This article provides a methodological tool for studying central civil service management structures (CCSMS) and their role in de-politicizing the civil service, thereby contributing to evidence-based civil service management. This tool can be used in comparative studies of CCSMS across, but also within countries, since civil service management functions are often split between several central organizations in one country. The comparative study of CCSMS is particularly useful for contemporary policy makers in EU (...) member states, who currently face the challenge of reforming civil service systems due to EU pressure. There is therefore an urgent need to establish which type of central structure would effectively support the EU’s favored values of professionalizing and de-politicizing the civil service. Stemming from theory on organizational autonomy, our typology focuses on two key dimensions of the CCSMS that support these values: decision-making autonomy over individual civil servants and structural accountability. (shrink)

This study investigated how the social identities assumed by individuals as part of their professional roles influence the nature and use of a range of rationalizations for their corruption or the corrupt acts of others. Thirty senior Indonesian public servants were interviewed about the causes and factors that perpetuated corruption during the Suharto era, and how they rationalized corrupt behavior within the role of being a civil servant. Findings revealed that corruption was routine and embedded in the daily activities (...) and administrative structures of Indonesian public servants. Rationalizing ideologies that supported corruption included a denial of responsibility, social weighting and an appeal to higher loyalties. Central to these rationalizations were explanations around the low levels of civil service salaries, poor accountability, and corrupt leadership at senior levels of the government. However, the expression of these rationalizations varied across three social or role identities of the Indonesian civil servant: the professional civil servant, the collegial civil servant, and the corrupt civil servant. The implications of these findings for interventions in organizations in developing countries are discussed. (shrink)

RésuméLa définition de la condition suspensive, telle qu’elle nous est donnée dans l’article 1181 du Code civil français, est aujourd’hui au centre de différents projets de réforme. Si aucun projet de réforme n’a réussi à emporter l’assentiment de tous les juristes, nombre d’entre eux semblent s’accorder sur la nécessité de réformer ce texte—inchangé depuis 1804. Pourquoi un tel consensus sur ce besoin de réécriture de la définition de la condition suspensive mène à une discussion doctrinale où deux positions principales (...) s’opposent? C’est à cette question que nous tâchons de répondre en traquant l’origine de cette scission dans la lettre même du texte dont nous analysons à la fois la structure logique et la signification des termes employés pour sa rédaction. Cette analyse nous permet de mettre en évidence la sémantique ambiguë du terme “incertain”, terme pour lequel nous proposons une analyse logique de sa signification que nous comparons ensuite à celle du terme “inconnu”. (shrink)

The U.S. Civil Rights Movement (CRM) is a relevant K-6 topic to learn foundational concepts of social justice and participatory citizenship. Year after year, though, U.S. elementary school lessons typically focus on a Martin Luther King, Jr.-Rosa Parks centered narrative, adapted for character education. This qualitative inquiry invited 66 pre-service teachers to explore social justice education embedded at the core of existing K-6 historical topics. Examining pre-service teachers' knowledge, beliefs, and what and how they plan to teach (...) their future students revealed dated educational philosophies. They held limited content knowledge and sociopolitical critical thinking needed to teach the CRM's civic significance and were conflicted by wanting to both empower students and withhold information. This study describes actions designed to model replicable, justice-oriented lessons and help K-6 pre-service teachers reflect on pedagogical choices and ideologies they adopt. It also calls attention to the challenges of K-6 teacher education and school reform when teachers lack content knowledge and political/cultural awareness. (shrink)

Health care reform that includes universal coverage could lower a major barrier to care for people of color and ethnic minorities—the inability to pay for care. But universal coverage alone, even with comparable fee-for-service payment or appropriately risk-adjusted capitated reimbursement, will not eradicate the racial and ethnic inequities in health care delivery. Restrictive admissions practices, geographic inaccessibility, culture, racial stereotypes, and the failure to employ minority health care professionals will still create barriers to minority health care. In addition (...) to universal financing, health care reform should include new civil rights legislation to address and reduce these noneconomic barriers to minority health care. (shrink)

This paper falls into three parts. In the first part I will briefly review the current process of reform that the United Kingdom National Health Service is undergoing. Two fundamental motivations for reform, the desire for increased efficiency and for an increased responsiveness to patients' needs and preferences will be discussed in greater detail. The second part attempts to provide a perspective on the moral debate concerning health care reform by introducing the distinction between ‘civil (...) association’ and ‘enterprise association’ as proposed by the political philosopher Michael Oakeshott. In the final part, this distinction will be used to analyze the moral and political constitution of the National Health Service, in order to establish the relevance and scope of concerns with efficiency and patient and public accountability. A framework within which the current reforms can be assessed is thereby outlined. Keywords: access to health care, civil association, enterprise association, freedom of choice, health care reform, United Kingdom National Health Service CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

With An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (1784) and What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? (1786), Kant presents the concept of public use of reason and defines its requirements, scope, and function. In outline, the public use of reason consists in sharing one’s thoughts with “the entire public of the world of readers” (8:37). As for its requirements, to the extent that someone communicates in their own person, i.e. not in the exercise of their function (...) as a public official, and bases their reasoning on universalizable grounds, their use of reason qualifies as public and shall be free from state censorship. Therefore, Kant’s concept of public use reason aims to establish a public debate that is free and includes in its scope, both as subjects and recipients, potentially all adult men. The ultimate function of the public use of reason is to foster moral progress and, with it, the reform of the political community according to the republican ideal. However, it is commonly held that Kant, with his 1798 essay The Conflict of the Faculties, deprives his notion of public use of reason of its progressive core and adjusts it to the absolutist conception of speech and civil service. Characterizations of state officials as “not free to make public use of their learning” (7:18) and “bound to uphold whatever […] the crown sanctions for them to expound publicly” (7:8), as well as the depiction of laypeople as “incompetent” (7:18) and “resigned to understanding nothing about [the sciences]” (7:34), have led influential interpreters to read Kant as redefining his notion of public use of reason by restricting its subjects to university professors and its recipients to government members (e.g. John Christian Laursen 1986, rpt. 1992 and 1996; Kevin Davis 1992; Steven Lestition 1993; Jay Franzel 2013). On my reading, with The Conflict of the Faculties, Kant does indeed redefine the concept of public use of reason making concessions to the absolutist notion of speech and civil service. However, a close reading of the text reveals that the public use of reason ends up being reaffirmed in its progressive core and extended in its scope. To substantiate my interpretation, I will systematically analyse and classify each of the 68 occurrences of the adjective ‘public’ in The Conflict of the Faculties and show how Kant employs the absolutist vocabulary to convey the progressive project of his previous writings. Accordingly, I argue that Kant holds on to the free public use of reason as a means to reform politics according to the republican ideal and that the employment of the absolutist vocabulary is motivated by a pragmatic attitude and a provocative stance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reforming the Law of Nature: The Secularization of Political Thought, 1532–1689 by Simon P. KennedyFrancis J. BeckwithKENNEDY, Simon P. Reforming the Law of Nature: The Secularization of Political Thought, 1532–1689. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. ix + 125 pp. Cloth, $110.00In this monograph Simon P. Kennedy offers an account of the desacralization of politics in the West by critically examining the works of five central figures in the (...) Protestant Reformed tradition: John Calvin (1509–64), Richard Hooker (1554–1600), Johannes Althusius (1557–1638), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), and John Locke (1632–1705). He dedicates a chapter to each thinker. The core of Kennedy's thesis is that desacralization is the result of a shift in the way modern thinkers like Hobbes and Locke reimagined the nature of natural law. The medieval tradition, having found its fullest expression in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas, saw natural law as one of four different types of law: eternal law (the eternal plan of creation in the mind of God), natural law (the rational creature's participation in the eternal law), human law (civil laws that are derived from the natural law), and divine law (the Old and New Testaments). According to Kennedy, the eventual desacralization of politics was set in motion with the development of arguments for natural rights that relied on a natural law that was in [End Page 553] practice severed from eternal law. But in that case, our political institutions—which are founded on the natural law—are purely human constructions and thus entirely secular.The usual story is that the Protestant Reformation constituted the decisive break with the medieval tradition and that it was the political theology of the reformers and their immediate successors that made the secularization of politics nearly inevitable. Kennedy wants to push back against that story. He argues, quite convincingly, that Calvin, Hooker, and Althusius, all Reformed Protestants, were in continuity with their medieval predecessors. Although Calvin is often depicted by his contemporary followers—especially among American Evangelicals—as hostile to the natural law tradition, Kennedy marshals an impressive case that shows that classical natural law seemed almost second nature to Calvin. My own sense is that the confusion over Calvin is the result of his contemporary readers expecting him to use the vocabulary of an Aquinas or a Duns Scotus. But not finding that vocabulary, they conclude that he rejected the natural law. Kennedy dispels that confusion by showing that Calvin in fact was fully committed to the four types of law absent the technical jargon of medieval scholasticism.Hooker and Althusius, writes Kennedy, continue in that tradition, though with a bit of a twist that some argue portends to Hobbes and Locke. Hooker and Althusius use the language of contract to account for the origin of certain aspects of political life. But Kennedy insists that it is a mistake to interpret them as proto-contractarians (as one finds in Hobbes and Locke), for they still held that the natural law participates in the eternal law, and that any agreements employed in the service of political life are under the authority of, and guided by, the natural law. One could argue, then, that these "contracts," like constitutions and treaties, are nonstatutory manifestations of the human law, which is perfectly consistent with classical natural law. So like Calvin before them, Hooker and Althusius were, as Kennedy puts it, theistic political naturalists.Hobbes and Locke are a different story. According to Kennedy, they both defended desacralized views of politics, with Hobbes being the more extreme of the two. Although I think he is correct in that assessment, I am not sure he locates the cause of the desacralization in the right place. For example, he says that because for Locke politics is artificial and not natural—that is, it is the result of a social contract to insulate members of society from the instability of a state of nature—politics is desacralized, even though God is the ultimate source of the natural law. But it is not clear how that in and of itself desacralizes politics. After all, Aquinas, the paradigm case of a classical natural lawyer, held... (shrink)

The diffusion of New Public Management reforms across the globe is based on the assumption of the universal applicability of managerialism, driven by instrumental rationality, individualism, independence and competition. The aim of this article is to challenge this conception and to fill a significant gap in the existing research by analysing potential problems arising from the implementation of the NPM philosophy in non-Western public organisations. In-depth interviews and a large-scale survey were conducted across six public organisations in Thailand based on (...) the Competing Values Framework (CVF). Thematic analysis of the data revealed that the traditional cultural model of the organisations studied was characterised by a combination of hierarchical and clan-based cultures, which remained largely unaltered despite massive-scale reform. The persistence of this hybrid cultural system appears to be rooted in the deep-seated Confucian ethical values governing Thai society, in which the organisations are embedded. Based on the research findings, the paper underlies the importance of a symbolist viewpoint of culture and argues that a rational perspective underpinning a functionalist cultural management must be challenged. (shrink)

Major reforms via the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012 and subsequent reforms have reduced the legal aid budget and the scope of eligibility in criminal as well as civil cases. According to Mansfield et al., the principles of justice that embody the legal aid provision has been neglected by governments for over a decade and as such; created a gap that emasculates the most vulnerable in society, such as recipients of legal aid. This study (...) employs an interview-based approach to investigate alternative perspectives in terms of the cuts and widespread impact on service providers in England and Wales, such as barristers, and solicitors. Detailed qualitative data were collected to provide insights into the diminishing legal aid scheme through the lived experiences of both civil and criminal legal aid providers. The study examines the concerns of service providers regarding their future as public defenders and the future of the judicial system post-LASPO 2012, focusing on safeguarding the rights of individuals facing litigation and ensuring that newly qualified lawyers are not deterred from public defence roles due to the long-term effects of ongoing legal aid cuts. (shrink)

Major reforms via the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders (LASPO) Act 2012 and subsequent reforms have reduced the legal aid budget and the scope of eligibility in criminal as well as civil cases. According to Mansfield et al., the principles of justice that embody the legal aid provision has been neglected by governments for over a decade and as such; created a gap that emasculates the most vulnerable in society, such as recipients of legal aid. This study (...) employs an interview-based approach to investigate alternative perspectives in terms of the cuts and widespread impact on service providers in England and Wales, such as barristers, and solicitors. Detailed qualitative data were collected to provide insights into the diminishing legal aid scheme through the lived experiences of both civil and criminal legal aid providers. The study examines the concerns of service providers regarding their future as public defenders and the future of the judicial system post-LASPO 2012, focusing on safeguarding the rights of individuals facing litigation and ensuring that newly qualified lawyers are not deterred from public defence roles due to the long-term effects of ongoing legal aid cuts. (shrink)

The polarization of the individual and the community that underlies much of the debate between individualists and communitarians is made possible in part by the literal vanishingof civil society—the domain whose middling terms mediate the stark opposition of state and private sectors and offer women and men a space for activity that is both voluntary and public. Modern democratic ideology and the reality of our political practices sometimesseem to yield only a choice between elephantine and paternalistic government or a (...) radically solipsistic and nearly anarchic private market sector—overnment gargantuanism or private greed. Americans do not much like either one. President Clinton's callfor national service draws us out of our selfishness without kindling any affection for government. Private markets service our avarice without causing us to like ourselves. The question of how America's decentralized and multi-vocal public can secure a coherentvoice in debates over public policy under the conditions precipitated by so hollow and disjunctive a dichotomy is perhaps the most important issue facing both the political theory and social science of democracy and the practice of democratic politics in America today. Two recent stories out of Washington suggest just how grave the situation has become. Health-care reform failed in a paroxysm of mutual recrimination highlighted by the successful campaign of the private sector against a presidential program that seemed to be widely misunderstood. The public at large simply went missing in the debates. (shrink)

Interpretive Political Science is the second of two volumes featuring a selection of key writings by R.A.W. Rhodes. Volume II looks forward and explores the 'interpretive turn' and its implications for the craft of political science, especially public administration, and draws together articles from 2005 onwards on the theme of 'the interpretive turn' in political science. Part I provides a summary statement of the interpretive approach, and Part II develops the theme of blurring genres and discusses a variety of research (...) methods common in the humanities, including: ethnographic fieldwork, life history, and focus groups. Part III demonstrates how the genres of thought and presentation found in the humanities can be used in political science. It presents four examples of such blurring 'at work' with studies of: applied anthropology and civil service reform; women's studies and government departments; and storytelling and local knowledge. The book concludes with a summary of what is edifying about an interpretive approach, and why this approach matters, and revisits some of the more common criticisms before indulging in plausible conjectures about the future of interpretivism. The author seeks new and interesting ways to explore governance, high politics, public policies, and the study of public administration in general. (shrink)

This study explores the educational meaning of Songdok in traditional Korean education. Songdok refers to the act of memorizing text completely while reading it aloud; however, in traditional Korean education, it used to symbolize ‘learning’ itself. Historically, Songdok was regarded in extreme terms: being criticized as low-level memorization or encouraged as a religious ritual. In the Goryeo Dynasty, when civil service exams were introduced, Songdok was performed to memorize Confucian textbooks solely for passing the exam. However, its status (...) changed in the mid-1600s because of an educational reform movement by Neo-Confucian fundamentalists. Given the widespread perception in South Korea that ‘imitating a saint is a way of learning’, Songdok has been elevated as part of moral consciousness. Here, we discuss how Songdok takes on two opposing educational objectives: One is passing the exam, and the other is imitating a saint. An examination of Songdok provides insightful perspectives on Korean education, especially regarding sluggish moral education. (shrink)

Malek Bennabi naît en 1905 dans une Algérie occupée par la France. Aux côtés de savants algériens dont la devise est "L'islam est notre religion, l'Algérie est notre patrie, l'Arabe notre langue", il forme sa pensée, qui demeure encore trop injustement méconnue jusque dans son pays natal. Les axes centraux de l'idéologie bennabienne (religion, spiritualité, réforme, colonisabilité...) trouvent pourtant leurs échos dans la France d'aujourd'hui. Son constat situant la décadence de la civilisation islamique à la fin de la dynastie Almohade (...) (XIIIe siècle) est percutant. Il engendre un ensemble de conséquences dont les savants contemporains n'ont peut-être pas encore pris la mesure. Cet ouvrage trace les parallèles entre l'analyse visionnaire de Bennabi et les caractéristiques de l'époque actuelle. Si les modalités des maux peuvent être différenciées, l'analogie entre les événements des deux époques permet de tirer de son oeuvre des solutions actuelles et efficaces. (shrink)

China has undergone a profound paradigm shift in its approach to economic development since its policy of 'opening and reform' was first implemented in 1978. It has shifted rapidly from a centrally planned economy to a market-oriented one, speeding up its economic development through foreign investment, a more open market, access to advanced technologies and management experience. It is notable that its economic growth, marked by annual double-digit rises in GDP over two decades, has lifted more than 400 million (...) people out of extreme poverty. Today, the number of Chinese billionaires has ballooned, but so has the rich-poor gap. China's 'development' has to address this urgent issue. This article examines, based on the experience of Amity Foundation, one of China's largest faith-based organisations, how religious organisations are being harnessed by the state to redress the wealth gap arising from 'development'. The process of social engagement has empowered FBOs, made their presence more accepted and appreciated in Chinese society and contributed to the creation of more social and political space for a nascent civil society. The author argues that FBOs must provide visible, viable and replicable alternatives in their social practices that are firmly rooted in their faith, if they are to make any sustainable impact on the development debate. (shrink)

This study analyzes the at-will employment doctrine using a tool that encompasses the complementarity of results-based utilitarian ethics, rule-based duty ethics, and virtue-based character ethics. The paper begins with a discussion of the importance of the problem followed by its evolution and current status. After describing the method of analysis, the central section evaluates the employment at-will doctrine, and is informed by Lord Acton's dictum, "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The conclusion explores the implications of the (...) findings. (shrink)

The recurrent clashes between Dhaka University (DU) students and those from its seven affiliated colleges highlight deeper issues beyond mere administrative inefficiencies, pointing to a significant crisis of identity and governance. Central to this crisis is the duality within the faculty—DU professors rooted in academic autonomy versus BCS cadre teachers entrenched in civil service hierarchy, exacerbating tensions and undermining collaboration. For the students, the affiliation with DU has deepened feelings of alienation, as they are caught in a liminal (...) status, neither fully part of DU nor detached. The suggested "respectful separation" fails to address these underlying issues, making it a short-term solution at best. Serious reforms are needed to address both the identity crisis and the structural divides, possibly involving significant changes in administrative practices or reconsidering the educational role of these colleges. Addressing these challenges is crucial for stability in the educational framework and for the students' sense of belonging and recognition. (shrink)

In the decades to come, the authors expect growing pressures to reform current production systems to make them more compatible with the biosphere. A proactive approach to this pressure involves consideration of an alternate value chain based on a comprehensive engineering and marketing approach to recover value from end-of-life products. To estimate the potential advantages of the new value chain, the authors calculate the minimum throughput advantages and environmental advantages that can be realized from a comprehensive strategy of recovering (...) value from end-of-life products. The efforts of corporations and other organizations to make modern ways of life more environmentally sustainable are evaluated against this benchmark in terms of activities in the area of selling services, product take back, life cycle assessment, Responsible Care, voluntary emission reduction initiatives, and engineering and management education. It is concluded that in general, these efforts make only a minor contribution toward achieving. (shrink)

The paper is premised on the well-recorded fact that R.B. Haldane, throughout his working life, remained fascinated with German idealist philosophy. The paper unravels Haldane’s own perception of the relation between his philosophical interests and his diverse policy-orientated work at the beginning of the twentieth century. Many commentators have noted this relation but often pass over it as a curious detail of his biography. The most basic tool his philosophy gave him was a way of analysing problems. This philosophical stance (...) was not an ex post facto rationalisation but conversely was always his first thought on encountering a problem. To solve a policy problem one has to identify the leading ideas of that particular mode of human experience. Haldane believed that finding such rational principles underlying all forms of experience was the first duty of a politician, lawyer or civil servant. He contended that this painstaking ideational analysis would ultimately lead to the most effective policy solutions. The paper focuses first on Haldane’s initial encounter with German philosophical culture in both Edinburgh and Göttingen, second, it unpacks the key philosophical themes which characterize his approach, derived largely from his reading of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Thirdly, it turns - in the light of his philosophical beliefs - to his overt commitments to policy developments in the Edwardian new liberalism, military reform, administrative and civil service policy reorganisation, and finally his extensive work in education policy, particularly in the university sector. (shrink)

By 1910 the Cambridge University physiology department had become the kernel of British physiology. Between 1909 and 1914 an astonishing number of young and talented scientists passed through the laboratory. The University College department was also a stimulating place of study under the dynamic leadership of Ernest Starling.I have argued that the reasons for this metropolitan axis within British physiology lie with the social structure of late-Victorian and Edwardian higher education. Cambridge, Oxford, and University College London were national institutions attracting (...) students from all over England and Wales. In contrast, the provincial colleges drew their clientele from relatively narrow geographic radii. Generally, also, these institutions were regarded as socially inferior to the longer-established universities.A brief survey of the biographies of some British physiologists demonstrates how physiology, as an occupation, became, over the later decades of the century, socially elite. The scientists who achieved full-time posts in the 1870s generally came from somewhat marginal backgrounds. Foster, like his mentors T. H. Huxley and William Sharpey, came from a non-conformist family. Edward Schäfer was also a dissenter and, like Foster, began his professional career as a general practitioner.Physiologists of the succeeding generation, however, came from wealthy families with established intellectual traditions. John Scott Haldane, nephew of John Burdon Sanderson, was the brother of the politician R. B. Haldane and uncle of the historian A. R. B. Haldane.71 Joseph Barcroft was one of the most affluent of all physiologists.72 His family's wealth derived from linen manufacturing. He attended the Ley's School Cambridge, where his schoolmates included Henry Dale, later Director of the National Institute for Medical Research; F. A. Bainbridge, who eventually became Professor of Physiology at St. Bartholomew's Hospital; and the Cambridge historian J. H. Clapham. A. V. Hill, Professor of Physiology at Manchester and, subsequently, London, married Margaret Keynes, sister of John Maynard Keynes and niece of Sir Walter Langdon Brown, Professor of Physic at Cambridge. Margaret Keynes's younger brother, the surgeon Sir Geoffrey Keynes, married a granddaughter of Charles Darwin; their son Richard Keynes also became a physiologist at Cambridge.These families were part of a new class emerging during the late Victorian period, descendants of the great reforming radicals of the 1830s, who had begun to achieve power through positions in the universities, the professions, and the civil service. Their social prestige rested upon their intellectual expertise. Physiology was an appealing research discipline to these groups because of its clear dissociation from industry and commerce. And because physiology's “practical” face was medicine, its acceptability was reinforced by professional ties.The nature of the Physiological Society confirms this image of physiology as an elite science. By the turn of the century the Society had taken on some of the characteristics of a dining club. The scientific meetings were generally followed by dinner: if the Society met at Oxford, they were entertained at Burdon Sanderson's college, Magdalen.73 Through a “black ball” system, unwanted candidates could be excluded. In 1912, when the question of admitting foreigners was discussed, E. H. Starling wrote to Edward Schäfer: “the Society has very much in it the nature of a club, and a certain amount of personal knowledge of the candidate is always desirable.”74.The developing institutional structure of physiology in late Victorian Britain indicates, therefore, that we must look beyond the achievements of individuals and departments to understand why physiology flourished. The discipline became part of a new social order in which the professional middle classes assumed increasing power. These groups valued intellectual skill, especially in the pure scienes, as forces both for self-advancement and for progress within society. (shrink)

Personnel management in localgovernment in Flanders bas undergone some major reforms during recent years. We examine the purposes and the extent of these reforms. Also, the new personnel management in Flemish local government is evaluated in terms of flexibility. The Flemish civil service can be considered as an Internal Labour Market. The rigidity which characterises the Internal Labour Market in local government in Flanders is shown by the fact that local government lacks discretion in elaborating the personnel statute, (...) which still constitutes the basis of personnel management. However, the thesis that the public sector employment policy is too rigid has to be nuanced. The civil service is familiar with irregular forms ofemployment. Infact, in Flemish local government only half of all personnel are employed according to a statute.Despite some constraints on the development of more flexible personnel policies, it is still possible to find opportunities which provide hope for the development of new and modern personnel management strategies in local government. (shrink)

It is commonly held that Kant, with his 1798 essay The Conflict of the Faculties, relinquishes some progressive stances and retreats to conservative positions. According to several interpreters, this is especially evident from Kant’s discussion of moral progress and public use of reason. Kant avers that moral progress can only occur through state-sanctioned education “from top to bottom” and entrusts the emergence of a state endowed with the relevant resolution and ability to “a wisdom from above” (7:92-93). According to numerous (...) interpreters, this call for state intervention and the accompanying surrender to a superhuman wisdom manifest Kant’s retreat from initially republican to later conservative positions. In Kant’s previous writings, the notion of public use of reason indicates the unrestricted freedom to communicate one’s thoughts, provided that the communication does not take place in the exercise of one’s function as a state official, and potentially encompasses all adult men. Instead, in The Conflict of the Faculties, Kant contrasts university professors’ freedom to make public use of their reason with the other public officials’ obligation “to uphold whatever […] the crown sanctions for them to expound publicly” (07:08). Thus, according to several scholars, Kant ends up disenfranchising the vast majority of people from the public use of reason and adjusting an emancipatory notion to the absolutist conception of speech and civil service. On my reading, with The Conflict of the Faculties, Kant neither retreats to conservative positions nor softens any progressive tenets of critical philosophy. On the contrary, I intend to show that a) the project of a state-sanctioned education constitutes Kant’s republican rebuttal of conservative positions on their ground, and is fully in keeping with critical philosophy; b) Kant sets forth a new notion of public use of reason that reverses the order of moral progress presented in his previous writings, but retains all its emancipatory character. I intend to support my interpretation by a) conducting a rhetorical analysis showing how Kant’s rhetoric aims to persuade the ruler that his interests are best served by fostering the regulative ideas of pure practical reason as discovered by critical philosophy; b) analysing Kant’s use of the term ‘public’ (both as the adjective ‘öffentlich’ and the noun ‘Publikum’) and showing how it retains its wide scope and emancipatory function and even expands them to areas previously subjected to legitimate censorship. (shrink)

The establishing of the Military Chaplaincy Service of Ukraine is closely related to the fundamental socio-cultural transformations of the entire Ukrainian society, which began in 1991, when Ukraine gained independence. After three revolutions, and especially the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014, the people of Ukraine finally chose the path of European integration and their further development in the great family of the civilized world. Gradually, all state and public institutions began to reform their internal structures to approach the (...) standards of European societies. This also affected the armed forces of Ukraine, including and chaplain service. Since 1991, the chaplaincy has gone through several stages in its formation. As early as 2014, before the start of full-scale Russian military aggression against Ukraine, important changes took place in the Military Chaplaincy Service, which brought its internal structure closer to the standards of the armed forces of foreign countries. During the years of work of military chaplains in the combat units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, experience has been gained that gradually allows us to assess the effectiveness of the mechanisms of activity and management. This article is a scientific reflection of the personal experience of the author, who is serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine as a military chaplain in one of the combat units. The activity of a military chaplain within the framework of the military chaplaincy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and at the same time, in the conditions of the unit's execution of combat missions, gives an opportunity to fix and understand the factors of decreasing the effectiveness of military chaplains. The aim of this study is to determine the institutions and administrative factors of ineffective work of military chaplains and to propose management solutions to overcome them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Catholic Social Teaching and the Allocation of Scarce ResourcesJohn Langan S.J. (bio)I shall approach the issue of justice in the allocation of scarce resources from the viewpoint of Catholic social teaching, as developed over the last century. This teaching is found primarily in the social encyclicals issued by popes from Leo XIII (1878–1903) to John Paul II (1978- ), but also in the pastoral letters of the various bishops’ (...) conferences, especially in the United States and in Latin America. These documents, which enjoy a high standing in Catholic teaching but which are not taken as binding in all their particulars, form part of a tradition of moral and social theorizing that a contemporary American would regard as “communitarian.” On social questions, this tradition also has shown itself to be historicist in that it is capable of modifying itself in significant ways in response to changing political and economic situations. It normally approaches issues from a universalist perspective, though it has shifted from a preoccupation with the concerns of the industrial societies of Europe to an advocacy of much of the reform agenda of the Third World.Rooted in classical and biblical sources and modified in the course of the last [End Page 401] century to include a principled acceptance of religious freedom, of human rights, and of democratic political institutions, the Catholic social tradition proposes a number of ideas that can serve as the basis for significant criticism of currently dominant liberal modes of organizing and interpreting advanced industrial societies. These ideas do not form a countertheory to liberalism so much as they indicate ways in which a religious organization that includes both hierarchical and egalitarian elements in its structure and that has both moral commitments and practical responsibilities with regard to health care can draw on its intellectual resources to develop alternative strategies for the reform of health care.I shall survey six ideas that figure prominently in Catholic social teaching and that are relevant to the allocation of scare resources in American health care. Space constraints require that I present them in a very condensed fashion, without tracing the complex development they have undergone in the internal Catholic debate or subjecting them to much criticism.First, Catholic social teaching, especially the great encyclical of John XXIII, Pacem In Terris (PT 1963), affirms the full range of human rights recognized in such modern documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1949). In addition to the civil and political rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights added to the original U.S. Constitution (1791), the Universal Declaration includes rights “to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are suitable for the proper development of life; these are primarily food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, and finally the necessary social services” (PT 11). Catholic social teaching has not committed itself to one particular way of institutionalizing these rights, but it effectively endorses the comprehensive West European welfare states that the Christian Democratic political parties helped to construct in the period after 1945.Second, Catholic social teaching has accorded a central organizing role to the notion of the common good, the realization of which “is the whole reason for the existence of civil authorities” (PT 54). The common good, however, is not to be understood as identical with the interest or the power of the state; rather, it “embraces the sum total of those conditions of social living whereby men are enabled to achieve their own integral perfection more fully and more easily” (PT 58; quoting Mater et Magistra). John XXIII is particularly anxious to affirm that the common good cannot be construed so as to exclude some groups or to violate the rights of individuals and that it must include both physical and spiritual goods (PT 55–61). The notion of the common good has both an inherent attractiveness and a vagueness that cries out for specification and clarification. But in the contemporary situation it serves to remind us that “individual citizens and intermediate groups are obliged to make their specific contributions to the common welfare” (PT 53).Third, while an insistence on the primacy of the common good and on the [End Page 402... (shrink)

Psychoanalysis was introduced to Greece in 1915 by the progressive educator Manolis Triantafyllidis and was further elaborated by Marie Bonaparte, Freud’s friend and member of the Greek royal family, and her psychoanalytic group in the aftermath of the Second World War. However, the accumulated traumas of the Nazi occupation (1941–1944), the Greek Civil War (1946–1949), the post-Civil-War tension between the Left and the Right, the military junta (1967–1974) and the social and political conditions of post-war Greece led this (...) project and all attempts to establish psychoanalysis in Greece, to failure and dissolution. The restoration of democracy in 1974 and the rapid social changes it brought was a turning point in the history of Greek psychoanalysis: numerous psychoanalysts, who had trained abroad and returned after the fall of the dictatorship, were hired in the newly established Greek National Health Service (NHS), and contributed to the reform of Greek psychiatry by offering the option of psychoanalytic psychotherapy to the non-privileged. This article draws on a range of unexplored primary sources and oral history interview material, in order to provide the first systematic historical account in the English language of the complex relationship between psychoanalysis and Greek society, and the contribution of psychoanalytic psychotherapy to the creation of the Greek welfare state. In so doing, it not only attempts to fill a lacuna in the history of contemporary Greece, but also contributes to the broader historiography of psychotherapy and of Europe. (shrink)

Assesses the limits and possibilities of humanism for engaging with issues of pressing political and cultural concern. In his book The End of Education: Toward Posthumanism, William V. Spanos critiqued the traditional Western concept of humanism, arguing that its origins are to be found not in ancient Greece’s love of truth and wisdom, but in the Roman imperial era, when those Greek values were adapted in the service of imperialism on a deeply rooted, metaphysical level. Returning to that question (...) of humanism in the context of the United States’ war on terror in the post-9/11 era, Toward a Non-humanist Humanism points out the dehumanizing dynamics of Western modernity in which the rule of law is increasingly made flexible to defend against threats both real and potential. Spanos considers and assesses the work of thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Judith Butler, Jacques Rancière, and Slavoj Žižek as humanistic reformers and concludes with an effort to imagine a different kind of humanism—a non-humanist humanism—in which the old binary of friend versus foe gives way to a coming community without ethnic, cultural, or sexual divisions. William V. Spanos is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He is the author of many books, including American Exceptionalism in the Age of Globalization: The Specter of Vietnam and Herman Melville and the American Calling: The Fiction after Moby-Dick, 1851–1857, both also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)

The administrative practices of officials who process the admission of immigrants show severe variations in the ways in which migration policy is enforced on the ground. For the author, inequality of treatment lies in the very hierarchy of tasks and services of what he dubs, following Pierre Bourdieu, the immigration "field". According to the author, the governments’ securitizing priorities favour the sort of suspicion towards foreigners that the media then reproduces, thus authorizing so-called street-level bureaucrats to act with great leeway (...) with regard to immigrants. Under pressure, governments implement what the author calls a "trompe-l’oeil policy" that explores the ambivalence between international and domestic law: while the state enforces repressive laws that apparently comply with fundamental human rights, it leaves to low-ranking civil servants enough discretion to make those rights ineffective. This point is the author’s central contention. The arbitrariness of these officials is neither contingent nor accidental: it actually constitutes a purposive "front-line policy" to enlarge the discretionary power of street-level bureaucrats in charge of regulating admissions. Unequal treatment comes in three flavours in this context. First, officials are asked to ensure that each right granted to a foreigner will not threaten the national order, which means the economic, social and political order. They are therefore in a position to judge the suitability of each application in view of their own arbitrary interpretation of what such "threats" consist of. The question of discretionary power is in this way intimately linked to the problem of equality before the law. Second, the scarcity of material and human resources allocated to services in charge of welcoming migrants starkly contrasts with the expenditure incurred to deport foreigners. Inequality also arises from how agents perceive users and the leeway they have to implement the law. Third, inequality is related to foreigners’ abilities and means to challenge discretionary power, especially through the legal tools they use or through legal intermediaries. The author thus concludes that such "front-line policy" has increasingly been used as a weapon against migrants, especially since the early 2000s, when immigration and detention policies were generalized in France. More broadly, in Europe as well as in United States, immigration reforms have made greater use of detention and focused on enforcement rather than on hosting programs and services for asylum seekers. But they have also strengthened the role of legal intermediaries. Hence the need to investigate how discretionary power is challenged as it sheds light on the power relations between states and migrants. Keywords: foreigners, discretion, sociology, participant observation, front-line policy, illegalism, jobs, insecurity, legal intermediaries. (shrink)

Northeast Brazil has been targeted for remedial projects to combat drought for more than 100 years, although drought mitigation policies have been mostly ineffective in reducing vulnerability for the majority of the population. In this paper I review some of the historical and contemporary approaches to drought mitigation and examine the efficacy of mitigation through the aperture of contemporary clientalism and the persistence of asymmetric power relations in democratic Brazil. Although the abertura , political opening, and end of a 20-year (...) military dictatorship allowed for improved civil and political rights and public demonstrations, this 'low-intensity' democracy has had few social and economic reforms that have hampered elite interests, minimized inequity, or empowered the poor. Patronage continues to be the dominant tool for survival, especially in the drought-ridden Northeast, where access to scarce state services is extremely competitive and personal connections determine or facilitate access. (shrink)