A Review of “Decision Points”

Abstract

A large body scholarship demonstrates that the population size of an electoral district affects elections in important ways, yet little is known about the implications of population size for campaigning and fundraising. I posit that the challenges of running a campaign in a populous electorate require candidates to focus their fundraising efforts on the wealthy. I analyze campaign finance records published by the Federal Election Commission during the 2006–2014 Senate elections and find that Senate candidates running in large states receive fewer donations per capita from in-state donors, but they tend to receive larger donations on average and more money from contributions of $1,500 and above. In sum, candidates running in populous states appear to rely upon comparably smaller pools of wealthy constituents writing larger checks to finance their campaigns. In the context of rising campaign costs, these findings suggest that constituency population growth may exacerbate representational inequalities between citizens and contribute to the growing influence of the wealthy in U.S. politics.     

Just War or Ethical Peace? Moral Discourses of Strategic Violence After 9/11

Against the commonly held view that morality implies a critique or restraint of strategic violence, this article analyses a range of moral discourses that have been deployed to support the war on terror, including its extension to Iraq. It analyses the ambiguity between legal and extra-legal responses in Bush administration rhetoric and policy, and critically surveys the humanitarian costs–in civilian life, instability and suffering–sustained during the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This article places just war theory, in particular, under extended critical scrutiny, and finds its formalized system of moral rules and concepts–particularly civilian immunity and proportionality–deeply flawed in the light of actual US war-fighting strategies. By insisting on the acceptability of unintentional killing (as opposed to an alternative concept such as avoidable harm) just war theory may actually expose civilians to mortal danger and liberate war rather than morally restrain it. In the light of the flaws of current moral discourses on strategy, the article concludes by developing 'ethical peace' as an alternative conceptual framework that seeks to create a genuinely universal moral community in which it is never, in principle, legitimate to secure one group of citizens by placing others in moral danger.     

Paleoethology as a tool for the development of archaeological models of land-use: the Crimean Middle Palaeolithic

The principal aim of our research is to capitalize on the close relationship between prehistoric hunters and prey to develop spatial models for the investigation of land-use patterns. Ideally, these models should be useful both as predictive tools for designing regional archaeological surveys, and as analytical tools for studying the distribution of known archaeological sites. Here, we build upon a basic G.I.S. model (including standard environmental variables such as slope, aspect and distance to water) adding a paleoethological variable in the form of range reconstructions for the regionally dominant, prehistoric human prey species: Equus hydruntinus.     

Book reviews

Gramsci and the Italian State. By Richard Bellamy and Darrow Schecter (Manchester and New York Manchester University Press, 1993), xvi + 203 pp.

Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572–1588. By Wallace MacCaffrey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), x + 530 pp.

Elizabeth I: War and Politics, 1588–1603. By Wallace MacCaffrey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), xvi + 592 pp.

Figures on the Horizon. Edited by Jerrold Seigel (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1993), xix + 278 pp. £29.50, $53.00 cloth.

Logomachia: The Conflict of the Faculties. Edited by Richard Rand (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), xii + 218 pp., £27.00 cloth, £11.95 paper.

The Origins of French Art Criticism from the Anden Régime to the Restoration. By Richard Wrigley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), xii + 427 pp.

The Madness of Kings: Personal Trauma and the Fate of Nations. By Vivian Green (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993), xiii + 322 pp., $35.00 cloth.

The Conservative Imagination. By Philip Thody (London: Pinter, 1993), xi + 179 pp., cloth.

The Longman Companion to Cold War and Détente 1941–91. By John W. Young (London and New York: Longman Higher Educational, 1993), 360 pp., £11.99 paper.

The Colloquy of Montbéliard: Religion and Politics in the Sixteenth Century. By Jill Raitt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), xiv + 226 pp., £40.00

Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism. By Robert Wuthnow (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993; first published, 1989), 739 pp., $29.95 paper.

Xenophon Oeconomicus: A Social and Historical Commentary. By Sarah B. Pomeroy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), xii + 388 pp., $50.00

The Heidegger Controversy: A Critical Reader. Edited by Richard Wolin (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993), xx + 315 pp., $16.95 paper.

Biblical Theocracy: A Vision of the Biblical Foundations for a Christian Political Philosophy. By Stephen Palmquist (Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press, 1993), 193 pp., HK $35.00, US $4.50 paper.

Considerations sur la France. By Joseph De Maistre, trans, and edited by Richard A. LeBrun; introduction by Isaiah Berlin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) xlii + 132 pp., £30.00/$49.95 cloth, £12.95/$16.95 paper.

Machiavellian Rhetoric. By Victoria Kahn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), xv + 314 pp., $29.95, £23.50 cloth.

Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre et les Annales d'Histoire Economique et Sociale: Correspondance, vol. 1, 1928–1933. Edited by Bertrand Müller (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1994), lx + 551pp., FF240.

Kant's Transcendental Psychology. By Patricia Kitcher (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 296 pp.

The End of the Salon: Art and the State in the Early Third Republic. By Patricia Mainardi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), ix + 210 pp., $18.95/£12.95 paper.

Aristotle on the Goals and Exactness of Ethics. By Georgios Anagnostopoulos (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), xiii + 468 pp., $50.00 cloth.

A Treatise of Orders and Plain Dignities. By Charles Loyseau, edited and trans, by Howell A. Lloyd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xlviii + 255 pp., $59.95 and £40.00 cloth, $22.95 and £14.95 paper.

The Philosophy of Childhood. By Gareth B. Matthews (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 136 pp., $18.95 cloth.

Reading Heidegger from the Start: Essays in His Earliest Thought. Edited by Theodore Kisiel and John van Buren (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 480 + ix pp., $74.50 cloth, $24.95 paper.

Dante and the Mystical Tradition: Bernard of Clairvaux in the Commedia. By Stephen Botterill, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), x + 269 pp., £37.50 and $59.95.

The Boundaries of Modern Iran. Edited by Keith McLachlan, SOAS Geopolitics Series 2 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994, ix + 150 pp., $49.95 cloth.

New French Thought: Political Philosophy. Edited by Mark Lilla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) 239 pp., $45.00 cloth; $14.95 paper.

Myth and Territory in the Spartan Mediterranean. By Irad Malkin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xvii + 278 pp., £37.50 and $59.95 cloth.

The Interpretation of Order: A Study in the Poetics of Homeric Repetition. By Ahuvia Kahane (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), xi + 190 pp., £25.00 cloth.

History and Tropology: The Rise and Fall of Metaphor. By Frank R. Ankersmit (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), vii + 244 pp., $40.00 cloth.

Anglo‐Irish: The Literary Imagination in a Hyphenated Culture. By Julian Moynahan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), xiii + 288 pp., $24.95 cloth.

The Correspondence of Thomas Hobbes. Edited by Noel Malcolm, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), Vol. 1: 1622–1659, lxxv + 511 pp., £60.00 doth; Vol. 2: 1660–1679, xv + 495 pp., £60.00 cloth.

Actors in the Audience: Theatricality and Doublespeak from Nero to Hadrian. By Shadi Bartsch, Revealing Antiquity 6. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), vi + 309 pp., $37.50 cloth.

Divine Power: The Medieval Power Distinction up to its Adoption by Albert, Bonaventure, and Aquinas. By Lawrence Moonan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), xii + 396 pp., £40.00 cloth.

Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–1922. By Vladimir N. Brovkin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), xiii + 455 pp., $43.50 and £55.00 cloth.

The Art of War in World History: From Antiquity to the Nuclear Age. Edited by Gerard Chaliand (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), xliii + 1072 pp., 8 maps, $75.00 cloth, $30.00 paper.

The French Press in the Age of Enlightenment. By Jack R. Censer (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), xi + 263 pp., £40.00 cloth.

Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther. By Mark U. Edwards, Jr. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 238 pp., 6 illus., $40.00 cloth.

The Rhetoric of Purity: Essentialist Theory and the Advent of Abstract Painting. By Mark A. Cheetham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 194 pp., 16 illus., £11.95, $17.95 paper.

Ambrose of Milan. By Neil B. McLynn (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), xii + 406 pp., $45.00 cloth.

Understanding the Infinite. By Shaughan Lavine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), ix + 371 pp., $39.95 cloth.

Historia and Fabula: Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age. By Peter G. Bietenholz (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), xii + 434 pp., 9 illus., $91.50 cloth, NLG 160.00.

The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa. By Otto of Freising, trans, and edited by Charles Mierow (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 366 pp., $16.95 paper.

In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. By Robert Kegan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), viii + 396 pp., $29.95 cloth.

Tudor Political Culture. Edited by Dale Hoak (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), xxiii +310 pp., £45.00

Reconstructing the Subject: Modernist Painting in Western Germany, 1945–1950. By Yule F. Heibel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 207 pp., $45.00, £33.50 cloth.

The Uses of the University, 4th ed. By Clark Kerr (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), xv + 220 pp., $15.95 paper.

The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations of the Disunity of Science. By John Dupré (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 308 pp., paper.

The Stop. By David Appelbaum (Albany: State University of New York Press, New York, 1995), xi + 154 pp., $14.95 paper.

Walter Benjamin's Passages. By Pierre Missac, trans. Shierry Weber Nicholson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995), 233 pp., $25.00 cloth.

Spinoza: The Enduring Questions. Edited by Graeme Hunter. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995), xviii +182 pp., North American $70.00, Europe $78.00, UK £45.50 cloth.

Adultery and Divorce in Calvin's Geneva. By Robert M. Kingdon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), ix + 214 pp., $29.95 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Falsehood Disguised: Unmasking the Truth in La Rochefoucauld. By Richard G. Hodgson. (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1995), xiii + 175 pp., £28.50.

Nietzsche and the Modern Crisis of the Humanities. By Peter Levine (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), xxi + 279 pp., $18.95 cloth.

Science and Culture: Popular and Philosophical Essays. By Herman von Helmholtz, ed. David Cahan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), xviii + 418 pp., $52.00 cloth, $17.00 paper.     

The Influence of Salt on Handheld Electrical Moisture Meters: Can They Be Used to Detect Salt Problems in Porous Stone?

Salt contamination in heritage stone affects handheld moisture meter measurements on-site. This poses a problem when the readings indicate erroneously higher levels of moisture than actually present. For decision making with regards to moisture prevention treatment it is therefore crucial to distinguish between actual dampness and the hygroscopic action of salts. This study investigated the effect on moisture meter readings of both increased conductivity of pore water and the increased water retention caused by the presence of sodium chloride (NaCl) in artificially contaminated Portland limestone samples. The influence of NaCl contamination on selected handheld moisture meters was quantified. As a result, this article proposes that under certain circumstances moisture meters could be used to diagnose, reliably, both moisture and salt problems in heritage stone.     

‘How Time Flies’: Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the 1960s

Recent histories of human rights have identified the 1970s as the most decisive epoch in the birth of the modern rights era. These works have tended toward a parenthetic dismissal of the period 1948–70 as years of interregnum, of marginal impact to the ‘breakthrough’ moment which followed. This article argues for a more complex periodisation, and reclaims the importance of the 1960s. Far from an undifferentiated abyss, the two decades between the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the 1968 International Human Rights Year held their own shifts, integral to the evolution of modern human rights. A crucial transition in the status of the UDHR occurred across the mid-1960s, roughly aligned with the terminal years of liberal post-colonialism. Through a comparison of two hitherto neglected events in the history of human rights, the fifteenth and twentieth anniversary commemorations of the UDHR, in December 1963 and 1968, this article traces the trajectory of that transition. These commemorations, concentrated moments of explicit reflection on the meaning of human rights, encapsulated the gulf between the early and the late 1960s. In the space of five years, any vestigial consensus on the vision enunciated in 1948 was obliterated.