Drei Kritiken am Klassenbegriff

Jon Elster, Drei Kritiken am Klassenbegrif

Making Sense of Marx.

This book offers an analysis of transitional justice -retribution and reparation after a change of political regime -from Athens in the fifth century b.c. to the present. Part I, "The Universe of Transitional Justice," describes more than thirty transitions, some of them in considerable detail, others more succinctly. Part II, "Analytics of Transitional Justice," proposes a framework for explaining the variations among the cases: why after some transitions wrongdoers from the previous regime are punished severely and in other cases mildly or not at all, and why victims are sometimes compensated generously and sometimes poorly or not at all. After surveying a broad range of justifications and excuses for wrongdoings and criteria for selecting and indemnifying victims, the book concludes with a discussion of three general explanatory factors: economic and political constraints, the retributive emotions, and the play of party politics

The night of August 4, 1789. A study of social interaction in collective decision-making

I. Introduction On the night of August 4 1789, the French Assemblée Constituante voted unanimously to abolish feudalism. In this paper I discuss some intensely interactive aspects of this process of collective decision-making and of the events that led up to it. I shall proceed as follows. In Section II I discuss the idea of social interaction. Section III offers a brief and selective overview of the period between the elections to the Estates-General in the spring of 1789 and the adoption of..

La crisis de las ciencias sociales

Traducción de la transcripción del discurso de aceptación del título de Doctor Honoris Causa en la Universidad Torcuato Di Tella por parte de Jon Elester

Política constitucional

Un banco central independiente es apenas un caso especial de los beneficios de la separación de poderes. En vez de que todas las políticas económicas estén unidas en las manos del ejecutivo, algunas de ellas se le encomiendan a una agencia separada. Si un gobierno quiere promover el interés conuín, su poder en conjunto se ve fortalecido retirándole parte de sus poderes. Si el gobierno quiere promover intereses partidistas, la misma institución evitará que lo haga