliberation based on Rawls’s political liberalism. Our formalization gives a new perspective on his political theory. Moreover, we obtain quantitative results on political deliberation under Rawlsian rules. Finally, we elaborate two arguments in favor of Rawlsian deliberation: first, deliberation is epistemically valuable when, all other things being equal, it tends to favor the better view, because in this case, deliberators settle on the better view with high probability. Second, results suggest that when citizens deliberate within the limits of Rawlsian public reason, they can reach unanimity faster than when they deliberate outside these limits.     

Institutional foundations for a just society

The author distinguishes between fundamental justice and incremental justice and argues that the Harsanyian/Rawlsian, ex ante, concept of justice is the only concept of justice relevant to the design and evaluation of institutions. Unlike incremental justice for which a concensus as to what constitutes justice is generally not possible the conditions that satisfy the Harsanyian/Rawlsian concept of justice are derived from the assumptions of rationality and aversion to large risks, and the postulate of fairness. A concensus occurs not fortuitously but inevitably. The paper develops eight principles of institutional design that contribute towards a just society and that follow logically from these assumptions and postulates. The paper argues that these principles are by and large needed for social welfare maximization, so that justice is generally consistent with efficiency. The paper applies the theory to the concept of exploitation, crime and punishment, as well as labour market and social security, to illustrate the working of the principles developed.     

A procedural approach to distributing responsibilities in R&D networks

In professional settings, people often have diverse and competing conceptions of responsibility and of when it is fair to hold someone responsible. This may lead to undesirable gaps in the distribution of responsibilities. In this paper, a procedural model is developed for alleviating the tension between diverging responsibility conceptions. The model is based on the Rawlsian approach of wide reflective equilibrium and overlapping consensus. The model is applied to a technological project, which concerned the development of an in-house monitoring system based on ambient technology. The development of this innovative technology raised questions among the technological researchers about its social acceptance and the way issues related to privacy and security should be addressed. The case is analyzed in terms of two procedural norms (reflective learning and inclusiveness), which are based on literature on policy and innovation networks. Analysis of the case shows that, in a pluralist setting, a procedural approach can be useful for encouraging discussion on the legitimacy of different responsibility conceptions and the question what a fair responsibility distribution amounts to.     

Language and libertarianism: the politics of cyberculture and the culture of cyberpolitics

A significant number of theories concerning the nature of cyberspace or virtuality are being constructed with little regard for the empirical realities of online life. This article sets out certain simple empirical factors related to the nature first of politics in cyberspace and second culture in cyberspace. These questions are posed as ‘what is the politics of cyberculture?’ and ‘what is the culture of cyberpolitics?’. The politics of cyberculture revolves around issues of grossly uneven regional distribution of the Internet and a bias toward anglo‐american language and culture that is based on the competitive individual. The culture of cyberpolitics revolves around informational forms of libertarian and anarchist ideologies that posit cyberspace as the realm of individual freedom. These cultures and politics can be related to each other as the structure and action of cyberspace. The assumption that cyberspace is constituted by individuals is revealed as an assumption of both, and connection between, cyberpolitics and cybercultures.     

Gibbardian libertarian claims revisited

Two resolution schemes for the impossibility theorems on the Gibbard-Kelly claims of libertarian rights, which are rather contrasting with each other, are proposed and their implications discussed. The first scheme asserts that there exists a collective choice rule satisfying the Pareto principle and the Gibbard-Kelly libertarian claims if there exists at least one socially unconcerned individual. The second scheme asserts existence of an eligible collective choice rule if there exists at least one liberal individual.     

Trend-Soziologismen

An excursive contentanalysis of the media suggests evidence of a strong and widespread public interest concerning sociological issues: the quest for social positioning, cultural and economic change or practical “tools” for management and marketing. But this public need for sociological explanation and consulting is only to a minot degree satisfied by professional sociologists. The majority of the media-released results are distributed by representatives of a profession named “trend-“ or “future-research”. A closer look at the work and publication-strategies of these consultants indicated that the most active protagonists like Matthias Horx not only claim to be “sociologists”, but undertake strong attacks against professional and academic sociology and social scientists. The claim to conduct authentic sociological research and using techniques of “social research” helps to legitimate the publication of the superficial results of this sociologistic research in newspapers, magazines, and media-websites. Thus for professional sociology the question arises what to fo and how to react. One strategy could repeat the practice of the so called “Third Culture” of the international science-community’s members who have started a widely renowned public discourse to meet public demands of being scientifically informed.     

Praxis – Zuschreibung – Objektivit?t.

The article scrutinizes different arguments as against individualism that are different from arguments from emergence. What these types of arguments nevertheless share with an argument based on emergence is the idea of a decisive asymmetry: whereas individual properties have to be derived from social properties, social properties do resist to an analysis in terms of individual properties. Four types of such anti-individualistic arguments are distinguished: First, the idea that individual actions become meaningful actions only in the context of a social practice; second, the claim that action derives from processes of social attribution; third, the thesis that subjective states presuppose intersubjectivity; and, finally, the claim that actorship requires the process of social recognition as an actor. It can be shown that these types of arguments are not conclusive. Thus, an individualistic concept of social phenomena is defended. Following Max Weber, social properties are considered to be a certain class of individual properties that constitute the social world, i.e. individual properties do not necessarily depend on social practices or processes of attribution or recognition.     

Class and ideological orientations revisited: an exploration of class‐based mechanisms

Studies of the relationship between class position and political outlooks still only have a limited understanding of the class‐related mechanisms that matter for ideological orientations. This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the mechanisms that link class position and left/right and authoritarian/libertarian orientations. Besides main factors such as income, career prospects, job security, education, class origin and class identification, the significance of work‐related factors such as work autonomy, working in a team, a physically demanding job and a mentally demanding job is studied. The findings are based on a survey specifically designed for this purpose and collected in Sweden in 2008/2009. A great deal of the association between class position and left/right orientations is explained by socio‐economic conditions; different classes sympathize with policies that will benefit them economically. Another important factor is class identification. Work‐related factors also have relevance, but the effect of class position on left/right orientations works mainly through the remuneration system. Class position is also related to authoritarian/libertarian orientations. However, this relationship is less explained by socio‐economic position per se, but is rather an effect of the educational system and its allocation of the workforce into different class positions. It also turns out that work‐related factors do not explain the class effects; however, a physically demanding job shows a unique effect. Overall, our findings suggest that besides factors such as class position, income, education and class identification, we need to consider work‐related aspects to derive a more complete understanding of the distribution of ideological orientations in Western societies.     

The self-refuting paradox and the conditions of sociological thought

Modernity and postmodernity have formed an important framework for debate in sociological theory. The often confrontational nature of the debate has obscured key conclusions but these can be outlined by considering an argument often used by modernists against postmodernists, called the self-refuting paradox. This argument takes the form ‘the claim that there is no such thing as the Rational is itself a rational claim and so refutes itself’. First, the notions of self-refutation and self-reference are separated. It is then noted that the result of the self-refuting paradox is neither the loss of modernity's key categories, as claimed by postmodernists, or the failure of the postmodern project, as claimed by modernists. Instead, both sides are shown to succeed and fail; forms of legitimation that previously underlay modernity's thought fail and the strong forms of postmodern claims, such as there are no universals, also fail. The result of this analysis is that attention should be paid to the nature of universals, truths and norms, rather than disputing their existence. These arguments are pursued first at a general level and then in relation to the three key concepts of difference, truth and universality.     

Third-party reimbursement for mental health care delivered by clinical social workers: The case for its expansion

Conclusion It is believed that the foregoing statistical material and accompanying discussion substantiate the claim that clinical social workers deliver an ever-increasing portion of mental health care in the United States as a whole and in Pennsylvania in particular.It has also been shown that reimbursement for this type of care is more realistic than current forms of reimbursement and can be effected without adding to the cost of insurance either to the insurers or to the insured.A publication of the Pennsylvania Society for Clinical Social Work, Inc., 4856 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, P. 19141. Prepared January 1976 by the Insurance Committee, Edward Horn and Joan Stern, Research Staff.     

Individual powers and social consent: an axiomatic approach

We introduce a notion of conditionally decisive powers the exercise of which depends on social consent. Decisive powers, or the so-called libertarian rights, are examples and much weaker forms of powers are covered by our notion. We provide an axiomatic characterization of existence of a system of powers and its uniqueness as well as characterizations of various families of rules represented by systems of powers. Critical axioms are monotonicity, independence and symmetric linkage (person i and i’s issues should be treated symmetrically to person j and j’s issues for at least one linkage between issues and persons).     

Strategyproof single unit award rules

The problem of allocating a single indivisible unit to one of several agents is considered, where monetary compensations are not allowed, and the unit is not necessarily desirable to each agent. In addition to strategyproofness, three properties of social choice functions are considered: Pareto-optimality, nondictatorship, and nonbossiness. It is shown that these three additional criteria cannot be satisfied simultaneously. However, any two of the additional criteria can be satisfied. We give characterizations of the classes of strategyproof social choice functions satisfying these three pairs of properties. Received: 18 February 1998/Accepted: 15 May 2000     

Art work or money: Conflicts in the construction of a creative identity

The identity projects of novice creative practitioners must take account of the economy of art work. It has been suggested ( McRobbie, 2002a ) that in the contemporary cultural industries in the UK, a new understanding of the connection between creative work and money has replaced past ‘anti‐commercial’ notions. This claim is investigated through a narrative‐discursive analysis of interviews from a longitudinal study with current and recent Art and Design postgraduates. Their ongoing identity projects are shaped by established understandings of creative work and the prospects it offers for earning and employment, and also by more local discursive resources given by personal life contexts. An analysis of two interviews with a single speaker shows how these resources are taken up within her ongoing and distinctive identity project. Both old and new repertoires of art and money are in play in her talk. She must negotiate dilemmas and potentially troubled positionings in order to reconcile a creative identity with relationships and responsibilities towards others. Coherence is only achieved momentarily and is disrupted by new life circumstances. By investigating an identity project at the level of talk, the analysis shows the complexity of the speaker's work to construct and claim a creative identity.     

Financial Giving of Foundations and Businesses to Environmental NGOs: The Role of Grantee’s Legitimacy

This paper studies how foundations and businesses decide which environmental NGOs to fund. Since not all funding requests can be satisfied, donors have to evaluate applicants and select just a few. We argue that their selection is based on the evaluation of the applicant ENGO’s various aspects of “legitimacy” (Suchman, Acad Manage Rev, 20(3): 571–610, 1995). We test this claim by using data from 14 in-depth interviews with representatives of Greek foundations and businesses (banks and phone companies) which have funded flagship ENGOs over the period 2008–2010. We find that “moral legitimacy”, which taps on the normative evaluation of an organization by its audience, is the most important for all donors. On the other hand, “pragmatic legitimacy”, which rests on the donor’s self-interest calculations, was found to be more relevant for businesses than for foundations.     

ON THE CHOICE BETWEEN PROPERTY RULES AND LIABILITY RULES

When parties can bargain with each other in an externality situation, it is frequently argued that liability rules are preferable to property rules. The case for liability rules is thought to be strongest when the parties behave strategically, when the collective authority responsible for maximizing social welfare has perfect information, and when lump-sum transfers are not available. It is shown here that liability rules are not generally preferable to property rules in these circumstances because of their limited ability to redistribute income between the parties.