Income Shocks, Inequality, and Democracy

In this paper, motivated by contradictory evidence on the effect of income on democracy, we investigate the hypothesis that it is income shocks – major income fluctuations relative to the trend – rather than marginal year‐on‐year variation in income levels that lead to non‐trivial changes in the quality of political institutions. Empirical results provide support for this hypothesis, and show how income inequality plays a crucial role in the effects of economic shocks on democracy. In particular, negative income shocks reveal a positive effect on democracy in countries with high inequality, and vice versa

Community detection in networks with positive and negative links

Detecting communities in complex networks accurately is a prime challenge, preceding further analyses of network characteristics and dynamics. Until now, community detection took into account only positively valued links, while many actual networks also feature negative links. We extend an existing Potts model to incorporate negative links as well, resulting in a method similar to the clustering of signed graphs, as dealt with in social balance theory, but more general. To illustrate our method, we applied it to a network of international alliances and disputes. Using data from 1993--2001, it turns out that the world can be divided into six power blocs similar to Huntington's civilizations, with some notable exceptions.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. Revised versio

Drivers and outcomes of work alienation: reviving a concept

This article sheds new light on an understudied construct in mainstream management theory, namely, work alienation. This is an important area of study because previous research indicates that work alienation is associated with important individual and organizational outcomes. We tested four antecedents of work alienation: decision-making autonomy, task variety, task identity, and social support. Moreover, we examined two outcomes of alienation: deviance and performance, the former measured 1 year after the independent variables were measured, and the latter as rated by supervisors. We present evidence from a sample of 283 employees employed at a construction and consultancy organization in the United Kingdom. The results supported the majority of our hypotheses, indicating that alienation is a worthy concept of exploration in the management sciences

Law, Liberty and the Rule of Law (in a Constitutional Democracy)

In the hunt for a better--and more substantial--awareness of the “law,” The author intends to analyze the different notions related to the “rule of law” and to criticize the conceptions that equate it either to the sum of “law” and “rule” or to the formal assertion that “law rules,” regardless of its relationship to certain principles, including both “negative” and “positive” liberties. Instead, he pretends to scrutinize the principles of the “rule of law,” in general, and in a “constitutional democracy,” in particular, to conclude that the tendency to reduce the “democratic principle” to the “majority rule” (or “majority principle”), i.e. to whatever pleases the majority, as part of the “positive liberty,” is contrary both to the “negative liberty” and to the “rule of law” itself

European “freedoms”: a critical analysis

Faced with the present migrant crisis and the dismal record of Europe in protecting vulnerable refugees’ and migrants’ rights, what could be the view of the moral philosopher? The contrast between the principles enshrined in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights and the reality of present policies is shocking, but more scrutiny will show that it is the result of a larger trend towards an understanding of freedom mostly in economic terms, at a time when economists such as Amartya Sen have revised their approach to economic growth and prosperity, noting the central role played by a much richer conception of freedom. The paper will scrutinize these inconsistencies and the conception of the person from which they derive and will provide an alternative and more coherent moral vision that could strengthen the legitimacy of the European Charter, at a time of growing dissatisfaction and so-called democratic deficit. Such a vision could help reconnect the Charter with a conception of the human person as in need not solely of passive legal protection, but also of active promotion of her self-respect and capabilities, and of her aspiration to a valuable life

Civil Liberties and Volunteering in Six Former Soviet Union Countries

To contribute to the debate as to whether volunteering is an outcome of democratization rather than a driver of it, we analyze how divergent democratization pathways in six countries of the former Soviet Union have led to varied levels of volunteering. Using data from the European Values Study, we find that Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—which followed a Europeanization path—have high and increasing levels of civil liberties and volunteering. In Russia and Belarus, following a pre-emption path, civil liberties have remained low and volunteering has declined. Surprisingly, despite the Orange Revolution and increased civil liberties, volunteering rates in Ukraine have also declined. The case of Ukraine indicates that the freedom to participate is not always taken up by citizens. Our findings suggest it is not volunteering that brings civil liberties, but rather that increased civil liberties lead to higher levels of volunteerin

The mimetic politics of lone-wolf terrorism

Written at a time of crisis in the project of social and political modernity, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1864 novel Notes from Underground offers an intriguing parallel for the twenty-first century lone-wolf; it portrays an abject, outcast, spiteful unnamed anti-hero boiling with rage, bitter with resentment and on the verge of radicalisation. A Girardian reading of the poetic truths contained in Dostoevsky’s work is able to provide important keys to explain the contemporary transformation from ‘fourth-wave’ religious terrorism to ‘fifth-wave’ lone-wolf terrorism. Such a reading argues that it is mimetic rivalry – rather than much-trumpeted forms of religious violence or cultural differences – that fuels the triangular relation between governments, terrorists and civilian victims at heart of terrorist acts. This approach is further able to blend social inquiry with an account of the individual, in fact anthropological, conditions of lone-wolf terrorism by tracing the globalisation of resentment and the individualisation of violence to the hyper-mimeticism characterising the globalisation of late modernity. Finally, a mimetic reading of ‘fifth-wave’ terrorism accounts for the turbulence of a global politics in which victimhood and scapegoating no longer have the ability to stabilise social order and warns against a future where violence proliferates and escalates unchecked