John Macmurray and the'Forgotten'Lessons on Capitalism and Community

Tony Blair has made no secret of his admiration for the philosophical works of John Macmurray. This article shows that Blair recognises Macmurray's contribution to the understanding of the individual in society. Blair readily acknowledges Macmurray's overriding desire for philosophy to place individuals in their rightful social setting. Yet Blair views this philosophical shift as a reinforcement of modern notions of community that emphasise an obligation to others as well as to oneself. It is my contention that this may be a misreading of the specifics that lay behind the works of Macmurray. By implication, this error in understanding could have led New Labour to pursue a social policy direction that contradicts Macmurray's visions of capitalism and its effects upon human agency, behaviour, rationality and morality. Consequently, this article examines the works of Macmurray in an attempt to show that Tony Blair and New Labour are in danger of making false assumptions on how to revive a contemporary sense of community through the bedrock of a traditional family unit supported by the model of the 'rational economic man'.     

Empirical Determinants of Bicameral Sequence in State Legislatures

In a previous article (Rogers 1998), I showed that the bicameral chamber that originates enacted legislation tends to realize policy outcomes closer to the preference of its median legislator than does the chamber that votes second on legislation. All things being equal, this “first‐mover advantage” implies that each chamber could be expected to originate roughly half of all enacted legislation. But all other things are not equal in U.S. state bicameral legislatures. Drawing on an expanded dataset, I innovate and test a number of additional hypotheses related to bicameral voting sequence. My results account for the effects of constitutional, institutional, and electoral variables on bicameral sequence.     

Economic Assistance to Impoverished Americans

This study examined the relationship between a measure of public assistance to poor families (adjusted for cost of living differences among SMSAs) and crime rates. The regression analyses controlled for the effects of several other economic and noneconomic factors thought to influence variation in crime rates and utilized census and other data for the S9 SMSAs for which the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics provided cost-of-living data in 1970. The results indicated that level of public assistance to poor families had an independent negative effect on the variation of several crime rates, including rates of homicide, rape, and burglary. The results suggest that a substantial reduction in the level of public assistance to the poor may contribute to significant increase in crime rates.