scholarly journals The microdynamics shaping the relationship between democracy and corruption

Author(s):  
Boris Podobnik ◽  
Marko Jusup ◽  
Dean Korošak ◽  
Petter Holme ◽  
Tomislav Lipić

Physics has a long tradition of laying rigorous quantitative foundations for social phenomena. Here, we up the ante for physics' forays into the territory of social sciences by (i) empirically documenting a tipping point in the relationship between democratic norms and corruption suppression, and then (ii) demonstrating how such a tipping point emerges from a micro-scale mechanistic model of spin dynamics in a complex network. Specifically, the tipping point in the relationship between democratic norms and corruption suppression is such that democratization has little effect on suppressing corruption below a critical threshold, but a large effect above the threshold. The micro-scale model of spin dynamics underpins this phenomenon by reinterpreting spins in terms of unbiased (i.e. altruistic) and biased (i.e. parochial) other-regarding behaviour, as well as the corresponding voting preferences. Under weak democratic norms, dense social connections of parochialists enable coercing enough opportunist voters to vote in favour of perpetuating parochial in-group bias. Society may, however, strengthen democratic norms in a rapid turn of events during which opportunists adopt altruism and vote to subdue bias. The emerging model outcome at the societal scale thus mirrors the data, implying that democracy either perpetuates or suppresses corruption depending on the prevailing democratic norms.

Author(s):  
David Konstan

This chapter examines the tension in classical thought between reciprocity and altruism as the two fundamental grounds of interpersonal relations within the city and, to a lesser extent, between citizens and foreigners. It summarizes the chapters that follow, and examines in particular the ideas of altruism and egoism and defends their application to ancient ethics. Various attempts to reconcile the two, especially in respect to Aristotle’s conception of virtue as other-regarding, are considered, and with the relationship to modern concepts of “egoism” and “altruism” is explored. The introduction concludes by noting that one of the premises of the book is that, in classical antiquity, love was deemed to play a larger role in the way people accounted for motivation in a number of domains, including friendship, loyalty, gratitude, grief, and civic harmony.


Author(s):  
Daniel Clarry

This chapter discusses the nature and operation of mandatory and default rules in fiduciary law, arguing that loyalty is a core element of every fiduciary legal institution. Loyalty is the hallmark of fiduciary law, as it requires persons in other-regarding positions of power to perform functions selflessly, rather than selfishly. However, there are many circumstances in which a person undertakes and exercises other-regarding powers, underscoring the fact that a broad range of persons may be the subject of fiduciary law. This chapter first provides an overview of key concepts and context, focusing on the distinction between mandatory rules and default rules as well as sources of such rules in fiduciary law. It then considers fiduciary loyalty, citing examples that illustrate how a baseline of fiduciary accountability is implied by the essential nature of fiduciary legal institutions, along with the mandatory or default quality of the duties of care and good faith. The main thesis of this chapter is that loyalty is a basic constituent element of all fiduciary legal institutions. Whether fiduciary principles are mandatory involves a consideration and determination of whether the relationship or institution is inherently fiduciary as matter of law and legal classification. It also highlights the modern trend toward codification and clear legislative demarcation of mandatory and default rules in fiduciary law.


2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 687-705 ◽  
Author(s):  
RACHAEL DOBSON

AbstractThis article argues that constructions of social phenomena in social policy and welfare scholarship think about the subjects and objects of welfare practice in essentialising ways, with negativistic effects for practitioners working in ‘regulatory’ contexts such as housing and homelessness practice. It builds into debates about power, agency, social policy and welfare by bringing psychosocial and feminist theorisations of relationality to practice research. It claims that relational approaches provide a starting point for the analysis of empirical practice data, by working through the relationship between the individual and the social via an ontological unpicking and revisioning of practitioners' social worlds.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Vanessia Abraham

Composed between the sixth and ninth centuries, penitentials were little books of penance that address a wide range of human fallibility. But they are far more than mere registers of sin and penance: rather, by revealing the multiple contexts in which their authors anticipated various sins, they reveal much about the ways those authors and, presumably, their audiences understood a variety of social phenomena. Offering new, more accurate translations of the penitentials than what has previously been available, this book delves into the potentialities addressed in these manuals for clues about less tangible aspects of early medieval history, including the innocence and vulnerability of young children and the relationship between speech and culpability; the links between puberty, autonomy, and moral accountability; early medieval efforts to regulate sexual relationships; and much more.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Chao ◽  
Geoffrey Fisher

Nonprofits regularly use conditional “thank you” gifts to entice prospective donors to give, yet experimental evidence suggests that their effects are mixed in practice. This paper uses multiple laboratory experiments to test when and why thank you gifts vary in effectiveness. First, we demonstrate that although gifts often increase donations to charities that donors did not rate highly, many of the same gifts had no effects or negative effects for charities that prospective donors already liked. We replicate these findings in a second experiment that uses a different range of charity and gift options as well as different measures of participant perceptions of a charity. We also find that making gifts optional, as is common in fundraising campaigns, does not eliminate these negative gift effects. In additional experiments, we directly test for donor motives using self-report and priming experiments. We find that thank you gifts increase (decrease) the weight that donors place on self-interested (prosocial) motives, leading to changes in donation patterns. Altogether, our results suggest that practitioners may find gifts more useful when appealing to donors not already familiar with or favorably inclined to their charity, such as during donor acquisition campaigns. They may be less useful when appealing to recent donors or others who already favor the charity, in part because the gift may activate mindsets or norms that emphasize self-interested motives instead of more prosocial, other-regarding motives. This paper was accepted by Yan Chen, decision analysis.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (11) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
Omar David Moreno Cárdenas ◽  
Andréa Máris Campos Guerra

Resumo: Este artigo explora consequências epistemológicas e políticas de se realizar pesquisa de fenômenos sociais com um olhar psicanalítico dentro da universidade, tanto para a psicanálise, o campo social e a própria universidade. No início estabelecemos a relação entre ciência e psicanálise, o que nos permite refletir sobre a participação da psicanálise na universidade e as tensões clássicas desse intercambio. Em seguida, apresentamos o impasse de se pesquisar fenômenos sociais com a psicanálise face à indissociabilidade de teoria, método e clínica. Nossa chave de leitura é a teoria dos discursos da psicanálise lacaniana, indicando o potencial político dessa modalidade de pesquisa ao causar subversões nas formas de poder e dominação discursiva na universidade, nas instituições de psicanálise e no campo social.Palavras-chave: Fenômenos sociais; Pesquisa psicanalítica; Teoria dos discursos; Psicanálise; Subversão. Psychoanalytic research on social phenomena in university: political potentiality within subversion of discoursesAbstract: This paper explores the epistemological and political consequences of conducting research on social phenomena from a psychoanalytic perspective within the university, for the psychoanalysis, the social field and the university. In the beginning, we established the relationship between science and psychoanalysis, which allows us to reflect on the psychoanalysis participation in the university and the classic tensions of this exchange. Next, we present the impasse of researching social phenomena from the psychoanalysis taking in account the indissociability between theory, method and clinic. Our theoretical perspective is the discourses theory of Lacanian psychoanalysis, indicating the political potential of this research modality by causing subversions in the forms of power and discursive domination in the university, in the institutions of psychoanalysis and in the social field.Keywords: Social phenomena; Psychoanalytical research; Discourses theory; Psychoanalysis; Subversion. 


Author(s):  
Henrik Halkier

The present paper explores some possible links between linguistics and social science, departing from an example of textual analysis originating in research in progress. Particular attention is paid to the characteristics of historical textual analysis and to the relationship between social phenomena and the concepts employed by social scientists. It is argued that the presence of common theoretical problems and shared methodologies provides an interesting starting point for future interdisciplinary research and for up-to-date teaching of post-graduate students.


2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Ashok Kumar Biswas ◽  
Edward P.A. Gebuis ◽  
Petrica Irimia

The parent-child relationship is a complex social issue. Several factors have much more impact on the issue besides a parent's perception. The participant was a retired, divorced man with two sons with his ex-wife. He felt satisfied with the relationship between himself and his children. Apart from conflicts and confusion, he successfully made it clear that for a busy person like him, he is doing his best to keep the relationship alive with his children. A relationship is typically subjective between two people and can not only be analysed by comparing it with others' examples. As the primary purpose of the qualitative research is to represent the essential qualities of one or more complex social phenomena. This qualitative interview successfully achieved qualitative information on the parent-child relationship. However, to understand better, bigger sample size (here N=1) would be required.


2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 444-457 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean Paul Lefebvre ◽  
Tobias Krettenauer

This meta-analysis examined the relationship between moral identity and moral emotions drawing on 57 independent studies. Moral identity was significantly associated with moral emotions, r = .32, p < .01, 95% confidence interval [CI: .27, .36]. Effect sizes were moderated by the type of moral emotion. Studies reporting other-regarding emotions (sympathy, empathy, and compassion) had the largest effect sizes ( r = .41), while negative other-evaluative emotions (moral anger, contempt, and disgust) had the smallest ( r = .16). Self-evaluative and other-evaluative positive emotions had intermediate effect sizes ( r values between .29 and .32). The type of emotion measure also was a significant moderator, with trait measures of emotion ( r = .38) correlating more strongly with moral identity than state measures ( r = .24). Effect sizes did not differ for the type of moral identity measure being used, publication status, or cultural origin of the study sample. The results of this meta-analysis demonstrate a robust empirical connection between moral identity and moral emotions, which confirms the multifaceted role of moral identity in moral functioning.


2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (OCE2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanis Gani ◽  
Peter Ho ◽  
Caroline Orfila

AbstractIntuitive eating is an intrinsic ability to moderate the amount and type of food, promoting a healthy diet and self-regulation of one's own weight. Different instruments (IES-H, IES-T, IES-2) have been developed to assess intuitive eating between different population groups from different countries. The construct validity and invariance of the 23-item Intuitive Eating Scale-2 (IES-2) has been widely validated by Confirmatory Factor Analysis and Exploratory Factor Analysis. However, these Classical Test Theory (CTT) methods have not always confirmed the same 4-factor structure.Rasch analysis, a Modern Test Theory method (MTT), has been used as an alternative approach to examine the psychometric properties of various health and medical instrument (HADS, KIDSCREEN-52, LANSS, MHRM). One significant difference between CTT and MT is the method of calculating a composite score. A CTT total sore is based on the summation of raw categorical scores, whereas these raw categorical scores are converted to interval-scaled measures into a Rasch composite score.Data was collected from 625 respondents was fitted to the Rasch Rating Scale Model. The data fitted the model adequately, as less than 5% and 1% of absolute standardised residuals were found to be ≥ 2 and ≥ 3, respectively. A Principle Component Analysis of Rasch residuals (PCAR) was used to determine the unidimensionality of the IES-2 and its subscales, after checking and adjusting for lack of item fit and proper rating scale functioning. PCAR indicated that all 23 items could not function as a single total unidimensional Rasch measure. However, the same item structure for the 4 subscales, originally proposed by Tylka and Kroon Van Diest, was confirmed by PCAR. The relationship between the respondents and the IES-2 items in each subscale could be explained using a Wright map, allowing both to be represented on the same logit scale.Statistical different levels of intuitive eating were determined for each subscale from a table representing the relationship between the lowest and highest possible raw scores and their Rasch measures. Wright maps showed the position of respondents between cut-off lines indicating different statistical levels along each unidimensional subscale of intuitive eating. The majority of respondents were classified into 2 out of 4 levels in the subscale Unconditional Permission to Eat, 3 out of 5 levels in Eating for Physical Rather Than Emotional Reasons, 3 out of 5 levels in Reliance on Internal Hunger and Satiety Cues and 2 out of 4 levels in Body-Food Choice Congruence.


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