Jürgen Habermas's Theory of Cosmopolitanism

In this paper we explore the sustained and multifaceted attempt of Jürgen Habermas to reconstruct Kant's theory of cosmopolitan right for our own times. In a series of articles written in the post‐1989 period, Habermas has argued that the challenge posed both by the catastrophes of the twentieth century, and by social forces of globalization, has given new impetus to the idea of cosmopolitan justice that Kant first expressed. He recognizes that today we cannot simply repeat Kant's eighteenth‐century vision: that if we are to grapple with the complexities of present‐day problems, it is necessary to iron out certain inconsistencies in Kant's thinking, radicalize it where its break from the old order of nation‐states is incomplete, socialize it so as to draw out the connections between perpetual peace and social justice, and modernize it so as to comprehend the “differences both in global situation and conceptual framework that now separate us from him.” ¹ 1 Karl‐Otto Apel, “Kant's Toward Perpetual Peace as historical prognosis from the point of view of moral duty,” in James Bohman and Matthias Lutz‐Bachmann, eds., Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1997), 87. Jürgen Habermas, “Kant's Idea of Perpetual Peace, with the Benefit of Two Hundred Years Hindsight,” ibid., 113–53; and in Jürgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 165–202. His basic intuition, however, is that Kant's idea of cosmopolitan right is as relevant to our times as it was to Kant's own. If it was Kant's achievement to formulate the idea of cosmopolitanism in a modern philosophical form, Habermas takes up the challenge posed by Karl‐Otto Apel: to “think with Kant against Kant” in reconstructing this idea. What follows is a critical assessment of Habermas's response to this challenge. We focus here on the dilemmas he faces in grounding his normative commitment to cosmopolitan politics and in reconciling his cosmopolitanism with the national framework in which he developed his ideas of constitutional patriotism and deliberative democracy.     

Can child care assistance in welfare and employment programs support the employment of low‐income families?

Policymakers have long recognized child care as a key ingredient in low‐income parents' employability. We examine the effects of expansions in child care policies that were bundled with a mix of employment‐related policies and implemented as part of several random assignment studies on families' child care access and cost. Almost all of these welfare and employment programs increased employment and led to concomitant increases in the use of child care, especially paid child care. Only the programs that also expanded access or affordability of child care consistently increased the use of child care subsidies and reduced out‐of‐pocket costs to parents, allowing parents to purchase center‐based care. With one exception, such programs had small effects on employment‐related child care problems, suggesting that broader and more generous targeting of child care assistance may be important for achieving the goal of enhancing the stability of employment among low‐income families. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Regional integration and free-trade agreements in the Balkans: opportunities, obstacles and policy issues

The Balkan states are engaged in a complex and contradictory process of simultaneous regional integration and disintegration. The main instrument of regional integration has been a network of bilateral Free Trade Agreements which the Balkan countries have adopted under the guidance of the Stability Pact for South East Europe, and more recently the extension of the CEFTA free trade area to the region. The bilateral FTAs have been criticised for creating a ‘spaghetti bowl’ of differentiated trade relations, and creating risks of trade deflection and trade diversion. At the same time other arrangements, including the contractual relations of individual countries with the EU, cut across the region and fragment their mutual trade relations. Moreover, Croatia is likely to become an EU member within the next few years, at which point it will suspend its trade agreements with the non-member Balkan states. Therefore, soon after having established a new mechanism of integration, the region will once again be split apart, leaving a rump association of five or six poverty-stricken and politically unstable countries to pursue the vision of regional cooperation. This paper focuses on the prospects for regional integration among these remaining countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia. It explores the patterns of their mutual trade, and the opportunities and obstacles to increasing trade between them.     

西方CEO变更理论研究综述

任何一个公司在发展过程中都无法回避CEO的变更,这是公司最重要的战略决策之一,会对公司产生重大影响。正因为此,国外从上个世纪50年代就开始关注CEO变更问题,并形成一个专门化的研究领域。而这个领域的研究主要集中在三个方面,一是影响CEO变更的因素,二是CEO变更的继任机制,三是CEO变更的影响。     

Torres Strait Governance Structures and the Centenary of Australian Federation: A Missed Opportunity?

In his 1993 Boyer lecture, Getano Lui Jnr called for a change in the status of Torres Strait governance structures within the Australian federation, nominating the centenary of Federation on 1 January 2001 as a possible time for change. In 1996, the Commonwealth Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs initiated a parliamentary committee inquiry into greater autonomy for the people of the Torres Strait, which reported favourably in 1997. This report was not, however, greeted all that favourably by Torres Strait Islanders and it now seems unlikely that any significantly new governance structures for Torres Strait will be in place by the centenary of Federation. This paper attempts to explain why.     

Being a Good Senior Manager in Indigenous Community Governance: Working with Public Purpose and Private Benefit

This article seeks to understand the role of being a senior manager in Indigenous community governance, particularly though not exclusively in remote Aboriginal communities. It argues against the tendency of would‐be reformers of Indigenous community governance to focus on the competence and ethical qualities of those who occupy these roles and asks instead how can isolated managerialism in Indigenous community governance be overcome? The article begins with an overview of Ralph Folds' analysis of relations between Pintupi settlements and the larger Australian polity. While taking much from Folds' analysis, the article argues that ultimately he relies too heavily on the idea of antithetical worldviews across the settlement interface, on a problematic distinction between the official and private uses of publicly allocated resources and on too idealist a view of the Australian state. The article argues that the state's allocation of public resources inevitably involves a flow of private benefits and that public purposes and private benefits are not different phenomena, but rather different perspectives on state action. In contrast to Folds' idealism about the state, the article outlines a more thoroughly realist or materialist analysis of being a good senior manager in Indigenous community governance. In its concluding section, the article makes some suggestions for overcoming isolated managerialism in Indigenous community governance oganisations.     

Discount Latin American(ist) Intellectuals

Any settling of scores about the state and role of intellectuals in the west has to factor in the function of Latin American writers and the subset of pseudo-intellectuals called “Latin Americanists” of the second half of the twentieth century. The score is not even, since the university-bound misrepresent the actual development of intellectual thought in the southern hemisphere. The ideas and ubiquity of Mario Vargas Llosa are a necessary point of departure to calibrate properly the real importance of those views.