The politics of flatland

A version of the median-voter theorem holds for two-dimensional spatial models in which voters regard the two dimensions as economic goods or goodlike activities and in which the set of feasible outcomes is constrained by budget or technology. Although mathematically trivial, this fact has widespread analytical uses. After arguing that our two-dimensional model, with its stability property, fits a number of important and general policy areas, we use our analysis to address some prominent theoretical issues.     

The politics of kinship

Judith Butler’s Antigone’s Claim explores our most intimate ties to others – the ties of kinship. Antigone’s Claim explores the politics of kinship through a reading of the figure of Antigone. For Butler, Antigone represents a crisis of the Oedipal order of kinship, revealing the possibility of new forms of kinship itself. Butler presents a persuasive and moving argument for the necessity of changes in our conception and practice of kinship. However, her account of new kinship forms is less persuasive, failing to engage adequately with the sociality of kinship or to provide a radical model of its new forms. Butler argues that Antigone does not represent a feminist politics. However, Antigone’s Claim suggests that, if we are to re-conceive the politics of kinship, then it is necessary to reread Antigone as a political figure.     

The politics of desire

This paper examines the relevance of the ‘particularity of the place where discourse is produced’ in two literary histories to discover if de Certeau's distinction, in Heterologies, between historiography and psychoanalysis, helps to determine if and how a work written by a white writer who writes about Aboriginal literature differs from the work of a black writer who does the same thing. It concludes that the status of the author is not a matter of indifference, neither is it simply a matter of personal experience. It ushers in the need to differentiate subject positions in relation to incremental moments of the past and in relation to constructs of the ‘other’.     

The fragile politics of addiction

Suppose the optimizing consumer only has local information, then what? Obviously, there will be a random element of consumption. The link between the frequency distribution of consumption by person and preference surface is worked out. Under convex preferences there will be a unimodal distribution and conversely. A local optimizing theory of addictive behavior is developed from nonconvex preferences. The resulting bimodal distribution of consumption implies a nonrobust outcome for median voter politics. Such a local optimizing model of addiction is compared with globally optimizing models of addiction.     

The politics of other citizens

In all kinds of political action, citizens are confronted with the performances of other citizens. An important guide to political behaviour is therefore likely to be the assumptions people make concerning how others can be expected to behave. This article explores common sense ideas about other citizens as potential political participants, drawing on a series of group interviews conducted with taxi-drivers in Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic. I argue the expectations voiced of other citizens tend to be pessimistic in nature, casting them as ill-informed, apathetic, passive and unduly self-interested, notwithstanding the appearance of a more optimistic view which holds they can be expected to follow the lead of those who ‘take a stand’. These empirical observations lead to a discussion of the theoretical issues they raise, notably where to locate the origins of such views, and how to appraise their implications for democracy.     

The politics of minority statistics

Harold Orlans, of Chevy Chase, Maryland, was formerly on the staff of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. His books include The Nonprofit Research Institute, Contracting for Knowledge, Private Accreditation and Public Eligibility,and Nonprofit Organizations.Philip Lyons helped to gather the information in this article.