The Article 9 Association,Leftist Elites,and the Movement to Save Article 9 of Japan’s Postwar Constitution

Leftist political parties and labor unions that had stood at the forefront of the collective effort to protect Article 9 until the early 1990s have stepped back to some extent as they have shrunk and fragmented. Instead, advocacy groups whose influence is often enhanced by ‘leftist elites’ have now seemed to come more to the fore, thereby raising certain questions: What roles do the leftist elites play in those groups? How are such groups organized? Who exactly are the leftist elites? This article intends to address questions regarding the leftist elites, as well as the organization and development of these advocacy groups, in particular the Article 9 Association.     

Discovering the Dark Side of Power: The Principal’s Moral Hazard in Political-Bureaucratic Relations

Principal agent (PA) is among the most prominent concepts for analyzing the relationship between politics and bureaucracy. Nonethelesss, the inherent bias of PA scholars to attribute moral hazard almost exclusively to the agent, usually referred to as “bureaucratic drift”, requires re-examination. Building on the spare literature in which moral hazard of the principal is considered, this paper provides empirical evidence for a neglected aspect of the PA concept. Three cases of German regulatory agencies responsible for drug control, financial services and rail safety are analyzed in critical situations which were largely perceived as bureaucratic failures. The analysis reveals that a good deal of these failures, ranging from negligence to suppressing crucial information, has to be attributed to the political principal. This is called the dark side of power because the intention is to shift blame or to dodge political responsibility. Turning conventional PA reasoning upside down, the conclusion is that the principal’s moral hazard should be considered more routinely as a potential explanation for political-bureaucratic interactions.     

Same same but different. Die Feldtheorien Fligsteins und Bourdieus und das Potenzial einer wechselseitig informierten Perspektive für die Wirtschaftssoziologie

Field theoretical approaches have become popular within economic sociology. Many even consider the notion of ?field“ a suitable alternative to the hegemonic paradigm of ?embeddedness“. This article outlines the epistemological potential of a field theoretical perspective by systematically comparing the approaches of Neil Fligstein and Pierre Bourdieu. By examining their respective contexts of emergence, their theoretical and methodological references, their research interests and their central concepts, both similarities and differences between the two approaches become visible. The resulting insights allow for a field theoretical and profoundly relational perspective on economic phenomena that might stimulate ongoing debates within economic sociology.     

Rehumanizing Birth and Death in America

THESIS: Despite spending more on medical care than any other country in the world, the United States still boasts some of the worst patient outcomes of any developed nation. This disparity is especially true of how Americans give birth and die.  These natural human transitions have become catastrophically expensive and leave patients and their families traumatized from unnecessary interventions. This article examines the costs and outcomes associated with the medicalization of birth and death and argues that alternatives exist that improve patient outcomes while lowering costs. Access to these alternatives will require changing current regulatory and reimbursement structures and providing trained support staff to help families navigate beginning- and end-of life decisions.     

Treaty Commitment as a Signaling Device: Explaining the Ratification of the International Covenant on Economic,Social, and Cultural Rights

This study investigates the determinants of the ratification of International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). To do so, it proposes an explanation that postulates that states employ treaty ratification as a device to signal their resolve to implement polices required by the treaty at issue in order to appease demanding domestic constituencies, predicting that states with lower compliance capacity tend to commit faster than states with higher compliance capacity. Applying this explanation to the ICESCR leads to two expectations. First, the larger government spending a proxy of high compliance capacity is hypothesized to delay the ratification process. Second, states with the unitary system are expected to ratify the ICESCR more promptly because the centralized power structure in unitary states significantly restricts the pursuit of the policy autonomy by minorities at local level that the right to self-determination entails. The Cox proportional hazard analysis lends support to both hypotheses.