Generalized Agency Problems

Agency problems in economics virtually always entail self-interested agency exhibiting "insufficient" loyalty to principal. Social psychology also has a literature, mainly derived from work by Stanley Milgram, on issues of agency, but this emphasizes excessive loyalty -- people undergoing a so-called "agentic shift" and forsaking rationality for loyalty to a legitimate principal, as when "loyal" soldiers obey orders to commit atrocities. This literature posit that individuals experience a deep inner satisfaction from acts of loyalty -- essentially a "utility of loyalty" -- and that this both buttresses institutions organized as hierarchies and explains much human misery. Agency problems of excessive loyalty, as when boards kowtow to errant CEOs and controlling shareholders, may be as economically important in corporate finance as the more familiar problems of insufficient loyalty of corporate insiders to shareholders. Overt conflict between rival authorities is shown to reverse the "agentic shift" -- justifying institutions that formalize argumentation such as the adversary system in Common Law courts; the Official Opposition in Westminster democracies; discussants and referees in academia; and independent directors, non-executive chairs, and proxy contests in corporate governance.

Behavioral Finance in Corporate Governance - Independent Directors, Non-Executive Chairs, and the Importance of the Devil’s Advocate

The Common Law, parliamentary democracy, and academia all institutionalize dissent to check undue obedience to authority; and corporate governance reformers advocate the same in boardrooms. Many corporate governance disasters could often be averted if directors asked hard questions, demanded clear answers, and blew whistles. Work by Milgram suggests humans have an innate predisposition to obey authority. This excessive subservience of agent to principal, here dubbed a "type II agency problem", explains directors’ eerie submission. Rational explanations are reviewed, but behavioral explanations appear more complete. Experimental work shows this predisposition disrupted by dissenting peers, conflicting authorities, and distant authorities. Thus, independent directors, chairs, and committees excluding CEOs might induce greater rationality and more considered ethics in corporate governance. Empirical evidence of this is scant – perhaps reflecting problems identifying genuinely independent directors.

Religion in language policy, and the survival of Syriac

Throughout Islamic era, the Syriac language remained the language of the majority despite Arabic hegemony. The decline of the Syriac accompanied the decline of Christianity in the East, and was affected by the policies of rival religious and nationalist groups. By considering the current conditions under which Syriac speakers live, and the renewed interest in reviving the language among Christian communities in the modern Fertile Crescent, this thesis will examine the causes of decline over the centuries, and the possibilities for the revival of Syriac in modern times. The present research examines how religion contributed to the shaping of language policy in the case of Syriac

A Prince and a Fractured Kingdom: The Case of the Sudan’s Power Relations

Religion has an important place in Sudanese society, and it has been used as a means of political domination. British colonialism had favored and empowered the Sufi orders of the Mahddiyya and Marghaniyya, with the result that the heads and families of those orders became the hegemonic Sufi establishment who used Sufism as a power capacity tool of political domination in the Sudan. The Sudanese Islamic/Islamist Movement (SIM), which appeared with a different religious ideology from that of the Sufi establishment, wanted to impose its ideology on the Sudanese masses. As the elites in the Sudan were fractured, allowing the SIM to impose its ideology as a means of domination, the SIM forcibly seized state power through the June 30, 1989 military coup. This capture of state power gave Al-Turabi, the head and ideologue of the SIM, the capacity to impose the SIM’s radical ideology on the Sudanese masses. Thereafter, under Al-Turabi’s leadership from the Sudan, the SIM supported likeminded radical religious movements in Eritrea and Somalia. Those countries faced their own factional conflicts for state power, which provided a great opportunity to expand the SIM ideology. While imposing the SIM ideology in and out of the Sudan, the SIM faced a power conflict within its ranks. Al-Bashir, the head of the SIM’s military faction, used military power to oust Al-Turabi from state power, resulting in the palace coup of 1999. During that coup, most members of the SIM sided with Al-Bashir. The post-Al-Turabi regime is composed of competing factions of the SIM leaders and members who sided with Al-Bashir in the palace coup, and who hold sensitive positions within the regime. Therefore, so as not to be removed from state power, Al-Bashir is in a power relation with those factions. Thus, the Sudan’s continued support for radical Islamist movements in Eritrea and Somalia after the palace coup is a byproduct of power relations within the post-Al-Turabi regime. This byproduct of power relations is a tactic conducted by Al-Bashir to discourage the competing factions within the regime from removing him from state power. It demonstrates that under Al-Bashir’s leadership, the SIM expansionist ideology, to which the competing factions remain attached, has not been abandoned

The impact of authoritarian systems on the rise of transnational Islamist movements: Egypt, Saudi Arabia & the path to Al Qaeda

The events of September 11, 2001 have had a profound impact on the world we live in today. Not only have they changed the perception of rights and freedoms in both the developed and developing worlds, but these events brought violent political Islamist movements from the fringes of international politics to the forefront of world politics. Suddenly movements that were once seen as an issue for the Muslim world became a concern for countries worldwide as they struggled to understand the causes behind the rise of Islamist violence and figure out ways to address it. By and large, Islamist movements, violent and non-violent, find roots in the Arab world. The authoritarian nature of these systems, which prioritizes stability of the system and the ability of regimes to remain in power over inclusion of the public and various opposition groups, have often dealt with these movements through attempts of cooption into the system or isolation, which ranges from preventing them from participating in the legitimate system to full repression through incarceration and torture. It is largely due to isolation by these systems that many Islamist movements have not only turned to violence but adopted transnational modes of operation whereby a movement based in one country will carry out violent activities in a second to bring about change in a third. This study trances the dealings of the Egyptian and Saudi Arabian governments with their respective Islamist movements with particular emphasis on tactics of cooption and isolation adopted by these governments. It also argues that these tactics played a fundamental role in driving these movements to alter their mode of operation from limiting their activities within the confines of the political system of individual countries to adopting global jihad against the states that help maintain these authoritarian systems in place. The end result Al Qaeda is hoping to achieve is the recreation of the Islamic Ummah, through the declaration of global jihad. Based on the study, a series of actions are recommended for several players including political analysts, the media, and political players both on the international and regional levels. These actions include the need for expanding authoritarian political theory to allow for the analysis of these new movements and to predict their future activities. Efforts need to be made to distinguish between Islam as a religion and political movements derived from it. There is also a need for limiting the demonization of Islam by the media in order to reduce the feeling that the religion is under attack, which would reduce the attraction of radical ideologies to young Muslims

Galileo's Revenge: ways of construing knowledge and translation strategies in the era of globalisation

Galileo’s fateful confrontation with the Holy Office in 1633 is often taken to mark the start of the Scientific Revolution, the moment when a whole new approach to knowledge began to take over the western world. Amongst the many repercussions of this great epistemological shift was the development of a new ‘transparent’ type of discourse, felt to reflect reality more directly than the elaborate verbal edifices of the Scholastics. Today, the ‘authoritative plain style’, as Lawrence Venuti calls it, is so prevalent in English academic and factual writing that knowledge configured otherwise is rarely allowed past the cultural gatekeepers. There are countries, however, where, for historical and cultural reasons, the Scientific Revolution never really took place. In Spain and Portugal, for example, the anthropocentric paradigm favoured by the Christian humanist tradition has persisted well into the 21st century, and as a result, many of the academic texts produced in these countries operate according to an entirely different philosophy of language. This paper discusses some of the linguistic and ideological problems of translating such scholarship into a form that is publishable in English

Are the Evangelicals an Ethnic Group?

The thesis of the paper is that at the core of the Evangelical political movement is the Scots-Irish ethnic group. The Scots-Irish are often mis-characterized as a religious group. The paper discusses Evangelical political positions and compares them with Scots-Irish culture and political thinking. The author suggests that the Scots-Irish are a key element of American politics. Any party that can win half of their states can win the Presidency.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/110131/1/EvangelicalEthnic2013.pd

The highest style of humanity : religion, the New South creed, and Holland Nimmons McTyeire

Through an examination of the religious ideology of Holland Nimmons McTyeire as evidenced in his sermons, editorials, and other writings, this thesis sheds light on the relationship between religion and the New South creed. Although he developed his ideology in the antebellum era, his ideas carried over into the postwar era albeit changed because of his war experience and the New South context. Because McTyeire believed that the South lacked a stable social structure, as he felt God desired, new leaders had to be established. Without the traditional leadership of the gentry, middle class professionals rose to power and McTyeire helped push the Methodist Episcopal Church, South to be accommodating toward their business practices, ambitions, and social prestige. His ideology essentially merged with the New South creed to become a plan of action to advance the southern Methodist church by modernizing its ecclesiastical structure, professionalizing its ministry, and defending its beliefs and institutions. Ultimately, McTyeire declared victory for his plan of action while ignoring many convenient realities that indicated otherwise. In the end, McTyeire?s actions hastened the shift of southern Methodism from a populist religion of the heart toward an all-white, high-brow, and wealthy denomination

The Politics of (Mis)recognition: Islamic Law Pedagogy in American Academia

The combination of presence (of Islamic law) and absence (of legal transplant) in the course materials assigned by Islamic law instructors, the scholarship on law in the Islamic world by Islamic law scholars as well as by Comparatists, betrays an ideological project. I would describe it as an identitarian one with an underlying teleological notion of history. By identitarian I mean the positing of a common identity shared by all Muslims based on their religio/legal beliefs, a project that to my mind recalls what I called earlier the fantasy effect. [F]antasy is the means by which real relations of identity between past and present are discovered and/or forged. In this instance what is being fantasized through the assigned materials and the scholarship is the identity between Muslims in their past and Muslims in their present, as well as the identity between Muslims\u27 relationship to their law in the past and their relationship to their law in the present. This ideological project has an underlying teleological notion of history because it assumes that the spirit of Islamic law marches through history unencumbered by the world\u27s contingencies (in this case the legal transplant). The latter might sever the relationship between Muslims-in-the-world with the spirit of their law, but this is only momentary and is destined to end. The spirit, ultimately, will be joined with its believers because the contingencies of history are inconsequential for this pre-ordained relation between believer and idea. Short of this moment of re-joining with the spirit, Muslims are destined to feel the bite of existential alienation

Padre Agust?n Vijil and William Walker: Nicaragua, Filibustering, and the National War

The research involves an examination of the basis the National War in Nicaragua from 1854-1857. The purpose is to show how the social, cultural, and political antecedents led to the National War. This has been done by focusing on William Walker and Padre Agust?n Vijil. William Walker was the American filibuster invited to Nicaragua in 1855 by the Liberals to aid them in the year old civil war with the Conservatives. Walker took control of the Nicaraguan government, first through a puppet president. He became president himself in July of 1856. Padre Agust?n Vijil encountered Walker in October of 1855 and provided an example of the support given to Walker by Nicaraguans. Though Walker would be forced to leave Nicaragua in 1857, the intersection between these individuals sheds light on actions shaping the National War