Convergence Thesis Research Articles

Do predictions destroy predictability? A study focusing on stock markets

Abstract Predicting stock markets is a problem that has generated many answers. According to one group of responses, the divergence thesis, it is impossible to accomplish this since the prediction has a ‘bending effect’ that would cause the market to behave in a way that would permanently depart from what was predicted, i.e. the prediction would falsify itself. There are at least three types of impossibility: logical, theoretical and empirical. A second class of responses argues that despite the ‘bending effect’ of predictions, it is still feasible to predicting stock markets. These responses, the convergence thesis, contend that we can achieve it by demonstrating that there are fixed points or that the prediction and market behavior will eventually converge. I expand this line of reasoning by showing that the performativity makes it possible certain predictions by an alignment between the ‘ontic’ and the ‘epistemic’ state of the markets. In addition, I show that performativity enables us to explain how a prediction is produced, why it works initially and then why it fails (i.e. why its predictive power is destroyed).

Liberal Convergence or Differential Exclusion? Temporary Labor Migration Policy in Japan and Korea

Abstract The rapid industrialization of countries in East Asia and the resulting labor shortage are challenging established theories in research on migration policy. Studies argue that the persistence of temporary labor migration programs in this region contests the liberal convergence thesis, which suggests that democratization inevitably leads to more open migration policies. This article revisits the theoretical debate, focusing on conceptual equivalence across time and space. In a comparative policy study of Japan and Korea, we examine the development of two temporary labor migration programs (the Specified Skilled Worker program and the Employment Permit System). Our findings demonstrate how migration policies alternately intersect and diverge throughout time and across policy dimensions. The article contributes to comparative research in migration policy by highlighting the significance of historically informed and empirically equivalent analysis of migration policies.

Positional Goods and Social Equality: Examining the Convergence Thesis

Several philosophers argue for the ‘convergence thesis’ for positional goods: prioritarians, sufficientarians, and egalitarians may converge on favouring an equal (or not too unequal) distribution of goods that have positional aspects. I discuss some problems for this thesis when applied to two key goods for which it has been proposed: education and wealth. I show, however, that there is a variant of the thesis that avoids these problems. This version of the thesis is significant, I demonstrate, because it applies to a person’s status as a citizen, which I suggest is the central concern of social or ‘relational’ egalitarianism.

Oppositional Genealogy of Ḥanābilah towards al-Ma’mūn’s Miḥna Policy: Nomos and Authority Conflict

While consolidating democracy in Muslim-majority countries like many Arab countries today, the problem of opposition between the people and the rulers still leaves a latent conflict. The opposition is not new in the Islamic world. In this context, the Ḥanābilah oppositional movement against the al-Ma'mūn's miḥna policy finds its significance here. The article aimed to determine the genealogy of the Ḥanābilah opposition to the al-Ma'mūn's miḥna policy and to correct the Weberian perspective in reading socio-religious movements, mainly the movement carried out by the Ḥanābilah ulema community by offering a socio-convergent perspective. This article is more a religious research than research on religion. The data in this study were sourced from books written by Ibn Ḥanbal and other relevant books. Data were analyzed using data display, data verification, and conclusions techniques. The results show that Ibn Ḥanbal's opposition to the miḥna is motivated by maintaining theological orthodoxy and protecting the authority of the Sunni ulema. Ḥanābilah's oppositional actions are more related to the conflict of authority. This convergence thesis is in line with the blurred approach of Edmund Burke and Adonis or the double-edged sword theory of Alberto Melluci. Opposition as part of efforts to construct a civilized political system which is not only seen from an opposing side but also as a sparring partner in carrying out the function of amr ma'rūf nahy munkar 'commanding right and forbidding wrong' to the government to realize good governance.

:The Right to Higher Education: A Political Theory

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Nigerian Troops in the War Against Boko Haram: The Civilian–Military Leadership Interest Convergence Thesis

This study interrogates the experiences of Nigerian troops in the war against Boko Haram. The paper’s contribution is bi-dimensional. First, it adds to the empirical literature on Boko Haram by analyzing the perspectives of rank-and-file troops. The study finds 10 forms of corruption affecting troops. These have contributed to the inability to defeat Boko Haram. Second, the paper adds to theoretical scholarship on civil–military relations and persistence of small wars. It challenges the bureaucratic-organizational model and the focus of civil–military relations theory on civilian control of the military. The study emphasizes the need to focus on the texture of the relationship between civilian and military leaders. The paper argues that the bureaucratic-organizational model has limited relevance to militaries in the postcolony and proposes a civilian–military leadership interest convergence thesis. The findings are relevant for understanding the spread of terrorism in sub-Saharan Africa and the persistence of small wars in non-Western, illiberal quasi-democratic societies.

Citizens' expectations about social protection in multilevel governance: The interplay between national and supranational institutions

AbstractTwo contrasting perspectives can be identified in the current literature on the relationship between European integration and the welfare state. On the one hand, the race to the bottom thesis presumes that welfare spending will be reduced to the lowest common denominator. On the other hand, the upward convergence thesis suggests that European integration supports and strengthens the capacities of national welfare states. This suggests that the consequences of European integration for national social protection systems are ambiguous. The current study contributes to this debate, by investigating the relationship between European integration and the welfare state from the perspective of public opinion. Do European citizens envision a race to the bottom or an upward convergence in social protection, and why so? Analysing data from the European Social Survey in 18 EU countries, the article reveals that the material benefits brought by national and supranational institutions, jointly shape citizens' expectations about the EU–welfare nexus, although in opposite directions. Generous national welfare provision fuels expectations that European integration fosters a race to the bottom for social protection levels, while higher receipts from EU Structural Fund programs and individual trust in EU institutions raise expectations of the EU as a catalyst of upward convergence in social standards. The implications of these findings for social policymaking in multilevel governance regimes are discussed.

Global diffusion of three road safety policies, 1964\u20132015

Global convergence of public policies has been regarded as a defining feature of the late twentieth century. This study explores the generalizability of this thesis for three road safety measures: (i) road safety agencies; (ii) child restraint laws; and (iii) mandatory use of daytime running lights. This study analyzes cross-national longitudinal data using survival analysis for the years 1964–2015 in 181 countries. The first main finding is that only child restraint laws have globally converged; in contrast, the other two policies exhibit a fractured global convergence process, likely as the result of competing international and national forces. This finding may reflect the lack of necessary conditions, at the regional and national levels, required to accelerate the spread of policies globally, adding further nuance to the global convergence thesis. A second finding is that mechanisms of policy adoption, such as imitation/learning and competition, rather than coercion, explain more consistently global and regional convergence outcomes in the road safety realm. This finding reinforces the idea of specific elective affinities, when explaining why the diffusion of policies may or not result in convergence. Lastly, by recognizing fractured convergence processes, these results call for revisiting the global convergence thesis and reintegrating more consistently regional analyses into policy diffusion and convergence studies.

Hungarian health care in the 1930s and 1940s: health care at a crossroads in East Central Europe before World War II

ABSTRACT The relationship between the Horthy era (1920–44) and the communist era shows continuities from a social historical perspective. The paper contributes to the reinterpretation of these relations by examining Hungarian health care in the 1930s and 1940s with a focus on the relationship between international transfers and path dependency in forging health care reforms. The author argues that the achievements communists regarded as inventions of socialism in health care and the welfare state had already been developed in the 1930s and 1940s. It was only because of the strict wartime budget of the early 1940s that these welfare reforms had not been realized. With the help of internal affairs documents, essays on health care, official statistics records in the National Archives of Hungary and the Semmelweis Library and Archives of Medical History as well as press material, Cora demonstrates that, even if communists depicted the interwar period as ‘fascist and imperialist’, the health care system of the so-called ‘productive social policy’ showed continuities. Moreover, social policy makers of the 1930s and early 1940s, such as Béla Johan, Ferenc Keresztes-Fischer and Béla Kovrig also designed welfare and health care reforms for the post-war period by both developing already existing Hungarian programmes and selectively adapting foreign welfare models (American management principles, the Alsace scheme and the Beveridge Plan). The study investigates Hungarian health care in view of the theory of path dependency and the macrohistorical convergence thesis developed by Tomka (on East–West convergence). It is within this framework that the paper addresses the issue of health care transfers to better understand the development of twentieth-century European health care systems by identifying similarities and differences in their development as well as to speculate on the trajectory of various political solutions to social challenges, including health care.

Where, When, and Who: Corporate Social Responsibility and Brand Value—A Global Panel Study

According to surveys of companies, branding is one of the main objectives of their corporate social responsibility (CSR). With advantageous data from Brand Finance, we address three contextual factors that may condition the relationship between CSR and brand value. First, we hypothesize that the relationship between CSR and brand value obtains across major world regions and industrial sectors (“the convergence thesis”). Second, we hypothesize that the relationship has weakened with time, as companies have had increasing difficulty using CSR to differentiate their brands in a sea of CSR-espousing competitors (“the crowding out thesis”). Third, we hypothesize that the relationship between CSR and brand value is weaker where a brand’s identity is different from that of its corporate owner, which may make it difficult for observers to readily link (corporate-level) CSR with its potential (lower level) brand beneficiaries (“the identity-match thesis”). We support these hypotheses with random-effects, fixed-effects, and instrumental-variable regressions before ending with contributions, limitations, implications, and potential next steps.

The effect of the cabinet’s ideological composition on economic growth in the Visegrád countries

ABSTRACT This article examines the relationship between the ideological composition of government cabinets and changes in economic activities in the Central European Region. Often, electoral rhetoric about right-wing governments being financially prudent and left-wing governments being “tax and spend” actors still holds sway in public discussion. However, empirical analysis and academic research have rarely backed such claims. The research hypothesis is that economic activity is mostly independent of who governs, also known as policy convergence. The article aims to test the policy convergence thesis on four Visegrád countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia). The research applied hierarchical models to estimate the effects of the ideological composition of the cabinet on the quarterly change of real GDP while controlling for other relevant predictors. The results confirmed the policy convergence thesis because the effects of various cabinets were neither substantial nor meaningful.

United populisms of America: exploring anti-corporate sentiment in populist social movements

Inspired by the literature on populist social movements and Ralph Nader’s convergence thesis, this paper aims to understand the potential for a left–right anti-corporate political convergence in the USA. We use the academic interpretation treating populism as a citizen’s reaction against perceived unresponsive elites, where anti-corporate grievances voiced by populist movements reflect feelings of political exclusion. Qualitative content analysis is applied using secondary sources written or spoken directly by eight “voices” representing Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party. Potential areas of convergence are taken from Nader’s Unstoppable. The analysis suggests common grievances with regards to corporate welfare, bailouts, and trade. From a discursive perspective, an anti-corporate populist convergence seems to be possible. Our academic contribution is a first step toward understanding what a left–right anti-corporate alliance might look like. We open possibilities for further research into corporate grievances shared by ideologically different populist movements and potential societal implications.

Asymptotically Unambitious Artificial General Intelligence

General intelligence, the ability to solve arbitrary solvable problems, is supposed by many to be artificially constructible. Narrow intelligence, the ability to solve a given particularly difficult problem, has seen impressive recent development. Notable examples include self-driving cars, Go engines, image classifiers, and translators. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) presents dangers that narrow intelligence does not: if something smarter than us across every domain were indifferent to our concerns, it would be an existential threat to humanity, just as we threaten many species despite no ill will. Even the theory of how to maintain the alignment of an AGI's goals with our own has proven highly elusive. We present the first algorithm we are aware of for asymptotically unambitious AGI, where “unambitiousness” includes not seeking arbitrary power. Thus, we identify an exception to the Instrumental Convergence Thesis, which is roughly that by default, an AGI would seek power, including over us.

Against Resolution: Dialogue, Demonstration, and Dispute Resolution

Critical race theory has long argued that the methods of alternative dispute resolution inhibit systemic, structural transformation by particularizing social conflicts into small-scale disputes. At the same time, the principles of interest-based dispute resolution have also been used by those working within the critical race theory tradition to forge what Derrick Bell called “interest convergences” that advance racial justice. In the present moment, amidst nation-wide protests following the killing of George Floyd and others, it is essential to understand what the methods of ADR have to offer for advancing racial justice, and how to use these methods responsibly. This article brings Bell’s interest convergence thesis into dialogue with interest-based dispute resolution to understand the limitations of ADR, and to find opportunities to use ADR’s flexibility and informality to effect structural transformations. It does so by proposing dialogical methods that emphasize the need for ongoing engagement regarding visions of a just society, rather than seeking the swift resolution of disputes.

Performativity and convergence in comparative corporate governance

We engage with the convergence/divergence debate in the comparative study of corporate governance by commending a nuanced formulation of the convergence thesis. Directing attention to the precarious constitution and adoption of knowledge claims about corporate status and architecture in the field of corporate governance we suggest that the study of comparative corporate governance might usefully incorporate consideration of claims about corporate governance as potentially performative statements that function to stabilize particular ideas of status and architecture of the modern corporation with substantive outcomes for political economy, thereby influencing the shape of the institutions comprising the field of corporate governance. We conclude that the predominantly epistemological preoccupations of participants in the convergence/divergence debate could be usefully refined and supplemented by giving closer attention, empirical as well as theoretical, to the relation between performativity, convergence/divergence, and political economy.

Cannabimimetic plants: are they new cannabinoidergic modulators?

Phytochemicals and secondary metabolites able to interact with the endocannabinoid system (Cannabimimetics) have been recently described in a broad range of plants and fruits. These findings can open new alternative avenues to explore for the development of novel therapeutic compounds. The cannabinoids regulate many physiological and pathological functions in both animals and plants. Cannabis sativa is the main plant that produces phytocannabinoids inside resins capable to defend the plant from the aggression of parasites and herbivores. Animals produce anandamide and 2-arachidonoyl glycerol, which thanks to binding with main receptors such as type-1 cannabinoid receptor (CB1R) and the type-2 cannabinoid receptor (CB2R) are involved in inflammation processes and several brain functions. Endogenous cannabinoids, enzymes for synthesis and degradation of cannabinoids, and CB1R and CB2R constitute the endocannabinoid system (ECS). Other plants can produce cannabinoid-like molecules such as perrottetinene extracted from Radula perrottetii, or anandamide and 2-arachidonoyl glycerol extracted from some bryophytes. Moreover, several other secondary metabolites can also interact with the ECS of animals and take the name of cannabimimetics. These phytoextracts not derived from Cannabis sativa can act as receptor agonists or antagonist, or enzyme inhibitors of ECS and can be involved in the inflammation, oxidative stress, cancer, and neuroprotection. Finally, given the evolutionary heterogeneity of the cannabimimetic plants, some authors speculated on the fascinating thesis of the evolutionary convergence between plants and animals regarding biological functions of ECS. The review aims to provide a critical and complete assessment of the botanical, chemical and therapeutic aspects of cannabimimetic plants to evaluate their spread in the world and medicinal potentiality.

The role of individual variable pay in a collectivistic culture society: an evaluation

With increasing worldwide use of individual variable pay (IVP) and thereby some theoretical suggestions to drop it in collectivistic societies it is worth examining the role of variable pay in such cultural surroundings. This paper aims at answering the following research questions: what kind of IVP systems are offered in collectivistic societies, is the implementation of IVP systems related to some specific company characteristic and what results can companies achieve by using IVP systems. A primary research of compensation practices was conducted among 58 Croatian medium and large companies. The research carried out shows that in Croatia, which is a highly collectivistic society, companies offer IVP such as pay for performance, sales commissions and occasional bonuses to its employees. Non-parametric testing has shown that the use of individual-based pay for performance is dependent upon the size and ownership structure of the company. However, contrary to some previous findings and expectations, our analysis reveals only minor differences in organisational outcomes between companies that apply or do not apply individual incentives. Research results support the thesis of global convergence of compensation practices and show that collectivistic heritage does not inhibit the implementation of IVP.

Challenges to the Omohundro–Bostrom framework for AI motivations

PurposeThis paper aims to contribute to the futurology of a possible artificial intelligence (AI) breakthrough, by reexamining the Omohundro–Bostrom theory for instrumental vs final AI goals. Does that theory, along with its predictions for what a superintelligent AI would be motivated to do, hold water?Design/methodology/approachThe standard tools of systematic reasoning and analytic philosophy are used to probe possible weaknesses of Omohundro–Bostrom theory from four different directions: self-referential contradictions, Tegmark’s physics challenge, moral realism and the messy case of human motivations.FindingsThe two cornerstones of Omohundro–Bostrom theory – the orthogonality thesis and the instrumental convergence thesis – are both open to various criticisms that question their validity and scope. These criticisms are however far from conclusive: while they do suggest that a reasonable amount of caution and epistemic humility is attached to predictions derived from the theory, further work will be needed to clarify its scope and to put it on more rigorous foundations.Originality/valueThe practical value of being able to predict AI goals and motivations under various circumstances cannot be overstated: the future of humanity may depend on it. Currently, the only framework available for making such predictions is Omohundro–Bostrom theory, and the value of the present paper is to demonstrate its tentative nature and the need for further scrutiny.

Confucian Legacies and the Meaning of Democracy in South Korea: A Cultural Interpretation

Whether Confucianism is compatible with liberal democracy has been a topic of heated debate among scholars and politicians alike, but with little meticulous empirical analysis. The incompatibility thesis, represented by the Asian value argument, suggests that as a political culture Confucianism hinders the deepening of democracy in Confucian Asian countries. The compatibility or convergence thesis, in contrast, argues that Confucianism is compatible with, and even compensates for the shortcomings of liberal democracy. This article investigates the relationship between South Koreans’ attachment to Confucian values and their attitudes towards a (non)democratic form of government. Unlike previous studies that treat Confucianism as a unitary value system, this article argues that Confucianism is multifaceted - its teachings on social hierarchy, morality, primacy of community, and social harmony - have different relationships with democratic and authoritarian values. This empirical analysis demonstrates that, at least in South Korea, certain Confucian values are compatible with democratic values of political participation and individual rights and liberty. In contrast to previous literature that focuses on institutional and performance variables as key variables that explain individual attachment to (non)democratic forms of government, this study illustrates that culture has consistent and long-lasting impacts on individual political orientations.

“Accentuate the Positive; Eliminate the Negative”: Hegemonic Interest Convergence, Racialization of Latino Poverty, and the 1968 Bilingual Education Act

Derrick Bell's interest convergence thesis is a seminal framework to analyze social change within critical race theory. While interest convergence's influence has grown, two foundational questions have been raised: do interest groups act rationally; does interest convergence also offer a change prescription or only an explanation of prior events. By revisiting Bell's early influences, via the concept of hegemony, the article intervenes in these two formative debates by offering a reimagined analytic framing that I term “hegemonic interest convergence.” The article then applies this concept to analyze how broader political economic shifts shaped the struggles within which the 1968 Bilingual Education Act arose. I demonstrate that support for bilingual education stemmed from a seeming interest convergence among policymakers and Latino activists based on economic, rather than cultural, concerns regarding poor urbanizing Latino communities. In doing so, policymakers promoted the bill as a concession to redirect focus from other Latino demands for economic uplift and a tool to promote ideas of cultural deficit that reimagined job automation and outsourcing into linguistic and racial “handicaps.” These findings are significant in illuminating how hegemonic interest convergence functions, thereby providing a novel historiographical analysis of the Bilingual Education Act as well as suggesting a possible strategy for future change.