Public Service Motivation Concepts and Theory: A Critique

With its growth in popularity, public service motivation (PSM) research has been subjected to increasing critical scrutiny, but with more focus on measurement and models than on concepts. The authors examine PSM against standard criteria for judging the strength of concepts (e.g., resonance, parsimony, differentiation, and depth). After providing a critique of PSM concepts, they conclude with suggestions for research programs that could improve the explanatory power of PSM theory.     

公共治理理论中国适用性:批判的理路与话语的构建

公共治理理论具有普遍的适用性。当代中国,公共治理理论的适用在理论上可以引导和规范政治学研究,在实践中可以推进多元主体分工共治,倒逼改革的前行。推进公共治理理论有效适用时需要注重将批判贯穿于借鉴与超越之中,在批判治理的新自由主义企图的同时,需要批判阻碍公共治理理论有效适用的关键因素,即在一定程度上存在的利益失衡,批判的基本抓手是对公共事件的理性认知与处理。根本的破解之道唯有全面深化改革,这同时也是公共治理理论有效适用话语构建的基本依托,此外,公共治理理论有效适用话语构建尚需明晰研究主体及其定位。     

农村村民自治的理论溯源

有学者认为,村民自治作为一种"基层群众性自治",无论是在马恩列斯著作中,还是在毛泽东全集里,均找不到它的理论源头.本文作者认为,马克思主义经典作家提出的人民自治理论和毛泽东大力发展农村民主建设的思想,为我国实行村民自治提供了重要的理论依据.同时,村民自治又是当代中国领导人根据中国国情所进行的巨大理论创新,是马克思主义人民自治理论在中国的新发展.     

Nietzsche on Autonomy and Morality: the Challenge to Political Theory

Nietzsche's challenge to political theory can be located in his claim that autonomy and morality are mutually exclusive. In this paper an examination of Kant's attempt to ground a notion of autonomy through constructing a metaphysic of morals is followed by a consideration of Nietzsche's understanding of autonomy in terms of a notion of supra-moral sovereign individuality. A genealogy of morals represents an attempt to historicize the key notions of moral and political theory. Nietzsche's aristocratic conception of sovereign individuality is seen in terms of the value-basis on which sovereign individuals are to construct a common ethical and political identity and enter into social relationships. Foucaultian and feminist attempts to construct an ethics and politics of difference and a recent attempt to construct a post-modern conception of agency based on a synthesis of Nietzsche's philosophy of power and Kant's ethics are examined.     

Inquiry as Critique: on the Legacy of Deweyan Pragmatism for Political Theory

This article provides a critical reconstruction of John Dewey's theory of social and political inquiry. Clearing away some misconceptions about this theory allows us to grasp its practical and political focus, and to see its similarities to other strands of anti-positivist social thought, including hermeneutics and critical theory. I go on to examine the relationship between democratic values and the theory of inquiry. Like recent proponents of discursive conceptions of democracy such as Habermas he sees a connection between democracy and the conditions for rational procedures of problem solving. What connects democracy to inquiry for Dewey is primarily ethical and political, rather than epistemological. The article considers what may be usefully taken from Dewey's conception of social inquiry, without accepting his full ethical agenda.     

From Critique to Reconstruction: On Axel Honneth's Theory of Recognition and its Critical Potential

Abstract

This paper aims to analyse Axel Honneth's theory of recognition by focusing on two distinct methodological approaches present in it, namely, critique and reconstruction. The critical moment in Honneth's theory of recognition is articulated around two concepts: world-disclosing critique, which is based on the attempt to suggest new and provocative points of view on social reality through the usage of rhetorical devices; and misrecognition, as the empirical starting-point for the theoretical model. These two notions, which can be traced back to Adorno and the so called "first generation" of the Frankfurt School, are interpreted as the mainlines of the diagnostic moment in Honneth's critical theory, as they provide an effective analytical insight into the reality of social suffering. Furthermore, they represent the basic fundament upon which the second level, reconstruction, is articulated. By bringing to light the core aspects of social interaction, they provide the initial clues for the development of the normative framework of recognition, the formal idea of a "good life". The final part of the paper argues that such an interpretation of Honneth's theory of recognition helps to overcome some of its most problematic aspects and thus to deepen its critical potential.     

Hegemony and Autonomy

This article analyzes the concept of hegemony and examines its relationship to power and autonomy. Refuting the conventional belief that it is ideology that distinguishes hegemony, the article argues that it is autonomy that constitutes the distinguishing characteristic. Although hegemons tend to evolve into imperialists, hegemony involves leadership of an alliance, not domination by coercion. It is impossible to conceptualize hegemony without also including autonomy. In this conceptualization, the primary source of autonomy lies in a specific hegemonic system of domination that itself embodies the notion of autonomy for both the polity and its citizenry, a limiting construction that hinders the tendency toward imperialism. Such a system includes one type of autonomy that can be designated as autonomy within hegemony. In addition, the article discusses two other types of autonomy: counterhegemony and a largely power-based opposed hegemony. Thus, the article concludes, hegemony is a complex concept, with several types of manifestation, that can more usefully be understood in connection with autonomy and power than as a stand-alone concept.     

Autonomy and Egalitarianism

In this article I consider the alleged incompatibility between individual autonomy and the achievement and subsequent maintenance of an egalitarian society. I argue that not only is there no incompatibility, but that it is only where an egalitarian society is in place that a like autonomy can be exercised by each citizen. To make out my case I discuss the three main grounds that have been advanced to show there is such an incompatibility. Opponents of egalitarianism contend that egalitarian goals can only be achieved with losses in autonomy; in particular, losses through infringements on the civil liberties of individual citizens, losses in the scope individuals have to exercise and exploit their own talents and losses in control over the income and wealth to which individuals are entitled as a result of the exercise of their talents. The first of these contentions is dealt with quite briefly but the second and third go to the heart of the matter and accordingly are given fuller discussion. None of the three can be convincingly made out because it is precisely where there are significant inequalities in income and wealth that significant differences exist in the scope individuals have to fulfil their life-plans and thus to exercise their individual autonomy.     

自治理念与城市社区自治的评价体系

我们讨论城市社区自治,恐怕无法回避自治理念问题。因为如同自由(1iberty)一样,自治(autonomy)也是一个中国化中间“从未尝立以为教”(严复语)的问题。中国,作为一个东方的、具有典型意义的“领土国家”(顾准语),有着悠久的大一统中央集权传统,虽然经历了近代和现代的民主革命,但革命成功以后,国内的现实状况,以及政治、经济和化发展的需要,又承接了这一传统。我们应该看到,传统的影响有碍于自治理念的思想启蒙。     

A Critique of the Universalisability of Critical Human Rights Theory: The Displacement of Immanuel Kant

While the critically oriented writings of Immanuel Kant remain the key theoretical grounds from which universalists challenge reduction of international rights law and protection to the practical particularities of sovereign states, Kant’s theory can be read as also a crucial argument for a human rights regime ordered around sovereign states and citizens. Consequently, universalists may be tempted to push Kant’s thinking to greater critical examination of ‘the human’ and its properties. However, such a move to more theoretical rigour in critique only solidifies the subversive statism of Kant’s apparent universalism, as long as it remains embedded in his prior theory of critical philosophy that privileges a singular form of reason. Universalist theories of human rights can break with this contradiction only insofar as they also displace the right to philosophy from the subject and site of ‘civil’ man to a politics of theory where no such subject or site is guaranteed.