How does Spinoza’s “Democracy” differ from that of Hobbes?

Field focuses on the role in political theory of the concept of potentia of the people—power understood as the informal, natural power of the people—as distinct from potestas understood as the formal arrangement of power under the constitution of a given state. In a close analysis of the arguments of Hobbes and Spinoza on popular power and sovereignty, the book critiques democratic interpretations of both theories. While correct about that, the book neglects fundamental dissimilarities in their views of popular power. Of profound importance is the meaning of the concept “multitude”: unlike Hobbes, Spinoza distinguishes between the great mass of individuals and “the wise,” seeing the “multitude” as encompassing most kings. Also, there is a great gulf between their understandings of the “common good.” For Spinoza, obedience to the sovereign, Hobbes’s desideratum, is only compatible with freedom in the context of a state directed to the common good.

Queering Articulation

This chapter uses key ideas from queer theory in order to argue that the queerness of Terence Davies’s The Long Day Closes (1992) lies less in its protagonist’s presumed homosexuality and more in its formal arrangement of quotations from disparate cultural texts. This bricolage exposes the operation of a culture committed to reproducing compulsory heterosexuality. Criticism, however, has concentrated on explaining the density and arbitrariness of cultural quotation through reference to Bud, insisting that the scraps of film and popular music that make up The Long Day Closes reflect the boy’s escape into self-expression, offering relief and release from the humdrummery and cruelties of life. Building on Derrida’s post-structuralist theories, this chapter argues that the mosaic of references does not provide a medium through which characters can speak, but rather speaks over characters and limits what is sayable. Far from nostalgic, this articulation-through-quotation constrains the possibilities of individual identity.

Germany Divides the USSR from Britain and France, 1939

This chapter describes Germany's successful attempt to stop the USSR from allying with Britain and France in 1939. Adolf Hitler's policy was informed by two beliefs about Soviet strategic weight. The first was that Soviet neutrality was necessary for victory in a war against Poland that included British and French intervention. Soviet neutrality would diminish the effects of the allied strategy of economic blockade and punishment. The second was that the shock of Moscow's neutralization would likely compel Britain and France to abandon their commitments to Poland and thus allow Germany to attack it isolated. As German leaders foresaw, despite the apparent long odds, their policy to accommodate the Soviet Union might work because they could extend strategic benefits to Moscow that the Allies' alliance plans could not. Other conditions, captured in the theory, strongly favored success. First, Germany's policy tried to induce a low degree of alignment change. The Soviet Union was uncommitted; the German goal was to solidify this in a formal arrangement. Second, Germany faced low alliance constraints at the time. Its closest (and only formal) military ally, Italy, was weak relative to Germany and had little direct influence or interests at stake in the elements of the bargain, and it favored compromise with USSR for the same general reasons Germany did.

Modal Mismatch and Accessibility Gap in Dhaka using a Time of Day Based Approach

Transport accessibility is an area of growing global attention among transportation planners and policymakers. This paper aims to portray spatiotemporal variations of car and public bus accessibility in the context of a city in a developing country: Dhaka, Bangladesh. The public bus system in Dhaka is characterized by a semi-formal arrangement which means there is a lack of available data, for example, General Transit Feed Specification, which poses great difficulties in the study of accessibility. Given these limitations, we have presented the concept of major destinations to analyze spatiotemporal accessibility based on the simple understanding that trip purposes, time of day, and trip destinations are interlinked in an urban area, and different locations would attract a different number of trips based on the time of day. Using a spatial autocorrelation approach, we identified the statistically significant destination clusters in Dhaka by peak and off-peak hours. We measured accessibility to the major destinations using a cumulative opportunity-based metric followed by estimation of the Modal Accessibility Gap (MAG). The findings indicated that, regardless of the trip origins and time of day, dependence on public transport puts the users in a substantially disadvantageous position. From the policy perspective, we have suggested the introduction of a formal public transport system in Dhaka, particularly targeting the traffic analysis zones with higher MAG. Such an approach would lead to better resource usage while providing enhanced public transport services for both peak and off-peak hours and limiting dependence on cars.

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ORGANIZATIONAL WORK IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Human efforts to work together systematically in the sense of deliberate, planned and directed towards a goal, called organization. Complexity in organizations is increasing day by day and requires a new dimension in modern management in dealing with changes and their consequences. The main task of management is to try to ensure and plan everything, especially related to the emergence of changes outside the organization which ultimately requires the holding of strategic changes in the organization so that it can survive that is equipped with strong human resources. The success of a job is very dependent on all parties involved in implementing the achievement of organizational goals, both in government and the private sector in carrying out their duties in accordance with the management functions carried out correctly. One of the management functions that must be considered is coordination, which is very instrumental in determining organizational steps to achieve its objectives. Coordination is one of the management functions in carrying out these various jobs precisely, quickly and effectively to reduce mistakes. Such coordination is the task of the administrator at the top level of the organization for the activities of his subordinates. Group activities carried out with the awareness of cooperation can be called organized activities which in modern society the activities will be carried out in a more formal arrangement. All of this is intended to achieve work at various levels in order to achieve organizational effectiveness. The effectiveness of the organization in question is the result of work that is right on target and is appropriate in accordance with predetermined planning or in accordance with the desired results at various levels of the organization in order to achieve the targets set together

Party Institutions and Authoritarian Power-Sharing: Evidence from China's Provincial Leader Appointment

Recent scholarship of comparative authoritarianism suggests that party institutions contribute to regime resilience by facilitating power-sharing among the party elites and preventing the paramount leaders’ abuse of power that undermines political stability. Existing studies tend to focus on the empirical association between party organizations and regime resilience, whereas the actual effects of institutions on elite behavior receive less attention. This paper conducts an in-depth study of China's appointment system to examine whether the CCP's power-sharing institutions indeed constrain the person- nel authority of the party's paramount leader. Using a unique dataset of provincial leadership appointment from 1992 to 2014, the empirical analysis reveals that the General Secretary enjoys what can be described as ‘constrained supremacy’ in the making of personnel decisions: the leader can boost his own position by providing favorable treatment to key supporters, but the formal arrangement of collective decision-making constrains rampant reward of patronage that would unsettle the balance among the regime's top elites. The findings of the paper lay bare the diffculty of capturing the inner workings of authoritarian politics with broad, cross-national indicators of regime type; they also illustrate the complicated interaction between formal institutions and informal, personal logic of exercising power in authoritarian regimes.

Music and Religion in American Public Life

Music in American public life is best understood not simply as the formal arrangement of religious texts in sound but as a fluid arena of exchange between performers, participants, and audiences. In these exchanges we note the transformation of religious traditions themselves, as they navigate contact with their others and the challenges of public life or secularism; we also see the emergence of American religious musics as alternate publics themselves, in which new understandings of authority, tradition, and identity are negotiated. What is more, in recent decades American genre music—from jazz to hip-hop—has become a steady arena in which new forms of religiosity are proposed and debated.

Cardinal Enea Silvio Piccolomini and the Development of Cardinal Protectors of Nations

This article deals with the development of Cardinal Protectors of Nations in the 15th century. It is based partly on texts examined by Josef Wodka (1938), partly on the correspondence of Cardinal Enea Silvio Piccolomini published in the Opera Omnia edition of 1571 and the correpondence of King Christian 1. with the Papal Court.The author’s interpretation of the development differs somewhat from Josef Wodka’s in that it recognizes the decisive role of the Council of Basle in creating a legal base for cardinals representing royal interests at the Apostolic Sea. The Council agreed with the stance of Pope Martin V that cardinals should act as impartial and independent advisors of popes, but – reaching back to Avignonese precedents – it accepted a form of representation termed “promotorship” rather than “protectorship” of royal affairs. It did not indicate any difference of content between the two concepts, but only addressed the modalities of partiality and payment.This interpretation is based on the Conciliar Decree itself and on the Cardinal’s correspondence which documents the practice at the Papal Court in the 1450’s, including a formal arrangement of promotorship between the Cardinal and the Emperor, and negotiations concerning such a promotorship between the Cardinal and the King of Denmark.

PG 1237, Royal Cemetery of Ur: Patterns in Death

This article discusses the identity of the people buried in the Great Death Pit PG 1237, a mass grave of the Royal Cemetery of Ur, and the ways they died and entered the shaft. Admittedly, the evidence required to positively solve the many taphonomic and osteological questions involved does not exist, because of the way the site was excavated and published in the early twentieth century. Nonetheless, the original excavators’ skill and unquestioned care in mapping and recording still prepares the ground for new alternative interpretations. As the ‘Rams Caught in a Thicket’ (two statuettes found in the mass grave) may have been the front parts of lyres, and almost all the dead might have entered the shaft impersonating musicians, singers and dancers, the paramount importance of music in the funerals of Sumerian elites is emphasized. New radiographic evidence recently suggested that some of the buried persons were killed violently, refuting the traditional theory of a voluntary mass suicide by poison. The bodies of the victims might have been formally prepared and serially brought to the pit in burial groups. Stratigraphy and spatial distribution reveal consistent depositional patterns dictated by specific rituals, as already proposed on the basis of more limited evidence by other authors. Formal arrangement and ritualism, in turn, support Woolley's identification of the graves as sacred constructions and thus reaffirms their royal character. The article ends by considering the historical meaning of the nature of these impressive funerals at the verge of the political unification of Mesopotamia by the house of Sargon.