Empowerment through religion: religion’s survival strategies in democratic politics

Utraciwszy status dominującej formuły legitymizacyjnej w świecie zachodnim, religia została też instytucjonalnie oddzielona od państwa i, w myśl ideologii liberalnej, zepchnięta na margines życia publicznego. Pomimo tych niesprzyjających okoliczności, religia – zarówno jako system idei i norm, jak i w wymiarze instytucjonalnym – zdołała obronić się przed marginalizacją, zapewniając sobie szczególny status wśród innych ideologii. W nauce objawia się to swego rodzaju metodologicznym agnostycyzmem, nakazującym traktować twierdzenia religijne jako niewspółmierne z naukowymi, a zatem niepodlegające krytyce. W polityce, organizacje religijne uzyskały w wielu państwach zachodnich szczególną pozycję, a wolność religijna została ukonstytuowana jako szczególny przypadek swobody wypowiedzi. W swej działalności politycznej organizacje religijne stosują zarówno metody identyczne z innymi aktorami politycznymi (lobbying, masowa mobilizacja itp.) – co nadaje im legitymację w ramach demokratycznych systemów politycznych – jak i specyficzne strategie religijne. Działania te są w artykule analizowane głównie na przykładach polskich i amerykańskich. Uzbrojone w takie narzędzia, religijne podmioty polityczne mogą wywierać znaczący wpływ na demokratyczne systemy polityczne.In contemporary Western world religion has long lost its status of a default legitimating formula and has been relegated, in liberal political philosophy, to the private sphere. Institutionally, religious organizations have been largely separated from government institutions. Despite these adverse circumstances, religion – both as a system of ideas, values and norms and in its institutional expression – has adopted effective survival strategies guarding it from social and political marginalization. Religion has been accorded special status among other ideologies. In science, it results in a sort of methodological agnosticism, which treats religious and scientific statements as belonging to two incommensurable spheres. In politics, religious organizations are often granted special legal status among other political actors and religious freedom has been constitutionalized as a special case of general freedom of expression. As judicature and political practice show, religious arguments can often trump non-religious claims when fundamental value conflicts arise. In their political activity, religious organizations have used strategies characteristic for other political actors (lobbying, mass mobilization etc.), thereby gaining democratic legitimacy, as well as unique, religion-specific strategies. Armed with these and other empowering tools, religion can continue to influence democratic political systems in significant ways

A contemporary religious political movement: LDS Church’s nation-wide political campaigns

Drawing empirically on the examples of the Church of Latter-Day Saints’ (Mormon) participation in anti-ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) ratification campaign and its latest attempts to influence other political issues of moral consequences (such as same-sex marriage) in the United States, the paper attempts to analyse the dynamics of a contemporary religiously motivated political movement.Despite being, on any of these issues, a part of a wider coalition of political actors, the Mormon church displayed a specifically religious motivation, justification and modus operandi. Owing to strong religious legitimacy of their power – based on the doctrine of continuous revelation and enhanced by a sort of “personality cult” of the Church President-Prophet developing in late 20th century – the leadership of the church has been capable of effective grassroots mobilization, achieved through a disciplined universal priesthood structure.While, from the theoretical point of view, this Mormon political movement is of a traditional, “old” variation (ideological and social cohesion of members, well-defined, stable membership, hierarchical leadership etc.) it has nevertheless been relatively successful in modern political environment. The Mormon engagement, at least in the anti-ERA campaign, had made a difference certainly in Utah, and probably elsewhere as well

Die Regulierung des Einzelhandels in Italien: Grundlagen und Einfluss auf die Handelsstruktur

Der Internationalisierungsprozess im Einzelhandel lässt sich in den meisten Ländern Europas an einer ähnlich verlaufenden Entwicklung - dem Ausbau großflächiger, nach funktionalen Gesichtspunkten angelegter Versorgungszentren an den Stadträndern - ablesen. Die nationalen Strukturen in der Einzelhandelsbranche unterscheiden sich jedoch bezüglich dreier Merkmale: dem Grad der Konzentration, den Betriebsformen und den Beschäftigungsstrukturen. Die heutige Struktur des Einzelhandels in Italien ist stark geprägt von einer Akteurskonstellation, die sich bisher eher resistent gegenüber einer Marktöffnung gezeigt hat. Im Vergleich zu den meisten anderen europäischen Ländern war der italienische Einzelhandel in besonders hohem Maße durch gesetzliche Vorgaben reguliert; diese Steuerung wurde erst in jüngster Vergangenheit gelockert. Das Geflecht einer starken sektoralen Regulierung im Einzelhandel durch den Staat und der weitgehend unabhängig davon ablaufenden planerischen Steuerung der räumlichen Verteilung von Nutzungen hat dazu beigetragen, dass kleinteilige, in das lokale institutionelle Umfeld eingebettete Einzelhandelsstrukturen entwickelt und gepflegt wurden. Umfassende Kenntnisse über die lokalen Rahmenbedingungen scheinen eine conditio sine qua non für Akteure im italienischen Einzelhandelssektor zu sein. Ausländische Unternehmen, die sich in dieser Branche betätigen wollen, müssen zunächst Wege finden, sich in dieser Konstellation zu etablieren. Umgekehrt machen italienische Unternehmen bisher kaum Erfahrungen im Ausland. Dies könnte mit ihrer Größen- und Betriebsstruktur zusammenhängen. Der Beitrag dokumentiert ein Zwischenergebnis des von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft finanziell geförderten Forschungsprojektes zum Strukturwandel im großstädtischen Einzelhandel: ein Vergleich zwischen Berlin, London und Mailand. Das Papier beruht auf ersten empirischen Erhebungen in Mailand und der Lombardei sowie einer Aufbereitung von Dokumenten und Literatur. Parallel wurde von Christopher Bahn ein entsprechendes Papier für Deutschland bzw. Berlin erstellt (Bahn 2002). -- The process of internationalisation in the retail trade is reflected in similar development trends in most of the European countries - big shopping centres in suburban areas built according to functional criteria. However, the national structures in the retail trade sector differ from each other with regard to three characteristics: the level of concentration, the retail formats and the types of employment. The structure of retail trade in Italy is characterised by a constellation of agents that proves to be resiliant against the opening of the market. Compared to most other European countries retail trade in Italy has been strongly regulated by legislative guidelines for decades. Some of these regulations have been loosened only recently. The comprehensive body of rules and regulations is paralleled by a planning system of the spatial distribution of functions, but they are not adequately integrated. This mismatch has contributed to developing and cultivating small size retail trade structures embedded in the local institutional sphere. An intimate knowledge of the local framework seems to be a conditio sine qua non for an access to the Italian retail trade. Foreign enterprises intending to commit themselves to this sector have to find ways to establish themselves within this constellation. Conversely, Italian enterprises can rely on little experience abroad, a fact that may be related to their small size and internal structure. The paper is based on (preliminary) empirical surveys in Milan and the Lombardy and on the studies of documents and literature. It documents the starting phase of the research project supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) on Structural change in the metropolitan retail trade: a comparison between Berlin, London, and Milan. Parallel to this publication, a discussion paper on the governance structures of the branch in Germany, notably in Berlin, has been published by Christopher Bahn (Bahn 2002).

American Shakers – Dying Religion, Emerging Cultural Phenomenon

Through analysis of doctrine, cult, social and political organisation and the relations with the outside world, the article traces a dual development in the history of Shakerism, an American communitarian religious group: its rise and decline as a religion that has led to its almost complete extinction, and the accompanying process of its absorption into the mainstream of American culture. This became possible when, in the 20th century, Shakers – celibate communitarian pacifists – ceased to be perceived as a serious challenge to the American values of individualism, private property and the traditional model of family. Instead, their image was romanticised and material aspects of their culture emphasised, thus making Shakerism a sort of antiquarian curiosity, despite the survival of a small community of believers

Speed-up credit exposure calculations for pricing and risk management

We introduce a new method to calculate the credit exposure of European and path-dependent options. The proposed method is able to calculate accurate expected exposure and potential future exposure profiles under the risk-neutral and the real-world measure. Key advantage of is that it delivers an accuracy comparable to a full re-evaluation and at the same time it is faster than a regression-based method. Core of the approach is solving a dynamic programming problem by function approximation. This yields a closed form approximation along the paths together with the option's delta and gamma. The simple structure allows for highly efficient evaluation of the exposures, even for a large number of simulated paths. The approach is flexible in the model choice, payoff profiles and asset classes. We validate the accuracy of the method numerically for three different equity products and a Bermudan interest rate swaption. Benchmarking against the popular least-squares Monte Carlo approach shows that our method is able to deliver a higher accuracy in a faster runtime.Comment: arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1905.0023