Respect for Persons in Bioethics: Towards a Human Rights-Based Account

Human rights have increasingly been put forward as an important framework for bioethics. In this paper, it is argued that human rights offer a potentially fruitful approach to understanding the notion of Respect for Persons in bioethics. The idea that we are owed a certain kind of respect as persons is relatively common, but also quite often understood in terms of respecting people’s autonomous choices. Such accounts do however risk being too narrow, reducing some human beings to a second-class moral status. This paper puts forward a political approach to our standing as persons and a strongly pluralistic account of human rights that lays the ground for a more broadly applicable conception of Respect for Persons. It is further argued that this model also provides an example of a more general approach to philosophical ethics, an approach which is here called taxonomical pluralism. When it comes to Respect for Persons specifically, this principle is developed in terms of five distinct core concerns (autonomy, dignity, integrity, privacy, and vulnerability).     

Women’s Participation in Peace Negotiations and the Durability of Peace

There is an emerging consensus that women’s participation in peace negotiations contributes to the quality and durability of peace after civil war. However, to date, this proposition has remained empirically untested. Moreover, how women’s participation may contribute to durable peace has not been systematically explored. This article uses a mixed method design to examine this proposition. Our statistical analysis demonstrates a robust correlation between peace agreements signed by female delegates and durable peace. We further find that agreements signed by women show a significantly higher number of peace agreement provisions aimed at political reform, and higher implementation rates for provisions. We argue that linkages between women signatories and women civil society groups explain the observed positive impact of women’s direct participation in peace negotiations. Collaboration and knowledge building among diverse women groups contributes to better content of peace agreements and higher implementation rates of agreement provisions. We substantiate this argument with qualitative case study evidence and demonstrate how collaboration between female delegates and women civil society groups positively impacts peace processes. Our findings support the assumption that women’s participation in peace negotiations increases the durability and the quality of peace.     

Difficult Partnerships: The World Bank, States, and NGOs

Since the early 1990s, World Bank officials in many countries have pressed their government borrowers to include nongovernmental organizations as development partners. What impact has this new partnership norm had in the bank's borrower countries, and why? This article investigates these questions through longitudinal analysis of three cases: Guatemala, Ecuador, and the Gambia. In their first iteration in the 1990s, these bank-sponsored efforts generally failed to take root; yet by the 2000s, NGOs and state actors were engaged in multiple partnerships. This article suggests that over time, bank officials' repeated efforts to embed these new ideas fostered a social learning process that led NGOs to adopt more strategic partnership practices and government officials to see NGO partners as useful. Several factors may affect this learning process: levels of professionalism and the growth of professional networks, the presence of effective “bridge builders,” and the level of historical conflicts.     

Fairness in Non-human Primates?

Humans have a sense of fairness, i.e. an interest in the ideal of equity. This sense allows them to compare their own efforts and subsequent outcomes with those of others, and thus to evaluate and react to inequity. The question is whether our closest living relatives, the non-human primates, show the behavioural characteristics that might qualify as necessary components to a sense of fairness, such as inequity aversion. In this article, we review the five different experimental approaches to studying behaviours related to fairness in non-human primates, including their underlying logic and main findings that represent the current state of research in this field. In the critical condition of all these studies, a subject and a conspecific partner have either to invest different efforts or receive different outcomes while observing each other. The main question is whether??and how??subjects react to unequal situations that humans would perceive as ??unfair??. Taken together, the results from all five approaches provide only weak evidence for a sense of fairness in non-human primates. Although apes and monkeys are attentive to what the partner is getting, they do not seem to be able or motivated to compare their own efforts and outcomes with those of others at a human level. Even though the debate is still on-going, we believe that a full sense of fairness is not essential for cooperation. Obviously, apes and monkeys are capable of solving problems cooperatively, without a strong, humanlike sense of fairness. They are mainly interested in maximizing their own benefit, regardless of what others may receive. It is thus possible that a sense of fairness only exists rudimentarily in non-human primates.     

Beratung zum Tode. Eine neuears moriendi?

Dieser Artikel präsentiert Ergebnisse einer qualitativen Untersuchung deutschsprachiger Ratgeberliteratur zu Sterben, Tod und Trauer. Vor dem Hintergrund eines allgemeinen Beratungsbooms widmet sich der Aufsatz der Frage, welche Funktion Beratung, speziell die Beratung zum Tode, in der modernen Gesellschaft haben kann. Beratung wird alsKommunikative Gattung definiert, die in erster Linie auf das Problem der ?fragilen Anschlussfähigkeit“ — insbesondere bei schriftlichen Ratgebern — verweist. Eine Auswertung der Ratgeberliteratur zum Thema Tod zeigt, dass man anhand der Textedrei typische Problemhorizonte unterscheiden kann, in denen der Tod platziert wird. Die Bedeutung des Todes lässt sich somit nur im Hinblick auf die Erwartungsstrukturen erschließen, die in den Texten typischerweise konstruiert werden. Tod kann dann verstanden werden erstens als Abschied vom Leben, zweitens als bedeutungsloser Zwischenfall oder drittens als gleiches Schicksal für alle. Dieser Typologie entsprechen drei unterschiedliche Kontexturen. Damit bestätigt sich die Vermutung, dass die moderne Gesellschaft keinears moriendi mehr kennt. Stattdessen finden sich kommunikative ?Räume“, innerhalb derer das Unsagbare sagbar gemacht werden kann.     

Three types of price systems

Economic Change and Restructuring -