International Environmental Regimes: Legalisation,Flexibility and Effectiveness

In one of the first quantitative designs, we explore the impact of both legalisation and flexibility on regime effectiveness, using data on international environmental institutions. One of the main implications is that ‘precision’ is an important determinant of regime performance. If the rule and norm system is well defined, well understood and clear, then a regime tends to be more effective in addressing an environmental problem. We do not find evidence, however, that ‘hard law’ is more effective than ‘soft law’ or that delegation mechanisms may be relevant. Second, flexibility in the regime structure increases regime performance – regular instead of subsidiary bodies enhance flexibility and thus have a positive effect on a regime's environmental problem management. Flexibility in states' agenda setting power, membership and decision making do not seem to have a crucial influence, though.     

Without Faith,Tsar, and Fatherland

This book excerpt explores the impact of the February revolution on periodical publishing in wartime Russia. It briefly considers the publishing activities of various political parties, but the main focus is publications by and for the active-duty army. The new freedom of the press allowed for dozens of new publications produced by soldiers themselves. Numerous other entities, including the civil authorities and public and private organizations, also published papers intended for the army, often with a pro-war message. But worsening problems with transport and supplies made it difficult to satisfy soldiers’ deep desire for news.     

Faith,Pluralism, and Public Engagement

Abstract

This essay is Miroslav Volf’s reply to the respondents to his book A Public Faith (2011). In the process of engaging his his respondents, the author articulates the main thesis and thrust of the book as well as the motivation behind writing it.     

真理、信念与历史研究——兼说人类历史发展规律

1．什么是真理真理这个概念在《大英百科全书》中没有相应的条目。《微软大百科辞海》中有四种定义：相符即真理,有用即真理,普遍一致即真理和削减的真理论。这里的任何一种定义都不能令人信服,它们仅仅给出了一些似是而非的答案,导致许多人从根本上否认真理的存在。我国的《辞海》和《中国大百科全书·哲学卷》都对真理的概念作出了明确的解释。《辞海》称：真理是对客观事物及其规律的正确反映,同“谬误”相对。《中国大百科全书·哲学卷》称：真理是与谬误对立的认识论范畴,指认识主体对存在于意识之外、并且不以意识为转移的客观实在的规律性的正确反映。这两种定义的突出特点是,把真理确定为认识主体对客观事物的规律和规律性的正确反映,指明了真理在认识领域中所处的地位。     

Faith,Ethics, and Communication: Some Recent Writing in Philosophical Theology

Four very different books on the relationship between faith and ethics are reviewed from the point of view of coping morally and intellectually with difference. Marty focuses on the stranger in pluralist societies and finds that more than mere tolerance is needed as a response to religious difference. Humility and hospitality draw more deeply on the resources of the religions as a basis for true civility. Muers explores the communicative possibilities of silence: how can one speak of God's self‐communication without silencing others? She draws conclusions for sensitive questions such as the right to privacy. Schweiker identifies “spaces of reasons” in which the religions can be moral resources in a “time of many worlds.” Burrell sets up an inter‐religious dialogue across the ancient world, bringing thinkers as diverse as Aquinas, al‐Ghazali, and Maimonides into conversation about the relationship between creator and creature.     

"It is God who Speaks in the Thunder . . .": Mediating Ontologies of Faith and Fear in Aboriginal Christianity>

The connection between Christianity and the ancestral law of Aboriginal culture has generated considerable debate within Australian Christianity. I explore the intersubjective flow between faith and fear emergent within these two systems and show how external influences have impacted ruptures of ontological thought and experience. These ruptures have both emerged from and shaped social and political change for Yolngu from Galiwin'ku in north-east Arnhem Land. I examine a range of discourses of religious rupture and argue that Christian influences have, at different times, variously competed with, moulded, and naturalized Yolngu ancestral understanding, leading to a surveillance of the social, spiritual, and political relationship between the Gospel and Culture by Yolngu Christians.     

Capitalism's Anxious Whole: Fear,Capture and Escape in the Grundrisse

Abstract: Two Hegels inhabit the Grundrisse. The first is conservative of the “selfsame” subject that continuously returns to itself as non‐identical identity and propels “history”. The other Hegel tarries with the “negative” he (which or variously calls “non‐being”, “otherness”“difference”) to disrupt this plenary subject to Marx's reading of a Hegel who is different‐in‐himself lends Grundrisse its electric buzz: seizing Hegel's “negative” as the not‐value of value, i.e. “labor”, Marx explains how capital must continuously enroll labor to its will in order to survive and expand. But this enrollment is never given; hence, despite its emergent structure of necessity, capital's return to itself as “self‐animating value” is never free of peril. The most speculative aspect of my argument is that the figure of “labor” in Grundrisse, because of its radically open formulation as not‐value, anticipates the elusive subject of difference in postcolonial theory, “the subaltern”—that figure which evades dialectical integration, and is in some ontological way inscrutable to the “master”. Unexpectedly, then Grundrisse gives us a way to think beyond the epistemic and geographic power of “Europe”.     

Barack Obama's Political Theology: Pluralism,Deliberative Democracy,and the Christian Faith

Abstract

Obama won the 2008 election precisely because he crafted a political theology that enabled him to create a truly progressive Democratic Party religious and racial-ethnic minority platform that welcomed pro-choice and pro-life social-justice leaning Catholics and Evangelicals into a new coalition. His political theology was directly influenced by Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright and the black church civil rights tradition, white liberal Protestantism, his mother Ann Dunham's skepticism and free spirit, and Evangelical and Catholic leaders, advisors and opponents. Obama's best and most comprehensive statement on his political theology is his chapter on "Faith" in his New York Times No.1 best-selling autobiography The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream (2006). Obama contends that religiously motivated people must learn the art of compromise, proportion, and how to find shared values. They must translate their religious concerns and vision for America into universal rather than religion-specific values, which must be subject to debate, amenable to reason, and applicable to people of all lifestyles and faiths or no faith at all. They should also be willing to sublimate their ultimate theological and religious convictions for the common collective good. Secular people likewise must adopt a similar approach towards religious people and activists.     

Jim Wallis,Faith Works: Lessons on Spirituality and Social Action

Abstract

This is a response to John Milbank that further unfolds our debate published as The Monstrosity of Christ edited by Creston Davis and published by MIT Press, 2009. My response to Milbank takes its point of departure from Pascal's wager.     

The Euro: Faith Hope and Parity

The inauguration of the euro as the currency of the European Union is the most far‐reaching step so far taken in the long‐term movement for regional political and economic integration. The new money demonstrates that the initial customs union established by the Treaty of Rome has grown to such an extent that member states are willing to surrender control over their national central banks and currencies. Only three members of the EU have refused to join—Britain, Denmark and Sweden. Despite widespread scepticism, the euro so far has been a success. The new currency, while a dramatic innovation, is also congruent with financial dimensions that can be traced through the history of the European Community. The experience of inflation in the 1960s and 1970s was a powerful incentive to establish strong European central banking institutions. The euro is both derivative from and competitor with the US dollar, and American historical experience over the long term as well as foreign policies since the Second World War are germane to analysis. For Britain, remaining outside the euro zone so far has not brought negative consequences and may have been beneficial to the economy. For most member governments of the EU, the opportunity to pool resources through a regional currency understandably has been a persuasive incentive, especially given the enormous growth of private capital markets. The creation of the euro has been facilitated by the shifting nature of money. Currencies have changed from distinctive national components of the highly structured Bretton Woods system to relatively freely traded commodities, and the traditional distinctive characteristics of money have been blurred with the evolution of credit markets, financial instruments and technology. The fundamental test of the euro will occur when member states face differentiated political pressures to inflate economies in order to combat unemployment. To date, the European currency has been the latest confirmation of the insight of Jean Monnet and others to employ economic integration to reduce the likelihood of a resurgence of militarism and war.     

Liberal Government,Civil Society and Faith Communities

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between faith communities and the liberal system of government which operates in contemporary Britain. The problem addressed is as follows: liberal democracy relies upon the assumption of the validity of certain general truths: human rights, social justice, individual autonomy, and so on. In our postmodern society, however, social fragmentation has eroded the validity of such assumptions, leaving no universal or neutral benchmark through which to judge competing truth-claims. In particular, different faith traditions posit potentially incommensurable claims about what constitutes a good society. This article assesses the suggestion that in our pluralistic and differentiated society, more and more social decisions should be left to the market or to private rather than collective judgment and responsibility. It suggests various possibilities for reconceptualizing liberalism: for instance, as a modus vivendi providing a framework within which different moral outlooks can ‘live and let live’, but suggests that liberalism can have a positive moral content of its own, and need not be merely a coping mechanism for dealing with diversity.     

Systemic Flexibility,Production Fragmentation and Cluster Governance

The recent process of production fragmentation and the rapid growth of firm clusters have been explained by the increasing need for output flexibility. Although the mainstream literature relates flexibility mostly to labour adjustments, this paper investigates sources of flexibility as being related to forms of inter-firm production. Two extreme cases are compared: industrial districts and monopsonistic clusters. The nature and the implications of production flexibility are discussed in both settings. It is argued that the governance structure of industrial districts affects the dynamics of inter-firm linkages, which in turn enables systemic flexibility to be achieved.