Libertarian collective decision-making: A new framework

A model of collective decision-making is presented which enables us to analyze the allocation of individual rights and liberties. The model broadens the traditional social choice framework. In social choice theory it is usually assumed that individuals have preferences over a set of feasible alternatives and that society reaches a decision on the basis of those preferences only. In the model presented in this paper, decision procedures do not only take information about individual preferences as input, but also information about individual freedom. The specific decision procedures we present and analyze can be characterized as libertarian.This paper was written while I was a visitor at the University of California, Riverside. The visit was made possible by financial support of the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO). I am extremely grateful to Prasanta Pattanaik for many stimulating discussions on the subject. For helpful comments I also thank Ad van Deemen, Grahame Lock, Huib Pellikaan and Marcel Wissenburg. Finally, I express my thanks to Wulf Gaertner and two anonymous referees.     

Growing Disability Rates — the Gender Issue: The Dutch Case in an International Perspective

In the Netherlands, with its remarkably high disability rates, a new phenomenon seems to be emerging. Growing disability rates in the past few years have been exclusively caused by the growing inflow of women into the disability schemes. Comparing the Dutch situation internationally shows that roughly the same problem seems to exist in those countries in which there is a more general problem of large inflow into disability. Women are overrepresented in these arrangements. The Dutch literature shows that there are many factors (both work- and non-work-related) that contribute to a larger push of women towards disability. We conclude that the benefit system can be seen as a sort of "filter". If the filter is weak, many persons will enter disability. If the pressure on women to enter is larger (or the forces to stop women from entering disability smaller), then inflow risks for women will be higher.     

Estimation of Metabolic Rate Constants in PBPK‐Models from Liver Slice Experiments: What Are the Experimental Needs?

A mechanistic model is presented describing the clearance of a compound in a precision-cut liver slice that is incubated in a culture medium. The problem of estimating metabolic rate constants in PBPK models from liver slice experiments is discussed using identifiability analysis. From the identifiability problem analysis, it appears that in addition to the clearance, the compound's free fraction in the slice and the diffusion rate of the exchange of the compound between culture medium and liver slice should be identified. In addition, knowledge of the culture medium volume, the slice volume, the compound's free fraction, and octanol-water-based partition between medium and slice is presupposed. The formal solution for identification is discussed from the perspective of experimental practice. A formally necessary condition for identification is the sampling of parent compound in liver slice or culture medium. However, due to experimental limitations and errors, sampling the parent compound in the slice together with additional sampling of metabolite pooled from the medium and the slice is required for identification in practice. Moreover, it appears that identification results are unreliable when the value of the intrinsic clearance exceeds the value of the diffusion coefficient, a condition to be verified a posteriori.     

It takes two to tango: the integration of people with disabilities into society

The concept of integration is not well defined. It not known how people with disabilities experience integration. In this study qualitative methods were used. The aim of the article is to define a model of successful integration based on the perspectives of people with disabilities and people within their social environment. Integration consists of five elements: functioning ordinarily without receiving special attention, mixing with others that are not disabled, taking part in society, trying to realize one’s potential and directing one’s own life. Integration is obtained through a process of interaction between a person with a disability and society. This process is influenced by personal, societal and support factors. The individual with a disability and society have a mutual responsibility with respect to integration.     

The poverty of social control: explaining power in the historical sociology of the welfare state

The concept ‘social control’ has been criticised from a variety of quarters in recent years, particularly by historians and historical sociologists. However, it remains in common usage in sociological studies of welfare, deviance and social control. This paper shows, first, how this reliance on the concept of social control is rooted in a wider-ranging argument in social and political theory concerning the liberal-democratic fusion between the state and civil society, and that the lack of resolution of this argument is the foundation of the persistence of the concept social control in other areas of social inquiry, despite its repeated ‘falsification’. Second, the paper highlights the main arguments against the use of ‘social control’ in explaining social order, in particular the misunderstanding of class, culture and power which its use encourages, and the paper will conclude with a discussion of alternative ways of conceptualising the operation of power in contemporary societies.     

Book Review: Strategic Management for Voluntary Nonprofit Organizations,by Roger Courtney. Routledge,New York, 2002

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Bayesian analysis of elapsed times in continuous‐time Markov chains

The authors consider Bayesian analysis for continuous‐time Markov chain models based on a conditional reference prior. For such models, inference of the elapsed time between chain observations depends heavily on the rate of decay of the prior as the elapsed time increases. Moreover, improper priors on the elapsed time may lead to improper posterior distributions. In addition, an infinitesimal rate matrix also characterizes this class of models. Experts often have good prior knowledge about the parameters of this matrix. The authors show that the use of a proper prior for the rate matrix parameters together with the conditional reference prior for the elapsed time yields a proper posterior distribution. The authors also demonstrate that, when compared to analyses based on priors previously proposed in the literature, a Bayesian analysis on the elapsed time based on the conditional reference prior possesses better frequentist properties. The type of prior thus represents a better default prior choice for estimation software.     

STTEPping in the right direction? Western classical music in an orchestral programme for disadvantaged African youth

This article looks at STTEP, an outreach project currently housed at the University of Pretoria, which concentrates on the teaching of western orchestral instruments, plus background areas such as music theory, to disadvantaged children and youth from a variety of townships around Pretoria, South Africa. STTEP’s direction can well be described as ‘right’ – pupils are already surrounded by all kinds of global phenomena, and their formal music studies in western classical music are not making them forget their roots. In fact, the contrary has been found to be the case and some interesting cultural fusions are already seen – always a sign of a living culture.