Global perspectives on scientists’ roles in legislative policymaking

Policy Sciences - The question of how scientists should engage in policymaking has spurred both pragmatic and philosophical debates for decades. Scant empirical research addressing how experts...     

Citizenship in Palestine: a fractured geography

This article deals with the Israeli–Palestinian conflict through an approach based on citizenship. The article considers the whole historical Palestine (Israel and the so-called Occupied Territories) as a unique unit of analysis, and suggests that the dynamics of citizenship in this area should be analysed through the exam of two fundamental dimensions, relating to membership and territory. In general, the example of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict offers the chance to address the conventional meaning of concepts such as ‘state’, ‘democracy’ and ‘citizenship’, underlying the complex dynamics of inclusion/exclusion of individuals and groups within a collective decision-making process. As far as Palestine is concerned, the centre of gravity and the horizons of the conflict are described through the notion of ‘ruptured demos’, suggesting new directions for comparative research and drawing the attention to the progressive demise of the so-called ‘two-state’ solution.     

On the “Exporting” of Morality: Its Relation to Political Conservatism and Epistemic Motivation

A new phenomenon, moral exporting (ME), is introduced to capture active attempts to promote certain views of morality to others. It was hypothesized that political conservatives would be more likely to exhibit ME, due in part to strong epistemic concerns for certainty that may become attached to the moral domain. Related items from the 1988 and 2006 General Social Surveys were analyzed, and new scales were developed to better assess ME and specific moral-related epistemic concerns (moral absolutism). In a second study, these scales were administered to a large college student sample along with measures of political ideology and need for closure (NFC). Results generally showed that political conservatism was strongly related to the new ME factor. Further analysis determined that both moral absolutism (MA) and NFC accounted for significant portions of this relationship, but that the specific epistemic construct (MA) was a more proximal mediator. Discussion centers on further distinguishing ME and MA from related constructs, as well as on future research and applications.