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Political Position (political + position)
Selected AbstractsGovernments and unpopular social policy reform: Biting the bullet or steering clear?EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2009BARBARA VIS This article shows that there exists substantial cross-cabinet variation in the degree to which governments take unpopular measures and argues that current studies cannot adequately explain this variation. Using insights from prospect theory, a psychological theory of choice under risk, this study hypothesises that governments only engage in unpopular reform if they face a deteriorating socio-economic situation, a falling political position, or both. If not, they shy away from the risk of reform. A fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA) of the social policy reform activities pursued by German, Dutch, Danish and British cabinets between 1979 and 2005 identifies a deteriorating socio-economic situation as necessary for unpopular reform. It is only sufficient for triggering reform, however, if the political position is also deteriorating and/or the cabinet is of rightist composition. This study's findings further the scholarly debate on the politics of welfare state reform by offering a micro-foundation that helps one to understand what induces political actors aspiring to be re-elected to engage in electorally risky unpopular reform. [source] The 1892 General Election and the Eclipse of the Liberal UnionistsPARLIAMENTARY HISTORY, Issue 3 2010IAN CAWOOD This article seeks to establish that the 1892 general election marked a major change in the relative positions of the parties in the Unionist alliance. Not only did it reveal the limitations of the Liberal Unionist Party's strategy and appeal in an age of increasingly organised, mass politics, but it also acted as a brake on the ambitions of the new leader of the Liberal Unionists in the house of commons, Joseph Chamberlain. It argues that the Liberal Unionist Party suffered a more severe setback in 1892 than has been recognized hitherto and that Chamberlain's attempts to revive his party both before and after the general election were now prescribed by the reality of the political position in which the party now found itself. Rather than regarding the fluid political circumstances of the 1890s as the outcome of an emerging struggle between increasingly polarised ideologies, it seeks to reinforce the significance of local political circumstances and the efficacy of party management in the growing dominance of Lord Salisbury and Arthur Balfour and the Conservative central organisers. [source] Rational Ignorance and Political Morality,PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2006Guido Pincione People frequently advance political proposals in the name of a goal while remaining apparently indifferent to the fact that those proposals, if implemented, would frustrate that goal. Theorists of "deliberative democracy" purport to avoid this difficulty by arguing that deliberation is primarily about moral not empirical issues. We reject this view (the moral turn) and propose a method (The Display Test) to check whether a political utterance is best explained by the rational ignorance hypothesis or by the moral turn: the speaker must be prepared to openly acknowledge the bad consequences of his political position. If he is, the position is genuinely moral; if he is not, the position evinces either rational ignorance or posturing. We introduce deontological notions to explain when the moral turn works and when it does not. We discuss and reject possible replies, in particular the view that a moral-political stance insensitive to consequences relies on a distribution of moral responsibility in evildoing. Finally, we show that even the most plausible candidates for the category of purely moral political proposals are best explained by the rational ignorance/posturing hypothesis, if only because enforcing morality gives rise to complex causal issues. [source] Structural Power and Public Policy: A Signaling Model of Business Lobbying in Democratic CapitalismPOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 1 2005Patrick Bernhagen This paper develops a signaling model of corporate lobbying in democratic capitalist societies to analyze the conditions that lead to a powerful political position of business. Proceeding from the traditional dichotomy of structural economic determinants versus business' political action, our model predicts the conditions under which elected political decisionmakers modify their policy pledges to accommodate business' political preferences, or override business' lobbying messages and honor their pledges. Our results show that the structural power of business over public policy is contingent on two variables: the size of reputation costs of business in relation to its material costs of lobbying; and the ratio of the policymaker's reputation constraints from policy commitments and campaign pledges to the electoral costs arising from adverse effects of policy. We evaluate our model using case studies of business lobbying on environmental and financial services regulation in Britain and Germany. [source] ,For Our Devotion and Pleasure': The Sexual Objects of Jean, Duc de BerryART HISTORY, Issue 2 2001Michael Camille Jean, Duc de Berry (1340,1416), often seen as the first great ,collector' in Western art, is also described by some historians as a ,homosexual'. This article examines the relationship between these two terms and the problematic historical evidence for the latter claim, exploring the duke's desire for things, images and bodies in less categorical terms. The main argument is that we can best understand Jean's sexual tastes from the artworks he commissioned and in which we know from contemporary accounts he took great personal delight. Reinterpretations are provided of some well-known images, such as the January page of the unfinished Trés Riches Heures (1416), where the patron is pictured at the centre of a ,homosocial' feast for the eyes. This manuscript, along with the marginal decoration of his Grandes Heures, suggests his enjoyment of beautiful youthful bodies in general and of androgyny in particular. However, this has to be viewed within the very different gender system of the late fourteenth century in which women, youths and children were literally objects of male control. Only in this sense can we begin to understand how the duke's love of things intersected with his political position and power more generally. Rather than see his collecting in all its polymorphous perversity as a symptom of personal trauma, I want to view it as a socially creative and recuperative act that was part of the performance of a ruthless man of power. [source] How to be Bicameral: Reading William Connolly's Pluralism with Whitehead and DeleuzeBRITISH JOURNAL OF POLITICS & INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, Issue 2 2008James Williams This article argues that the concept of bicameralism is central to William Connolly's pluralism. The concept is analysed in terms of its roots in political bicameralism, in the bicameral mind and in organic bicameralism in order to show its richness and its capacity to provide positive answers to a series of standard criticisms of pluralism. Two more persistent critical problems are presented in the problem of evil (can we afford to be open to other political positions if they are evil?) and in the problem of the generation of paradoxes (does pluralism depend on adopting perniciously paradoxical positions?). These questions are answered by drawing connections from Connolly's work to Alfred North Whitehead's definition of evil and to Gilles Deleuze's work on paradox. [source] | ||||||||||