Two Voices of the Spanish Crisis

boundary 2 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-95
Author(s):  
Bécquer Seguín
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
New Media ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Pedro Almodovar ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Voice

This essay examines intellectual authority and popular dissent in Spain following the Great Recession. It advances two contrasting theoretical accounts of the voice—the “acousmatic” and “constituent” voice—as ways for understanding how intellectuals have eluded responsibility for their role in Spain’s economic crisis and why collective attempts at holding them accountable have been limited. Through a comparative analysis, the essay traces the meanings and permutations of the acousmatic and constituent voice through four very different examples from historiography (Santos Juliá), film (Pedro Almodóvar), new media (Appgree), and literature (The Winterlings, by Cristina Sánchez-Andrade). The essay, in sum, offers new theoretical tools for identifying the disavowal of authority and showing the limits of certain digital forms of collective decision-making in Spain today.

Welfare Capitalism in Crisis: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Labour Market Policy Responses to the Great Recession

2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 659-686 ◽  
Author(s):  
FARAZ VAHID SHAHIDI
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Qualitative Comparative Analysis ◽  
Fiscal Crisis ◽  
Labour Market Policy ◽  
Market Policy ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Policy Responses

AbstractSocial policy responses to the recent economic crisis have varied considerably across advanced capitalist countries. This study aims to explain this cross-national diversity through a qualitative comparative analysis of labour market policy responses to the Great Recession across eighteen advanced welfare states. The results of the study suggest that theories of welfare state change that attribute theoretical centrality to political and institutional factors do not provide a compelling explanation for patterns of labour market reform observed since the onset of the economic crisis. Rather, they appear to be explained principally in terms of the variable fiscal capacity of the state. In particular, the study findings indicate that the presence of fiscal crisis has acted as a necessary (but insufficient) condition for the presence of recommodification, while the absence of fiscal crisis has acted as a sufficient (but unnecessary) condition for the absence of recommodification. These empirical developments suggest that there is a need for a scholarly return to the problematic relationship between capitalism and the welfare state.

Islands of Stability: Engaging Emergence from Cellular Automata to the Occupy Movement

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Pickering
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cellular Automata ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

"Instead of considering »being with« in terms of non-problematic, machine-like places, where reliable entities assemble in stable relationships, STS conjures up a world where the achievement of chancy stabilisations and synchronisations is local.We have to analyse how and where a certain regularity and predictability in the intersection of scientists and their instruments, say, or of human individuals and groups, is produced.The paper reviews models of emergence drawn from the history of cybernetics—the canonical »black box,« homeostats, and cellular automata—to enrich our imagination of the stabilisation process, and discusses the concept of »variety« as a way of clarifying its difficulty, with the antiuniversities of the 1960s and the Occupy movement as examples. Failures of »being with« are expectable. In conclusion, the paper reviews approaches to collective decision-making that reduce variety without imposing a neoliberal hierarchy. "

Corruption and Anticorruption in Democratic Athens

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Participatory Democracy ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Alexander The Great ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Individual Judgment ◽  
Collective Judgment ◽  
Hidden Knowledge

The chapter examines a major corruption scandal that involved the Athenian orator Demosthenes and an official of Alexander the Great. This episode reveals how tensions between individual and collective decision-making practices shaped Athenian understandings of corruption and anticorruption. The various and multiple anticorruption measures of Athens sought to bring ‘hidden’ knowledge into the open and thereby remove information from the realm of individual judgment, placing it instead into the realm of collective judgment. The Athenian experience therefore suggests that participatory democracy, and a civic culture that fosters political equality rather than reliance on individual expertise, provides a key bulwark against corruption.

Collective Decision-making: FIFA from the Perspective of Public Choice

2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Follert ◽  
Lukas Richau ◽  
Eike Emrich ◽  
Christian Pierdzioch
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Choice ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Public Confidence ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Public Choice Theory ◽  
World Cup ◽  
The World ◽  
Selection Of

AbstractVarious scandals have shaken public confidence in football's global governing body, Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA). It is evident that decision-making within such a collective provides incentives for corruption. We apply the Buchanan-Tullock model that is known from Public Choice theory to study collective decision-making within FIFA. On the basis of this theoretical model, we develop specific proposals that can contribute to combating corruption. Three core aspects are discussed: the selection of the World Cup host, transparency in the allocation of budgets, and clear guidelines for FIFA officials and bodies with regard to their rights and accountability. Our insights can contribute to a better understanding of collective decision making in heterogenous groups.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document