John Dewey on experience: a critical resource for the theory and practice of youth civic engagement

Research on youth civic engagement often sees the everyday lives of young people as barriers to civic engagement. Recent qualitative approaches have drawn attention to the civic and political dimensions of young people's everyday lives. This is a crucial insight, but cannot – by itself – answer a key question: just how is it that everyday experience can be transformed into civic engagement? I argue that John Dewey's theory of experience makes two key contributions toward answering this question. First, Dewey's situational understanding of experience directs us to the concrete conditions of everyday life as the necessary groundwork and starting point for civic engagement. Second, his concept of reflective experience helps us understand how taken for granted assumptions about political and social life can be transformed into more active forms of engagement. I illustrate this argument by drawing on selected findings from a qualitative study of young people's experience in Public Achievement, a civic engagement initiative.     

Selecting women candidates: obstacles to the feminisation of the House of Commons

Abstract. Despite concern by the major British political parties to increase the number of women at Westminster, progress has been slow, yielding only just over 5 per cent of women MPs. This article presents the results of an investigation of party selection procedures designed to determine whether selection practices were themselves the explanation for the poor showing of women. The study consisted of interviews with party officials and a survey of the candidates in the 1987 General Election. It was found that selection procedures were in a process of change which included efforts by central leaderships to promote women's candidacies. But local selectorates were not always cooperative. Although women did not appear to be selected in the proportions in which they were coming forward, no evidence of direct discrimination against aspirant women candidates was found. But indirect discrimination may have taken place. Both the way in which the role of a candidate is defined and the qualities selectorates seek produce ideal candidate profiles which may penalise many women. The article concludes that if women are to be better represented at Westminster, parties must go beyond procedural change and the introduction of positive action to a reconsideration of the criteria for choosing candidates.     

A Failure to Communicate: 9/11 and the Tragedy of the Informational Commons

ABSTRACT

We investigate how networks among service organizations are integrated through a shared participant type of governance. Shared participant governance is a non-brokered type of network coordination where a network is governed by its members without a separate governance entity. We study the integrative capacity of this type of governance by measuring the effect of participation in a shared participant governance on tie formation in networks among service organizations. We analyze three networks of service organizations in three districts of Antwerp, Belgium. In each of these districts, the networks are governed by welfare meetings, defined as a shared participant type of governance. We use exponential random graph models. The results show that a shared participant type of governance has a positive effect on tie formation. We also find that the positive effect on tie formation is dependent on the active participation of centralized actors in the welfare meetings.     

Curbing the royal prerogative to use military force: the British House of Commons and the conflicts in Libya and Syria

Abstract

To what extent does political practice under the British Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition (2010–2015) reflect a ‘parliamentary prerogative’? From a formal-institutional point of view one should not expect substantial parliamentary influence in Britain. Yet recent developments suggest the emergence of a new convention. Examining parliamentary debates during the run-up to the votes on Libya and Syria, this contribution shows that the scope and contents of this convention remain contested. Specifically, there is disagreement about the kind of operations that ought to be exempt from the rule, questions of parliamentary procedure that favour the executive and, crucially, the proper timing of substantive votes. Nonetheless, parliament has emerged from the vote on Syria as an informal veto player on decisions regarding war involvement. However, whether MPs will exercise their veto power in prospective cases will depend on the preference distribution in the legislature and the nature of the proposed deployment.     

Institutions, Ideology, and the Tragedy of the Commons: West Texas Groundwater Policy

West Texas is the setting for an unintended experiment in commonsresource management. Dispersed, autonomous, local groundwaterdistricts use nonregulatory strategies to promote conservationand groundwater quality. The central force driving this organizationalform appears to be ideological. West Texans seek alternativesto state management of groundwater pumping. This study useskey-informant interviews to evaluate the strength of ideologyin explaining West Texas groundwater policy and to provide atheoretical framework for discussing the importance of the "localsolution.’ Time-series data substantiate the claim thatlocal groundwater districts succeed in slowing depletion rates.     

振兴东北老工业基地:民营企业的贡献率及其发展对策

振兴东北老工业基地战略的实施,将带来一大批企业复苏,也将使东北老工业基地的民营企业贡献的价值日益凸显。消除产业准入政策歧视、畅通融资渠道、改善生存环境、提高科技含量、完善投资法律保障,是生存于东北老工业基地中民营企业的普遍呼声。我们应当加快转变职能,明晰产权归属,完善社会服务体系,改进管理模式,不断提升民营经济的核心竞争力,促使其在振兴东北老工业基地的过程中积累更高的贡献率。     

Party,Constituency, and Representation: Votes on Abortion in the British House of Commons

Public Choice - To whom do British Members of Parliament respond when votingin the House of Commons? Using a series of votes on abortion,the revealed preferences of MPs are estimated. The...     

Representative misconduct,voter perceptions and accountability: Evidence from the 2009 House of Commons expenses scandal

This paper examines electoral accountability after the 2009–10 UK expenses scandal. Existing research shows that Members of Parliament (MPs) implicated in the scandal fared only marginally worse in the election than non-implicated colleagues. This lack of electoral accountability for misconduct could have arisen either because voters did not know about their representative's wrongdoing or because they chose not to electorally sanction them. We combine panel survey data with new measures of MP implication in the expenses scandal to test where electoral accountability failed. We find that MP implication influenced voter perceptions of wrongdoing more than expected. In contrast, constituents were only marginally less likely to vote for MPs who were implicated in the scandal. Electoral accountability may therefore be constrained even when information about representative misconduct is easily available and clearly influences voter perceptions.     

Peace in the Family is the Basis of Peace in the Country: How Women Contribute to Local Peace in Southern Kyrgyzstan

ABSTRACT

There has been a significant amount of research on peacebuilding in Central Asia in general and in Kyrgyzstan in particular. This has helped us both understand socio-political processes in the republic itself, and the shortcomings of the liberal peacebuilding framework in general. However, this work has, with rare exceptions, focused largely on male peacebuilding at either the state or international scale. Correcting that trend, this article illuminates the role of women peacebuilders in the post-conflict city of Osh. Based on ethnographic research conducted in 2016, it argues that women have a hitherto overlooked but nonetheless important ‘invisible’ role in peacebuilding.     

Why Subjectivity Matters: Critical Theory and the Philosophy of the Subject

Abstract

In this paper it is argued that Habermas' critique of German Idealism is misguided and that his rejection of the philosophy of the subject is unjustified. Critical Theory needs to recognise the importance of subjectivity for all social philosophy if its theoretical aims are to be achieved. In order to demonstrate the relevance of subjectivity to Critical Theory the essay draws on analytic philosophy of mind and on the work of Manfred Frank and Dieter Henrich.     

Rents and economic development: the perspective of Why Nations Fail

Public Choice - We present the approach to comparative economic development of Why Nations Fail. Economic prosperity requires inclusive economic institutions—those which create broad based...     

Cultivating Character: John Stuart Mill and the Subject of Rights

The antidemocratic tendencies of rights appear to be numerous. As trumps, rights are denounced for shutting down political debate and undermining the common good. As disciplinary, rights are attacked for reinforcing a politics of exclusion. I argue that an appreciation of the democratic potential of rights requires conceiving of them as political claims, as claims that represent a perspective that we seek to persuade others to adopt and through which we can create and contest community and identity. I cull a political conception of rights from the work of John Stuart Mill by rethinking the meaning of and connection between his ontological commitments and his politics. Paying careful attention to his notion of "character" and its cultivation, I argue that Mill embraces a conception of the socially constituted subject who is both disciplined and enabled by rights.     

Precedents,parliaments, and foreign policy: historical analogy in the House of Commons vote on Syria

Abstract

This analysis investigates the role of historical analogies in the influence that parliaments have in foreign policy. Our empirical focus is the UK Parliament’s unusual opposition to the Prime Minister on UK involvement in Syria in 2013. The vote challenges many conventional expectations about the role of parliament in security affairs. Important in this vote were lessons learned and strategically used from UK participation in the intervention of Iraq in 2003. This argument is developed theoretically based on research on historical analogies: parliaments, ‘learn’ (primarily negative) lessons about past foreign policy events which guide parliamentary preferences and procedures and can enhance parliaments’ role in subsequent foreign policy. The article contributes to research on analogies by extending the logic to lessons on process. This use of precedents can offer more structurally oriented perspectives that translate critical junctures into reforms in procedures and policy-making practices.     

大学生廉洁教育实效性问题及解决途径——基于行为主义理论视域

从行为主义理论视域看,高校廉洁教育教学行为、高校内部治理行为、高校教职工的言行、在校大学生的言行等构成了大学生廉洁教育实效性生成的基本内因,它从根本上规定着大学生廉洁教育实效性的性质和变化。而来自高校之外的社会环境则构成了大学生廉洁教育实效性生成的外因。为了在现有基础上提高大学生廉洁教育实效性,应采取以下对策:开设廉洁教育内容专题,组织专项实践教学活动;营造校园廉洁之风,设立高校师生廉洁奖励基金;规范教职工和大学生言行,建立腐败言行监督专项制度和言行监测预警制度;增强社会情境廉洁刺激,严厉打击各种歪风邪气。     

走向服务政府:洛克有限政府理论及其启示

随着国家治理现代化建设的推进,我国政府治理模式经历了管理型政府向服务型政府的转变。洛克有限政府理论在保护公民权利、实现政治国家与市民社会互动等方面具有积极的现实意义,但有限政府不一定等同于服务政府,在面对不同时期、不同国情下的市场失灵问题以及权衡德治与法治、自由与平等、作为与不作为等现实问题时,有限政府理论具有自身的局限性。而服务型政府必然是一个有限政府,洛克所提出的自然权利、社会契约以及权利让渡所构成的有限政府理论,对于新时代构建服务政府仍然有很强的借鉴意义。