Between ‘Objectivism’ and ‘Contextualism': the Normative Foundations of Social Philosophy

Abstract

One of the principal challenges facing contemporary social philosophy is how to find foundations that are normatively robust yet congruent with its self-understanding. Social philosophy is a critical project within modernity, an interpretative horizon that stresses the influences of history and context on knowledge and experience. However, if it is to engage in intercultural dialogue and normatively robust social critique, social philosophy requires non-arbitrary, universal normative standards. The task of normative foundations can thus be formulated in terms of negotiating the tension between ‘contextualism’ and ‘objectivism’. Six contemporary responses to this challenge are examined. Their respective limitations call for renewed reflection on justificatory strategies, in particular for a conception of ‘objectivity’ based in a normative theory of social learning processes.     

哈维的“时间—空间修复”理论刍议

资本主义在经历多次金融危机的情况下还能长久地发展下来,"时间—空间修复"战略的运用是原因之一。针对资本积累内部矛盾的危机倾向,"时间—空间修复"不断得以开启,在资本积累的历史中发挥着创造性破坏的作用。金融资本的发展将沿着克服矛盾和危机并产生新的矛盾和危机的辩证过程前进。一系列的"时间—空间修复"并未最终解决过度积累的问题,反而使得资本主义基本矛盾在新的基础上进一步加深。     

Popular perceptions of political regimes in East and Southeast Asia

Political regimes in East and Southeast Asia run the full spectrum from liberal democracy through various hybrid democratic-authoritarian types and on to full-blown authoritarianism and totalitarianism. While political scientists have invested much effort and ingenuity in creating typologies of regimes to better understand the empirical diversity of political structures and processes, much less attention has been paid to what the citizens think. How do people in East and Southeast Asian countries perceive their own institutions and performance of governance? This article uses public opinion data derived from the AsiaBarometer 2006 and 2007 Surveys of 12 East and Southeast Asian countries to map what citizens actually think about their structures, processes, and outcomes of governance and compare these with the regime classifications of political scientists. The results revealed universal commitment to elections but disillusionment with political practice, positive estimations of the institutions of governance in Southeast Asia but much less enthusiasm in East Asia, and a preference for moderate opinions. There is no clear overall correlation between regime type and popular perception.     

Lawmaking and News Making: Different Worlds after all? A Study on News Coverage of Legislative Processes in the Netherlands

Over the last decades the importance of the media for understanding the functioning of democracy in the contemporary world has become evident. Yet despite the developing body of knowledge on political communication and newsworthiness there is little research about why and how the media cover legislative processes in a European context. Therefore this study analyses media coverage of lawmaking in the Netherlands and investigates which characteristics of legislation influence the amount of news coverage. It shows that only one out of five laws is covered at all and that no more than one out of 10 laws receives substantial media attention. This leads to the question why some laws get extensive news attention, whereas most laws are completely ignored. Press coverage for the legislative process turns out to be both selective and predictable. Traditional news values such as political conflict and significance are good predictors of media coverage for lawmaking. In addition, laws are largely ignored when they are part of the budgetary cycle.     

Mind the gap: How party–voter incongruence fuels the entry and support of new parties

This article examines to what extent ideological incongruence (i.e., mismatch between policy positions of voters and parties) increases the entry of new parties in national parliamentary elections and their individual-level electoral support. Current empirical research on party entry and new party support either neglects the role of party–voter incongruence, or it only examines its effect on the entry and support of specific new parties or party families. This article fills this lacuna. Based on spatial theory, we hypothesise that parties are more likely to enter when ideological incongruence between voters and parties is higher (Study 1) and that voters are more likely to vote for new parties if these stand closer to them than established parties (Study 2). Together our two studies span 17 countries between 1996 and 2016. Time-series analyses support both hypotheses. This has important implications for spatial models of elections and empirical research on party entry and new party support.     

俄罗斯联邦空间立法概述

苏联第一颗人造卫星的成功发射,给传统的国际法带来挑战.为了适应对新的法律关系的调整,外层空间法作为国际公法的一个新的部门应运而生.作为苏联的最大继承国,俄罗斯的空间技术一直处于世界领先地位,其空间法律,在整体的全面性、逻辑的严密性、立法技术的科学性等方面都堪称典范.     

"Sticking One's Neck Out": Reducing Mistrust in Sri Lanka's Peace Negotiations

Lack of trust has been widely used as an explanation for the failure of peace negotiations. However, we know little about how mistrust can be reduced between belligerents involved in negotiating peace. Why are some confidence‐building strategies more successful than others? For theory‐building purposes, this article explores how a party can send conciliatory signals to the other party that increase trust by exposing itself to three different kinds of political risks. More specifically, it compares the variables that reduced mistrust — or failed to reduce mistrust — during two peace negotiations in Sri Lanka: in 1994–1995 and in 2002. Using a theoretical framework that combines social psychology and rational choice approaches, this article examines the communicative signaling process between the parties. In addition, by drawing out the implications from this argument, we offer some insight into why the peace process in Sri Lanka became politically stalemated in 2003. We also use our comparison of Sri Lanka's peace processes to develop general propositions about the dynamics that can reduce mistrust. The main proposition that remains to be tested empirically is whether obstacles to peace can be transformed into important catalysts for the reduction of mistrust.     

It's all relative: Spatial positioning of parties and ideological shifts

The usefulness of the general class of spatial econometric models, which relaxes the assumption that the observations are independent, has only recently been realised. One particularly fruitful application includes models of parties' ideological change as well as the electoral consequences of party competition. In these studies, scholars can explicitly model the spatial interconnectedness of political parties in theoretically pleasing ways, producing inferences that are consistent with formal models of party competition, but are beyond the grasp of traditional ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models. To illustrate these benefits, this article replicates Adams and Somer‐Topcu's 2009 study of parties' responses to ideological shifts by rival parties to show that appropriately modeling patterns of interconnectivity between parties via weights matrices provides more realistic inferences that are more consistent with formal models of party competition.     

Critical Observations on Neo-liberalism and India’s New Economic Policy

Abstract

Neo-liberalism is capitalism without leftist illusions (i.e. illusions that there can be such a thing as humane capitalism on a long-term basis). The article makes a series of critical comments on India’s neo-liberalism expressed in the form of the so-called New Economic Policy. It argues, New Economic Policy is more than a governmental policy. It is rather a policy of capital, mediated and implemented by the state. Neo-liberalism is a social-spatial project. Neo-liberalism in rural areas (agrarian neo-liberalism) is particularly ruthless. Neo-liberalism is implemented through, and entails, the transformation of space, and thus produces enormous spatial unevenness. Neo-liberalism is also a part of the imperialist project. Given New Economic Policy’s adverse impacts, it has inspired massive resistance from below. Interestingly, in spite of offering some opposition, the left has been, overall, a conduit through which New Economic Policy has worked. The article shows how a critical discussion on neo-liberalism has implications for understanding macro-structural changes in societies such as that of India, which have suffered not only from economic backwardness but also incomplete revolutions. A dialectical view of neo-liberalism and the New Economic Policy connects them both to the democratic and agrarian questions, the national question, and the question of socialism itself.