The Constitution of Violence Through the Language of Law: Legal Hermenutics in Second‐Century Roman Egypt

Bryen, Ari Z. 2013. Violence in Roman Egypt: A Study in Legal Interpretation . Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pp. 376. $75.00 cloth; $75.00 eBook. This essay examines the linguistic anthropological themes emergent in Violence in Roman Egypt (2013). Viewing law as a discourse, it explores how language is constitutive of law and is the primary modality of acting upon, and enacting the world(s) that it shapes, giving meaning to the lives of people who engage each other in and through it. Violence petitions in second‐century Egypt are a fundamental mode of sense making and problem solving, calling on legal authorities to interpret claims of iniuria, or legal battery, into a language that they understand and remedy. In doing so, law changes the discourse of violence, specifically, and social life, more broadly.     

Pro- and anti-system behavior: a complementary approach to voice and silence in studies of political behavior

Theories of participation and non-participation are largely unable to capture and distinguish anti-system behavior, which ranges from deliberate silence to political violence. To better understand and measure these diverse forms of citizen participation, and to distinguish these from forms of alienation and marginalization, this article builds a new model of anti-system behavior in a way that facilitates the development of empirically observable variables and hypotheses. To do so, I draw upon sociological approaches to alienation – which examine intensities of rebellion and contestation – and combine them with the standard political scientific approach – which examines intensities of engagement based on resources. The problem, I argue, is that each approach only partially explains the motivations behind aberrant political behavior in modern democratic systems; they are in fact two sides of the same coin. I consider three cases of apparent silent citizenship: Muslims in Western Europe, Roma in Eastern Europe, and white working-class people in North America and Europe.     

Verifiability, Incomplete Contracts and Dispute Resolution

Recent literature on incomplete contracts attributes noncontractibility of certain contingencies to their unverifiability. This paper questions the underlying assumption of this theory and argues that the court (or arbitrator) need not observe relevant contingencies with the same degree of accuracy as the contracting parties in order to enforce a contingent contract. In a simple procurement model, it is shown that as long as the ruling of the court (arbitrator) is not arbitrary, the first-best outcome can be implemented under certain ideal conditions by a contingent contract even if contingencies are costly to verify and verification is imperfect.     

Integrating information technology into public administration: Conceptual and practical considerations

Abstract: Both theorists and practitioners of public administration continue to debate the extent to which public institutions and organizations are likely to be transformed by the burgeoning adoption of information technology (it). Among those who believe that there will be a substantial, even a revolutionary, transformation, are scholars who emphasize the concept and impact of “informatization.” This article focuses on the implications for public administration of the public sector's increasing reliance on it. It is argued that it, like information itself, is a vital resource for achieving organizational objectives. The use of it by public organizations predisposes them to change in particular ways. As a resource, it has inherent predispositions (e.g., requiring certain skills and investments) that lead to changes in organizational structures and management (e.g., increased dependence on the private sector). Overcoming obstacles to the potentially powerful impact of these it predispositions will require both short‐term reforms (e.g., improved partnering skills) and longer‐term reforms (e.g., changes in organizational culture). Sommaire: Les théoriciens comme les praticiens de l'administration publique continuent à débattre sur la question de savoir dans quelle rnesure les établissements et organisrnes publics risquent d'être transformés par I'adoption croissante de la Technologie de I'inforrnation (ti). Parmi ceux qui croient que l'on va assister à une transformation importante, voire même révolutionnaire, il y a les chercheurs qui soulignent le concept et I'impact de « l'informatisation)>. Le présent article se concentre sur les répercussions que la dépendance croissante du secteur public à l'égard de la ti aura sur I'administration publique. On argumente que la ti, tout come I'information elle‐même, est une ressource essentielle pour atteindre les objectifs organisationnels. Le recours à la ti prédispose a des changement particuliers les organismes publics en question. En tant que ressource, la ti comporte des prédispositions inhérentes (p. ex., exigence de certaines compétences et certains investissements) qui conduisent à des changements dans les structures et la gestion organisationnelles (p. ex., une dépendance accrue à l'égard du secteur privé). Pour surmonter les obstacles à I'impact potentiellement puissant dc ces prédispositions de la ti, il faudra entreprendre des réformes à court terme (p. ex., améliorer les compétences en partenariat) et des réformes à long terme (p. ex., apporter des changements à la culture organisationnelle).     

Appropriators not Position Takers: The Distorting Effects of Electoral Incentives on Congressional Representation

Congressional districts create two levels of representation. Studies of representation focus on a disaggregated level: the electoral connection between representatives and constituents. But there is a collective level of representation—the result of aggregating across representatives. This article uses new measures of home styles to demonstrate that responsiveness to constituents can have negative consequences for collective representation. The electoral connection causes marginal representatives—legislators with districts composed of the other party's partisans—to emphasize appropriations in their home styles. But it causes aligned representatives—those with districts filled with copartisans—to build their home styles around position taking. Aggregated across representatives, this results in an artificial polarization in stated party positions: aligned representatives, who tend to be ideologically extreme, dominate policy debates. The logic and evidence in this article provide an explanation for the apparent rise in vitriolic debate, and the new measures facilitate a literature on home styles.