Democracy has been a flawed hegemony since the fall of communism. Its flexibility, its commitment to equality of representation, and its recognition of the legitimacy of opposition politics are all positive features for political institutions. But democracy has many deficiencies: it is all too easily held hostage by powerful interests; it often fails to advance social justice; and it does not cope well with a number of features of the political landscape, such as political identities, boundary disputes, and environmental (...) class='Hi'>crises. Although democracy is valuable it fits uneasily with other political values and is in many respects less than equal to the demands it confronts. In this volume prominent political theorists and social scientists present original discussions of such central issues. Democracy's Values deals with the nature and value of democracy, particularly the tensions between it and such goods as justice, equality, efficiency, and freedom. (shrink)

The familiar problems of democratic capitalism have given way to a deep crisis challenging the basic forms of governance introduced around the late 18th century and then gradually expanded and developed until the late 20th century. Associative Democracy and the Crises of Representative Democracies argues that we are in urgent need of normative guidelines and a strong understanding of a broad range of institutional options and innovative experiments in associative democracy in order to address the structural problems that (...) existing institutional arrangements are confronted with whilst maintaining and strengthening democratic forms of government and governance. The argument is developed against the background of a thorough survey of empirical social scientific studies on the crises of capitalisms and representative democracies. This book focuses primarily on democratic alternatives, though it also works out principles and institutions of democratic socialism as alternatives to capitalism. After introducing the theoretical approach, the book illustrates the ways this framework of analysis can be of use, with particular focus on three issues that are highly topical when it comes to the challenges our institutions are confronted with: democratic governance in relation to ecological crises and uncertainty; the threats to democracy raised by the crisis of political parties and representative party-democracy, and the challenges related to privatization and marketization of public services, particularly in healthcare. The book concludes by exploring opportunities to democratize the economy, locating viable alternatives to capitalism in the tradition of democratic socialism. This urgent and thought-provoking book will be of great interest to academics and students in various disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, including political science, sociology, and economics. (shrink)

There was a significant monetary cost associated with establishing Catholicism in colonial Western Australia. The bishops and clergy funded the development of the local Catholic Church through donations from European benefactors, offerings from the congregation, and sponsorship from the Colonial and British Governments. As donations from Europe were variable and the resident Catholic population were largely poor, the government grants were the most reliable income for the Diocese of Perth. The government issued grants to support the establishment of congregations, (...) schools, and social welfare institutions. The development of congregations in new settlements was the Catholic Church's core ministry and the government issued stipends to Catholic chaplains to administer spiritual care to settlers and convicts in particular districts. Government grants were based on the census results and the Catholic Church was required to establish local church congregations and recruit clergy, and demonstrate an ability to contribute towards the maintenance of both. From 1852 to 1886, Bishops Joseph Serra, Rosendo Salvado and Martin Griver took charge of establishing congregations, managing clergy and lobbying the governors and other civil officials to fund colonial chaplaincies. The government also expected that the chaplains would promote moral and social order among the ex-convicts transported from Britain. (shrink)

"A deeply thoughtful articulation of an enduring and appealing ideal. It is an ideal with a resonance beyond the world of Catholic higher education for all in the academy who still respond to the beckoning vision of the ultimate unity of all human knowing and who view it, indeed, as a necessary inspiration if we are to succeed in according to our intellectual activities the sort of seriousness and moral significance they properly deserve." —Francis Oakley, President Emeritus, Williams College "There (...) is a real need, indeed an absolute necessity, for a Catholic university that is true to its religious values. By so being, it makes other, non-Catholic institutions that much better." —E. Gordon Gee, Chancellor, Vanderbilt University "Dean Roche has done a rare thing. He has articulated a sharp and clear Catholic theology of Christian higher education. What has been implicit in the practice of great Catholic universities has now been made explicit in this fine essay." —Robert Benne, author of _Quality with Soul: How Six Premier Colleges and Universities Keep Faith with Their Religious Traditions_ "Catholic identity will mean nothing in the world of higher education if it lacks a genuine _intellectual_ dimension. Mark Roche understands that fundamental fact, tackles the problem directly, and deals with it cogently." —Philip Gleason, author of _Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century_. (shrink)

During times of crisis, institutions tend to focus on maintaining or restoring public trust, as well as on measures to insulate themselves (and their leadership) from potential legal liability. This is because institutions reflexively turn to lawyers, risk managers, crisis consultants, and public relations firms that focus on what they euphemistically call the “optics.” In this essay, I highlight the vital importance of addressing underlying reasons for an institution's loss of public trust—in particular, the loss (or erosion) of its integrity (...) and trustworthiness. Loss of public trust generates one kind of crisis—which I term “opsis.” But there is another kind of institutional crisis that so often remains unrecognized. Just as medical sepsis in the human body is a critical condition that endangers life, the loss of an institution's integrity and trustworthiness constitutes a type of sepsis—ethical sepsis—that poses an existential threat to the institution if unaddressed. (shrink)

World politics, international relations, representative government. Author's works in demand.

This article compares the growth trajectories of Catholicism and Protestantism in modern China and tackles a puzzle: Why did Catholicism, which maintained a substantial numerical advantage in Chinese converts over Protestantism before 1949, come to lag so far behind Protestantism today? The article identifies three crucial differences in the institutional features of Catholicism and Protestantism, but shows that an institutional argument alone is insufficient to explain their reversal of fortune. It argues that the growth trajectories (...) of Catholicism and Protestantism changed less because their institutional features have experienced major changes, but more because their institutional features played out differently in the sociopolitical contexts of pre-1949 China, Maoist China, and post-Mao China. The article advances a new approach that combines the currently dominant institutional argument with a historical perspective that stresses the importance of political forces in order to understand the growth dynamics of religions. It concludes by making some preliminary observations on the generalized patterns of how institutional features of Catholicism and Protestantism play out under different kinds of political structures, shaping their waxing and waning in a global context. (shrink)

Leading international environmental philosophers further the debate about the environment and the metaphysical, ethical, social and international implications.

Calls to recognize a right of return are a recurring feature of refugee crises. Particularly when such crises become long-term, advocates of displaced people insist that they be allowed to return to their country of origin. I argue that this right is best understood as the right of refugees to return, not to a prior territory, but to a prior political status. This status is one that sees not just any state, but a refugee's state of origin, take (...) responsibility for safeguarding their welfare. This entitlement I characterize as an institutional right: a right that presupposes, and is a necessary feature of, a particular institution. The institution of which the right of return is an indispensable part is the international political system that sees authority exercised by sovereign states. The institutional argument for a right of refugee return presupposes two basic factual claims about states: they play a central role in safeguarding rights and they pursue exclusionary policies of border control. Importantly, the institutional view presupposes only that states do perform both functions, not that they are justified in doing so. On a purely normative level, the institutional account assumes little more than the moral equality of human beings. (shrink)

Zemyarska MS. Is it ethical to provide IVF add-ons when there is no evidence of a benefit if the patient requests it? J Med Ethics 2019;45:346–50. doi: 10.1136/medethics-2018-104983. The Acknowledgements section of ….

I argue that the same factors that motivated Catholicism to champion liberal democracy are the same that motivate 21st Century Islam to do the same. I defend this claim by linking political liberalism to democratic secularism. Distinguishing institutional, political, and epistemic dimensions of democratic secularism, I show that moderate forms of political and epistemic secularism are most conducive to fostering the kind of public reasoning essential to democratic legitimacy. This demonstration draws upon the ambivalent impact of Indonesia’s Islamic (...) parties in advancing universal social justice aims as against more sectarian policies. (shrink)

How can we, as individuals and as members of religious, educational, and/ or social institutions, more adequately respond to the crises of sexual abuse that have come to light in recent years? This paper will address this question through the philosophical lens of Paul Ricoeur. The argument proposed here is that through Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of testimony, responsibility, and recognition, we can begin to approach, address, and evaluate the crises of sexual abuse we face by grounding our ethical reflections, (...) and actions, within a more robust philosophical framework. Therefore, this paper will proceed as follows. The first three sections will investigate Ricoeur’s writings in order to glean from them three distinct hermeneutical approaches to three different sets of criteria at play in contemporary crises of sexual abuse: first, a hermeneutics of testimony, related to memory and history; second, a hermeneutics of responsibility, related to authority and justice; and, finally, a hermeneutics of recognition, related to forgiveness and forgetting. Insofar as each of these hermeneutical approaches offers us some insight into the problematics underlying crises of sexual abuse, the fourth section will offer an evaluation of these approaches by focusing on the specific case of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. The final section will consider possible avenues for resolution of these crises through Ricoeur’s notion of exceptional “states of peace,” at the heart of which lies mutual recognition. My hope is that this contribution provides new avenues for conversation and deliberation, as well as new resources and frameworks for articulating and implementing responsible action in the face of sexual abuse. (shrink)

A tendência de uma sociologia do catolicismo contemporâneo no país nestes últimos anos foi de reduzi-lo a uma instituição política e social movida por interesses de poder no campo religioso e no espaço público, dispensando a mediação de sua cosmologia como pano de fundo de sua atuação. A partir do livro pioneiro de Roberto Romano (1976) que resgata o papel da cosmologia católica na sua intervenção pública, e seguindo os estudos de Sanchis (1994) e Steil (1996) que chamam a atenção (...) para o seu perfil de “estrutura de longa duração” que se (re)combina com os estilos das épocas que atravessa, a intenção deste texto é detectar numa hermenêutica de aspectos cruciais da Teologia católica e em dimensões estruturais de sua configuração, condutas e comportamentos pelo qual o catolicismo se faz presente na modernidade. Neste particular, a cosmologia não vai engendrar um comportamento holista-tradicional mas vai expressar-se traduzida para os códigos contemporâneos seja do individualismo, da subjetividade, da cultura psi, da auto-ajuda e da expresividade emocional e corporal. Palavras chave : Catolicismo. Cosmologia. Modernidade.: The trend in contemporary sociology of Catholicism in Brazil has been to reduce Catholicism to a political and social institution moved by the interests of power in religious as well as public spheres, ignoring the intervening role of its cosmology as a background for its actions and postures. The article takes as a starting point Roberto Romano’s (1976) pioneer work in the field, where the author reinstates the role of catholic cosmology in processes of institutional public intervention. It has equally drawn inspiration from Sanchis (1994) and Steil’s (1996) studies stressing on Catholicism’s institutional profile as a ‘structure of long duration’ that interacts with the various ways of living of different times and spaces. Accordingly, the main goal of the article is to identify in a hermeneutics of crucial aspects of Catholic theology and in structural dimensions of its configuration, the attitudes and behaviors that inform Catholicism’s presence in modernity. In this way, cosmology doesn’t underpins any traditional holistic behavior but finds expression in translations of contemporary codes like those of individualism, subjectivity, psy culture, self-help and emotional and bodily expressions. Key-words : Catholicism. Cosmology. Modernity. (shrink)

Transnational higher education (TNHE) has been characterised as a crude form of market-driven internationalisation, often targeting immobile student populations in countries with high demand for international academic degrees. In response to recent scholarship on the role of higher education internationalisation in facilitating and producing diasporic networks, this study examines its inverse: how TNHE services existing diasporic communities in situ by mobilising institutions across borders rather than student bodies. It specifically examines these dynamics within the United Arab Emirates (UAE), simultaneously host (...) to one of the largest concentrations of TNHE globally and a five million-member diasporic community of long-term, yet impermanent residents from South Asia. Drawing on interviews with South Asian students in undergraduate degree programmes at three British international branch campuses (IBCs), it explores how students perceive their IBCs as strategic sources of valuable degree capitals for enhancing employment opportunities in the UAE and securing against precarity and uncertain futures as perpetually impermanent residents. The research implicates the role of TNHE in diaspora policymaking, asking how IBCs function as an extension of a limited social contract between a diasporic community and its ‘host’ state. (shrink)

Savulescu J. Is current practice around late termination of pregnancy eugenic and discriminatory? Maternal interests and abortion. J Med Ethics 2001;27:165–71. Lachlan de Crespigny contributed in a major way to the conceptualisation, design, administration of surveys, ….

The editio princeps of the first Medieval introduction to philosophy that makes use of the full range of Aristotle's writings.

v. 1. The philosophy of the Kabbalah.--v. 2. The philosophy of Spinoza.

يضم هذا الكتاب الأعمال الكاملة لندوة" نحو فلسفة إسلامية معاصرة"، والتي انعقدت لاستجلاء كيفية توظيف الفلسفة الإسلامية فكراً ونظريات ومبادئ ومقاصد في عملية إعادة تشكيل العقل المسلم، ومعالجة الأزمة الفكرية الراهنة لدى المسلمين، وإعادة بناء النسيج الثقافي الإسلامي- لعل هذه الأمة تستعد عافيتها وتسترد قدرتها- فإن هذه الأمة قد تخلفها وفي ابتلائها بالأزمة الفكرية لم يكن وحدها الخاسرة- لكن العالم قد خسر بانحطاطها الكثير.. فأمام علماء المسلمين كمية هائلة من تساؤلات العقل المسلم المعاصر، ومشكلات عويصة بعضها ذات جذور تاريخية ضاربة (...) في القدم تحتاج إلى دراسة وتحليل ولا بد من إعادة تقسيمها وطرحها.. وهذه البحوث والدراسات وإن صدرت متأخرة عن موعد انعقاد الندوة كل هذه الفترة، فإننا نأمل أن تكون قد أسهمت في إيجاد حل لجزء من هذه التساؤلات والمشكلات.. (shrink)

Dheensa S, Fenwick A, Lucassen A.‘Is this knowledge mine ….

"The Bush administration and Congress are in concert on the goal of developing a fleet of unmanned aircraft that can reduce both defense costs and aircrew losses in combat by taking on at least the most dangerous combat missions. Unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) will be neither inexpensive enough to be readily expendable nor-- at least in early development-- capable of performing every combat mission alongside or in lieu of manned sorties. Yet the tremendous potential of such systems is widely (...) recognized, and allies as well as potential adversaries are moving quickly to mount their own research and development programs. The United States is committed to fielding UCAV capabilities by 2010, principally for the missions of suppression of enemy air defense and deep strike, which are among the highest risk tasks for the Air Force and naval aviation."--Overview. (shrink)

The early twenty-first century will be remembered as a time of constant crisis. These crises have created repeated global states of emergency, revealing gaps, and inadequacies in social protection systems worldwide. Alongside these crises, and as a response to them, social protection has grown into a paradigm of global governance. This development is also noticeable in the practices of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. At the heart of all social protection policies is the protection of (...) vulnerable groups. Crises create new vulnerabilities and deteriorate the situation of those already vulnerable. The article explores the social protection endorsement of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund through the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. It shows how crises have fueled their social protection endorsement, making protection of vulnerable groups a central outspoken policy preference. The article asks whether the policies adopted in response to the pandemic confirm their social protection commitment and what challenges remain. (shrink)

First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

How has the international community responded to humanitarian crises after the end of the Cold War? While optimistic ideational perspectives on global governance stress the importance of humanitarian norms and argue that humanitarian crises have been increasingly addressed, more skeptical realist accounts point to material interests and maintain that these responses have remained highly selective. In empirical terms, however, we know very little about the actual extent of selectivity since, so far, the international community’s reaction to humanitarian (...) class='Hi'>crises has not been systematically examined. This article addresses this gap by empirically examining the extent and the nature of the selectivity of humanitarian crises. To do so, the most severe humanitarian crises in the post-Cold War era are identified and examined for whether and how the international community responded. This study considers different modes of crisis response (ranging from inaction to military intervention) and different actors (including states, international institutions, and nonstate actors), yielding a more precise picture of the alleged “selectivity gap” and a number of theoretical implications for contemporary global security governance. (shrink)

In this volume leading ethicists and theologians address conscience, a term with loaded meaning and controversy in the Catholic Church in recent decades around issues like political participation, human sexuality, war and institutional violence, and theological dissent. Many essays in this challenging and far-ranging volume focus on the tension between the primacy of conscience (codified at Vatican II) and the processes and cultures of Catholic institutions, including schools, hospitals, and medical research facilities.