Showing papers in "Social Sciences Division in 2009"

Measuring people's trust

Abstract: Summary. We measure trust and trustworthiness in British society with a newly designed experiment using real monetary rewards and a sample of the British population. The study also asks the typical survey question that aims to measure trust, showing that it does not predict ‘trust’ as measured in the experiment. Overall, about 40% of people were willing to trust a stranger in our experiment, and their trust was rewarded half of the time. Analysis of variation in the trust behaviour in our survey suggests that trusting is more likely if people are older, their financial situation is either ‘comfortable’ or ‘difficult’ compared with ‘doing alright’ or ‘just getting by’, they are a homeowner or they are divorced, separated or never married compared with those who are married or cohabiting. Trustworthiness also is more likely among subjects who are divorced or separated relative to those who are married or cohabiting, and less likely among subjects who perceive their financial situation as ‘just getting by’ or ‘difficult’. We also analyse the effect of attitudes towards risks on trust.

The Legal Effect of Directives: Policy, Rules and Exceptions

Abstract: This article reconsiders the legal effect of Directives for private parties within Community law. This is a vexed issue that has generated significant academic commentary and much case law. The qualifications and exceptions to the basic proposition that Directives do not have horizontal direct effect continue to grow, thereby rendering this overall area even more complex than it was hitherto. The article seeks to shed light on this topic by subjecting to critical scrutiny the policy underlying the “core rule” that denies horizontal direct effect to Directives, and considering whether the judicially created exceptions or qualifications to that policy are consistent with it.

The European Union's Democratic Agenda

Abstract: This chapter asks whether and if so how the EU is able to export, promote or simply showcase its system of democratic governance to the rest of the world. It is organised around a twofold distinction between the EU's external influence applied to states or to relations between states - that is, to democracy within states or democracy between states. These dimensions are to be related to the three legal orders of a federation of states as identified by Immanuel Kant: (i) relations between citizens and state as established by ius civitatis, (ii) relations between states as governed by ius gentium, and (iii) relations between nationals and a foreign state as defined by ius cosmopoliticum. The first category has to do with political order within states, while the last two categories concern relations between states. We argue that while the same principles underlie the EU's internal and external action, much is lost in translation: the conditions that gave rise to the construction of an integrated Europe cannot generally be replicated elsewhere. But the intra-state vs inter-state distinction is crucial in this regard. While the agenda of 'democracy promotion' within other states (and the problems it encounters) is shared by many actors in the international system, the second agenda, that of democracy between polities (as states or as citizens) is more specific to the EU, at least to the extent that the EU alone can claim to provide a model for such an agenda. It is in this second dimension that the EU might have the most relevant lessons to offer - positive or negative - to the rest of the world.

Frozen Conflicts in the Former Soviet Union – The Case of Georgia/South Ossetia

Abstract: The war in Georgia in August 2008 has once again highlighted the significance in international relations of “frozen” conflicts in the former Soviet Union. The Russian invasion and dismemberment of Georgia has had dramatic effects on the Caucasian sub-region. It has drawn into question key aspects of Europe’s energy-security strategy. It shed harsh light on the apparent incapacity of international institutions (including the OSCE) to prevent conflict or its resumption. And it caused the most serious deterioration in Russia’s relations with the West in general, and the United States in particular, since the end of the Cold War. This article addresses several issues: Why have conflicts in this region not been resolved? What are the risks that a frozen conflict might “thaw”, as occurred in Georgia? What does the conflict in Georgia suggest about Russia’s evolving role in the European regional system? What are the implications of the conflict in Georgia for regional security in the Caucasus and, more broadly, in the European and international systems? Finally, what does this experience suggest about the prospects for effective conflict management and resolution in the former Soviet region?

Plural Ownership, Funds, and the Aggregation of Wills

Abstract: This Article suggests that common ownership — better described as "plural ownership" to distinguish the phenomenon from semicommons — may usefully be analyzed from a dual perspective. Plural ownership may simultaneously be seen on the one hand as an aggregation of individualized rights, duties and intentions, and on the other as giving rise to a real entity with a group mind and corporate rights and duties distinct from those of the individual owners. For the purposes of understanding this dualism, the most developed and interesting form of plural ownership is the trust fund with multiple controllers and beneficiaries, an ancient device that now serves as the bedrock of modern capitalism. The fund is here subjected to legal, historical and philosophical scrutiny to uncover how group personality is generated by plural ownership in the absence of formal legal incorporation.