Selbstentfesselung in kleinen Schritten? Deutschlands Außenpolitik zu Beginn des 21. Jahrhunderts

Ohne Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag wurde bereits Anfang Januar 2003 abgeschlossen und konnte bis Mitte Februar nur noch geringfügig erg?nzt werden. Der Verfasser ist Herrn Fariborz Zelli, M.A., für seine Mithilfe bei der Vorbereitung dieses Essays zu gro?em Dank verpflichtet.     

Barack Obama Meets Celebrity Metaphor

Common knowledge suggests that elections are won or lost based on demographics, finances, and other structural elements. Whether candidates win or lose, however, is a matter of action. Symbolic identification, metaphor, and an unfolding narrative—and how they are managed and interpreted in the flow of events—determine who will emerge victorious from the democratic struggle for power. The McCain campaign’s effort to cast Obama as a celebrity, with the hollow trivialities and self-aggrandizement of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, proves to be one of the most dangerous episodes for the Obama campaign. In response, the Democrats must adjust the staging of Obama’s Thursday night acceptance speech in Denver as a performance of purpose and gravitas, rather than glitz and adoration.     

The Physical Basis of Voluntary Trade

The article discusses the conditions under which can we say that people enter the economic system voluntarily. “The Need for an Exit Option” briefly explains the philosophical argument that voluntary interaction requires an exit option—a reasonable alternative to participation in the projects of others. “The Treatment of Effective Forced Labor in Economic and Political Theory” considers the treatment of effectively forced interaction in economic and political theory. “Human Need” discusses theories of human need to determine the capabilities a person requires to have an acceptable exit option. “Capability in Cash, Kind, or Raw Resources” considers what form access to that level of capability should take—in cash, kind, or raw resources, concluding that a basic income guarantee is the most effective method to ensure an exit option in a modern, industrial economy.     

Why the Fair Use Doctrine Should be Eliminated

The concept of fair use was introduced in the Copyright Act of 1976 as a means of allowing limited free access to copyrighted material. However, the application of fair use principles in the adjudication of infringement cases has demonstrated a fundamental problem in our approach to intellectual property rights. In much the same way as Hardin recognized a tragedy of the commons, continued efforts to make decisions based on the fair use doctrine run the risk of creating an information anti-commons.     

Taking Threat Seriously: Prejudice,Principle, and Attitudes Toward Racial Policies

Drawing from group theories of race-related attitudes and electoral politics, we develop and test how anxiety influences the relative weight of prejudice as a determinant of individuals’ support for racial policies. We hypothesize that prejudice will more strongly influence the racial policy preferences of people who are feeling anxious than it will for people who are not. Using an experimental design we manipulate subjects’ levels of threat and find significant treatment effects, as hypothesized. We find that individuals’ racial policy attitudes are partially conditional on their affective states: individuals who feel anxious report less support for racial policies than those individuals who do not feel anxious, even when this threat is stimulated by non-racial content. More broadly, we conclude that affect is central to a better understanding of individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors.