Electoral poaching and party identification

This paper studies electoral competition in a model of redistributive politics with deterministic voting and heterogeneous voter loyalties to political parties. We construct a natural measure of party strength based on the sizes and intensities of a party’s loyal voter segments and demonstrate how party behavior varies with the two parties’ strengths. In equilibrium, parties target or poach a strict subset of the opposition party’s loyal voters: offering those voters a high expected transfer, while freezing out the remainder with a zero transfer. The size of the subset of opposition voters frozen out and, consequently, the level of inequality in utilities generated by a party’s equilibrium redistribution schedule is increasing in the opposition party’s strength. We also construct a measure of political polarization that is increasing in the sum and symmetry of the parties’ strengths, and find that the expected ex-post inequality in utilities of the implemented policy is increasing in political polarization. -- In dieser Studie wird der Wahlkampf in einem Modellrahmen mit umverteilender Politik untersucht. Dabei gehen wir von den Annahmen deterministischen Wahlverhaltens und heterogenen Wählerbindung an die politischen Parteien aus. Wir generieren eine natürliche Messgröße für die Stärke einer Partei. Sie beruht auf der Größe und Intensität der parteiloyalen Wählersegmente und zeigt wie sich das Verhalten der Parteien verändert in Abhängigkeit von der Stärke der beiden Parteien. Im Gleichgewicht versuchen die Parteien einen Teil der loyalen Wählerschaft der Gegenpartei mit dem Versprechen hoher Transferzahlungen abzuwerben, während den restlichen Teilen der gegnerischen Wählerschaft Null-Transfers in Aussicht gestellt werden. Die Anzahl dieser letzteren Oppositionswähler, die keine Transferzahlungen erhalten werden, und das Niveau der Ungleichverteilung der Nutzen durch die im Gleichgewicht resultierende Umverteilung steigen in Abhängigkeit von der Stärke der Oppositionspartei. Des weiteren wird eine Messgröße der politischen Polarisierung konstruiert, das mit der Summe und Symmetrie der Parteienstärke steigt. Als Ergebnis lässt sich feststellen, dass das erwartete ex-post Ungleichgewicht des Nutzens der implementierten Politik ansteigt, je stärker die politische Polarisierung ist.

Reflections on morality in Renaissance thought

We can read about the morality of that time in works by authors who describe or criticize the conduct and activity of the members of those classes taking the lead in the morality of that time. Thus, we can find a lot of information about ancient Greece and its morality in Plato’s presentation of Socrates, Peter Abelard presenting the Middle Ages, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Niccolo Machiavelli, Baldesar Castiglione, but even also Slovak authors such as Martin Rakovský and Juraj Koppay presenting very interesting contemporary facts about the Renaissance

Civil Rights in the New Decade: The Geography of Opportunity

It is truly an honor and a privilege to have been invited to return to my home state of Alabama to talk about the civil rights agenda in the new decade. Lest you think that I lack the appropriate credentials to speak on this issue, I will tell you that I did go to jail for the cause. At the age of four months, I was taken by my mother, Joan Carpenter Cashin, to a sit-in at a lunch counter in Huntsville, Alabama. When my mother was arrested, she insisted on taking me with her to jail. I am very proud of the role that she and my father, Dr. John Cashin, played in helping to bring about the desegregation of public accommodations in Huntsville, two full years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. I am also proud to be an Alabamian. I am proud of the role that my state played in the civil rights movement of the twentieth century. It is most appropriate that here, in the place where the Second Reconstruction was fought and bled for, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the Cumberland School of Law are attempting to chart the course for the civil rights movement in the new century

Developing a poverty-aware pedagogy : from paradigm to reflexive practice in post-academic social work education

Social work scholars haveargued that poverty reminds us of the necessary commitmentto educate professional social workers in the development of poverty-aware practices. Being inspired by a conceptual framework thatcaptureshow poverty-awareness can be the subject of teaching in social work programs, this article offers a qualitative analysis of the reflections being made by a cohort of students about their learning process in a post-academiccourse. Five common themesare discussed: (1) from recognizing micro-aggressions to tackling macro-aggressions, (2) poverty is an instance of social injustice and requires collective indignation, (3) notions of commitment and solidarityare ambiguous, (4) poverty is an instance of social inequality rather than merely social exclusion, and (5) from being heroic agents tosocial change ‘from within’. Based on these findings, we raise thelessons learned for social work educators

Beauty and Health: Anthropological Perspectives

This essay, written as a 'teaser' for an up-coming symposium, reflects on how human beauty can be understood from an anthropological and medical anthropological perspective. First, it considers how aesthetic and healing rationales can conflict or merge in a variety of medical technologies and health practices. Second, it discusses beauty in relation to the socioeconomic transformations of modernity and globalization. It suggests the need for a theoretical framework that departs from a strictly constructivist approach and views beauty as a distinct domain of social experience, not reducible to an effect of other inequalities

The Tyranny Puzzle in Welfare Economics: An empirical investigation

We address a puzzle in welfare economics - the possibility that rational people may be simultaneously against two apparently con‡icting forms of "tyranny." In fact the two types of tyranny can be reconciled but at the possible cost of con‡ict with other standard welfare principles. We examine whether such con‡icts do arise using a questionnaire-experimental study. Our study shows that both tyrannies are rejected by a majority of the parti- cipants, and in many cases also pose a practical problem in moral reasoningKeywords: social welfare, aggregation, questionnaire, income distribution

Dignity, Human Rights, and Democracy

In order to analyze what can plausibly be said about the relationship between dignity, human rights, and democracy, I will propose a basic assumption about human dignity (I) and then formulate five theses concerning the justification of democracy (II) which will allow me to conclude (III) that only when human rights are constitutionally established and effectively implemented democracy can be theoretically and practically justified as a political means to guarantee human dignity.human dignity, justifications of democracy, human rights