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A manufacturer of a product that transports, processes, and packages bulk materials with a pneumatic process sued a competing manufacturer that uses a screw process using the latter company's advertising, which compared and evaluated the two methods, and charged that these advertisements constituted a deceptive trade practice. The plaintiff claimed that in these advertisements the defendant not only made false, misleading, and disparaging comments but also failed to reveal the industry data, studies, statistics, and other information that might substantiate its claims. Syntax analysis of these advertisements revealed that in these advertisements the verb tenses indicated that the defendant did not claim that comparisons with other types of conveyors were based on studies or tests. Semantic analysis of the word “ratings” conveys that this word indicates a subjective estimate or comparison, one not requiring research or tests. It also showed that the terms used in the comparisons (best, good, fair, poor, worst) are used regularly to indicate attitudes, beliefs, or dislikes, as opposed to the numerical, statistical measures of qualities that are used in reporting research findings.

This chapter sets out the liberal ideals of justice and legitimacy that form the basis of the conception of upbringing defended in later chapters. It begins with a summary of Rawls’s conception of political morality, then discusses the different dimensions of liberal autonomy and summarizes Rawls’s case for anti-perfectionist justice. Section 3 considers certain objections to Rawls’s political liberalism and against Rawls, asserting the view that autonomy should be treated as valuable in non-political lives. Section 4 sets out a conception of advantage with which to judge the demands of justice, drawing on Rawls’s account of the interests of citizens and Dworkin’s hypothetical insurance scheme. Finally, the questions addressed in later chapters are clarified by reference to recent discussions of the issue of the site of political morality offered by G.A. Cohen and Andrew Williams.

Opens with a brief consideration of some key questions of comparative method when applied to democratizations that are understood as long‐term, dynamic, and open‐ended processes. It then considers two alternative strategies of comparison that may be particularly appropriate for democratization studies. These are broad comparisons across large regions (such as continents) on the one hand and ‘paired’ national comparisons on the other.

The study was designed to explore the impact of any country differences on the use of and impact of temporary employment contracts. In addition, data were collected from three broad sectors to represent different types of work. This chapter reports the effects of country and sector on the results. A first step was to agree a number of relevant dimensions on which to compare countries and a number of institutional and cultural factors were identified. However comparison across the six European countries and Israel revealed rather few differences of the sort that might be expected to have an impact on temporary employment. Despite this, there are large national differences in the use of temporary workers. The statistical analysis of our survey data reveals that the amount of variation in outcomes that can be explained by the country or sector level is small. It rarely exceeded ten per cent and was generally overwhelmed by the much greater influence of factors at the organizational and workplace levels.

This chapter compares the living standards between countries. Per capita comparisons and the estimation of international poverty thresholds are discussed in light of purchasing power parity and market or official exchange rates. The United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index is discussed.

This chapter reviews the results of the empirical chapters in the light of conceptual and theoretical discussions in earlier chapters. It argues that historically sensitive diachronic comparisons of policy programmes are particularly suited for a systematic empirical welfare state analyses. Reviewing factors which impinged on policy change, it argues for a multi-causal accounts of change taking account of institutional variation and diverse actor constellation across welfare state programmes. It concludes with an assessment of the EU on national policy making which has been fairly modest in the three domains covered, but it likely to gain relevance in all of them.

Research on the determinants of executive compensation has a very long tradition in a variety of academic fields. This chapter focuses on the key ideas that emerge from a review of this work, especially in the management literature. Executive pay is generally determined by economic factors, social factors, and political factors, each of which is examined in this chapter. Economic factors include size, performance, human capital, risk, and marginal product. Managerial discretion, discussed in Chapter 2, also plays a big role. Social factors tend to fall into three categories—institutional pressures, social comparison processes, and social capital—each of which suggests alternative predictors of executive compensation. Finally, political factors are very much about power. The chapter concludes with a short section on the compensation of general managers at a business-unit level.

Presents the results of the comparative analyses of absolute mobility and social fluidity in 11 European countries covering the period 1970 to 2000. Findings are presented separately for men and for women. We find a marked convergence between countries in their patterns and rates of absolute social mobility. There is also a widespread tendency for class inequalities in mobility chances to diminish over time, though there remain quite substantial variations in this respect between countries.

This chapter suggests general research needs and directions for research on women and American politics. The authors call upon researchers to think in more complicated ways about the category “women,” employ a more diverse range of research methods, expand existing conceptions of the “political,” conduct research that is relevant to activists as well as academics, and add a comparative perspective to their work.

Comparison between cultures throws light on each one. It helps to explain similarities and divergences. To do so effectively, one needs to compare all relevant genres and periods. There has been no systematic comparison between Western, Islamic, and Byzantine political thought, at least since Weber. Political thought here includes both philosophical argument and everyday beliefs. Each of these cultures was monotheistic and neoplatonic, but they applied these features differently.

Religion scholar Jonathan Z. Smith identifies five modes of social comparison: the ethnographic, encyclopedic, morphologic, evolutionary, and statistical. Each mode essentially shapes the perception of difference and similarity. This is particularly evident in the hierarchies and teleologies that form central parts of some modes, often valuing the members of one category over another because they are “higher” or “more advanced.” These modes bear examination because each form of social or cultural knowledge operative in British India–or anywhere–necessarily depends on at least one of these modes.

This chapter applies alternative research methods to test the effect of direct elections on presidential activism. First, the Slovakian case offers a setting of a natural experiment because it changed its presidential election method from indirect to direct contest in 1998. Contrary to the conventional argument, the change did not induce the expected increase in presidential activism. This chapter also compares three pairs of otherwise similar countries one of which uses direct while the other indirect elections in order to determine whether the former have more active presidents. No such effect is detected. Rather, these comparisons further confirm the theory that political opportunity framework determines levels of presidential activism. Finally, this chapter considers other potential influences on presidents' involvement in politics, such as their personalities, specific historical circumstances, and the country's level of economic and democratic development. These alternative explanations do not find support.

Provides a case study of the democratization of Chile viewed as an exemplary case, i.e. one that is not only of importance in itself, but is also instructional for comparativists with no special commitment to this particular instance. It draws from three main methods: theoretical reflection, structured comparison, and historical enquiry, all three of which can be combined. Among other specificities of the Chilean case, it highlights the redemocratization aspect of the Chilean experience, some peculiarities of the country's political class, and the Chilean view of the country's distinctive place in the world.

This chapter surveys the relevant bargaining theory, namely the Nash bargaining solution, the utilitarian bargaining solution, and the egalitarian bargaining solution. The importance of how interpersonal comparisons of utility are made is emphasized.

Sympathy refers to caring about another to some degree as one cares for oneself. Empathy refers to the capacity to put yourself in the position of others to see things from their point of view. Empathetic preferences compare being one person in one situation with being another person in another situation. John Harsanyi showed that mild assumptions imply that to have empathetic preferences is the same thing as having rates at which the utility units of different people are to be traded off against one another. A consequence is that empathetic preferences have the same structure as Hamilton's rule, and so may have originated from strangers adopted into a clan being treated as surrogate kinfolk. But since empathetic preferences are cultural artifacts, they are subject to cultural evolution. The idea of an empathy equilibrium is introduced to capture the medium-run effects of such cultural evolution on empathetic preferences.