John Locke and the Limits of Religious Liberty: Marriage License Refusal,Religious Freedom Laws,Vaccine Refusal,Contraception Mandate Exemptions,and Ultrasound Requirements

Nearly two hundred fifty years into its existence, the American polity faces a conundrum over a core founding principle: religious liberty. Multiple debates have emerged over the extent and limits of religious liberty, including arguments over how far any one person’s religious liberty extends into the public sphere as well as into the private lives of other citizens. Highly influential on James Madison’s crafting of the First Amendment, John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration outlines a strong conception of both religious toleration and of religious liberty. In the “Letter,” Locke’s reasoning is sympathetic to the concerns and convictions of believers while remaining cognizant of the calamities to which religious differences can give rise. Further, he provides a robust explication of the mutually exclusive domains of ecclesiastical and civil authorities, now known more colloquially as the division of church and state. In the following article, I illustrate how the principles put forth by Locke offer guidance in adjudicating religious liberty claims in the cases of Kim Davis, religious freedom laws, vaccine refusal, contraception mandate exemptions, and ultrasound requirements.     

A Difference-Centred Alternative to Theorization of Children's Citizenship Rights

The “rights revolution” has become a central feature of modern political consciousness and has resulted in a proliferation of theories about children's rights. Yet mainstream liberal theories in which children's rights are theorized rarely take children's rights as citizens seriously, due to the normative stance of liberal theories that construct children in terms of “not-yet-citizens”. This article argues for a difference-centred theory of children's citizenship rights by situating the analysis within feminist, anti-racist, gay, lesbian and transgendered theories of citizenship that are difference-centred. It discusses an alternative, difference-centred, articulation of children's citizenship rights through an analysis of their rights of liberty and equality. Through a broadening of liberal, normative notions of liberty defined around exercising individuated autonomous decision-making or the participation in citizenry duties, the article re-defines children's rights of liberty in relational terms that addresses their agency and acknowledges their presence as participating subjects in the multiple relationships in which they interact. It also re-articulates their rights of equality from a mainstream liberal interpretation of “equality-as-same” to one that treats children as “differently equal” members of the public culture in which they are full participants. Normative social institutional practices and assumptions become the focus of the analysis, which concludes that these have to change as they act as barriers that exclude and marginalize children's citizenship rights on the basis of their difference (real and constructed) from an adult norm assumed of citizens.     

Whither Power in Public Administration? Attainment,Dissipation, and Loss

Norton Long's 1949 essay, “Power and Administration,” has a complicated legacy. First, analysis reveals both support for and important refinements of Long's arguments since the article's publication. Second, Long's claim has proven problematic that competition among agencies for power would bring more coordination and a cross‐agency sense of purpose to the federal government. Third, the bureaucratic pluralism that he explained and defended produced special interest biases that were off‐putting to large segments of citizens and thus helped create an unsupportive political environment for needed capacity building in the federal government. Fourth, by not considering how institutions “coevolve,” Long failed to warn that “horizontal power” building by individual agencies would provoke efforts by elected officials to enhance their control over bureaucracy in ways that, over time, diminished their collective sources of power. Finally, much remains to be done before what Long called a “realistic science of administration” incorporating the “budgeting of power” exists in public administration.     

How to pay for the peace? A theoretical framework with references to African countries

This paper analyses a simple game-theoretic model to highlight the choice of the government between raising its defence expenditures or giving away some “gifts” to his opponents, as a means to defend his position in power. If the government is a Cournot-Nash player, then there is no gift in equilibrium, and any increase in the budget will lead to more inefficient defence expenditures. However, if the government is a Stackelberg-leader, then he will use the “gift” as a tool in his policy for staying in power.     

THE “INVASION” OF MANUFACTURED CIVIL SOCIETY: GOVERNMENT–NONPROFIT PARTNERSHIPS IN A BRAZILIAN STATE

The growth of the nonprofit sector in Brazil has been conceptually similar to that of the Anglo‐Saxon Third Way, where the government promotes the creation of partnerships with civil society. This process has been criticized for creating a “manufactured civil society”. This study will investigate whether the same pattern can be observed in the Brazilian context, particularly within the Management Shock Reform implemented by Minas Gerais, one of the principal Brazilian states. Management Shock is guided by a governmental partnership discourse that promotes contractual partnerships with both businesses and nonprofits. We opted for a bottom‐up oriented research approach, aiming to comprehend the rationale for initiating and sustaining the partnerships revealed in the narratives that emerged from both government and nonprofit partners. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and content analysis of documents and the media. Results show the predominance of agency‐type partnerships, highlighting the centrality of the government and its techno‐bureaucratic role in fostering and maintaining Organização da Sociedade Civil de Interesse Público or Civil Society Organization of Public Interest designs. Differing from the Anglo‐Saxon context, we observed the “invasion” of market‐driven values in nonprofits and, to some extent, in government narratives. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Legitimacy of Using the Harm Principle in Cases of Religious Freedom Within Education

John Stuart Mill’s famous “harm principle” has been popular in the limitation of freedoms within human rights jurisprudence. It has been used formally in court cases and also informally in legal argumentation and conversation. Shortly, it is described as a very simple principle that amounts to the notion that persons are at liberty to do what they want as long as their actions do not harm any other person or society in general. This article questions whether it is legitimate to use the harm principle in cases concerning the limitation of religious freedom within education. For example, can the exemption of a learner from sex education (based on religious objections) be denied based on the argument that such an exemption will cause harm? In order to answer this question, the meaning, origin and use of the harm principle are investigated. This article also discusses four main criticisms against the use of this principle in general and in cases of religious freedom of learners in education.     

Integration to What? Marginalization from What?: Keynote Address at 19th Nordiske Sociologkongres, 13–15 June 1997, Copenhagen: “Integration and Marginalization.”

The modern world-system has created considerable confusion about what we can mean by integration and marginalization into our societies/states. One of the principles of most sovereign states in the last two centuries is that they are composed of “citizens.” Once there were citizens, there were non-citizens as well. Citizenship became something very valuable, and consequently not something one was very willing to share with others. Despite the fact that citizenship is a cherished good, which gives rise to “protectionist” sentiment, migration is a constantly recurring phenomenon in the modern world, which leads to the issue of national integration. The world revolution of 1968 put into question, for the first time since the French Revolution, the concept of citizenship. What was different about me world revolution of 1968 was that it was an expression of disillusionment in the possibilities of state-level reformism. The post-1968 movements added something new. They insisted that racism and sexism were not merely matters of individual prejudice and discrimination but that they took on “institutional” forms as well. What these movements seemed to be talking about was not overt juridical discrimination but the covert forms that were hidden within the concept of “citizen” The concept of citizenship is, in its essence, always simultaneously inclusionary and exclusionary. We should begin to conceive whether we can go beyond or dispense with the concept of citizen, and if so, to replace it with what?     

Mill, Liberty and the Facts of Life

This paper examines John Stuart Mill's discussion of economic liberty and individual liberty, and his view of the relationship between the two. It explores how, and how effectively, Mill developed his arguments about the two liberties; reveals the lineages of thought from which they derived; and considers how his arguments were altered by political economists not long after his death. It is argued that the distinction Mill drew between the two liberties provided him with a framework of concepts which legitimized significant government intervention in economic matters without restricting individual liberty.     

“Grabbing Hand” or “Helping Hand”?: Corruption and the Economic Role of the State

This article seeks to disentangle which features of government intervention are linked to corruption and which are not, by distinguishing between the government roles of regulator, entrepreneur, and consumer. It finds that the degree of regulation of private business activity is the strongest predictor of corruption, and that high levels of public spending are related to low levels of corruption. There is no evidence of direct government involvement in production having any bearing on corruption. It is concluded that advanced welfare capitalist systems, which leave business relatively free from interference while intervening strongly in the distribution of wealth and the provision of key services, combine the most “virtuous” features of “big” and “small” government. This suggests that anti‐corruption campaigners should be relaxed about state intervention in the economy in general, but should specifically target corruption‐inducing regulatory systems.     

The Problem of Political Science: Political Relevance and Scientific Rigor in Aristotle's “Philosophy of Human Affairs”

Treatments of Aristotle's moral‐political science have largely disregarded the methodological statements that he delivers as he embarks on his “philosophy of human affairs” in book I of the Nicomachean Ethics. A consideration of these statements, however, lends critical support to the view that Aristotle sought to give the sharpest possible expression to ordinary moral‐political opinion. Moreover, apart from revealing the by‐no‐means ordinary reasons that induced Aristotle to do so (and to do so in contrast to Plato), such a consideration sheds light on the source of the vagueness or ambiguity that defines moral‐political opinion as such. Indeed, the methodological statements are perhaps the first entries in the old quarrel of “relevance versus rigor.” And, through them, Aristotle suggests how political scientists today might walk a fine line between “politics,” on one hand, and “science,” on the other, without losing sight of the ultimate tension between them.     

Madison on the Meaning of the "General Welfare," the "Purpose" of Enumerated Powers, and the "Definition" of Constitutional Government

According to James Madison, "the most important and fundamentalquestion" he ever addressed was the meaning of and relationbetween the general welfare clause and the enumeration of particularpowers. This question is the most "fundamental" because theanswer determines the very "idea" or "nature" of the U.S. Constitution.Commentators virtually agree on the answer Madison proposedand defended in Federalist 41, namely, that the general welfareclause is neither a statement of ends nor a substantive grantof power. It is a mere "synonym" for the enumeration of particularpowers, which are limited and wholly define its content. Fromthis answer, it follows that the primary meaning of the nationaldimension of the federal Constitution is limited government,understood as a government with a limited number of powers ormeans. The thesis of this essay, however, is that, contraryto the commentators' claims, Madison argued that the clausewas a substantive grant of power for the generally stated endand that the primary purpose of the ensuing enumeration wasto define more particularly the ends alluded to by the phrase"general welfare." Hence, the meaning of the general constitutionalgovernment in the American federal system is a government orientedto a limited number of limited ends.     

Victimization,rent-seeking and just compensation

When should government compensate citizens for harm inflicted by public policy? In practice, all public policy is harmful to somebody, even when it is beneficial to society as a whole. The common view in the legal profession is that a fuzzy but serviceable line can be drawn between “taking” which should be compensated and the proper exercise of the “policy power” where no compensation is warranted. Recently this view has been challenged by some authors who argue that harm to victims of socially-advantageous public policy should never be compensated, and by others who argue that compensation is almost always warranted. The latter would go so far as to proscribe all redistribution of income as a “taking” from the well-to-do. This paper is a defense of the common view against both challenges. The key to the problem is the distinction between unalterable risk and the risk of victimization of citizens by the government, giving rise to rent-seeking and a general disorganization of society.     

The Obama Administration's Challenges after the “War on Science”: Reforming Staffing Practices and Protecting Scientific Integrity in the Executive Branch

In this article, we examine the difficult leadership position President Barack Obama inherited as he took office with respect to science and technology policy making and implementation, particularly following the Bush administration and years of the so‐called “war on science.” We contend that the Obama administration's challenge is not only to take substantive policy action, but also to reform certain administrative practices, particularly in light of the previous administration's practice of the politics of strategic vacancies, a managerial technique that rearranges an agency's ideological inclinations not through the usual forms of active politicization (i.e., by filling the appointee ranks with like‐minded ideologues) but instead by “starving” the agency of staff and co‐opting its agenda that way.     

Serving Clients When the Server Crashes: How Frontline Workers Cope with E‐Government Challenges

Implementing e‐government in the contemporary American state is challenging. E‐government places high technical demands on agencies and citizens in an environment of budget austerity and political polarization. Governments developing e‐government policies often mobilize frontline workers—also termed “street‐level bureaucrats”—to help citizens gain access to services. However, we know little about how frontline workers cope in these challenging circumstances. This article fills this gap by examining frontline workers implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Based on a qualitative analysis, the authors find that frontline workers “move toward clients” when coping with stress: they bend the rules, work overtime, and collaborate in order to help clients. They are less inclined to “move away” or “move against” clients, for instance, through rigid rule following and rationing. In other words, frontline workers try to serve clients, even “when the server crashes.” Frontline workers, then, can play a vital role in the successful implementation of e‐government policies.     

“人民自由”何以可能--从消极自由理论说起

贡斯当的“古代人的自由与现代人的自由”是近现代西方消极自由理论的重要基础;伯林的“消极自由与积极自由”以个人自由为出发点,落脚到制约国家权力的宪法制度设计上;德沃金和罗尔斯的自由理论返回法的形而下,试图寻找国家权力在个人自由实现中发挥积极作用的可行路径;中国传统自由观强调权力与自由的关系,以严复为代表的近现代自由话语开始触及自由的主体性、平等性等法治要素。中国共产党从人民立场出发的自由理论及其实践表明,“人民自由”吸收借鉴经验自由主义和理性自由主义合理因素,吸取中国传统自由观优秀基因,整合自由与平等、自由与公正、自由与法治的关系,形成了个人自由与国家权力同生共在、相互促进、共同发展的有序格局。     

Low‐trust bureaucracy: Understanding the Mexican bureaucratic experience

Latin American bureaucracies are notorious for their inefficiency and opacity, yet there is very little empirical research done on what exactly constitutes the “bureaucratic experience” for citizens and what the costs of bureaucratic dysfunction are. To improve our understanding of this topic, 5 cases of Mexican citizens' encounters with public bureaucracies are used to develop the notion of “low‐trust bureaucracy”: public organisations in which access to services is unreliable and the levels of control towards both citizens and bureaucrats are excessive. This bottom‐up analysis of administrative practices contributes to our understanding of the ineffectiveness of government programmes and services, but also of how bureaucracies in developing countries amplify social inequality rather than function as a social equaliser. Furthermore, this article adds new insights to the existing understanding of administrative burdens as a result of either political tactics or mere benign neglect. The data presented here suggest that structural and intractable characteristics of the broader administrative context, such as authoritarian legacies, can produce behavioural patterns that shift bureaucratic attention away from a fair and efficient service provision.     

Of Two Minds,But One Heart: A Good “Gut” Feeling Moderates the Effect of Ambivalence on Attitude Formation and Turnout

Popular psychological accounts argue that successful candidates address their appeals to citizens’ “hearts” rather than their “heads.” Yet research on campaigns shows that candidates win elections by getting voters to think about particular issues—especially issues that create ambivalence in the minds of opposition supporters. This article helps to reconcile these “heart‐centered” and “head‐centered” accounts of preference formation during campaigns. An original experiment and ANES data analyses (1980–2004) show that a “good gut feeling” toward a candidate helps citizens to overcome the paralyzing effect of ambivalence on attitude formation and turnout. And, since turnout is most tenuous among those with lower income, this is where the effect is most pronounced. Since Democratic candidates rely disproportionately on support from these lower‐income voters, it is particularly important that they inspire positive affect among latent supporters.     

Begging and belonging in the city: a semiotic approach

Citizens develop routine spatial enunciations through which they “domesticate” both the intensity of transition and the extension of distance implied by moving across a city and smooth out the frontiers between environments of belonging (e.g. home) and environments of non-belonging (e.g. the streets). Yet urban “accidents” constantly threaten the impermeability of such routine spatial enunciations. Beggars represent, from the point of view of citizens, an instance of such urban “accidents”. The primary goal of urban beggars is to intercept the routine spatial enunciations of citizens, stop them, and convince them to donate part of their money. In order to achieve these goals, beggars develop a series of micro-strategies that can be analyzed as both semiotic practices and urban performances. At the same time, citizens constantly reabsorb these micro-strategies in their routine spatial enunciations, pushing beggars to the elaboration of new strategies, and so on and so forth, in a continuous struggle between the citizens’ desire to protect their feeling of sedentary belonging and the beggars’ need to invade it. From this point of view, routines of sedentary belonging are a manifestation of power. But why are citizens willing to have their routine spatial enunciations through the city be stopped by all sorts of agencies (for instance, the commercial agency of advertisement), whereas they cannot wait to expel beggars from the urban landscape? Perhaps this discrepancy depends on the elimination of the spiritual discourse of charity from the urban arena?     

“Tell It Like It Is”: Decision Making,Groupthink, and Decisiveness among U.S. Federal Subcabinet Executives

In addition to difficulties gathering and evaluating complete information, cognitive limitations and biases preclude individuals from making fully value‐maximizing choices when making decisions. It has been suggested that, done properly, involving advisors can compensate for individual‐level limitations. However, the “groupthink” tradition has highlighted ways group‐aided decision making can fail to live up to its potential. Out of this literature has emerged a paradigm Janis calls “vigilant problem‐solving.” For this article, we interviewed 20 heads of subcabinet‐level organizations in the U.S. federal government, asking questions about how they made important decisions. Ten were nominated by “good‐government” experts, 10 chosen at random. We wanted to see whether there were differences in how members of those two groups made decisions, specifically, to what extent executives in the two categories used a “vigilant” process. We found, however, that similarities between the two groups overwhelmed differences: As best as we were able to measure, decision making by U.S. subcabinet executives tracks vigilant decision making recommendations fairly closely. The similarity reflects a common style of senior‐level decision making, which we theorize grows out of government bureaucracy's methodical culture. We did, however, develop evidence for a difference between outstanding executives and others on another dimension of decision making style. Outstanding executives valued decision making decisiveness—“bias for action”—more than the comparison group. Perhaps, then, what distinguishes outstanding executives from others is not vigilance but decisiveness. Contrary to the implications of the groupthink literature, the danger in government may be “paralysis by analysis” as much or more than groupthink.     

Governing kidnap for ransom: Lloyd's as a “private regime”

Kidnap for ransom raises significant governance challenges. In the absence of formal regulation and enforcement, insurers have created an effective private governance regime to facilitate smooth commercial resolutions. Controlling ransoms is paramount: “supernormal” profits for kidnappers create kidnapping booms and undermine the market for insurance. Ransom control requires cooperation, but there are high transactions costs in enforcing a collusive agreement. The Coasean prediction is that a single firm will form to internalize the externalities arising from lax insurance and mismanaged ransom negotiations—or a government must order the market. There is indeed a single source of kidnap insurance: Lloyd's of London. Yet, within the Lloyd's market several insurers compete for business. Lloyd's is a club providing private governance: Its members issue standard contracts, follow the same regime for kidnap resolution, and exchange information to stabilize ransoms. Lloyd's, therefore, combines aspects of Coase's “single firm” and “government” solution to the externalities problem.