From the morality of living to the morality of sying: hunger strikes in Turkish prisons

Political hunger strikes have been part of the debates on human rights in many countries around the world. This paper explores the preconditions for and motives behind hunger strikes in Turkey by conceiving the hunger strikers as a part of citizenship politics through which strikers not only express their views against certain common issues, but also declare total opposition to an unjust condition within their political community. The paper focuses on the question of why some such “citizens” choose to participate in hunger strikes, which appears as an individual commitment to achieve a certain common objective. In doing so, the meaning of the experiences of hunger strikers and their universal right to live are elaborated in relation to their political and moral views. Hunger strikes are suggested to be seen as voluntary fasting, undertaken as a means of civil disobedience against an injustice within the context of citizenship. As examples of non-violent political acts, hunger strikes are not only part of citizenship politics but also expressions of commitment to achieving one’s goals through non-aggressive means for the common good of all citizens. Moreover, they can also be considered examples of martyrdom/heroism because hunger strikers altruistically risk their life for a public cause. As a particular altruistic act, hunger strikes can also be viewed as an effective form of communication directed toward fellow citizens. Moreover, they are expressions of self-determination for having control over and for one’s own life conditions. Finally, hunger strikes can be conceptualized as a struggle for transforming the configuration of structures and practices of citizenship about which one is passionately concerned. In this context, hunger strikes seem to be struggles for recognition in a relationship between two subjects, in which one subordinates the other

EU Competition Policy: Algorithmic Collusion in the Digital Single Market

E-commerce promises a digital environment with ‘more perfect’ market characteristics. Although consumers may benefit from digital efficiencies, firms’ exploitation of such benefits may require new policy to regulate in line with the European Commission’s Digital Single Market Strategy. Price-setting algorithms are central to this dichotomy, as faster and more transparent pricing strategies could conceivably maintain algorithmic price-fixing cartels – which Article 101 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union may prove inadequate in tackling. This paper looks to remedy a perceived failure in the literature to appreciate the legal and economic analysis necessary to inform an alternative policy. It will assess the anti-competitive impact of pricing algorithms by contrasting the online and offline economic environments against which policy is set. It will evaluate the effectiveness of current policy in tackling explicit and tacit algorithmic collusion, accounting for its impact upon reasonable business practices, consumer welfare, liability and enforcement, and legal concepts which can be difficult to apply to the digital market. As long-term consumer welfare could be sacrificed by enforcing short-term remedies, it is advised that policy returns to its ordoliberal roots: prioritising the maintenance of healthy competition over current welfare-first economics which lack sufficient clarity to regulate algorithms

Does God Have the Moral Standing to Blame?

In this paper, I introduce a problem to the philosophy of religion – the problem of divine moral standing – and explain how this problem is distinct from (albeit related to) the more familiar problem of evil (with which it is often conflated). In short, the problem is this: in virtue of how God would be (or, on some given conception, is) “involved in” our actions, how is it that God has the moral standing to blame us for performing those very actions? In light of the recent literature on “moral standing”, I consider God’s moral standing to blame on two models of “divine providence”: open theism, and theological determinism. I contend that God may have standing on open theism, and – perhaps surprisingly – may also have standing, even on theological determinism, given the truth of compatibilism. Thus, if you think that God could not justly both determine and blame, then you will have to abandon compatibilism. The topic of this paper thus sheds considerable light on the traditional philosophical debate about the conditions of moral responsibility

Leaving Money On the Table: Contract Practice in a Low-Trust Environment

Social capital – the level of trust inherent in a society – will affect the contracting practices that are considered standard, practical or fair. These practices in turn will help determine the parties’ positions as they approach their negotiation, how they will communicate, and what terms they will agree in any particular transaction. This is true not only for the small transaction, but also for large and complex deals. As a result, when operating in a low-trust environment, even sophisticated parties (who can bear the costs of tailoring an agreement to their particular case), will be prone to relinquish or to sacrifice value – leaving money “on the table”. The paper illustrates this point by contrasting alternative practices in merger & acquisition transactions, comparing the “standard” model that is generally encountered in the United States with an alternative model often encountered in the developing world, most particularly in transactions done among sophisticated parties throughout Latin America. The relationship between trust, social capital and contract is then outlined. Finally, some preliminary observations are made comparing the normative and behavioral presuppositions of different legal traditions and how they may reinforce or help rationalize alternative contract practices, as described earlier in the paper

Contracting capability: A distillation of co-operative principles from business history to guide present day restructuring

The article re-examines the present day restructuring of large-scale enterprise in the West from a new perspective derived from business history, ttansaction cost economics, and game theory. Creating inter-organizational networks and modifying intra-finn arrangements to give human capital more scope of exercising autonomous judgement involves formulating co-operative contracts. The idea of "contracting capability" is developed to show how economic actors in the past established presence in an incipient bargaining flow, forged bonds of trust with other parties, and designed contracts that could accommodate sequential modification. By exercising strong leadership and communicating skills, they forged an initial agreement that became a foundation for sustaining a long-term, multiple-period relationship. Knowledge of history can help today's business leaders to identify the principles of contracting and to develop guidelines for evoking and preserving co-operative conduc

Counter-intelligence in a command economy

We provide the first thick description of the KGB’s counter-intelligence function in the Soviet command economy. Based on documentation from Lithuania, the paper considers KGB goals and resources in relation to the supervision of science, industry, and transport; the screening of business personnel; the management of economic emergencies; and the design of economic reforms. In contrast to a western market regulator, the role of the KGB was to enforce secrecy, monopoly, and discrimination. As in the western market context, regulation could give rise to perverse incentives with unintended consequences. Most important of these may have been adverse selection in the market for talent. There is no evidence that the KGB was interested in the costs of its regulation or in mitigating the negative consequences

Genocidal Empires

Between 1904 and 1907, German soldiers, settlers and mercenaries committed mass murder in Africa. Can this be considered the first genocide of the 20th century? Was it a forecast of the Third Reich’s extermination policy in Central and Eastern Europe? This book provides the answer. Based on extensive archival and library research in Tanzania, Namibia, South Africa, Germany and Poland as well as on the most recent and up-to-date jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals, the renowned historian and political scientist Klaus Bachmann paints a new and surprising picture of the events and their legal significance, which many will find disturbing and provocative. It abolishes many well-established interpretations about German colonialism and its alleged links with the Third Reich and provides a new and intriguing contribution to the current post-colonial debate

Polish literature and the Konzentrationslager. The beginning

 In the article the author discusses the beginnings of Polish camp literature, more precisely: literature referring to the Nazi German concentration camps. For decades it was assumed that the earliest Polish texts of that type were published in 1945. It appears that the first works – reports and memoirs – were published before the outbreak of WWII. In this article, the author discusses them in the historical and historical-literary contexts (mainly in the context of German writings).

Open Source Software: The New Intellectual Property Paradigm

Open source methods for creating software rely on developers who voluntarily reveal code in the expectation that other developers will reciprocate. Open source incentives are distinct from earlier uses of intellectual property, leading to different types of inefficiencies and different biases in R&D investment. Open source style of software development remedies a defect of intellectual property protection, namely, that it does not generally require or encourage disclosure of source code. We review a considerable body of survey evidence and theory that seeks to explain why developers participate in open source collaborations instead of keeping their code proprietary, and evaluates the extent to which open source may improve welfare compared to proprietary development.