Occupation and Ideology: The Case of the Small Businessman

1961 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 103-111 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Rogers ◽  
Ivar Berg
Keyword(s):  
Economic System ◽  
Work Experience ◽  
Democratic Society ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Status ◽  
Preliminary Study

Political theorists since Aristotle have viewed the middle classes as a source of social stability. In recent times some writers have pointed to a decline in the opportunities for small businessmen, one of the core groups of the old middle classes. The argument has been that as opportunities decline, the tendency of small businessmen is to harbor fundamentalist wishes to return to a less complicated economic system and to experience a disenchantment with democratic institutions. In this paper we review and criticize several approaches to the study of the consequences of changes in the opportunities for small businessmen. We reconceptualize opportunity in such a way that satisfactions in some areas of the work experience of entrepreneurs are seen as compensating for dissatisfactions in others. The result is that some small businessmen accommodate to the status quo. Selected results of a preliminary study are reported. We then suggest some of the implications of this accommodation for the functioning of a democratic society.

1848 and Parliamentary Reform

1988 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 831-851 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roland Quinault
Keyword(s):  
Solid Support ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Middle Classes ◽  
State Security ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
Parliamentary Reform ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
History Books

1848 has gone down in history – or rather in history books – as the year when England was different. In that year a wave of revolution on the Continent overthrew constitutions, premiers and even a dynasty but in England, by contrast, the middle classes rallied round the government and helped it preserve the status quo. This interpretation of 1848 has long been the established orthodoxy amongst historians. Asa Briggs took this view thirty years ago and it has lately been endorsed by F. B. Smith and Henry Weisser. Most recently, John Saville, in his book on 1848, has concluded that events in England ‘demonstrated beyond question and doubt, the complete and solid support of the middling strata to the defence of existing institutions’. He claims that ‘the outstanding feature of 1848 was the mass response to the call for special constables to assist the professional forces of state security’ which reflected a closing of ranks among all property owners. Although some historians, notably David Goodway, have recently stressed the vitality of Chartism in 1848 they have not challenged the traditional view that the movement failed to win concessions from the establishment and soon declined. Thus 1848 in England is generally regarded as a terminal date: the last chapter in the history of Chartism as a major movement. Thereafter Britain experienced a period of conservatism – described by one historian as ‘the mid-Victorian calm’–which lasted until the death of Palmerston in 1865.

scholarly journals Accessing with Dinosaurs: Protecting Access to Government Information in the Cretaceous Period of Canadian Democracy

2016 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Kazmierski
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
Technological Innovations ◽  
Government Information ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
The Status ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Cretaceous Period

In many ways, our democratic institutions, processes, and frameworks resemble the dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period...They have ceased to evolve sufficiently and are being left behind in an environment where technological innovations and greater expectations for political consultation, participation, and accountability have combined to present new challenges to the legitimacy, and perhaps the viability, of the status quo. Indeed, without further evolution, one wonders how our democratic dinosaurs will be able to survive cataclysmic events on the horizon, including escalating terrorism events and their aftermath.

Blocking Coalitions and Fairness in Asset Markets and Asymmetric Information Economies

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anuj Bhowmik ◽  
Maria Gabriella Graziano
Keyword(s):  
Asymmetric Information ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Veto Power ◽  
Asset Markets ◽  
The Core ◽  
Information Models ◽  
The Status ◽  
Initial Improvement ◽  
Core Allocations ◽  
Asymmetric Information Economies

AbstractThis paper analyses two properties of the core in a two-period exchange economy under uncertainty: the veto power of arbitrary sized coalitions; and coalitional fairness of core allocations. We study these properties in relation to classical (static) and sequential (dynamic) core notions and apply our results to asset markets and asymmetric information models. We develop a formal setting where consumption sets have no lower bound and impose a series of general restrictions on the first period trades of each agent. All our results are applications of the same lemma about improvements to an allocation that is either non-core or non-coalitionally fair. Roughly speaking, the lemma states that if all the members of a coalition achieve a better allocation in some way (for instance, by blocking the status quo allocation or because they envy the net trade of other coalitions) then an alternative improvement can be obtained through a perturbation of the initial improvement.

On Social Stability and Social Change

2011 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 360-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aaron C. Kay ◽  
Justin Friesen
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Personal Control ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
System Justification ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
System Justification Theory ◽  
The Status ◽  
System Threat ◽  
Do So

More than a decade of research from the perspective of system-justification theory (Jost & Banaji, 1994) has demonstrated that people engage in motivated psychological processes that bolster and support the status quo. We propose that this motive is highly contextual: People do not justify their social systems at all times but are more likely to do so under certain circumstances. We describe four contexts in which people are prone to engage in system-justifying processes: (a) system threat, (b) system dependence, (c) system inescapability, and (d) low personal control. We describe how and why, in these contexts, people who wish to promote social change might expect resistance.

scholarly journals The Role of Anger in Motivating Leadership

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iona Heath ◽  
Anna Stavdal ◽  
Johann Agust Sigurdsson
Keyword(s):  
Structural Violence ◽  
Core Values ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Working Day

As doctors, we see every working day the pervasive effects of different forms of structural violence and discrimination that undermine the hopes and aspirations of those on the losing side. This leads to powerlessness, fear and anger. Anger is not only forward facing but also directed toward, systems, institutions, governments—rather than individuals. At its best it is a protest against the status quo. We point out that leadership is one of the core values of our professionalism. In the light of what we see and hear, we have a responsibility to use the anger that this engenders within us to speak truth to power: this speaking is leadership. Our message is: feel the fear and the anger, use it to change the world, and enfold leadership in hope and the pursuit of justice.

Democracy Assistance for Botswana: Maintaining the Status Quo in a Peripheral Capitalist Country

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-229
Author(s):  
Kebapetse Lotshwao ◽  
Robert Imre ◽  
Jim Jose
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Democratic Institutions ◽  
Capitalist Country ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Democracy Assistance ◽  
Multilateral Institutions ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Cost

Given that Botswana is considered a stable democracy, the need for democracy assistance does not at first glance seem necessary. Yet, democracy assistance is an important feature of Botswana’s political regime. The rationale for democracy assistance is couched in terms of strengthening the country’s democratic institutions, enhancing the state’s capacity, and bolstering Botswana’s civil society. However, contrary to these stated objectives, this article reveals that democracy assistance serves the agenda of Western donor countries and certain multilateral institutions—an agenda concerned with keeping Botswana politically stable and its state institutions efficient so that the country is attractive to investors. This agenda is pursued at the cost of not making certain long overdue political reforms.

Martyrdom, Self-Sacrifice, and Self-Immolation

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Tradition ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
World Religions ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The Core ◽  
Branch Davidians ◽  
The Status ◽  
Self Harm ◽  
Self Immolation

Suicide in the forms of martyrdom, self-sacrifice, and self-immolation is mired in controversies regarding religious roots, nomenclature, motives, and valor. Although the admiration ebbs and flows, at least some idealization of such elective deaths is discernible in every religious tradition treated in this volume. Traditional support ranges from tales of ascetic heroes who conquer personal passions to save others by dying, to tales of righteous warriors who suffer and die valiantly while challenging the status quo. While the lionization of elective death is a persistent theme in world religions, just as persistent are disputes about the core notions that justify it, such as altruism, heroism, and religion itself. This volume offers critical analyses by renowned scholars with the literary and historical tools to tackle the contested issue of religiously sanctioned suicide. Three chapters treat contemporary phenomena with disputed classical roots (chapters on Salafist Jihadists, on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam, and on the Branch Davidians and Heavens' Gate), while eleven focus on classical religious literatures which variously celebrate and disparage figures who invite self-harm to the point of corporeal death (chapters on Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Sikh, Tamil, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, and Daoist traditions, as well as on their diverse branches and special expressions). Overall, the volume offers astute scholarly insights which counter the axiom that religious traditions simply and always embrace life at any cost.

Perspectivas ecocríticas y tensiones narrativas en El padre de Blancanieves de Belén Gopegui

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 161-171
Author(s):  
Iulia Bobăilă ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Ecocritical Perspectives and Narrative Tensions in Belén Gopegui’s Snow White’s Father. The relationship between literature and ecology has come to the fore in the last few decades and has encompassed several dimensions approached within the evolving framework of ecocriticism. In this context, our purpose is twofold: to explore the possibilities of an ecocritical reading of Belén Gopegui’s novel Snow White’s Father and to highlight the way in which the characters’ uncomfortable questions, the fully-articulated answers and those still latent make up an intricate network of narrative tensions. At the core of the novel lies an all-pervading need of self-questioning and collective reassessment of values, interactions and ethical limits. Its characters are marked by doubt and hesitations regarding the reasons that make them strive for a change or defend the status quo they are fond of. Gopegui is able to perform a delicately-balanced walk on a tightrope between stern anti-capitalist principles and complex human motivations. Keywords: system, ideology, capitalism, ecocriticism, collective subject

Der arbeitsrechtliche Schutz der Crowdworker

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Walzer
Keyword(s):  
Legal Protection ◽  
Legal Framework ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Employment Law ◽  
Work Organisation ◽  
Commercial Law ◽  
The Core ◽  
General Terms ◽  
The Status ◽  
Core Elements

The work organisation model of crowdwork almost paradigmatically stands for "work 4.0". Networking and digitalisation accelerate the already-existing tendency towards an "escape from the restrictions of German employment law", away from hierarchy and back to the market. The thesis addresses the disruptive dimension of this development and asks for adequate protection for crowdworkers. The protection of crowdworkers is examined on the basis of the leading German crowdwork platforms. As a first step, the thesis provides an overview of the fundamentals, as well as the factual and legal framework of crowdwork. Subsequently, it assesses the general terms and conditions of the platforms examined on the basis of general civil and commercial law. The core elements of the thesis are the analysis of the status quo of employment law protection de lege lata, as well as the examination whether and to what extent the legal protection for this form of employment can and must be extended de lege ferenda.

Libertarian personal responsibility

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 621-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Preiss
Keyword(s):  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Core ◽  
Social Bases ◽  
The Status ◽  
Radical Revision ◽  
Political Value

While libertarians (by most accounts) affirm personal responsibility as a central moral and political value, libertarian theorists write relatively little about the theory and practice of this value. Focusing on the work of F. A. Hayek and David Schmidtz, this article identifies the core of a libertarian approach to personal responsibility and demonstrates the ways in which this approach entails a radical revision of the ethics and American politics of personal responsibility. Then, I highlight several central implications of this analysis in the American political and economic status quo. First, this analysis makes a mockery of so-called libertarian/conservative ‘fusionism’, such that libertarian personal responsibility cannot partner with meritocratic conservative thought to provide a plural grounding for rejecting progressive or redistributive economic policy. Next, preferred libertarian policies threaten the status, esteem and social bases of self-respect of citizens who are worse-off through little or no fault of their own. Finally, these policies undermine the ethics of personal responsibility that Americans from across the ideological spectrum value and many conservatives and libertarians celebrate. In the American status quo, those who value personal responsibility must reserve a central place for policies that mitigate opportunity and distributive inequalities.

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