Rousseau's Politic Argument in the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts

Rousseau's arguments often turn on a correct understanding of the relationship between cause and effect. We argue that the principal cause-effect argument of the Discourse is actually the opposite of the one Rousseau appears to posit in his work. Whereas he initially seems to argue that the sciences and arts corrupt morals, his ultimate argument is that the corruption of morals is the cause of the advancement of the sciences and arts and of their corrupting effects. Behind both moral corruption and the advancement of the sciences and arts lies a more remote cause: human pride and the unequal social and political conditions that result from pride and then foster it. Rousseau takes advantage of this complex causal relationship by simultaneously presenting an initial causal argument that gives his essay its paradoxical character and obscuring the ultimate causal argument of the work because of its implications as a critique of political authority and inequality.     

“Racial Threat”, Partisan Climate, and Direct Democracy: Contextual Effects in Three California Initiatives

Does context—racial, economic, fiscal, and political—affect whites’ votes on racially-related ballot propositions? We examine non-Hispanic whites’ voting behavior on three California ballot initiatives: Propositions 187, 209, and 227. Unlike previous analyses that lacked individual-level data and were therefore limited to ecological inference, we combine individual-level data from exit polls with county-level contextual variables in a hierarchical linear model. Racial/ethnic context affected whites’ votes only on Proposition 187, economic context had no influence on vote choice, and the effect of fiscal context was limited to Proposition 227. However, across the propositions, whites’ decisions were shaped by their political context. Thus, we do not find support for the “racial threat” hypothesis across all racially-charged issues.     

In the Aftermath of the Storm: US Foreign Policy in the Wake of 9/11 and its Implications for the Asia-Pacific region

In the following article, Kurt M. Campbell, senior vice-president and director of the International Security Program (ISP) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, DC., and Yuki Tatsumi, ISP research associate at CSIS, explore the changes that have taken place in US foreign policy since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and how such changes might be reflected on its policy toward the Asia-Pacific region. They point out that the US will shift its focus to security at home and war on terrorism abroad. In the short-term, US focus will deviate from Northeast Asia to Southeast, Central and South Asia, but as the region will continue to be strategically important, the US will remain engaged in the region. It is up to the countries in the Asia-Pacific to ensure that the US engagement in their region is not dominated by unilateralism and excessive preoccupation with the war against terrorism.     

Familial correlates of identity formation in late adolescence: A study of the predictive utility of connectedness and individuality in family relations

Past investigations have documented that late adolescence is associated with developmental changes in identity formation resulting in individual differences in identity statuses. Particular attention has been given to the identification and study of diffusion, foreclosure, moratorium, and identity achievement statuses. Drawing from the recent theoretical speculations by Cooper and Grotevant, an investigation was completed to assess the predictive utility of measures of family connectedness and individuality in differentiating among the four identity statuses. Data were obtained from male and female late adolescents and their mothers and fathers on perceptions of independence (individuality), communication, and emotional affection (connectedness). Differences among adolescents grouped into the four identity formation statuses were assessed using analysis of variance techniques comparing gender and identity status on measures of connectedness and individuality within a parent-adolescent relationship. Evidence consistent with the notion that a combination of emotional attachment to parents and the encouragement of independence striving by parents is associated with healthy identity development emerges from our data.This research was funded in part by the W144 Western Regional Research Project, Development of Social Competency in Children, with funding provided by the Science and Education Administration/Cooperative Research of the USDA and the Utah State Agricultural Experiment Station, Logan.Completed his doctoral work at Utah State University under the direction of the second and third authors. Interested in counseling and clinical psychology, therapy, and adolescent/child psychology.Interested in personality and social development during childhood and adolescence.Interested in clinical and counseling psychology, therapy, and psychological adjustment.     

A past: a revolution in public ethics

This piece is about those elements of British nineteenth-century deep culture which have to do with the production of subordination, compliance, and acquiescence. It is about perceptions of deviance. The purpose of this work is to provide some support for a suggestion about attribution of the replacement of the dominant British public ethic concerning treatment of deviance during the nineteenth century (1780-1914). Until then deviant persons had been, by and large, subject to policies and customs of exclusion and excision. These practices were replaced by new mechanisms of relegation and subordination, arrangements which lent themselves readily to institutionalisation and subsequent centralised control under a rubric of inclusion in humanity. The social, legal, and administrative mechanisms of exclusion increasingly came under attack for their inhumanity, and a climate of favour grew in Britain for a public ethic of inclusion. This principle, once it got hold, asserted into public life the beliefs which ended such practices of exclusion as slavery, public execution, transportation to the colonies, the inhuman treatment of lunatics and the dispatch of "savages". In order to support the suggestion, it will be necessary to establish that evangelicals placed themselves in the public domain as moral experts, that evangelicals expertly labelled deviant persons and groups, that evangelical publicities and structures energised in the main the revolution in the treatment of deviance without threat to power relations, and that the beginnings of national institutions of labelling are to be found in this revolution of ideas.     

Investing in international security: rising powers and organizational choices

How do rising powers choose to allocate their finite resources among the multiple global and regional security organizations? Building on the literatures on forum shopping and rising powers, we argue that the different organizational investment choices of rising powers are explained by varying regional ideational affinities. Organizational settings have ideational foundations that can look very different from region to region. We argue that regional ideational affinity leads rising powers to invest in regional rather than global organizations. However, if the ideational composition of the region is highly diverse, global organizations are a better vehicle to accommodate rising powers’ emergent ambitions. To demonstrate our argument, we examine the choices of Brazil and South Africa in terms of their material and ideational investments in regional and global organizations.     

Market Rules: The Incidental Relationship between Democratic Compatibility and International Commerce

Democracies trade more with other democracies than they trade with closed political systems, but why they do so is unclear. We present a "gravity equation" that disentangles foreign policy from country-specific influences on trade by adding explanatory variables to control for traits of both the mass public and the domestic political system. We apply the resulting model to a data set covering 50 years (1948–1997) and 72 countries. The estimated effect of joint democracy, which appears in the absence of the country-specific variables, drops out when these control variables are added to eliminate omitted variable bias. Democracies do not trade together any more than they would incidentally given the usual social, economic, and political influences on commercial activity, calling into question explanations for their mutual trade activity that rely on foreign-policy favoritism or institutional compatibility.     

The Boston schoolyard initiative: a public-private partnership for rebuilding urban play spaces

The Boston Schoolyard Initiative (BSI) is a policy effort to rebuild school yards in Boston through innovative citywide public-private partnerships. At the center of the initiative is a commitment to engage multiple stakeholders and utilize a bottom-up planning process to encourage meaningful change. Based on a case study of BSI, this article develops a framework to understand and analyze how different school and neighborhood sectors can partner to benefit neighborhood communities and utilize the built environment to encourage more active living and active learning. The article contributes to a literature that focuses on the effects of school yards and the role of physically active environments on learning. It expands on this literature by looking at the school-yard initiative as a way to build and expand relationships between teachers, parents, and the community at large. Finally, the study shows that even older schools in inner-city neighborhoods, previously considered blights, can be turned into community, educational, and political assets.