Doctrine

About: Doctrine is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 21901 publications have been published within this topic receiving 204282 citations.

The economic approach

Abstract: It [economics] is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions

Against the Grain: The East Timor Intervention

Abstract: The principle of non-interference is an integral part of the ‘Asian Way’. Countries of the region have doggedly opposed any suggestion that state sovereignty should be softened by a new doctrine of ‘humanitarian intervention’. The participation of some of these countries in the 1999 intervention in East Timor – an action sanctioned by the United Nations for specifically humanitarian purposes – was thus out of character. But this departure, far from reflecting a re-evaluation of the doctrine, was a consequence of specific historical and political factors. Most important of these was the fact that the UN had never accepted the Indonesian incorporation of the territory as legitimate. Once the United States adopted a more critical attitude, after Australia pressured Indonesia to test local opinion on East Timor’s future, the internationalisation of the issue became inevitable. In the aftermath of the postballot militia violence, Indonesia’s uncertain transitional leadership could not resist calls for an intervention by peacekeepers. There are certainly lessons in the East Timor case for coalition operations and other interventions in the region. But the actions of the Australia-led coalition do not indicate a wider regional acceptance of the norm of humanitarian intervention.

Briefing — Darfur: The international community’s failure to protect

Abstract: OUR COMMON INTEREST, the March 2005 report of the Commission for Africa, squarely acknowledged that much more must be done to prevent conflict in Africa if development in the continent is to accelerate. In passing, the report called for practical means to implement 'agreed criteria for humanitarian intervention and the use of force, drawing on the principles of the "Responsibility to Protect" human life'.1 Six months later, Responsibility to Protect (or R2P in shorthand) became the centrepiece of efforts to reform the United Nations (UN) at the 2005 World Summit and is now widely accepted as providing the criteria for international responses to conflict and large scale atrocities. Such broad acceptance of the doctrine of R2P is a real advance, but implementing it is proving to be a much tougher test of international political will. The most obvious case for the first application of the new doctrine is Darfur, but the international community has conspicuously failed to take the steps necessary to protect the people of Darfur. Instead, while the world has been looking on, the regime in Khartoum and its proxy Janjaweed militias have conducted a systematic campaign of atrocities in Darfur since early 2003, a campaign that continues today.

Incentives, predestination and free will

Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION Max Weber's [1930] "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" argues that the Protestant reformation set the stage for post-Medieval economic growth. Using an occupational study of Germans from 1895, Weber shows that Protestants dominate the mercantile or capitalist occupations in that country at that time period. Weber also argues that between 1600 and 1900, Protestant countries advanced faster than their Catholic neighbors and that this was the result of Calvin's urging acceptance of material success and the dogma of predestination.(1) An ocean of work beginning with Rachfahl [1909] and Sombart [1913] has since attacked Weber's theological generalizations (see Giddens, [1992], for a review). Tawney [1926] and Robertson [1933] argue Weber's causal interpretation is wrong and that economic growth laid the framework for Protestantism, not Protestantism for economic growth. Samuelsson [1961] disputes the very correlation between Protestantism and economic success which is the basis of the Weberian hypothesis. The correlation between Protestantism and economic success is certainly weaker than Weber suggests, even in the German data that Weber himself uses. Furthermore, more modem data tends to find only a modest link between Protestantism and economic success, as in Winter [1974] and Tomes [1994].(2) However, for centuries there were gaps in economic success between Protestant and Catholic nations, and new findings on early modem data tend to confirm differences between Protestants and Catholics at least within the U.S. As Weber's arch-critic Samuelsson himself writes "there is some truth in the contention that the Protestant countries, and especially those adhering to the Reformed church, were particularly vigorous economically." Given that there was some correlation between Protestantism and economic success before the mid to late 20th century, the question then becomes why this correlation existed. Some elements of Protestant theology clearly encourage capitalism. Usury doctrines became less rigid under Calvinism (Nelson [1972]); avarice was de-emphasized as a sin. Weber claims that Luther's concept of a "calling" includes worldly success and that this is a prominent difference with Catholic doctrine. Although this theological claim has been subject to much debate, e.g. Sombart [1915], there still appears to be some basic truth to this point. One of the largest theological gaps between the denominations is that Calvinism accepts the dogma of predestination while Catholicism argues for a dogma of free will.(3) For the purposes of this paper we will follow Weber and accept broad brush definitions of doctrine rather than getting mired in the more subtle features of the two doctrines. Under predestination, a spiritual elite is preordained before the beginning of time and will receive eternal life.(4) Under free will, it is only through a lifetime of good actions that individuals are accepted into Heaven.(5) Weber argues that predestination creates a more lasting basis for economic growth than the dogma of free will. In this paper, we present a model that formally treats Weber's claim under particular circumstances and show how predestination could create the correlation between Protestantism and growth that existed in the pre-modern era. Our model also suggests conditions under which a more successful society would favor the doctrine of predestination, which can be seen as a formalization of Tawney's and Robertson's view that economic growth created the reformation. In this essay, both free will and predestination create incentives which spur good behavior.(6) Under the doctrine of free will, good behavior is motivated by an increased probability of getting into heaven. Under the doctrine of predestination, this incentive is irrelevant because individual actions do not determine spiritual outcomes. Instead an individual's actions are motivated by a desire to receive positive behavior from others by convincing them that he is part of the spiritual elite. …