Politics without a centre

The Retreat of the State: The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy. By SUSAN STRANGE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp.xvii + 218, biblio., index. £14.95 (paper). ISBN 0–521–56440–9.

Uncertain Boundaries: The Social and Political Construction of European Economies. By MARINO REGINI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp.x + 164, biblio., index. £30 (cloth). ISBN 0–521–47371–3

Internationalization and Domestic Politics. Edited by ROBERT O. KEOHANE and HELEN V. MILNER. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. x + 308, biblio., index. £14.95 (paper). ISBN 0–521–565587–1.

Balancing State Intervention: The Limits of Transatlantic Markets. Edited by ROGER BENJAMIN, C. RICHARD NEU and DENISE QUIGLEY. Pp. xiv + 274, index. Houndmills: Macmillan, 1995. £40 (cloth). ISBN 0–333–64162–0.

Cash, Crisis, and Corporate Governance: The Role of National Financial Systems in Industrial Restructuring. By VICTORIA MARKLEW. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1995. Pp.viii +260, biblio, index. $44.40 (cloth). ISBN 0–472–10504–3.     

Strategic Misspecification in Regression Models

Common regression models are often structurally inconsistent with strategic interaction. We demonstrate that this "strategic misspecification" is really an issue of structural (or functional form) misspecification. The misspecification can be equivalently written as a form of omitted variable bias, where the omitted variables are nonlinear terms arising from the players' expected utility calculations and often from data aggregation. We characterize the extent of the specification error in terms of model parameters and the data and show that typical regressions models can at times give exactly the opposite inferences versus the true strategic data-generating process. Researchers are recommended to pay closer attention to their theoretical models, the implications of those models concerning their statistical models, and vice versa.     

Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data

We study rare events data, binary dependent variables with dozensto thousands of times fewer ones (events, such as wars, vetoes,cases of political activism, or epidemiological infections)than zeros ("nonevents"). In many literatures, these variableshave proven difficult to explain and predict, a problem thatseems to have at least two sources. First, popular statisticalprocedures, such as logistic regression, can sharply underestimatethe probability of rare events. We recommend corrections thatoutperform existing methods and change the estimates of absoluteand relative risks by as much as some estimated effects reportedin the literature. Second, commonly used data collection strategiesare grossly inefficient for rare events data. The fear of collectingdata with too few events has led to data collections with hugenumbers of observations but relatively few, and poorly measured,explanatory variables, such as in international conflict datawith more than a quarter-million dyads, only a few of whichare at war. As it turns out, more efficient sampling designsexist for making valid inferences, such as sampling all availableevents (e.g., wars) and a tiny fraction of nonevents (peace).This enables scholars to save as much as 99% of their (nonfixed)data collection costs or to collect much more meaningful explanatoryvariables. We provide methods that link these two results, enablingboth types of corrections to work simultaneously, and softwarethat implements the methods developed.     

Two-Step Hierarchical Estimation: Beyond Regression Analysis

e-mail: achen{at}princeton.edu Two-step estimators for hierarchical models can be constructedeven when neither stage is a conventional linear regressionmodel. For example, the first stage might consist of probitmodels, or duration models, or event count models. The secondstage might be a nonlinear regression specification. This notesketches some of the considerations that arise in ensuring thattwo-step estimators are consistent in such cases.     

社会回归——行政权力的演进方向

随着先发国家逐渐从工业社会向后工业社会转型,国家行政权力向社会回归的趋势变得越来越明显,这种变化主要体现在政府与公民、政府与市场以及政府与“第三部门”的关系上。根据自由主义的国家和社会关系的观点,国家权力是由社会让渡的,当社会发展到一定的成熟阶段,势必要求将让渡给国家的部分权力收回。而这些需要回归社会的权力往往是通过传统的政府的行政职能来体现的,因此,通过调整政府职能范围来重塑行政权力的行使空间,是确保行政权力向社会回归的关键。     

自由的回归：放松管制的意义探寻

放松管制是20世纪80年代以来西方世界一颇为引人注目的现象。它由英美两国首开先河,并迅速波及世界各地,形成一个世界性的放松管制浪潮。放松管制是国家干预主义膨胀而引起的一种反动,是对曾经支持近现代文明发展的自由民主价值的回归,产生了良好的经济绩效和非经济绩效。它既是政府的自我解放,也是社会的自由解放。     

Morality without Intention

Abstract

An examination of how, in literature, silence and veiling are related to moral significance. The paper emphasizes Walter Benjamin’s essay on Goethe’s Elective Affiniites and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Minister’s Black Veil” and poses the question of how the literary can possess moral meaning or effect when, as in these two works, silence and veiling appear as a means of refusing or denying intention. Benjamin’s and Hawthorne’s different critiques of the symbol are presented as the central issue around which the possibility of moral meaning is decided as an intentionless act. Benjamin’s preservation of the moral is interpreted as the cause of the paradoxical and contradictory sources of the expressionless and its critical violence as well as the veiling and secrecy he identifies as forming the true work of art. Against this account, Hawthorne’s story is read as the refusal of any preceding secret as the basis of a moral claim and thus as the defining category of the work of art.