Selling Oneself into Slavery: Mill and Paternalism

'Voluntarily acceding to slavery', Joel Feinberg has written, 'is too much for Mill to stomach', and so Mill espouses strong paternalism and contradicts his famous principle of individual sovereignty. Mill's critics have found incoherence where none exists, largely because they have failed to take seriously his own claim that the non- enforcement of slavery contracts is required by the principle of liberty. The refusal to enforce such contracts arises not from Mill's espousal of paternalism, but from the paradox of sovereignty. Reconstruction of Mill's solution to this paradox not only dispels the charge that he abandoned the sovereignty of the individual, but also contributes to the reinterpretation of his defence of freedom, as a result of which his entire doctrine of antipaternalism emerges as a coherent and defensible position.     

The efficiency of the demarking point of the femoral head as a sex determining parameter

The percentage of skeletal remains that can be sexed depends on the degree of completeness of the skeleton, the parameters that are used and the type of statistical analysis that is done. The objective of the present study was to assess the accuracy of the demarking point in sexing the femur of South African whites and blacks. One hundred pairs of femurs were randomly selected from the bone collections of each of the two racial groups. The bones were sexed by measuring the head diameters and comparing them with the corresponding demarking point values that had been previously determined. The sex that was so allocated to each bone was compared with its documented sex in the database in order to assess the accuracy of the method. The overall success rate of sex identification was 32% for both white and black populations, but the accuracy of sexing was 100%.     

The judiciary and post-election conflict resolution and democratic consolidation in Ghana’s Fourth Republic

ABSTRACT

In recent times most elections in Africa have been fraught with post-elections conflicts that have had dire consequences on citizens. Kenya, Ivory Coast and Zimbabwe are few of these cases. This makes post-election conflict resolution a very important aspect of the electoral process deserving enormous attention. However, extant literature has not accorded it the needed attention. It is as a result of this, that this study investigates the nature of post-election conflict resolution in Ghana’s Fourth Republic. The study, based on a qualitative case study approach, found among others that, the Courts have been instrumental in consolidating democracy in Ghana, and stakeholders are devotedly operating within the legal framework governing elections, despite logistical, law enforcement and justice delivery challenges. The study being conscious of the progress made over the years concludes that, where democratic institutions are consolidating, the use of unconventional means to resolve conflicts is usually not an option.     

Computing Nash Equilibria in Probabilistic, Multiparty Spatial Models with Nonpolicy Components

Although there exist extensive results concerning equilibriain spatial models of two-party elections with probabilisticvoting, we know far less about equilibria in multiparty elections—i.e.,under what conditions will equilibria exist, and what are thecharacteristics of equilibrium configurations? We derive conditionsthat guarantee the existence of a unique Nash equilibrium anddevelop an algorithm to compute that equilibrium inmultipartyelections with probabilistic voting, in which voters chooseaccording to the behaviorists' fully specified multivariatevote model. Previously, such computations could only be approximatedby laborious search methods. The algorithm, which assumes aconditional logit choice function, can be applied to spatialcompetition for a variety of party objectives including vote-maximizationand margin-maximization, and can also encompass alternativevoter policy metrics such as quadratic and linear loss functions.We show that our conditions for an equilibrium are plausiblegiven the empirically-estimated parameters that behavioristsreport for voting behavior in historical elections. We alsoshow that parties' equilibrium positions depend not only onthe distribution of voters' policy preferences but also on theirnonpolicy-related attributes such as partisanship and sociodemographicvariables. Empirical applications to data from a recent Frenchelection illustrate the use of the algorithm and suggest thata unique Nash equilibrium existed in that election.     

National and State Cultural Influences on Principals' Administration of Local Schools

The conceptual core of this essay focuses on the dual conceptof leadership as one who manages versus one who transforms values.The central research question is: Did a state-based versus national-basedprofessional culture of cognitions dominate a 1, 200 sampleof principals in six states, two each from Elazar's politicalcultures? The principals were asked attitudes about their tasks,and explanations of differences were sought through cultural,personal, and other factors by using graphic and regressiontechniques. There were wide differences among the sample states,and political culture had some minimal effect, all results thatweakened the concept of a national professional culture.