1,474 research outputs found
Resolving the Paradox of Holding People Responsible
Regardless of justification, it is commonplace throughout the U.S. criminal justice system as in everyday life to teach our offenders and children alike that wrong actions “have consequences,” namely, those authority figures promise to impose upon them. We do so in the name of holding people responsible for their actions, or in legal parlance in civil law, holding them accountable or liable. I noticed that in Norwegian, responsibility, accountability and liability translate into one word, ansvar, which I have translated from Germanic to Latin roots as “responsiveness.” In practice, the state of being responsive to others with whom one conflicts occurs when empathy moves one to recognize and accommodate the interests of others, in Roger Fisher’s terms, to shift focus from position to interests, a shift I observed as a victim-offender mediator. When we hold people responsible, we dictate rules to replace rather than invite and encourage assumption of responsibility for how ones’ actions affect others; we require obedience in place of building capacity for self-control. In legal terms, we adjudicate rather than mediate our differences. I turn from the paradox to identifying ways in which responsibility is also engendered rather than taken in our relations, inside and outside the criminal justice system, in our daily lives. I seek to recognize and encourage transition in our political culture from control by power over others to control by sharing power with others, in moments of conflict as in all our moments of cooperation
Criminology as a Force for Human Tolerance
Criminology traditionally has been the study of twin forms of intolerance--crime and punishment. Punishment can only increase crime. Criminology ought to become a study of how to alleviate crime and punishment by engineering tolerance of greater varieties of human behavior, where social control takes on positive connations. A framework is outlined for making criminology a force for human tolerance
Piety and Redistributive Preferences in the Muslim World
This article tests two competing theories of the relationship between piety and redistributive preferences in the Muslim world. The first, drawn from the new political economy of religion, holds that more pious individuals of any faith should oppose redistributive economic policies. The second, drawn from Islamic scripture, holds that pious Muslims should favor more redistributive economic policies. Employing survey data from twenty-five countries, the authors find that there is no clear relationship between piety and redistributive preferences among Muslims. The authors find that more pious Muslims are less likely to favor government efforts to eliminate income inequality, but they find only inconsistent evidence that more pious Muslims support governments taking responsibility for the well-being of the poor. The findings offer little evidence to suggest that either scriptural or organizational factors unique to Islam create distinct economic policy preferences
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The Exclusionary Foundations of Embedded Liberalism
Abstract:
Analyses of embedded liberalism have focused overwhelmingly on trade in goods and capital, to the exclusion of migration. We argue that much as capital controls were essential components of the embedded liberal compromise, so too were restrictions on the democratic and social rights of labor migrants. Generous welfare programs in labor-receiving countries thrived alongside inclusionary immigration policies, but this balanced arrangement was only tenable if migrants were politically excluded in their destination countries. That is, embedded liberalism abroad rested on exclusionary political foundations at home. In bringing together the IPE literature on the “globalization trilemma” with the comparative politics of citizenship, we provide a novel account of how embedded liberalism worked politically, with implications for current debates about the fate of the liberal order in a time of populist resurgence
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