Power resource theory revisited: The perils and promises for understanding contemporary labour politics

While their power is declining, unions and workers remain prominent actors in society. Therefore, there is a need to bring power resource theory back to the analytical forefront in the study of contemporary labour politics and labour market sociology. It provides the analytical perspectives necessary for a comprehensive and historical understanding of labour markets and labour politics. However, this article argues that the original theory developed by Korpi needs to be reassessed and further developed. Revisiting the original theory and reviewing common criticism, the authors argue that power resource theory should pay closer attention to how different types of power resources are mobilised and used and how actors’ interests are shaped during that process. The article seeks to address these issues and thus move power resource theory forward and pave the way for future theorisation.

Offenders with a Mental Impairment Under a 'Fusion Law': Non-Discrimination, Treatment, Public Protection

A common criticism of a ‘fusion law’ - a generic law covering all instances where a person’s ability to make a treatment decision is impaired, regardless of the cause, and furthermore which only allows non-consensual treatment if it is in the person’s ‘best interests’ – is that it fails to deal adequately with the protection of the public. This paper examines the implications of a ‘fusion law’ where a person with an ‘impairment or disturbance of mental functioning’ has committed an offence or where the person has been found ‘unfit to plead’ or ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’. It is argued that within the parameters of a fusion law, unfair discrimination towards those with a mental impairment placed on treatment orders by a court - as exists presently in nearly all jurisdictions - can be avoided while at the same time providing satisfactory public protection. This can be achieved through hospital treatment, voluntary or involuntary depending on the person’s decision-making ability and best interests (or best interpretation of ‘will and preferences’), and a form of supervision order in the community that is supportively structured, but includes special conditions to ensure compliance.

The Green New Deal, Subsidiarity, and Local Action

A common criticism of the Green New Deal proposal to address climate change is that it would centralize too much power at the level of the federal government. However, the Green New Deal can avoid this by centering local action and decision-making in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity from Catholic social ethics. This principle holds that higher levels of society should not override the initiative of lower levels of society but should instead coordinate and support their work whenever possible. A focus on subsidiarity is already present in the framing of the Green New Deal proposal and provides a sound ethical foundation for its development and implementation.

Superdeterministic hidden-variables models I: non-equilibrium and signalling

This is the first of two papers that attempt to comprehensively analyse superdeterministic hidden-variables models of Bell correlations. We first give an overview of superdeterminism and discuss various criticisms of it raised in the literature. We argue that the most common criticism, the violation of ‘free-will’, is incorrect. We take up Bell’s intuitive criticism that these models are ‘conspiratorial’. To develop this further, we introduce non-equilibrium extensions of superdeterministic models. We show that the measurement statistics of these extended models depend on the physical system used to determine the measurement settings. This suggests a fine-tuning in order to eliminate this dependence from experimental observation. We also study the signalling properties of these extended models. We show that although they generally violate the formal no-signalling constraints, this violation cannot be equated to an actual signal. We therefore suggest that the so-called no-signalling constraints be more appropriately named the marginal-independence constraints. We discuss the mechanism by which marginal-independence is violated in superdeterministic models. Lastly, we consider a hypothetical scenario where two experimenters use the apparent-signalling of a superdeterministic model to communicate with each other. This scenario suggests another conspiratorial feature peculiar to superdeterminism. These suggestions are quantitatively developed in the second paper.

Beyond Onto-theology and Metaphysics: the Cases of Heidegger and Nietzsche

Two recent works will be considered that discuss Heidegger and Nietzsche in the context of the problem of overcoming metaphysics and the onto-theological tradition. A common criticism will be that these works in their attempt to retrieve a conception of religion, politics or faith beyond onto-theology and metaphysics tend to justify or idealize particular historically and culturally conditioned perspectives, which are not immune from further philosophical critique. Simon Oliai’s approach to countering the burgeoning fundamentalisms in our global age is ultimately not very convincing, representing as it does, a Western, liberal, Eurocentric worldview. The author’s use of Nietzsche or Heidegger for this purpose is also not very compelling. The remainder of this review essay appraises the volume edited by Cimino and van der Heiden, which attempts to rethink faith beyond onto-theology in several interesting ways. Although meant to be a comparative study, several contributions subscribe to a general Heideggerian (or Heidegger-inspired phenomenological-hermeneutical) theoretical framework, which itself is not rigorously scrutinized. A problematic implication is that Nietzsche’s own critical and constructive views of philosophy, his critique of religion and history, and his positive appraisal of faith and divinity are not seriously considered on their own terms: they are either mostly ignored, or they are selectively interpreted through a Heideggerian lens, with the result that this volume puts forward a mostly unfavorable view of Nietzsche. Some of the conceptual moves credited to Heidegger in the volume have their equivalents in Nietzsche’s philosophy, which a comparative and evaluative study such as this one must seriously take into account by resisting the uncritical acceptance of Heidegger’s own view of Nietzsche.

7. Homicide I

Each Concentrate revision guide is packed with essential information, key cases, revision tips, exam Q&As, and more. Concentrates show you what to expect in a law exam, what examiners are looking for, and how to achieve extra marks. This chapter discusses murder, arguably the most serious crime in English law. Murder is where D kills V, and D intends to kill or intends to cause grievous bodily harm (GBH). The most common criticism of the offence of murder is that the sentence is mandatory irrespective of whether the mens rea is the more serious form (intent to kill) or the less serious form (intent to cause GBH). There were three partial defences to murder under the Homicide Act 1957 (diminished responsibility, provocation, and suicide pact). There are three partial defences to murder under the Homicide Act 1957 as amended and the Coroners and Justice Act 2009; diminished responsibility, loss of self-control, and suicide pact. The chapter considers the first two in detail. These are partial defences because they result in a conviction for manslaughter rather than a full acquittal.

Analysis of the Implementation of the NRC with Respect to Statelessness in Assam

On 31st August 2019, the final version of the National Register of Citizens was published. It was meant to be a seamless solution to the so-called ‘immigration problem’ that the people of Assam have been facing for the last few decades. The demand for such a Register, therefore, dates back to the Assam Agitation. An undoubtedly sizable task, it has now drawn criticism on several grounds. The most common criticism being that it has successfully rendered 1.9 million people in Assam stateless. A stateless person is one who belongs to no particular ‘nation’ or ‘state’. This is an issue that requires urgent attention as it has resulted in the violation of human rights and deprivation of basic resources. This research paper attempts to examine whether the Register has successfully addressed the aforementioned problem. In order to do so, the researcher has examined the procedural aspects of drafting the Register and its subsequent implementation. Further, the paper explores the after effects of the implementation of such a Register, while attempting to arrive at solutions to resolve the various issues created via such an implementation.

A STUDY OF SUCCESS RATE OF BUTTERFLY TECHNIQUE

The use of Tympanoplasty as a remedy for minor perforations is a common trend these days. The technique is in use even from ancient time utilizing those day tools. Common criticism on this technique is that it bring disadvantages such as hospital stay, increased morbidity, and post-operative scar. Therefore, there was requirement to bring a more comprehensive technique. In this study, our objective is to assess the clinical and audiometric success rate of new tragal cartilage plug or butterfly technique tympanoplasty. The study is based on 30 patients who were in age category of 16 to 55 years of age. The results shows that out of 30 patients, 27 patients were based on graft taken up; while, the rest of the 3 patients showed residual perforation with an overall success rate of 90%. The anatomical success was assessed by otoscopy with graft well set in place. The functional success was analyzed by audiogram, which showed decrease in Air-Bone (A-B) gap in 25 patients (83.3%). Our conclusion is that the tympanoplasty method may be considered as an alternative treatment option for repair of tympanic membrane perforations.

What Is the Point of the Harshness Objection?

According to luck egalitarianism, it is unjust if some are worse off than others through no fault or choice of their own. The most common criticism of luck egalitarianism is the ‘harshness objection’, which states that luck egalitarianism allows for too harsh consequences, as it fails to provide justification for why those responsible for their bad fate can be entitled to society's assistance. It has largely gone unnoticed that the harshness objection is open to a number of very different interpretations. We present four different interpretations of the harshness objection in which the problem pertains to counterintuitive implications, badness of outcome, disproportionality, or inconsistency, respectively. We analyse and discuss appropriate luck egalitarian replies. Disentangling these different versions clarifies what is at the heart of this dispute and reveals the point of the harshness objection. We conclude that only the inconsistency version involves a durable problem for luck egalitarianism.

‘Nothing to do with the science’: How an elite sociotechnical imaginary cements policy resistance to public perspectives on science and technology through the machinery of government

That policymakers adopt technoscientific viewpoints and lack reflexivity is a common criticism of scientific decision-making, particularly in response to moves to democratize science. Drawing on interviews with UK-based national policymakers, I argue that an elite sociotechnical imaginary of ‘science to the rescue’ shapes how public perspectives are heard and distinguishes what is considered to be legitimate expertise. The machinery of policy-making has become shaped around this imaginary – particularly its focus on science as a problem-solver and on social and ethical issues as ‘nothing to do with the science’ – and this gives this viewpoint its power, persistence and endurance. With this imaginary at the heart of policy-making machinery, regardless of the perspectives of the policymakers, alternative views of science are either forced to take the form of the elite imaginary in order to be processed, or they simply cannot be accounted for within the policy-making processes. In this way, the elite sociotechnical imaginary (and technoscientific viewpoint) is enacted, but also elicited and perpetuated, without the need for policymakers to engage with or even be aware of the imaginary underpinning their actions.