Know your Schmitt: a godfather of truth and the spectre of Nazism

In a recent article in the Review of International Studies Hans-Karl Pichler argues that Hans Morgenthau's intellectual universe was saturated by 'typically European philosophical problems' which he transferred to an American political context. He shows this by looking at how Morgenthau tried to overcome the value determinacy of social science, as pointed out by Weber, by grounding his political realist theory in a Schmittean understanding of the political, which defines war–the friend/enemy distinction–as the essence of the political and founds it anthropologically in the evil, dangerous nature of human beings.2 I have a problem with the article because Schmitt emerges as just a serious political theorist, which he indeed was. But he was also more than an important political theorist. He was a member of the Nazi party between 1933 and 1936 explicitly providing legal justifications for the Nazi regime and its policies, thus becoming for some the Kronjurist of the Nazis. In that period also anti-Semitic references started appearing in his work. Since then his name and work have carried the spectre of Nazism and by implication of the Holocaust with them. This spectre is nowhere sensed in Pichler's analysis. It does not seem to have any grip on Pichler's narrative. I think this is unfortunate because I believe this spectre should always haunt any invoking of Schmitt or Schmittean understandings of the political. The reason is not to silence discussions about his understanding of the political, but rather to render normative questions about the ethico-political project his concept of the political incorporates as the kernel of any working with or on Schmitt's ideas

What's in an act? On security speech acts and little security nothings

This article makes a claim for re-engaging the concept of ‘act’ in the study of securitization. While much has been written about the discursive and communicative aspects of securitizing, the concept of ‘act’ that contains much of the politicality of the speech-act approach to security has been relatively ignored.The task of re-engaging ‘acts’ is particularly pertinent in the contemporary context, in which politically salient speech acts are heavily displaced by securitizing practices and devices that appear as banal, little security nothings. The main purpose of the article is to begin the framing of a research agenda that asks what political acts can be in diffuse security processes that efface securitizing speech acts

Sequential trials and the English rule

The allocation of trial costs and the way a trial progresses are two important issues in civil procedure. The combination of these two elements has received relatively little attention in the law and economics literature. The prior literature has only compared unitary litigation (e.g. liability and damage issues are litigated, after which the court decides on both issues) under the American rule with sequential litigation (e.g. the parties first litigate the liability issue after which the court makes a decision, and then if still necessary the parties litigate the damages issue) under the American rule. In this article, I examine the influence of sequential litigation when the loser at trial pays all the litigation costs and compare the results with (a) the situation in which litigation is unitary and the loser pays all the litigation costs and (b) the situation in which litigation is sequential and each party bears her own costs. I focus on the incentive to sue, the incentive to settle (or to litigate) and on the settlement amount. Some interesting differences with the previous literature are discussed in detail

Estimating monetary policy reaction functions : A discrete choice approach

I propose a discrete choice method for estimating monetary policy reaction functions based on research by Hu and Phillips (2004). This method distinguishes between determining the underlying desired rate which drives policy rate changes and actually implementing interest rate changes. The method is applied to ECB rate setting between 1999 and 2010 by estimating a forward-looking Taylor rule on a monthly basis using real-time data drawn from the Survey of Professional Forecasters. All parameters are estimated significantly and with the expected sign. Including the period of financial turmoil in the sample delivers a less aggressive policy rule as the ECB was constrained by the lower bound on nominal interest rates. The ECB's non-standard measures helped to circumvent that constraint on monetary policy, however. For the pre-turmoil sample, the discrete choice model's estimated desired policy rate is more aggressive and less gradual than least squares estimates of the same rule specification. This is explained by the fact that the discrete choice model takes account of the fact that central banks change interest rates by discrete amounts. An advantage of using discrete choice models is that probabilities are attached to the different outcomes of every interest rate setting meeting. These probabilities correlate fairly well with the probabilities derived from surveys among commercial bank economists.monetary policy reaction functions, discrete choice models, interest rate setting, ECB

The robust assembly of small symmetric nano-shells

Highly symmetric nano-shells are found in many biological systems, such as clathrin cages and viral shells. Several studies have shown that symmetric shells appear in nature as a result of the free energy minimization of a generic interaction between their constituent subunits. We examine the physical basis for the formation of symmetric shells, and using a minimal model we demonstrate that these structures can readily grow from identical subunits under non equilibrium conditions. Our model of nano-shell assembly shows that the spontaneous curvature regulates the size of the shell while the mechanical properties of the subunit determines the symmetry of the assembled structure. Understanding the minimum requirements for the formation of closed nano-shells is a necessary step towards engineering of nano-containers, which will have far reaching impact in both material science and medicine.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figure