Auctioneers and Misdescription: Between Scylla and Charybdis

In Elidor Investments SA v Christie's, Manson Woods Ltd the court implied a term as to Wednesbury reasonableness into an auctioneer's agency contract which fettered its ‘sole and complete discretion’ to describe lots. It is contended that, in so doing, the court unjustifiably and unnecessarily extended the jurisdiction into areas where it was not required and, in granting an injunction to restrain the sale of the lots, failed properly to apply the appropriate criteria.     

A limited solution carried to excess

In writing of the Presidency, Marshall Dimock declared that the personal staff idea was a limited solution carried to excess. This paper undertakes to examine the Dimock assertion in the wider arena of the Executive Branch. It first considers the idea of staff, exploring its earlier applications. It relies on the work of Douglas McGregor in suggesting that the personal staff orientation, as exhibited in the White House, tends to perpetuate profoundly hierarchical assumptions in respect to organizing and managing. The increasing politicization of the top echelons of the Federal bureaucracy further accentuates tendencies toward a system that is characterized by loyalty to an individual rather than to a system. The emergence of the role of Chief of Staff throughout the bureaucracy in recent years has provided further structure and influence to the personal staff movement. A case study of the role of the Chief of Staff in the administration of Anne Burford in the Environmental Protection Agency, 1981-83, provides evidence of the role and its significance. It is concluded that Marshall Dimock identified a problem which deserves greater research interest and public attention.     

The past to come ∗

Proto-industrialization (PI) is a concept introduced several years ago to explain a number of paradoxical aspects of the pre-history of industrialization: in a word the remarkable growth of labour-intensive, low technology handwork for distant markets, dispersed in countless rural households throughout large regions of west, central and eastern Europe. Without disputing the facts themselves, the concept has been subjected to vigorous and serious criticism, including one by the present author. Geoff Eley's recent review article of one of the basic PI texts (KMS) argued that these critiques were basically negative, neglecting the ‘moment’ in which that work was conceived and written, and thus blind to the substantial advance which it represented. I dispute his argument; Eley neglects the constructive part of our own contributions — that is ‘our moments’: the attempts to formulate alternative frameworks capable of explaining the same facts and giving reason to our criticism. The Whole question surely brings into focus the more serious problem of the methodological and theoretical status of the several types of transition theory, most notably the problem of all ‘internalist’ treatments, the place of regions beyond Europe in an adequate debate on transition, and thus the question of the minimal framework suitable for dealing with such questions, even when they pertain directly to Europe.     

From D-Mark to Euro: the impact of mass media on public opinion in Germany

The introduction of the Euro in cash currency on 1 January 2002 has been one of the most important steps towards European integration since the foundation of the European Union. In Germany public opinion vacillated between rejection and approval. Did the media coverage play any role in the forming of this public opinion? How often and with what bias did television newscasts report on the Euro? To answer these questions, systematic content analyses of television newscasts will be compared with representative opinion polls on the aggregate level. On the individual level, the influence of media use on attitudes towards the Euro will be evaluated by means of a cross-section survey. Up to 2001, public opinion was a reflection of the Euro/US dollar exchange rate. Since then it has coincided rather with media coverage. The individual views regarding the Euro are, however, best explained by general attitudes towards European integration.     

Punctuated Equilibrium in Comparative Perspective

We explore the impact of institutional design on the distribution of changes in outputs of governmental processes in the United States, Belgium, and Denmark. Using comprehensive indicators of governmental actions over several decades, we show that in each country the level of institutional friction increases as we look at processes further along the policy cycle. Assessing multiple policymaking institutions in each country allows us to control for the nature of the policy inputs, as all the institutions we consider cover the full range of social and political issues in the country. We find that all distributions exhibit high kurtosis values, significantly higher than the Normal distribution which would be expected if changes in government attention and activities were proportionate to changes in social inputs. Further, in each country, those institutions that impose higher decision-making costs show progressively higher kurtosis values. The results suggest general patterns that we hypothesize to be related to boundedly rational behavior in a complex social environment.     

Extending a Life with Meaning

This essay questions Callahan’s criticism of people’s aspiration to extend their life. It argues that ideas about life are subject to historical variations and the question at issue is whether society can give meaning to aging. It also questions the claim that the radical extension of human life will jeopardize the welfare of future generations. It suggests that the application of the precautionary principle to the question of aging avoid facing up to question how society should value the old.