scholarly journals Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald Kroeze ◽  
André Vitória ◽  
G. Geltner
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
The World ◽  
Good Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western European

The introduction to this volume focuses on historiography, methodology and conclusions. It explains how anticorruption has seldom been treated as a historical subject except as the occasional counterpart of corruption; instead, policy makers and social scientists have linked anticorruption and good government to the historical development of democracy and Weberian-style bureaucracy, all emblematic aspects of countries consistently ranked among the least corrupt in the world. This hypothesis has struck most historians involved in this volume as either circular or at least teleological. In response, they have sought to show that efforts to control corruption are not an exclusively Western-European or modern phenomenon; rather, the history of anticorruption is far more complex and diverse. In addition, they also outline how anticorruption is an inherently political issue, related to changing power relations and acute political crises, and that fighting corruption is historically difficult to evaluate in terms of success or failure.

scholarly journals "Introduction: Debating Corruption and Anticorruption in History, "in Anticorruption in History: Antiquity to the Modern Era (Oxford University Press, 2017), 1-17

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
D.B.R. Kroeze ◽  
André Miguel de Cunha Vitória ◽  
Guy Geltner
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
The World ◽  
Good Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Era

The introduction to this volume focuses on historiography, methodology and conclusions. It explains how anticorruption has seldom been treated as a historical subject except as the occasional counterpart of corruption; instead, policy makers and social scientists have linked anticorruption and good government to the historical development of democracy and Weberian-style bureaucracy, all emblematic aspects of countries consistently ranked among the least corrupt in the world. This hypothesis has struck most historians involved in this volume as either circular or at least teleological. In response, they have sought to show that efforts to control corruption are not an exclusively Western-European or modern phenomenon; rather, the history of anticorruption is far more complex and diverse. In addition, they also outline how anticorruption is an inherently political issue, related to changing power relations and acute political crises, and that fighting corruption is historically difficult to evaluate in terms of success or failure.

scholarly journals "Tense encounters"

2021 ◽  
pp. 299-318
Author(s):  
Elisabeth Kirndörfer ◽  
Madlen Pilz
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western European

We discuss the 'postmigrant condition' of contemporary Western European societies at the example of women's initiatives which aim at promoting encounter between women with and without a history of forced migration. We analyse these initiatives in their potential to forge affective spaces of solidarity and empowerment while at the same time being embedded in hegemonic discursive dynamics of othering and differentiation. Against this background, we ask: Under which conditions can women's initiatives become sites of trust, comfort and solidarity and thus of micro-political struggle? Which paradoxical dynamics can practices of solidarity and empowerment engender in contexts of uneven power relations?

Some Evaluations

1970 ◽  
pp. 129-146
Author(s):  
Francis E. Reilly
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Theoretical Knowledge ◽  
Personal Attitude ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Personal Philosophy

This chapter evaluates two aspects of Peirce's thought: his Greek insistence on the primacy of theoretical knowledge, and his almost Teilhardian synthesis of evolutionary themes. It reflects the author's own personal attitude toward both of these topics in Peirce, which is one of endorsement, though some criticisms are also offered. Concerning the first aspect, Peirce was not only an outstanding philosopher but also a man well acquainted with the history of philosophy. His knowledge of history, going back to Plato, Aristotle, and other Greeks, contributed to the formation of his own personal philosophy. One obvious Greek attitude that he made his own was the dedication to theoretical knowledge. On the second topic, the chapter argues that Peirce understood evolution as one of the chief characteristics of the world. It is not restricted to the biological sphere, but extends to the whole cosmos and to the historical development of science. In proposing this synthetic, post-Darwinian view of evolution, Peirce was decades ahead of his time.

The Necessity of Historicism

1961 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 560-565 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glenn Tinder
Keyword(s):  
General View ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
End Of History ◽  
American Students ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Living Person

American students of society and politics for the most part view “historicism”—the ascription to history of an overall direction and goal—with attitudes ranging from skepticism to overt hostility. In the general view, no valid propositions can be framed concerning matters so shrouded in darkness as the course and the end of history. Indeed it may well be asked, when we use such terms, whether we are referring to realities or merely to inventions of the imagination. Historicist theories are also said to tend to undermine concern for the individual; the needs of the present, living person are likely to shrink into apparent insignificance before the imagined events of a future age. On the part of those who in recent years have seen the bloody trails left by pretended ministers of historical missions, such misgivings are understandable.Are social scientists and political thinkers at liberty, however, dogmatically to reject historicism? It is the purpose of this article to argue that they are not. For if history is without meaning, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that social and political affairs, which make up a large part of what we treat as history, are also without meaning. Why then should one study, or take part in, these affairs? What is at stake, in the last analysis, is our right—or duty—to regard the world we inhabit, not merely as alien material to be used or ignored as we please, but as a realm of being with which we are fundamentally united and in which, consequently, we are properly participants.

scholarly journals BETWEEN WORLD HISTORY AND STATE FORMATION: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON AFRICA'S CITIES

2011 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURENT FOURCHARD
Keyword(s):  
Urban Studies ◽  
World History ◽  
African Continent ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Urban Dynamics ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
City State

ABSTRACTThe dramatic urban change taking place on the African continent has led to a renewed and controversial interest in Africa's cities within several academic and expert circles. Attempts to align a growing but fragmented body of research on Africa's urban past with more general trends in urban studies have been few but have nevertheless opened up new analytical possibilities. This article argues that to move beyond the traps of localism and unhelpful categorizations that have dominated aspects of urban history and the urban studies literature of the continent, historians should explore African urban dynamics in relation to world history and the history of the state in order to contribute to larger debates between social scientists and urban theorists. By considering how global socio-historical processes articulate with the everyday lives of urban dwellers and how city-state relationships are structured by ambivalence, this article will illustrate how historians can participate in those debates in ways that demonstrate that history matters, but not in a linear way. These illustrations will also suggest why it is necessary for historians to contest interpretations of Africa's cities that construe them as ontologically different from other cities of the world.

Investor-State Arbitration: Proportionality's New Frontier

2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alec Stone Sweet
Keyword(s):  
World Trade ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Crucial Point ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Appellate Body ◽  
New Frontier ◽  
The World ◽  
New Institutions

The arbitral world is at a crucial point in its historical development, poised between two conflicting conceptions of its nature, purpose, and political legitimacy. Formally, the arbitrator is an agent of the contracting parties in dispute, a creature of a discrete contract gone wrong. Yet, increasingly, arbitrators are treated as agents of a larger global community, and arbitration houses concern themselves with the general and prospective impact of important awards. In this paper, I address these questions, first, from the standpoint of delegation theory. In Part I, I introduce the basic “Principal-Agent" framework [P-A] used by social scientists to explain why actors create new institutions, and then briefly discuss how P-A has been applied to the study of courts. Part II uses delegation theory to frame discussion of arbitration as a mode of governance for transnational business and investment. In Part III, I argue that the International Center for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) is presently in the throes of judicialization, indicators of which include the enhanced use of precedent-based argumentation and justification, the acceptance of third-party briefs, and a flirtation with proportionality balancing. Part IV focuses on the first wave of awards rendered by ICSID tribunals pursuant to Argentina's response to the crushing economic crisis of 2000-02, wherein proportionality emerged, adapted from the jurisprudence of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization.

scholarly journals The history of the Geophysical Service of Austria

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-19
Author(s):  
Wolfgang A. Lenhardt
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Geophysical Research ◽  
Applied Geophysics ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

Abstract. A brief summary will be given of the historical development of Geophysical Service of Austria, which comprises the national geomagnetic, gravimetric and seismological services as well as the “Applied Geophysics Section” located at the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) in Vienna in Austria. The paper presents the achievements, changes and challenges of the Department from its modest beginning in 1851 until 2020. Finally, a special emphasis is placed on the Conrad Observatory – one of the most comprehensive geophysical research observatories in the world.

scholarly journals The Language of Street Signs in Dualist Transylvania and the Banat

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-36
Author(s):  
Ágoston Berecz
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
Complex Power ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
History Of ◽  
Western Half

AbstractTwice in the history of late Habsburg Austria, local conflicts over the languages used on street signs spilled out into all-out political crises on the imperial level – first in 1892, when the Prague municipality’s decision to replace the city’s bilingual signs with Czech-only ones and to rename a multitude of streets after Czech national heroes sparked violent demonstrations across the Empire’s German-speaking cities. Then in 1911, a plan to display street names in three scripts in Sarajevo led to a tug of war between the Bosnian parliament and the imperial authorities. If there were no such high-profile symbolic fights over urban spaces in the contemporary Kingdom of Hungary, that was not because Magyarizing policies had successfully purged the linguistic cityscape, as the earlier literature on the era may lead one to believe. The picture that unfolds from the sources employed here is indeed diverse. But unlike in the western half of the Empire, city fathers were more interested in papering over rather than playing up national conflicts. The story of street signs in Dualist Transylvania and the Banat is one of resistance and consensus, of complex power relations and of subtle ways to signal them.

scholarly journals The effect of norm-based messages on reading and understanding COVID-19 pandemic response governmental rules

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ennio Bilancini ◽  
Leonardo Boncinelli ◽  
Valerio Capraro ◽  
Tatiana Celadin ◽  
Roberto Di Paolo
Keyword(s):  
Descriptive Norm ◽  
Injunctive Norm ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Personal Norm ◽  
Dependent Variables ◽  
The World ◽  
Pandemic Response ◽  
Level Of Understanding ◽  
The Right

The new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) threatens the lives of millions of people around the world, making it the largest health threat in recent times. Billions of people around the world are asked to adhere to strict shelter-in-place rules, finalised to slow down the spread of the virus. Appeals and messages are being used by leaders and policy-makers to promote pandemic response. Given the stakes at play, it is thus important for social scientists to explore which messages are most effective in promoting pandemic response. In fact, some papers in the last month have explored the effect of several messages on people’s intentions to engage in pandemic response behaviour. In this paper, we make two contributions. First, we explore the effect of messages on people’s actual engagement, and not on intentions. Specifically, our dependent variables are the level of understanding of official COVID-19 pandemic response governmental informative panels, measured through comprehension questions, and the time spent on reading these rules. Second, we test a novel set of appeals built through the theory of norms. One message targets the personal norm (what people think is the right thing to do), one targets the descriptive norm (what people think others are doing), and one targets the injunctive norm (what people think others approve or disapprove of). Our experiment is conducted online with a representative (with respect to gender, age, and location) sample of Italians. Norms are made salient using a flier. We find that norm-based fliers had no effect on comprehension and on time spent on the panels. These results suggest that norm-based interventions through fliers have very little impact on people’s reading and understanding of COVID-19 pandemic response governmental rules.

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