General Propositions Research Articles

Edgeworth's Ireland: History, Popular Culture, and Secret Codes

During the 1990s more critical work has appeared on the Anglo-Irish national novel than in any decade since 1800-1810 when, by common consent, the subgenre first appeared. The new edition of Edgeworth in twelve volumes is a contribution to this collective effort, but the edition is appearing after what is effectively a school of Anglo-Irish postcolonial criticism. In the course of the 1990s Tom Dunne, Seamus Deane, Terry Eagleton, and most recently Kevin Whelan have between them established an essentialist line, not closely concerned with the text, on what they see more broadly as a body of initially by Anglicized and Protestant Irish writers that made the writing of Ireland a topic dominated by the colonial relationship with England and addressed to the English.1 Some of the postcolonial group argue that the relationship has from the first been hierarchical: they instance the debate Edmund Spenser borrowed from a dialogue by the Greek, Lucian, that of Civility versus Incivility, which survived into the nineteenth century with the Irish permanently cast in the role of barbarians. Critics vary somewhat in the closeness with which they make such general propositions fit individual writers. Whelan is most dogmatic in fitting the colonizer-stereotype to Edgeworth and in the process giving her a specific political role:

Verneinen als Absprechen bei Aristoteles oder: Muß man Aristoteles durch die Russellsche Brille lesen?

Two counter-examples stand against the Aristotelian thesis of De interpretatione 6 that negation principally means denial: Neither can the negation of general propositions be understood as denial, nor is this possible in the case of propositions whose grammatical subject is an empty singular term. While the first counter-example can be ea­sily refuted through the analysis which Aristotle gives of general propositions in De interpretatione 7, the second counter-example seems to be able to invoke Categoriae 10. According to the usual view of Categoriae 10, Aristotle himself delivers examples for negations which cannot be understood as denials. The present essay holds this interpretation to be incorrect, and attempts to show with reference to indexical propositions and an Aristotelian two-term concept of truth that even these negations are to be understood as denials. Specifically, it is argued that this errant interpretation relies upon a reading of the Aristotelian text through a Russellian lens.

Rescuing the Sociology of Educational Knowledge from the Extremes of Voice Discourse: Towards a new theoretical basis for the sociology of the curriculum

This paper is a response to that of Moore and Muller 'The Discourse of Voice and the Problem of Knowledge and Identity in the Sociology of Education', which appeared in Volume 20 of this journal. It starts by summarising and endorsing their criticisms of 'voice discourses' but argues that their case is weakened by their failure to distinguish clearly between the 'debunking of knowledge' associated with the postmodernist theories that underpin 'voice discourses' and the general propositions of a social theory of knowledge. The idea that knowledge has a social as well as an epistemological basis is now widely accepted in philosophy as well as sociology. The paper draws on a paper by Stephen Toulmin and makes a distinction between anthropological and sociological approaches to the idea of knowledge having a social basis. It goes on to use some ideas from the author's recent work on the issue of knowledge specialisation to suggest the kind of contribution that a sociological approach to knowledge can make to current curriculum issues as well as to educational policy more broadly.

Imagine substituting leptons and quarks for gods and spirits

Guided by the conviction that an exhaustive exploration of features common to modern Western and traditional African thought should come before the enumeration of differences, it is argued that the general propositions that can be formulated on the nature and function of Western traditional thinking are highly relevant to traditional African thinking. Despite the fact that African worldview reflections are mostly in terms of the world of which “we are part”, and not the world where “we are inside”, which is common to Western reflection, a surprisingly fundamental similarity exists in the type of conceptuality employed as well as in the process of theory making.

Proposal Rights, Veto Rights, and Political Bargaining

Formal models of political bargaining generally emphasize the importance of the allocation of prerogatives such as proposal and veto rights among the bargainers. However, despite the importance of these arguments for the study of political institutions, little work has been done to clarify precisely what general roles each of these prerogatives play in generating political outcomes. In this article, I develop a sequential-choice bargaining model that incorporates very general allocations of both proposal and veto rights. The model helps clarify the important strategic distinctions between these rights and identify the conditions under which they have substantial impacts on outcomes. My analysis demonstrates how these prerogatives interact and how the failure to account for this interaction can lead to mistaken inferences about their individual effects. Finally, the model suggests that the value of these rights is heavily influenced by a number of other features of the institutional bargaining environment. he notion that the protocols for the production and adoption of policy proposals have profound effects on outcomes is hardly novel in political science. In the past two decades, dozens of models of various political institutions have been formulated that show how specific allocations of proposal rights-the ability to initiate new policies-and veto rights-the ability to block proposed policies-affect political outcomes. However, despite the general recognition of the importance of these prerogatives in political bargaining, there have been relatively few attempts to develop general propositions as to their effects. In this article, I develop a model of political bargaining designed to isolate the distinctions between the rights to make proposals and those to invoke vetoes. There are two main questions that I wish to address. First, what is the impact of how these rights are allocated across actors in a political bargaining situation? Secondly, what are the conditions under which one of these prerogatives are more valuable to a political actor than another?' To illustrate these questions concretely, consider the model of political bargaining first developed by Romer and Rosenthal (1978) and used in numerous applications to the study of political institutions. In the simplest version, two actors negotiate to change an exogenously given status quo policy. Prerogatives are allocated such that one player is allowed to make a proposal while the other may veto it. The game lasts for only a single period as the status quo remains in effect following any unsuccessful proposal. This model has a number of implications with regard to the effects of proposal and veto rights. The first is that policy often depends on which of the actors is the proposer and which is the vetoer. As long as there are policies that both actors prefer to the status quo, the outcome is determined by the

Politics and History's Lessons

The intellectual vigor of political history informed by social science is obvious in journals such as Studies in American Political Development and the Journal of Policy History, in award-winning books produced by both university and commercial presses, in the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association (currently the seventh largest organized section in the APSA), and in many specialized panels, workshops and conferences dedicated to specific topics in political history. What can this vigorous application of social science to political history teach leaders and citizens today? The best political history' teaches that the past is relevant, politics is ubiquitous, and broad political perspective is essential for political wisdom. These lessons of political history, though, can teach nothing if leaders and citizens will not learn from them. To influence leaders and citizens, political historians must provide them with information they value. Expanding the audience for political history depends as much on the strategy of gaining influence as it does on the quality of the lessons themselves. Put bluntly, political historians must be highly political to influence leaders and citizens (and political historians should be the first to recognize this fact). Lucid reflection will cause many political historians to doubt that it is worth the intellectual compromises necessary to maximize popular interest in political history. Political historians, however, can influence specific premises of political discourse, explain the way that historical evidence is used in politics, and provide leaders with the hope that historical development teaches as much about new possibilities as foreclosed options. Political history informed by social science is beneficial for public action in just the way that good psychology is beneficial for private action. Psychology is valuable because it blends rich, textured case studies of individuals' psychological histories with general propositions about types of psychological temperament, motivations, processes, and problems. We know intuitively that understanding another person requires knowledge of that person's past experiences. Psychology shows the value of applying systematic analysis to the events that shape a person's life. It offers a model for the constructive marriage of the historical and social science approaches to political history.

Influence of Boundary Conditions on Pattern Formation and Spatial Chaos in Lattice Systems

This work elucidates the spatial structure of lattice dynamical systems, which is represented by equilibria of the systems. On a finite lattice, various boundary conditions are imposed. The effect from these boundary conditions on formation of pattern as well as spatial complexity, as the lattice size tends to infinity, is investigated. Two general propositions are proposed as a criteria to demonstrate that this effect is negligible. To illustrate the effectiveness of these criteria, the mosaic patterns in a cellular neural network model on one- and two-dimensional lattices are also studied. On a one-dimensional lattice, the influence of boundary conditions on pattern formation and spatial chaos for mosaic patterns is negligible. This result is justified by verifying the above-mentioned criteria and by using the transition matrices. These appropriately formulated matrices generate all the mosaic patterns on a one-dimensional infinite lattice and on any one-dimensional finite lattice with boundary conditions. On a two-dimensional lattice, two illustrative examples demonstrate that the boundary effect can be dominant. The results and analysis in this investigation have significant implications for circuit design in cellular neural networks.

Materializing Identities: An African Perspective

Archaeological approaches to social boundaries are currently emphasizing the dynamic nature of processes thought which individuals construct, maintain, and negotiate their identity. Although the integration of such concepts has led to a more accurate reconstruction of past social boundaries, it has also revealed a need for more sophisticated ways of interpreting material culture. This paper is a step in that direction. Focusing on pottery chaines operatoires and addressing questions about the salience and scale of particular behaviors, I seek to develop general propositions regarding the relationships between technological styles and aspects of social identity. To that end, I compare African pottery techniques at a subcontinental level and see whether there are recurrent patterns in their distribution and whether these can be related to specific social boundaries or historical processes of group formation.

On the Individual

A description of two cases from my time as a school psychologist in the middle of the 1950s forms the background to the following question: Has anything important happened since then in psychological research to help us to a better understanding of how and why individuals think, feel, act, and react as they do in real life and how they develop over time? The studies serve as a background for some general propositions about the nature of the phenomena that concerns us in developmental research, for a summary description of the developments in psychological research over the last 40 years as I see them, and for some suggestions about future directions.

The Evolutionary Advantages of Dying Young: Epidemiological Implications of Longevity in Metapopulations.

Here we show that pathogen-mediated selection can influence the evolution of host longevity. Greater longevity can impair the fitness of host organisms subject to pathogen attack, by reducing the mortality rate of infected hosts and thus creating a larger and more persistent reservoir of disease, from which infection can spread to the healthy population. Where longer-lived and shorter-lived hosts can infect one another (and thus all share the same risk of infection), selection will favor longer-lived individuals, to the detriment of the host population as a whole. But in metapopulations, selection can favor shorter-lived hosts that are otherwise identical to their longer-lived competitors, because the populations in which they occur will have lower incidence of disease. Under some conditions, shorter-lived hosts can even invade metapopulations of longer-lived hosts, displacing them and driving them to extinction. Our results support three general propositions. First, an organism's life-history traits, and not just its resistance genes, can affect its risk of pathogen attack. Second, pathogen-mediated selection may therefore influence the evolution of host life-history traits that are unrelated to resistance, per se. Third, the magnitude-and even the direction-of selection on host longevity can depend on the structure of the host population.

Examining the "liberal media" claim: journalists' views on politics, economic and social policy (including health care), and media coverage.

The conservative critique of the news media rests on two general propositions: journalists hold views that are to the left of the public, and journalists frame news content in a way that accentuates these left perspectives. Previous research has revealed persuasive evidence against the latter claim, but the validity of the former claim has often been taken for granted. This research project examined the supposed left orientation of media personnel by surveying Washington-based journalists who cover national politics and/or economic policy at U.S. outlets. The findings include: (1) On select issues from corporate power and trade to Social Security and Medicare to health care and taxes, journalists are actually more conservative than the general public. (2) Journalists are mostly centrist in their political orientation. (3) The minority of journalists who do not identify with the "center" are more likely to identify with the "right" when it comes to economic issues and to identify with the "left" when it comes to social issues. (4) Journalists report that "business-oriented news outlets" and "major daily newspapers" provide the highest quality coverage of economic policy issues, while "broadcast network TV news" and "cable news services" provide the worst.

Colas, burgers, shakes, and shirkers: Towards a sociological model of franchising in the market economy

A growing volume of literature continues to inform debates on franchising as a business form. However, a great deal of the theorizing and research continues to focus on narrowly defined issues such as franchising as a distribution channel. The dominant reason for this restricted focus is perhaps that franchising does not fit comfortably within the limits of any single academic discipline or area of management practice. Rather, it extends into a multiplicity of fields such as law, marketing, economics, entrepreneurship, human resource management, psychology, sociology, and organizational theory. It is the authors’ contention in this paper, that a more encompassing theoretical model is now needed and that a mainly sociological approach has much to offer. This discipline arguably has the conceptual suppleness and ability to link the strategies and behavioral patterns of individual actors to organizational structures and characteristics, and to set these in the context of the wider economy and society. Overall, the model offered here takes the form of 15 general propositions spanning three levels: the macro, touching on cultural, societal, and economic attributes, the organizational, and, finally, the individual level. It builds on the substantial existing literature, seeking to integrate this in order to form a general model equally suited to quantitative or qualitative research approaches.

Bureaucrats and the Environment in Africa: The Politics of Structural Choice in a One Party State

Two different groups in Zambia, each seeking to construct new wildlife policies, faced a difficult institutional environment in the 1980s. Financially, the government of Zambia could not support a new, expensive conservation effort. Its revenues had dried up with the relentless fall in the price of copper, the country's chief foreign exchange earner. Yet without such an effort many wildlife populations faced uncertain futures. Illegal hunting had mushroomed in the 1970s, due to the government's decreasing ability to enforce its laws and the increasing value of wildlife products. The political environment possessed its own uncertainties. The incentives generated by Zambia's one party state forced all interest groups to contend with the president, Kenneth Kaunda. While generally supportive of conservation efforts, Kaunda also consistently interfered in the activities of government agencies. His favor could prove decisive for an agency; his disfavor could destroy an agency and end civil servants' careers. The members of the two conservation groups understood the incentives generated by Zambia's political system. Each created similar institutional solutions to deal with the country's particular pattern of political uncertainty. But the two groups' strategies also differed in one crucial respect. One group, composed of individuals from the Zambian conservation community and European donors, actively sought the support of President Kaunda. The other group, composed of officers from Zambia's National Parks and Wildlife Service, went to great lengths to avoid Kaunda. In explaining the strategies of these two groups, this study addresses important questions in the study of comparative politics in general and of bureaucracy in particular. First, can bureaucratic behavior be modeled? Scholars have attempted to make general propositions about bureaucrats' actions for a century; recent efforts using economic theory have added useful insights to counter conventional Wilsonian models and to improve our understanding of politicized bureaucrats. Second, do bureaucrats act similarly under different systems of government? Contemporary scholarship indicates that bureaucrats may face different incentives and therefore make different choices under alternative governmental arrangements. Does a one party system influence bureaucrats in systematic ways? The centralization of power in the executive might present fundamentally different choices to

The Evolutionary Advantages of Dying Young: Epidemiological Implications of Longevity in Metapopulations

Here we show that pathogen‐mediated selection can influence the evolution of host longevity. Greater longevity can impair the fitness of host organisms subject to pathogen attack, by reducing the mortality rate of infected hosts and thus creating a larger and more persistent reservoir of disease, from which infection can spread to the healthy population. Where longer‐lived and shorter‐lived hosts can infect one another (and thus all share the same risk of infection), selection will favor longer‐lived individuals, to the detriment of the host population as a whole. But in metapopulations, selection can favor shorter‐lived hosts that are otherwise identical to their longer‐lived competitors, because the populations in which they occur will have lower incidence of disease. Under some conditions, shorter‐lived hosts can even invade metapopulations of longer‐lived hosts, displacing them and driving them to extinction. Our results support three general propositions. First, an organism's life‐history traits, and not just its resistance genes, can affect its risk of pathogen attack. Second, pathogen‐mediated selection may therefore influence the evolution of host life‐history traits that are unrelated to resistance, per se. Third, the magnitude—and even the direction—of selection on host longevity can depend on the structure of the host population.

Some general propositions about the study of spatial patterns of species richness

Spatial patterns of species richness are very well studied, yet there is surprisingly little consensus about what factors or processes control those patterns. Hypotheses have accumulated in the literature, rather than being tested and replaced by better ones. We argue that this is because most studies are not designed to test hypotheses about what controls patterns of richness. Many hypotheses are weak (often because of non-operational variables) or badly formulated (often because they do not make mutually exclusive predictions). Support for many existing hypotheses is largely post hoc. In contrast, correlations have been used to test general hypotheses. The clearest general patterns over broad spatial scales in polar to temperate areas are that richness is related to variations in climate. At smaller spatial scales, richness is most consistently related to productivity. Mechanistic hypotheses that predict more than just patterns of richness would be desirable, but simple correlative hypotheses that make testable predictions about patterns of richness in nature are better than elegant mechanistic hypotheses that, in practice, make no predictions.

Cohomology of Lie superalgebras and their generalizations

The cohomology groups of Lie superalgebras and, more generally, of ε Lie algebras, are introduced and investigated. The main emphasis is on the case where the module of coefficients is nontrivial. Two general propositions are proved, which help to calculate the cohomology groups. Several examples are included to show the peculiarities of the super case. For L=sl(1|2), the cohomology groups H1(L,V) and H2(L,V), with V a finite-dimensional simple graded L-module, are determined, and the result is used to show that H2(L,U(L)) [with U(L) the enveloping algebra of L] is trivial. This implies that the superalgebra U(L) does not admit any nontrivial formal deformations (in the sense of Gerstenhaber). Garland’s theory of universal central extensions of Lie algebras is generalized to the case of ε Lie algebras.

Family Correlates of South African Students' Self-Concept: A Regression Surface Analysis

This study examined relationships between family social status, perceptions of proximal family environment and students' self-concept scores. Data were collected from 189 female and 146 male 18-yr.-old South Africans. Regression surfaces were constructed from models that included terms to account for linear, interaction, and curvilinear associations among the variables. The study suggests the general propositions (a) family social status and proximal family environment combine to have large associations with students' general self-concept and small to medium associations with scores on measures of specific self-concept, (b) proximal family environment is related more strongly to self-concept scores than is family social status, (c) there are complex interaction and curvilinear relationships between family and self-concept scores, and (d) there are sex differences in the nature of the associations between family social status, proximal family environment, and students' self-concept.

Impact of a catastrophic hurricane on island populations

Lizard and spider populations were censused immediately before and after Hurricane Lili on islands differentially affected by the storm surge. The results support three general propositions. First, the larger organisms, lizards, are more resistant to the immediate impact of moderate disturbance, whereas the more prolific spiders recover faster. Second, extinction risk is related to population size when disturbance is moderate but not when it is catastrophic. Third, after catastrophic disturbance, the recovery rate among different types of organisms is related to dispersal ability. The absence of the poorer dispersers, lizards, from many suitable islands is probably the result of long-lasting effects of catastrophes.

Business Representation in the UK since 1979: The Case of Trade Associations

The article explores the impact of Conservative governments since 1979 on business representation. It concentrates on the trade association – the most common form of business organization in the UK but one which has been largely neglected in the discussion of business representation. The results of a major survey of trade associations conducted in 1994 are reported and their significance assessed in the light of three general propositions about the direction of business representation since 1979.

Democracy and Battlefield Military Effectiveness

Why do democracies win the wars they fight? The authors explore this question by examining whether the armies of democratic states fight with higher military effectiveness on the battlefield, testing two general propositions: that the higher legitimacy of democratic states spurs superior individual soldiering and that democratic militaries are likely to have higher organizational efficacy. The authors test their propositions on a comprehensive set of major battles from 1800 to 1982, using data compiled by the Historical Evaluation and Research Organization. The authors find that the armies of democratic states tend to fight with marginally better logistics, substantially better initiative, and superior leadership. They also find that all three of these advantages dwindle as wars lengthen and interpret the results as indicating that although soldiers are not more willing to die for democratic governments, the emphasis on individual initiative in democratic culture generates important advantages on the battlefield.