Showing papers in "Political Studies in 1998"

Structure, Agency and Historical Institutionalism

Abstract: As be®ts two if its principal exponents, Hall and Taylor's recent article `Political science and the three new institutionalisms' provides a meticulous and provocative review of the many faces of the `new institutionalism' and a distinctive contribution to the growing literature in this area in its own right.* It provides an important opportunity to consider again the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary institutionalism and to raise the question of how its many insights might be more fully incorporated within the British political science mainstream. While careful to distance themselves from the idea that a `crude synthesis' of rational choice, sociological and historical institutionalism is `immediately practical or even necessarily desirable' (p. 957), they suggest that a dialogue between them is both necessary and crucial. We argue that the prospects for such a dialogue are more limited than Hall and Taylor suggest. For, rational choice and sociological institutionalisms are based on mutually incompatible premises or `social ontologies'. Moreover, in identifying two social ontologies ± the calculus and cultural approaches ± within the historical institutionalist canon (and hence in reconstructing historical institutionalism in rational choice and sociological terms), we argue that Hall and Taylor do a considerable disservice to this distinctive approach to institutional analysis. While this view of historical institutionalism makes it appear `pivotal' to future dialogue between institutionalisms, such a reading neglects the potentially distinctive social ontology of this approach. This may leave historical institutionalism prone to precisely the tendential structuralism characteristic of much institutionalist analysis, while giving a super®cial impression that the approach has already overcome this problem. We argue that if institutionalism is to develop to its full potential, it must consider the relationship between structure and agency, on which Hall and Taylor merely touch, as a central analytic concern.

Funding the Welfare State: Globalization and the Taxation of Business in Advanced Market Economies

Abstract: Theorists assert that international capital mobility creates substantial pressure for all democratically elected governments to decrease tax burdens on business. I explicate and critique the genera...

Is Nationalism a Distinct Ideology

Abstract: Whether or not nationalism is an ideology is a question that can be illuminated by a study of its conceptual structure. Core and adjacent concepts of nationalism are examined within the context of liberal, conservative and fascist ideologies, contexts that respectively encourage particular ideational paths within nationalist argument, while discouraging others. Employing a morphological analysis of ideological configurations, it is argued that various nationalisms may appear as distinct thin-centred ideologies, but are more readily understood as embellishments of, and sustainers of, the features of their host ideologies.

Non‐Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and Politics in the Developing World

Abstract: The proliferation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the developing, as well as the developed, world, has triggered an ‘associational revolution’. Political scientists, however, have made a relatively minor contribution to the contemporary NGO literature which has evolved since the mid-1980s. This article examines some of the main political themes addressed in the NGO literature, as well as related themes in other political studies. NGOs, the article argues, make significant contributions to political life and to political change in developing countries, revealing a fertile, and hitherto neglected, research agenda.

The Potential of Historical Institutionalism: a Response to Hay and Wincott

Abstract: Hay and Wincott raise an interesting question: can historical institutionalism develop a distinctive social ontology with insights into the structure-agency problem that transcend those found in rational choice or sociological variants of the `new institutionalism'? We take up this question but address ®rst several issues they pose along the way. To begin with, the issue of whether historical institutionalism has the potential to develop a novel approach to the structure-agency problem should be distinguished from the issue of whether historical institutionalism can already be said to have accomplished this task. On this point, we stand by the observation in our original essay that most work in historical institutionalism uses both the `calculus' and `cultural' approaches, creating something of an amalgam but not one that represents a fully-realized alternative to either of these approaches. Indeed, compared to these other schools of thought, historical institutionalists have devoted more attention to explaining macro-political outcomes than to developing the micro-logic that links institutional structures to action; and, on our reading, Hay and Wincott do not really challenge this contention. They do, however, criticize rational choice and sociological institutionalism for being overly structuralist, a ̄aw they expect historical institutionalism to overcome. In our view, this underestimates these schools of thought. Both contain many lines of analysis that grant actors a substantial role in the production and reproduction of institutional structures. Rational choice institutionalism, for instance, acknowledges a `folk theorem' which speci®es that, in a repeated game with more than two players, there is likely to be more than one equilibrium on which the actors can converge ± which means that the outcome often cannot be read directly from the structure of the game. Moreover,

Party Formation and Party System Consolidation in the New Democracies of Central Europe

Abstract: Political parties and the party systems of the new democracies of postcommunist Central Europe are in the process of formation through a sequence of elections and parliamentary terms. The sequence theory of electionparliament cycles suggests that in new democracies the formation of political parties and the de®nition of relationships among the parties proceed through a series of elections and the ensuing terms of parliament. During the current beginning stages of the `®rst generation' of parties and of whole political systems, the main question concerns democratic consolidation. For political parties, the question is one of emerging stability: to what extent do political parties have a continuous existence? For party systems the question is a double one: to what extent is the system consolidating from many small parties to fewer larger ones, and how stable is the relationship among them?While party formation is usually considered an important component in the formation and stabilization of democratic systems, some observers have suggested an `overpartycisation' phenomenon in at least some of the post-communist democracies. In this essay I review the formation, splits and recombinations among various groupings active in the electoral process I also consider the resulting shape and characteristics of party systems in the new democracies of Central Europe. While some references will be made to the Republics of the former USSR, the main attention of this paper is on Central Europe, and especially upon the Visegrad 4: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. These questions are examined from the perspective of the electoralparliamentary sequence. The tentative ®ndings are that, in the ®rst half-decade of the post-communist transition the major tendency in party organization was to develop a small set of activists who made broad issue appeals, thus resembling more the American model of parties, while the patterns in party system more resembled those of multi-party western Europe.

Justice, Democracy, and Hazardous Siting

Abstract: In this essay we examine some issues of justice associated with the siting of hazardous industrial facilities. Utilitarian justifications of siting decisions are inadequate because they fail to address questions of fairness. Approaches that consider questions of distributive equity provide a better framework for siting justice, but are still incomplete. Limiting questions of justice to the distribution of benefits and burdens fails to examine the justice of procedures for deciding such issues of distribution. We argue that justice requires a participatory communicative democratic process for siting hazardous facilities, in two respects. It is prima facie unjust to impose a risk on citizens without their having participated in the siting process. Participatory communicative democratic procedures in facility siting, moreover, when structured according to specific norms of discussion and inclusion, are likely to yield the most just outcomes. We propose procedural as well as substantive conditions for such de...

European Union Decision Making: The Role of Sub-National Authorities

Abstract: This article assesses how and to what extent sub-national authorities (SNAs) are represented in EU decision making. In particular, we compare the European goals and strategies of British sub-national authorities with those of their counterparts in Germany. Our central argument is that SNAs starting from very different positions face many of the same challenges and problems, even if their domestic constitutional positions remain the most important determinant of their influence at the EU level. Influence in EU decision making derives largely from effective coalition building, both with other like-minded actors but also, inevitably in the case of sub-national authorities, with central governments. Our case study highlights the enormous diversity of relationships between central governments and ‘their’ SNAs across the Union. It thus encourages scepticism about the feasibility of a ‘Europe of the Regions’.

The Structuring of Political Cleavages in Post-Communist Societies: the Case of the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Abstract: Although sharing institutions for over seventy years, and transition pathways from communism, the two successor states of the former Czechoslovakia have faced distinct challenges in state-building and divergent economic fortunes. The aim of this paper is to investigate the extent to which these differing social economic problems have influenced the ideological bases of party politics and mass electoral behaviour in the two societies. Using data from national samples of the population of each country conducted in the spring of 1994, our analysis points to the existence of distinct issue cleavages dominating party competition in the two states: in the Czech Republic, partisanship relates mainly to issues of distribution and attitudes towards the West; in Slovakia, by contrast, these issues are only secondarily important in shaping voters' choice of party, while the main focus concerns the ethnic rights of Hungarians. The distinctive nature of the issue bases to politics in the two countries suggests one reason for the greater degree of political conflict evident in Slovak politics since the split and, more generally, provides evidence of the role of social conditions in shaping new political systems.

Party Appeals and Voter Loyalty in New Democracies

Abstract: Some parties obviously have a more stable electoral basis than others. Is this so because of di€erences in the way they appeal to their voters? If such is the case, does it help explain why some countries have less volatility (that is, voters changing their vote or voting intention between two points in time) than others? Supposing that all these questions can be answered in the armative, why would the factors cementing the party loyalty of voters be relevant for empirical democratic theory? These are the questions confronted in this essay. The ®rst section discusses the theoretical and practical signi®cance of electoral volatility. What is argued is not that political parties aim at low volatility, but that it may improve the quality of democracy if they nevertheless achieve that. The second section brie ̄y indicates that the most frequently marshalled explanations (party allegiances inherited from a distant democratic past, instability of institutions, party fragmentation, the organizational style of parties) leave unexplained some of the noteworthy variations in electoral volatility between Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia. The balance of the paper investigates whether the way parties appeal to their voters may o€er an explanation of volatility or its opposite, party loyalty. The third section elaborates on this often heard but so far untested explanation, and I develop some related hypotheses. The fourth section presents an empirical test of some aspects of the theory. Following an innovative study by Oddbjorn Knutsen and Elinor Scarbrough, several alternative types of partyvoter linkages are distinguished conceptually and empirically. The KnutsenScarbrough methodology is further developed to estimate the extent to which an individual is a `cleavage', `value' or `structural' voter. Finally, panel data are utilized to assess which of these three voter types are most likely to be steadfast supporters of their parties.

Parties, Party Systems, and Satisfaction with Democratic Performance in The New Europe

Abstract: Political parties and the party systems they form constitute the major channels of interest aggregation and citizen input in contemporary democracies. They are the vehicles through which political elites supply policy alternatives, and they constitute the major route for citizens to organize the demand for such alternatives. Parties also play a crucial role in the nature of democratic governance because they help legitimize the state. After all, free and fair elections in which parties compete for oce are a prime criterion for whether a system should be considered a democracy in the ®rst place. Outside of elections, political parties also have long been the most important mediating institutions between citizens and the state, in particular as parties have taken on the roles as simultaneous agents both of the state and its citizens. While virtually all democracies have political parties that compete for oce, political systems di€er in a number of important ways with regard to how they go about channeling inputs or providing policy alternatives, and with regard to the roles they assign parties in this process. Moreover, and perhaps most importantly, the ways in which political institutions condition the formation, functioning, and development of political parties and party systems varies as well. While there is an extensive literature linking electoral systems and the development of party systems, few researchers have investigated their link with how citizens ± the ultimate arbiters of democratic governance ± feel about the way the political process performs. This essay focuses on two types of political performance that are expected to a€ect citizen attitudes about the political system: party and party system performance. While party performance focuses on how individual political parties perform their roles as mobilizing and organizing agents in elections, party system performance involves the aggregate constellation of parties in a political system and its electoral consequences in the form of party system fragmentation and volatility. This essay investigates whether, and how, crossnational di€erences in both party and party system performance a€ect citizens' evaluations of their country's political system.

Representation in Local Politics: A Reconsideration and Some New Evidence:

Abstract: The concept of ‘representation’, and the tensions within it, have exercised writers throughout the history of political theory. There is little consensus beyond the agreement that the meaning of representation should be made clear, and consistency sought, in any particular application. This paper takes as its starting point some key components of the concept of representation, and in the light of them examines the changing attitudes of both representatives and electors in British local government. Survey data accumulated over a 30-year period provides the basis for this analysis, enabling attention to be given to trends over the period. Changing expectations of representativeness – a component of representation that stresses ‘resemblance’ or ‘symbolic identification’ – prompt a questioning of its appropriateness for the understanding of local politics today. The evidence indicates that the contemporary demand for responsive and responsible local government has now displaced the historic concern with repre...

Institutional Arrangements and the Success of New Parties in Old Democracies

Abstract: This essay presents a multi-country analysis of the extent to which new political parties' electoral success and parliamentary representation is a function of institutional conditions. One of the most well developed ®elds of research in political science is the analysis of electoral systems and their e€ects on party system size. The statements known as Duverger's Hypothesis, `the simplemajority system with second ballot and proportional representation favors multi-partyism', and Duverger's Law, `the simple-majority single ballot electoral system favors a two-party system', are perhaps the most often repeated in political science. Researchers have re®ned these two assertions, making great strides in predicting the number of signi®cant parties in a system. Yet, there is little information connected with which parties are being counted. In a system that typically has two signi®cant parties, there may nevertheless be a great turn-over in which two parties are actually present. Conversely a multiparty system may see little turn-over of which parties are signi®cant; thus the multi-party system could be more stable than the two-party system. The question that remains to be asked is: Do the electoral institutions that a€ect the size of a party system also a€ect the entry of successful new parties? This article examines how the electoral structure of a system a€ects the stability of a party system. More speci®cally, it tests the e€ect of the institutions that shape the electoral process on the success of new political parties. I have assembled a dataset containing all of the new political parties receiving national election votes in each of eighteen post-World War II democracies. The article explores the theoretical link between electoral structure and party system size. I derive hypotheses exploring the relationship between electoral systems and the success of new parties. Regression analysis is used to predict the success of new parties in winning votes and seats. The results demonstrate the relevance for new parties of the number of legislators per district ± district magnitude. The more legislators per district, the smoother the road for new parties.

Sport and Civil Society

Abstract: Political science lags behind social history and sociological theory in its contributions to the academic understanding of sport. One remedy for this lag might be the analysis of the concept of civil society in relation to sport, since sporting institutions fit many of the definitions and fulfil many of the supposed functions of civil society. An analysis of sporting institutions in Georgia, Thailand and South Africa shows that they do ‘reflect’ the general condition of civil society in those countries, albeit in a distorted or exaggerated way, and that it is possible, though not necessary, for sport to be a major component of civil society.

Arenas without Rules and the Policy Change Process: Outsider Groups and British Roads Policy

Abstract: A key task of governments is to construct and manage systems of consultation whereby the vast array of interest groups seeking to influence public policy can be accommodated. Conventional wisdom holds that key insider groups secure for themselves special privileges, not least of which is an ability to prevent radical policy change. A concomitant view is that public policy emerges from relatively stable networks of actors who have some mutual resource dependencies. One reason why this paradigm is showing signs of intellectual fatigue is that it seems weak in explaining policy change. Yet, policy change does take place. Indeed, it is one of the characteristics of the 1980s and 1990s. This article examines an example of the traditional modalities of consultation failing to accommodate new interests, knowledge and ideas. This breakdown appears to have occurred by the use of alternative policy ‘arenas without rules' by outsider groups, leading to a radical new ‘framing’ of transport policy. Moreover, governmen...

Effects of Party Organization on Performance during the ‘Golden Age’ of Parties

Abstract: The study of parties and party systems has always been central to the study of politics, but the study of party organization per se has had its ups and downs. Party organization as a ®eld owes much to the foundations laid by Ostogorski and Michels early in this century. Nevertheless, contemporary scholars hold that the `dearth' of recent empirical studies of party organization has formed `lacunae' in modern party research. Much contemporary research focuses on the party system level, notably on questions of change and stability overtime. Other recent studies examine the sociological bases of party support. Currently, there is renewed interest in the study of party organization ± most impressively demonstrated with the publication by Katz and Mair of a `data handbook' on party organization in twelve countries from 1960 to 1990. Indeed, after a long period only occasionally punctuated by the study of party structure, the 1980s and 1990s produced a spate of works that range from models of party organization, to the study of comparative organization in

Political Settlements in Northern Ireland and South Africa

Abstract: The article examines comparisons between Northern Ireland's recent peace process and agreement and similar developments in South Africa. On the one hand, the analogy has been used to explain Northern Ireland's conflict and the type of prescription it requires. On the other, it has been employed to suggest ways in which agreement might be achieved in Northern Ireland, or, more recently, why agreement has been reached. These uses of the analogy ignore or downplay crucial contextual differences between the two cases. The most important of these is that while South Africa's conflict took place largely within a single state, Northern Ireland's occurs within a wider British–Irish space. This contextual difference is crucial for understanding the Northern Ireland conflict, the type of institutions required there, and why agreement was reached.

Party Policy in Britain 1997: Results from an Expert Survey

Abstract: Given the wide range of policy-based models of party competition, as well as the very common tendency for people in all walks of life to talk informally about politics in terms of the policy positions of the various actors, it is obviously very important to have systematic ways of estimating the policy positions of political parties. There are several ways to do this, including the content analysis of policy documents and attitude surveys of both voters and party e lites. One straightforward and e€ective way, however, is to conduct an expert survey of political scientists. Laver and Hunt conducted such an expert survey in 1989, designed to estimate party positions on a range of di€erent policy dimensions in 24 democracies, including Britain. The consequent data set has subsequently been used in a wide range of applications, recent examples of which include work reported in books by Kitschelt, Ware and Laver and Shepsle. Since the publication of the original data, the expert surveys have been updated in a number of countries, typically with expanded universes of experts, and typically during or relatively shortly after a general election. Directly comparable updated expert data sets have thus been generated for Ireland in 1992 and 1997, the Netherlands in 1994; and Japan in 1997. Survey work is under way at the time of writing also in Israel and Norway and being planned in Germany and the Netherlands. Given the dramatic results of the 1997 elections in Britain, and in particular the emergence of `New Labour' with policy positions ostensibly very di€erent from those of the Labour Party in 1989, the expert survey was repeated for Britain after the 1997 election. This note presents and very brie ̄y discusses the results of the new expert survey and compares these, where appropriate, with the estimates of British party positions in 1989.

Contemporary Challenges to Welfare State Development

Abstract: That convenient division of academic labour which once made study of welfare states principally the responsibility of sociologists has broken down. Of course, there were always a few political scientists and rather more economists who concerned themselves with the making of social policy. In the last ten years, however, and for a number of reasons (ranging from the ageing of the population to the end of the Cold War) questions of welfare have risen towards the top of the political studies agenda. Such a development is long overdue, given the importance of welfare provision in both governments' activity and spending, as well as its centrality in discussions of rights, equality, justice, citizenship and so on in contemporary political theory. But it also presents a problem. Recent years have seen an avalanche of new work on the welfare state. Within the broad ®eld of political studies this has involved work in political theory, in the study of policy making, on new forms of public administration, on the role of parties and elections, on changes in public opinion and on the structure of public ®nances. It has also sponsored a great deal of inter-disciplinary work with historians, sociologists, demographers and (international ) political economists. No contemporary survey of the many things happening to, and being said about, welfare states could pretend to be exhaustive. I shall, for example, say comparatively little about the crucial development of feminist theories of welfare and citizenship or about the ongoing conservative critique of welfare dependency, both of which have been very ably and recently reviewed. I shall also have comparatively little to say about important developments in the use of statistical techniques to illuminate patterns of welfare state development. My more modest intention here is to assess the state of our knowledge in ®ve or six key areas that have developed in the 1990s and to draw some general conclusions about future prospects for the welfare state and its political study.

Who Survives? Party Origins, Organizational Development, and Electoral Performance in Post-Communist Russia:

Abstract: Initial proliferation of parties is one of the characteristic features of postauthoritarian politics. Arguably, the intrinsic uncertainty of the process of regime change creates environments that encourage political actors to try their luck in exploring new issue dimensions and addressing their appeal to previously non-mobilized sectors of the electorates. Those parties which fail to attract voters in the founding elections subsequently disappear, while the vote for the surviving parties tends to gradually stabilize. Such trends are observable in the post-communist countries of Eastern Europe. While the emerging party systems of these countries are often viewed as especially unstable and fragmented, attrition takes place primarily among those parties that lose the founding elections. This may be illustrated with an ad hoc invented quantitative index, the party survival rate, de®ned as a proportion of the vote jointly received in the second elections by those parties each of whom gained no less than 3% of the vote in the founding elections. In Hungary, the party survival rate is as high as 90%; in Poland, where the process of party system formation has been often viewed as damaged by an especially unfavourable combination of countryspeci®c factors, the party survival rate nevertheless approaches 72%. In this

Consolidation and Stabilization of the Party System in the Czech Republic

Abstract: The current Czech party system is the result of a process of gradual transformation which has been taking place since the breakdown of the communist regime, or, in the case of the Czech Republic as such, since the split of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1992. The Constitution of the Czech Republic, as adopted in December 1992, established a parliamentary form of government. In other words, political parties became the major instruments of government. This means that the Czech parliamentary system of government is also one of party government. Parliament is now conceived of as a moderate arena in which political parties compete. Parties have the responsibility to stand for particular policy programmes and to attempt to implement those programmes if elected. The transformation of the political and economic systems was not a straightforward and simple process. The aim of this paper is to give a definition and brief description of the main periods of development of the party system: from a one-party state system to a more mature and stabilized party pluralism. The latter stages of this development have seen a considerably fragmented party system transformed via a process of concentration into a system of moderate pluralism. The level of the individual political parties will be examined from an evolutionary viewpoint. Parties will also be scaled along a left-right axis. The internal organizational structure of the parties is analysed as well as the role of the parliamentary party (oAcially referred to as the deputy club) in the organization and functioning of the Czech Parliament. Other important factors to be analysed in this paper are the influence of parliamentary electoral systems on the formation of the party system, and, last but not least, the phenomenon of cartelization which is currently manifesting itself in the Czech party system.

Party Families and Democratic Performance: Extraparliamentary vs. Parliamentary Group Power

Abstract: Introduction: Alternative Dimensions of Party Performance If to `perform' is to `produce' or `achieve' some intended result, then it is reasonable to assume that most competitive parties would gauge at least part of their performance in votes and seats. Hence, for many students of parties, performance has come to mean electoral performance. However, some participants in party politics may have other than electoral intentions, and hence may employ other (or at least, additional) yardsticks in measuring results. Indeed, it has become commonplace to assign to parties not only electoral but also governmental and policy goals (or strategies), each with its related means of measuring success: votes/seats, cabinet participation, and legislative achievements. Presumably, a given party actor would consider one or more of those dimensions in assessing the party's performance. It is a premise of this essay that for some parties, or at least for some party actors, there is a fourth dimension of performance that is considered to be as (or even more) important: democracy, and speci®cally internal party democracy. In his classic Political Parties: a Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, ®rst published in 1911, Robert Michels focused attention upon this dimension. Its continued relevance was vividly demonstrated in the formation of the German Greens in the early 1980s, when much

Business Representation in the UK since 1979: The Case of Trade Associations

Abstract: The article explores the impact of Conservative governments since 1979 on business representation. It concentrates on the trade association – the most common form of business organization in the UK but one which has been largely neglected in the discussion of business representation. The results of a major survey of trade associations conducted in 1994 are reported and their significance assessed in the light of three general propositions about the direction of business representation since 1979.

Liberalism and the Obligation to Military Service

Abstract: This article argues that liberalism's failure to address systematically the question of citizens' obligation to military service is indicative of its wider failure to develop a satisfactory concept of citizenship. Whilst liberalism's individualist bias, implicit class assumptions and hope of transcending war have all contributed to neglect of citizen duty to bear arms, the most interesting reason, in relation to contemporary republican critiques, is liberalism's inadequate view of citizenship. This article examines the different approaches of the classical English liberals Locke, Bentham and J. S. Mill to international relations, forms of national defence and the role (if any) of citizens, and considers very briefly the views of some contemporary liberal theorists on military service and justified resistance to the draft. Finally, it comments on the implicit reliance of liberal polities on non-liberal models of citizenship, and the need for a coherent liberal concept of citizenship which includes an exami...

‘Inevitable and Unacceptable?’ Methodological Rawlsianism in Anglo‐American Political Philosophy

Abstract: This article attempts two parallel tasks. First, it gives a sympathetic explication of the implicit working methodology (‘Methodological Rawlsianism’) of mainstream contemporary political theory in the English-speaking world. And second, principally in footnotes, it surveys the recent literature on justification to see what light these debates cast on the tenets of this methodology. It is worth examining methodological presuppositions because these can have a profound influence on substantive theories: many of the differences between philosophical traditions can be traced to their methodologies. My aim is to expose the central features of methodological Rawlsianism in order to challenge critics of this tradition to explain exactly where and why they depart from the method. While I do not defend it at length, I do suggest that methodological Rawlsianism is inevitable insofar as it is basically a form of common sense. This fact should probably lower expectations about the amount of progress consistent metho...

Love and Responsibility: A Political Ethic for Hannah Arendt:

Abstract: This paper argues that those critics of Hannah Arendt's thought who have protested at her disavowal of ‘moral standards’ as being appropriate in the judgment of political action have, in fact, misjudged the structure of her thought My argument is, however, a constructive one: the paper seeks to demonstrate how Arendt arrives at her sweeping rejection of conventional standards of moral judgment, and what solution she proposes I do this in three stages First, I address Arendt's understanding of self as opposed to world: especially how the moral absolutes which may be claimed by the former may threaten the very structure of the latter Second, I draw upon her model of action to discover the idea of a worldly ethics, one of principle And third, I consider the fate of our goals when we act into the world, paying particular attention to the idea of responsibility and the on-going responsiveness to the world that belongs to action under a principle

Fixed Content of Political Obligations

Abstract: An aspect of political obligations that has received little attention is the means through which their content, ie, exactly what is required of their bearers, is determined An adequate moral basis for political obligations must account for this requirement, which is closely linked to the concept of authority, the state's right to substitute its judgement in various areas for the subjects' own The problems faced by theories of obligation based on gratitude and tacit consent in fixing the content of obligations are examined, while I show how a theory based on the principle of fairness is able to overcome them As long as a cooperative enterprise supplies public goods that are indispensable to minimally acceptable lives and require ‘regulated cooperation’ for their supply, it is able to ground obligations with fixed content under the principle of fairness