Leif Lewin
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198277255
- eISBN:
- 9780191599774
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198277253.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics
Is it self‐interest or public interest that dominates in public life? Rational‐choice theory, political philosophy, and electoral research were all used to answer this question. Analysing existing ...
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Is it self‐interest or public interest that dominates in public life? Rational‐choice theory, political philosophy, and electoral research were all used to answer this question. Analysing existing literature, Professor Leif Lewin shows that predominant consensus emerged on this issue by the 1980s. This consensus states that people in politics are driven mostly by their self‐interest and not by common good and society values. Although Professor Lewin is not testing existing views that ‘egoism rules’ on deep theoretical grounds, he strongly argues that empirical facts do not support such views and thus opens a new chapter in the debate on individuals’ rationality.Combining research results and achievements of different research fields, mentioned above, the author adopts methodology never used before. Extensive literature review on studies of Western democracy provides a basis for analysis for many countries. Separate chapters of the book are devoted to the attitudes and actions of the electoral voters, politicians, and bureaucrats in power.This allows the author to make broad conclusions, which challenges predominant views. He concludes that in most cases people in politics are driven by broader social interests rather than their own short‐term interests.Less
Is it self‐interest or public interest that dominates in public life? Rational‐choice theory, political philosophy, and electoral research were all used to answer this question. Analysing existing literature, Professor Leif Lewin shows that predominant consensus emerged on this issue by the 1980s. This consensus states that people in politics are driven mostly by their self‐interest and not by common good and society values. Although Professor Lewin is not testing existing views that ‘egoism rules’ on deep theoretical grounds, he strongly argues that empirical facts do not support such views and thus opens a new chapter in the debate on individuals’ rationality.
Combining research results and achievements of different research fields, mentioned above, the author adopts methodology never used before. Extensive literature review on studies of Western democracy provides a basis for analysis for many countries. Separate chapters of the book are devoted to the attitudes and actions of the electoral voters, politicians, and bureaucrats in power.
This allows the author to make broad conclusions, which challenges predominant views. He concludes that in most cases people in politics are driven by broader social interests rather than their own short‐term interests.
Russell Hardin
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780198294900
- eISBN:
- 9780191596728
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0198294905.003.0009
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Economic Systems
Issues of social group autarky are addressed, with particular reference to their economic costs. The different sections of the chapter address the social interests of such groups, give some American ...
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Issues of social group autarky are addressed, with particular reference to their economic costs. The different sections of the chapter address the social interests of such groups, give some American examples (the Lubavitch Jewish community of Brooklyn, and American farmers—the need for which has declined as agricultural productivity has risen dramatically), individual versus group economic benefits, special status for social groups, conflict between special‐status social groups (exemplified by professional, religious, status, linguistic, and ethnic groups), and conflict within special‐status groups.Less
Issues of social group autarky are addressed, with particular reference to their economic costs. The different sections of the chapter address the social interests of such groups, give some American examples (the Lubavitch Jewish community of Brooklyn, and American farmers—the need for which has declined as agricultural productivity has risen dramatically), individual versus group economic benefits, special status for social groups, conflict between special‐status social groups (exemplified by professional, religious, status, linguistic, and ethnic groups), and conflict within special‐status groups.
Matthew Gerber
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199755370
- eISBN:
- 9780199932603
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199755370.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Family History
In the seventeenth century, jurists who wished to circumscribe rights traditionally enjoyed by extramarital offspring achieved this through litigation and case law jurisprudence. While the Edict on ...
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In the seventeenth century, jurists who wished to circumscribe rights traditionally enjoyed by extramarital offspring achieved this through litigation and case law jurisprudence. While the Edict on the Taille (1600) broke with tradition by excluding bastards from the nobility, it was preceded by sixteenth-century litigation over the issue. In 1656, the watershed case of Bourges v. Roussel determined that extramarital offspring could not receive as much property from their parents through gift or legacy as could a stranger. Several rulings also determined that legitimation by letters-patent of the king did not convey inheritance rights, even if acquired with the consent of the parents. Although reform-minded jurists successfully used judicial precedents to exclude extramarital offspring more fully from the family, they gradually abandoned the doctrine that bastardy was a form of criminal taint and personal degeneracy, replacing it with arguments for exclusion grounded on public decency and social interestLess
In the seventeenth century, jurists who wished to circumscribe rights traditionally enjoyed by extramarital offspring achieved this through litigation and case law jurisprudence. While the Edict on the Taille (1600) broke with tradition by excluding bastards from the nobility, it was preceded by sixteenth-century litigation over the issue. In 1656, the watershed case of Bourges v. Roussel determined that extramarital offspring could not receive as much property from their parents through gift or legacy as could a stranger. Several rulings also determined that legitimation by letters-patent of the king did not convey inheritance rights, even if acquired with the consent of the parents. Although reform-minded jurists successfully used judicial precedents to exclude extramarital offspring more fully from the family, they gradually abandoned the doctrine that bastardy was a form of criminal taint and personal degeneracy, replacing it with arguments for exclusion grounded on public decency and social interest
Kenneth Haynes
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199212125
- eISBN:
- 9780191718663
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199212125.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Literature in English is hardly ever entirely in English. Contact with other languages takes place, for example, whenever foreign languages are introduced, or if a native style is self-consciously ...
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Literature in English is hardly ever entirely in English. Contact with other languages takes place, for example, whenever foreign languages are introduced, or if a native style is self-consciously developed, or when aspects of English are remade in the image of another language. Since the Renaissance, Latin and Greek have been an important presence in British poetry and prose. This is partly because of the importance of the ideals and ideologies founded and elaborated on Roman and Greek models. Latin quotations and latinate English have always been ways to represent, scrutinise, or satirize the influential values associated with Rome. The importance of Latin and Greek is also due to the fact that they have helped to form and define a variety of British social groups. Lawyers, Catholics, and British gentlemen invested in Latin as one source of their distinction from non-professionals, from Protestants, and from the unleisured. British attitudes toward Greek and Latin have been highly charged because the animus that existed between groups has also been directed toward these languages themselves. This book is a study of literary uses of language contact, of English literature in conjunction with Latin and Greek. While the book's emphasis is literary, that is formal and verbal, its goal is to discover how social interests and cultural ideas are, and are not, mediated through language.Less
Literature in English is hardly ever entirely in English. Contact with other languages takes place, for example, whenever foreign languages are introduced, or if a native style is self-consciously developed, or when aspects of English are remade in the image of another language. Since the Renaissance, Latin and Greek have been an important presence in British poetry and prose. This is partly because of the importance of the ideals and ideologies founded and elaborated on Roman and Greek models. Latin quotations and latinate English have always been ways to represent, scrutinise, or satirize the influential values associated with Rome. The importance of Latin and Greek is also due to the fact that they have helped to form and define a variety of British social groups. Lawyers, Catholics, and British gentlemen invested in Latin as one source of their distinction from non-professionals, from Protestants, and from the unleisured. British attitudes toward Greek and Latin have been highly charged because the animus that existed between groups has also been directed toward these languages themselves. This book is a study of literary uses of language contact, of English literature in conjunction with Latin and Greek. While the book's emphasis is literary, that is formal and verbal, its goal is to discover how social interests and cultural ideas are, and are not, mediated through language.
Newton C. A. da Costa and Steven French
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195156515
- eISBN:
- 9780199785896
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019515651X.003.0007
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
This chapter analyzes the heuristics of scientific practice in terms of the objects of that practice and their structural qualities. The notion of partial isomorphism will be crucial to this picture ...
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This chapter analyzes the heuristics of scientific practice in terms of the objects of that practice and their structural qualities. The notion of partial isomorphism will be crucial to this picture of the development of new theories and models from the old. The “social interests” approach and the more recent “mangle” of scientific practice are considered and rejected. Both downplay the heuristic force of the structural elements of theories and models themselves.Less
This chapter analyzes the heuristics of scientific practice in terms of the objects of that practice and their structural qualities. The notion of partial isomorphism will be crucial to this picture of the development of new theories and models from the old. The “social interests” approach and the more recent “mangle” of scientific practice are considered and rejected. Both downplay the heuristic force of the structural elements of theories and models themselves.
Omri Moses
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780804789141
- eISBN:
- 9780804791236
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804789141.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Chapter Two examines James's late novels in order to rethink how characters formulate their interests or how they express themselves through their creative conceptions of personal desire. While ...
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Chapter Two examines James's late novels in order to rethink how characters formulate their interests or how they express themselves through their creative conceptions of personal desire. While critics often interpret his characters to be shrewd, calculating agents whose mutual entanglements only threaten their preconceived intentions and ambitions, the chapter draws attention to their affective adjustments and improvisations, which offer them ways of mending relationships and dampening threats of rancor and rivalry. Their vitalist way of suspending their interests and embracing situations that are provisional and incomplete enable them to resolve social conflict. It argues that James challenges the orthodoxy of liberal social thought on self-interest by refusing to regard interests as transparent givens that we can take for granted on the basis of people's identity-based positions. James's tentative, provisional characters also call into question the psychoanalytic premise that people have deep psychic structures or core properties.Less
Chapter Two examines James's late novels in order to rethink how characters formulate their interests or how they express themselves through their creative conceptions of personal desire. While critics often interpret his characters to be shrewd, calculating agents whose mutual entanglements only threaten their preconceived intentions and ambitions, the chapter draws attention to their affective adjustments and improvisations, which offer them ways of mending relationships and dampening threats of rancor and rivalry. Their vitalist way of suspending their interests and embracing situations that are provisional and incomplete enable them to resolve social conflict. It argues that James challenges the orthodoxy of liberal social thought on self-interest by refusing to regard interests as transparent givens that we can take for granted on the basis of people's identity-based positions. James's tentative, provisional characters also call into question the psychoanalytic premise that people have deep psychic structures or core properties.
Kenneth Dyson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780198714071
- eISBN:
- 9780191782558
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198714071.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, European Union
This chapter examines the role of theology in framing thinking about debt and as a tool in debt financing, with particular reference to usury, the ‘great chain of being’, moral paternalism, and ...
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This chapter examines the role of theology in framing thinking about debt and as a tool in debt financing, with particular reference to usury, the ‘great chain of being’, moral paternalism, and anti-Semitism. It explains why Jewish financiers became so significant, using the late Holy Roman Empire as a case study. Attention is paid to the circumvention of usury doctrine through subterfuge and hypocrisy; to Crusading and debt; and to the notion of the king’s two bodies. Also, the chapter draws an analytical distinction between three conceptions of sovereign creditworthiness, each grounded in the ideological commitments of different social interests. It documents the rise and fall of these different models of society: hierarchical, market, and communitarian. Most notably, the emergence of self-made wealth, rentiers, and associated new professional groups formed the basis for the primacy accorded to the creditor and for the rise of the statesman-banker.Less
This chapter examines the role of theology in framing thinking about debt and as a tool in debt financing, with particular reference to usury, the ‘great chain of being’, moral paternalism, and anti-Semitism. It explains why Jewish financiers became so significant, using the late Holy Roman Empire as a case study. Attention is paid to the circumvention of usury doctrine through subterfuge and hypocrisy; to Crusading and debt; and to the notion of the king’s two bodies. Also, the chapter draws an analytical distinction between three conceptions of sovereign creditworthiness, each grounded in the ideological commitments of different social interests. It documents the rise and fall of these different models of society: hierarchical, market, and communitarian. Most notably, the emergence of self-made wealth, rentiers, and associated new professional groups formed the basis for the primacy accorded to the creditor and for the rise of the statesman-banker.
Elizabeth A. Simpson, Annika Paukner, Stephen J. Suomi, and Pier F. Ferrari
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199686155
- eISBN:
- 9780191807589
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199686155.003.0016
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, Behavioral Neuroscience, Development
A developmental approach is critical for understanding both mirror neurons and the debates surrounding their properties, plasticity, function, and evolution. The presence of interindividual ...
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A developmental approach is critical for understanding both mirror neurons and the debates surrounding their properties, plasticity, function, and evolution. The presence of interindividual differences in early social competencies, such as neonatal imitation, is indicative of the complex nature of interactions among genetic, epigenetic, and nongenetic (environmental) factors in shaping action-perception brain networks. This chapter proposes that three aspects of early social development may explain variability in neonatal imitation: (1) individual differences in sensorimotor matching skills, underpinned by mirror neurons, functioning from birth and refined through postnatal experiences; (2) individual differences in social engagements, with some infants demonstrating stronger preferences for social interactions than others; and (3) more general temperamental differences, such as differences in extroversion or reactivity. The chapter presents findings and proposes future directions aimed at testing these possibilities by examining individual differences related to imitative skill.Less
A developmental approach is critical for understanding both mirror neurons and the debates surrounding their properties, plasticity, function, and evolution. The presence of interindividual differences in early social competencies, such as neonatal imitation, is indicative of the complex nature of interactions among genetic, epigenetic, and nongenetic (environmental) factors in shaping action-perception brain networks. This chapter proposes that three aspects of early social development may explain variability in neonatal imitation: (1) individual differences in sensorimotor matching skills, underpinned by mirror neurons, functioning from birth and refined through postnatal experiences; (2) individual differences in social engagements, with some infants demonstrating stronger preferences for social interactions than others; and (3) more general temperamental differences, such as differences in extroversion or reactivity. The chapter presents findings and proposes future directions aimed at testing these possibilities by examining individual differences related to imitative skill.
