Between Integration and Freedom: School Segregation in Critical Perspective

In the Danish case, school segregation is recognized as a crisis of society, but it is also a crisis in the deeper sense that central actors disagree about in what sense it is a crisis. This raises the general questions: In what sense is school segregation a problem? What exactly is the crisis? Though these are partly normative questions, in Scandinavian contexts we can interpret them in light of the internal value‐commitments of society. Accepting this premise allows us to build on the empirically informed and philosophically rigorous work of Elizabeth Anderson according to which segregation should be viewed in light of the imperative of social integration. The demand for citizens’ equal participation in the main institutions of society is, according to her, already entailed immanently if a society is broadly commitment to democracy. Finding this immanent democratic approach to be insufficient considering widespread concerns with respecting parental freedom, this article discusses the more value‐integrative approach found in the political philosophical work of Hegel. According to this approach, our value‐commitments to both social integration and individual freedom can be integrated if central public institutions reflect a complex structure of recognition. On the basis of both of these two steps, the article suggests ways of understanding and tackling the crisis of school segregation in a Scandinavian setting.     

Intellectuals and the Politics of Style

This article addresses the characteristic styles and modes of self-presentation used by such Victorian public moralists and intellectuals as William Morris, John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold in both their writing and in their appearances as public lecturers: these were all interventions that were aimed at provoking an audience into intellectual consideration and self-reflection. The article examines how questions about the style of these figures have shaped the response to their work both at the time and in the years since their deaths; thinking about why, in Raymond Williams’s words, they have produced ‘mixed feelings of respect and suspicion’. It considers how their versions of the combination of intellectual and public life could be thought about in our post-financial crisis present, at a moment when late nineteenth century debates about ‘the elites and the masses’ are re-emerging, but where also the figure of the intellectual is taking on a renewed interest as one possible point of encounter between these forces.     

Not in isolation: the necessity of systemic heuristic devices in all development practice

This brief essay is a response to the article by Cooke (Cooke, 1997) in which he sets out the case for a clinical model of development practice. Developing the theme that any methodology taken in isolation will become self-fulfilling in its activity and taking up Cooke's ‘challenges for Development Studies’ whilst building off the criticism set out by Blunt (Blunt, 1997) and upon an earlier work, I set out the imperative for inclusive and systemic tools to aid our understanding of development contexts. Paradigms of scientific thought (the prisons of Blunt) and tyrannies of methodology are unwholesome and ultimately self-destructive devices. It is argued that only by adopting a holistic systems approach, including the wealth of potential tools for problems solving and developing our creative thinking in partnership, can development studies achieve real understanding of what must otherwise always be seen as remaining an unknowable and mysterious context. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Unpacking LogM: Toward a More General Theory of Party System Density

The standard model of political party system density combines two traditions to explain why some countries have more political parties than others, one tradition that emphasizes social cleavages and another that emphasizes electoral institutions, especially district magnitude. Despite its considerable success, there are several reasons to be less than fully satisfied with the standard model. We examine two of these problems associated with the scope of strategic voting and the functional form of the specification used to test the model. In doing so, we contrast the standard interpretation with an organizational ecology model that accounts for what the standard model did so well, but also accounts for important anomalies it ignores. We reexamine some of the key analyses that have been used to test the standard model to assess the severity of its limitations and the utility of the rival organizational ecology account.     

Optimization and its discontents in regulatory design: Bank regulation as an example

Economists and lawyers trained in economics tend to speak about regulation from a perspective organized around the basic norm of optimization. In contrast, an important managerial literature espouses a perspective organized around the basic norm of reliability. The perspectives are not logically inconsistent, but the economist's view sometimes leads in practice to a preoccupation with decisional simplicity and cost minimization at the expense of complex judgment and learning. Drawing on a literature often ignored by economists and lawyers, I elaborate the contrast between the optimization and reliability perspectives. I then show how the contrast illuminates current discussions of the reform of bank regulation.     

Methods and mindsets: Towards an understanding of the tyranny of methodology

This article attempts to examine familiar things through a different comparative focus. The results given here are preliminary and intended for comment and further development. The article takes as its basis the tradition which has arisen from the export of methods to developing countries in all manner of scientific and technical development projects. In the area of global development the traditions of technology transfer and development intervention by donor agencies and their related consultancy groups is well documented. Not so well covered in the literature is the related issue pertaining to the export of the methods which accompany and, to some extent, confer respectability upon all manner of technology, intervention and work towards nation building. The article is concerned with what might be called the ‘tyranny of methods’, which, it is argued, are applied often uncritically in development work. The mindsets which are invoked by traditional western scientific methods are reviewed using a psychological model. Following from this, the article investigates two areas of existing experience in the adoption of methods and then goes on to develop a critical perspective of one particular form of information systems development method, drawing on the experiences related. The article briefly investigates traditional, linear methods and makes links to the experiences of fanning systems research and rapid rural appraisal. Although no definitive conclusions are made, observations relating to an action plan are provided. The core of this relates to self-analysis and points to be conscious of in the export of any method.