On the Debate Over Public Choice Theory

Hugh Strelton and Lionel Orchard, Public Goods, Public Enterprise and Public Choice: Theoretical Foundations of the Contemporary Attack on Government .     

Congress,Health Care Reform,and Reconciliation

This article explores the role of reconciliation in the passage of health care reform in the 111th Congress. Although counterintuitive, the analysis suggests that the loss of a filibuster-proof super-majority with the election of Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) aided Democrats in clearing the overhaul package by facilitating the use of reconciliation. Reconciliation provided the critical procedural mechanism enabling health care reform to be enacted into law. Despite reconciliation's importance, substantively the reconciliation “fixes” were relatively modest amendments. Moreover, notwithstanding the use of reconciliation, Congress passed the health care legislation with largely conventional means—separate health care reform measures cleared the House and Senate in 2009, in 2010 the House approved the Senate bill, and then both chambers quickly passed the reconciliation addendum. This research draws on discussions I had with over a dozen key actors after health care reform passed.     

Jazz and the Great Samba Debate,and Vice Versa

This paper will argue that jazz emerges as samba’s kindred foil in Brazilian popular music discourse of the 1940s and 1950s. Eager to underscore “blood” ties between idealized samba do morro and early blues and jazz, contributors to journals such as Diretrizes and Revista da Música Popular nonetheless tended to equate postwar bebop and big band with the menacing venality of the US music industry and the “vulgar” fandom to which it was associated. It was amidst such critical ambivalence toward jazz that bossa nova arrived on the scene, acutely vulnerable to accusations not just of appropriation but also servile imitation and therefore second-hand “decadence.”     

Teaching and Social Reform in the 1960s: Lessons from National Teacher Corps Oral Histories

Abstract: This article draws on oral history narratives to examinethe beliefs and expectations that brought a group of young peopleto the field of teaching in the 1960s through the National TeacherCorps (NTC). The oral histories address the identities, politics,aims, and backgrounds of a dozen NTC participants. By situatingthe voices of these young people within a larger social andhistorical context, the article uses oral history testimonyto reconsider existing accounts of social reform movements andteaching in the 1960s and early 1970s. Specifically, the oralhistories allow Teacher Corps participants to emerge as individualswho represent an important if largely unexplored populationthat took part in 1960s movements toward greater equality andsocial justice and who embraced the unique perspective thatteaching in ordinary schools serving poor and minority studentscould offer meaningful opportunities for grassroots, socialreform activity.     

Scientific Information, Elite Attitudes, and the Public Debate Over Food Safety

Why do consumers often react with alarm to food technologies (such as irradiation, genetic engineering, artificial hormones, and chemical pesticides) that scientists regard as essentially safe? We examine the attitudes toward food safety of three types of elites who serve as providers of scientific information regarding food safety to the United States public. Previous research suggests that journalists are likely to exaggerate risks associated with emerging food technologies, while minimizing risks associated with natural pathogens. This bias is hypothesized to be political in origin. By and large, our sample of newspaper editors was only slightly more concerned than were United States government policymakers and a sample of scientists. The expected pattern of alarm occurs clearly only in the case of irradiation. In addition, modest correlations of ideology to safety assessments were found for all three types of elites.     

National Forest Timber Management Over the Past Decade

Timber output, the major commodity use of the National Forests, was tracked from 1981 to 1993, to assess changes that have occurred in the amount of timber offered, sold, and harvested. In addition, changes in the method of harvest used on the National Forests were examined to view trends in the management practices of the Forest Service. Although trends regarding changes in timber harvest methods varied from region to region, data on timber offered, sold, and harvested showed a dramatic decrease both nationally and in important timber-producing regions since the late 1980s. This reduction, when seen in the light of other recent studies, suggests that the Forest Service is changing the emphasis of its management practices, placing less priority on the traditional high level of timber output.     

简论1957年农村两条道路的大辩论

1956年秋后至1957年春夏,农村出现了一股闹社退社风,为此在全国农村展开了一场以富裕中农为主要批判对象的资本主义道路和社会主义道路大辩论。大辩论是在对农村的形势作了不切实际的估计的前提下开展的,并出现了一些偏差。大辩论虽然达到了预期的目的,但给我国农村社会经济发展带来了长期的负面影响。     

Crossing the Great Divides: Hans Aarsleff's Lessons for Nineteenth-Century Intellectual Historians

SUMMARY

This essay discusses Hans Aarsleff's long battle to demonstrate the importance of the French and British thinkers of the mid-eighteenth century to the development of modern linguistic thought. Contesting claims that German scholars were the first to develop historicised theories of language, Aarsleff, along with his Princeton colleagues Lionel Gossman and Anthony Grafton, helped pioneer longue durée studies of the history of philology and of historiography that cross national boundaries as well as the so-called Sattelzeit (stretching from about 1780 until 1820). Although the importance of his work was, for a long time, little appreciated by modern intellectual historians, this essay argues that it is time that we fully learned Aarsleff's lessons.     

Organizing From Diversity in the Name of Community: Lessons From the Disability Civil Rights Movement

The recent passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act and other pieces of legislation affecting the disability community and other civil rights communities suggests a level of cohesion within the disability movement that blurs the reality and the power of the tensions which did and do exist. Examining the struggles to maintain an effective, cohesive entity provides an opportunity to explore the complexity of the disability movement as well as lessons for policy and program planning and for community organizing.     

《防海新论》与同光之际海防大讨论

德国人希理哈的《防海新论》可能是近代输入中国的第一本外国军事理论作。由于这本作所探讨的内容正切合中国海防建设的现实需要,故而引起清廷一部分官员的高度重视。他们在1874—1875年的海防大讨论中,一方面吸取了中国第一、二次鸦片战争被动挨打的经验教训,一方面接受了希理哈的海防观念,提出了比较先进的海防建设计划。此次海防讨论虽然最终未能达成共识,但我们仍应肯定希理哈《防海新论》译介到中国后所产生的积极影响。     

权力与自由:美墨战争期间美国外交大辩论研究

美墨战争发生在19世纪美国大陆扩张进入高潮时期,是美国以武力进行领土扩张的开始,在美国国会内部引发了一场有关美国国家目标的外交大辩论。辩论从得：克萨斯兼并开始,涉及宣战、拨款、领土兼并以及奴隶制的扩展等诸多问题,但其核心主题在于扩张性的外交政策与美国的自由事业是否相容,美国的国家目标是追求领土的扩大,还是自由的延续,从而体现了当时美国人对权力与自由两者之间关系的思考。     

资源委员会接管台湾工矿企业略论

二次世界大战结束后,资源委员会负责从日本人手中接管台湾省的工矿企业。面对战争带来的严重破坏和接管期间的种种困难,该会举全会的物力、财力和人力,先是监理,继而接管了台湾重要的工矿企业,掌握了台湾的经济命脉,为日后台湾经济的起飞做出了重要的贡献。     

The Debate on Economic and Social Security in the Late Eighteenth Century: Lessons ofa Road Not Taken

The laissez faire political economy of the late eighteenth century was marked by two sharply opposing views of the relation between social security or insecurity and economic growth: one associated with Adam Smith, Turgot and Condorcet; and another associated with Malthus. The latter school, with its faith in the motivating force of insecurity and fear, has been the more influential in subsequent economic thought. But, contrary to prevailing neoliberal stereotypes, Smith, Turgot and Condorcet had much to say to modern students of economics concerning the necessary and positive relationship between social security and economic development. This essay explores their vision of how to improve the life chances of the disadvantaged.     

From Universalism to Nationalism: Italian Freemasonry and the Great War

Abstract

During the period from 1914 to 1915, prior to Italy’s entry into the First World War, Freemasonry was a powerful force in Italian public life with a strong presence in every part of the nation and in the most vital organs of the State (parliament, public administration, the armed forces). Between them, the Grand Orient and the Grand Lodge of Italy counted 25,000 members and more than 500 lodges. Freemasons played a critical role in the campaign to mobilize Italian public opinion and political parties in support of Italy’s intervention in the war as an ally of France and Great Britain. To do so, they abandoned the movement’s traditional cosmopolitan and pacifist stances and adopted instead the objectives of the nationalists, a shift that would be consolidated during the war. Nonetheless, from 1917 onwards Italian Freemasons joined their counterparts in other European countries to press for the creation of a League of Nations to promote a new post-war universal order premised on the peaceful coexistence of independent and democratic nations. In examining the initiatives taken by Italian Freemasons in this period, this article focuses on the principles that inspired them, the language they adopted and the forms of communication and mobilization they used.     

从“大一统”到“正统”论——论唐宋文化转型中的历史观嬗变

伴随唐宋文化转型而兴起的“正统”论,扬弃了天人感应、五德终始之说．以法则性、道德性“天理”取代主宰性、意志性“天命”,经宋儒精心阐发的文化价值理想、社会政治理想“天理一王道”再次构成统合历史兴盛衰亡之变的“贞一之理”。而北宋时代的正统之辨呈现出儒家历史哲学、政治哲学在因应时代变化之际曾具有的复杂、深刻的思想面貌。