Implicit Social Contract Research Articles

Qualitative und quantitative Aspekte einer Elternrente

Ein Umlageverfahren, das nicht nur die Zahlungen an die ältere Generation, sondern gleichzeitig auch die Finanzierung der Humankapitalbildung der jungen Generation berücksichtigt, ist geeignet die Wohlfahrt aller beteiligten Generationen zu erhöhen. Während die jüngere Generation auf diese Weise ihr Liquiditätsproblem überwinden kann, gewinnt die ältere Generation eine attraktive Investitionsmöglichkeit, weil die Humankapitalbildung hohe Renditen und eine weitere Diversifizierung von Risiken verspricht. Da die Grenzerträge der Humankapitalbildung jedoch fallend sind, sollten die Rentenzahlungen nicht nur von der Höhe der Bildungsinvestitionen, sondern auch von der Anzahl der Kinder abhängen. Vergegenwärtigt man sich, dass in Deutschland die Humankapitalbildung im Wesentlichen durch Steuern finanziert wird, verspricht insbesondere die Einführung kinderzahlabhängiger Rentenansprüche eine Effizienzsteigerung. Die erforderliche Höhe einer Elternrente kann auf der Basis von fiskalischen Bildungsrenditen geschätzt werden. Außerdem wird gezeigt, wie der institutionelle Rahmen der gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung reformiert werden müsste.

"O Lord… You Perceive my Thoughts from Afar": Recursiveness and the Evolution of Supernatural Agency

AbstractAcross religious belief systems, some supernatural agents are nearly always granted privileged epistemic access into the self's thoughts. In addition, the ethnographic literature supports the claim that, across cultures, supernatural agents are envisioned as (1) incapable of being deceived through overt behaviors; (2) preoccupied with behavior in the moral domain; (3) punitive agents who cause general misfortune to those who transgress and; (4) committed to an implicit social contract with believers that is dependent on the rules of reciprocal altruism. The present article examines the possibility that these factors comprise a developmentally based, adaptive information-processing system that increased the net genetic fitness of ancestral human beings living within complex social groups. In particular, the authors argue that fear of supernatural punishment, whether in this life or in the hereafter, encouraged the inhibition of selfish actions that were associated with "real" punishment (and thus real selective impairments) by actual group members.

Labor at ‘Mother Warren’: paternalism, welfarism, and dissent at S. D. Warren 1854–1967

This paper describes the labor history of the S. D. Warren Company, a leading producer of high quality coated and plain publication paper that employed over 3,000 by the mid‐twentieth century at it...

Militarized Democracies: The Neoliberal Mexican State and the Chiapas Uprising

The neoliberal state, this article argues, displays structural contradictions between the need to create stability and the demand to display democratic structures where the human rights of the citizens are respected. As the discourse of human rights is increasingly used also by marginalized groups, the apparent convergence in human rights objectives may be dangerous illusion. The last few decades, crises and the expansion of neoliberal mar ket have transformed Latin American states from reasonably sover eign, authoritarian entities to ones highly dependent on international institutions and markets. Governments have become accountable not only, or perhaps even primarily, to their citizens, but to economic global actors that impose significant restrictions on their governance (Sassen 2003). The new role of the state, as argued by Turner (2003), is to facilitate the workings of these actors, eliminating market impediments and opening the public sector for privatization. This has often led to worsened conditions for the poor, thus breaking with former implicit social contracts between centralized, cor poratist states and the national populations, which promised certain extent of material security and well-being (Eckstein and Wickham-Crowley 2003: 12 13). The Zapatista uprising is perhaps the most famous example of popular protest against the new policies, and has been followed by more massive mobi lizations in countries such as Ecuador and Bolivia. However, for states, such protests imply threat to predictability and have frequently been countered by state repression. Thus, in many countries in Latin America, the last decades have involved a continuation or even increase in the use of force by the police and the military (Pereira and Davis 2000: 5). However, while states need to control political opposition, they should avoid methods that upset the international community. By the protagonists of neolib eral economy, market economy is regarded as codependent on democracy, legality and respect for human rights (Mendez 2002; Schild 1998). Thus, states have to create and maintain reputation of liberal democracy and protection of human rights.

Entrepreneurial capitalism: if America leads will Europe follow?

What differentiates US capitalism from all other forms of industrial capitalism is its historical focus on both the creation of wealth (entrepreneurship) and the reconstitution of wealth (philanthropy). Philanthropy is part of the implicit social contract that continuously nurtures and revitalizes economic prosperity. Much of the new wealth created historically has been given back to the community, to build up the great social institutions that have a positive feedback on future economic growth. This entrepreneurship‐philanthropy nexus has not been fully explored by either economists or the general public. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that US philanthropists – especially those who have made their own fortunes – create foundations that, in turn, contribute to greater and more widespread economic prosperity through knowledge creation. If we do not analyze philanthropy we can understand neither how economic development occurred nor what accounts for US economic dominance.

Reciprocity in parent-child relations over the adult life course.

This research assessed how parents' transfers of sentiment, time, and financial assets to their adolescent/young adult children affect the children's propensity in middle age to provide social support to their aging parents. We tested whether the mechanism of long-term intergenerational exchange is better modeled as a return on investment, an insurance policy triggered by the longevity or physical frailty of parents, or the result of altruistic (or other nonreciprocal) motivations on the part of adult children. Models were examined with 6 waves of data from the University of Southern California Longitudinal Study of Generations. The sample consisted of 501 children who participated in the 1971 survey and who had at least 1 parent surviving in 1985. Growth curve modeling was applied to predict average levels and rates of change in social support provided to mothers and fathers between 1985 and 1997 as a function of early parental transfers of affection, association, and tangible resources to their children. Children who spent more time in shared activities with their mothers and fathers in 1971 provided more support to them on average. Receiving greater financial support from parents in 1971 raised the marginal rate at which support provided by children increased over time. Maternal health operated synergistically with early affection to produce greater levels of support. Both levels and rates of increase in support from children were positive, even for children who received no early transfers from their parents. The results offer some support for investment, insurance, and altruistic models of intergenerational exchange. Sharing time in activities provides a direct return to the parent that is characteristic of an investment strategy, whereas financial transfers provide a time-contingent return that is characteristic of an insurance mechanism. That affection triggers greater support to more functionally impaired mothers suggests that emotionally investing in children as a health insurance mechanism may be based on the greater moral equity accorded to mothers. The motivation of adult children to provide social support to their older parents is partially rooted in earlier family experiences and guided by an implicit social contract that ensures long-term reciprocity.

Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy in American Capitalism

American capitalism differs from all other forms of industrial capitalism is its historical focus on both the creation of wealth (entrepreneurship) and the reconstitution of wealth (philanthropy). Philanthropy is part of the implicit social contract that continuously nurtures and revitalizes economic prosperity. Much of the new wealth created historically has been given back to the community, to build up the great social institutions that have a positive feedback on future economic growth. This entrepreneurship-philanthropy nexus has not been fully explored by either economists or the general public. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that American philanthropists – especially those who have made their own fortunes – create foundations that, in turn, contribute to greater and more widespread economic prosperity through knowledge creation. If we do not analyze philanthropy we can understand neither how economic development occurred nor what accounts for American economic dominance.

Corporate Health Care Purchasing and the Revised Social Contract with Workers

The implicit social contract between large companies and their employees has been recently revised to emphasize workforce flexibility and the financial responsibility of individual employees for their own employment and benefits-related decisions. The most recent aspect of this social contract to be significantly changed is health care benefits. On the basis of in-depth case studies of health benefits purchasing at 15 large United States employers, the authors found that the reported use of a purchasing technique called managed competitionhas enabled firms to bring health benefits purchasing in line with other elements of the revised social contract. An important minority of companies in our study appear to have retained a different, “employer responsibility” approach toward employee health benefits, leading them to move more gradually to managed competition purchasing and refrain from instituting heavy premium cost sharing or cutting coverage for their employees. These findings are preliminary and deserve further study as to their generalizability and persistence.

Psychological responses to disasters: Conceptualization and identification of high‐risk survivors

Disasters are often categorized as being `natural' or `technological' in origin. Natural disasters are called `acts of God' and are not seen to be alterable by human actions, while ecological disasters represent a loss of control over technology that could have been avoided. These technological events represent a breach of an implicit social contract that individuals, companies or organizations have to protect human welfare or not to cause harm. Although these differing types of events have not been directly compared, and some events may represent a combination of types, the distinction regarding responsibility may have implications for mental health. A more recently studied type of disaster involving toxic exposure, such as a nuclear radiation leak, has additional characteristics that may have implications for recovery, such as that the initial stressor may be only information. The actual level of exposure may be unknown, and later consequences may be unknown as well. In addition to describing these types of disasters, the present paper presents a conceptual model of individual risk factors for negative outcomes following disaster events. Empirical findings for a number of these risk factors are reviewed, with a focus on the importance of studying interactions among risk factors as they contribute to mental health outcomes. Future research needs include the description and accounting for comorbid disorders, and studying the trauma history of survivors, for whom the disaster is unlikely to be their only traumatic event exposure.

Anchoring Devices in Science for Policy

This paper adds a new dimension to the role of scientific knowledge in policy by emphasizing the multivalent character of scientific consensus. We show how the maintained consensus about the quantitative estimate of a central scientific concept in the anthropogenic climate-change field - namely, climate sensitivity - operates as an `anchoring device' in `science for policy'. In international assessments of the climate issue, the consensus-estimate of 1.5°C to 4.5°C for climate sensitivity has remained unchanged for two decades. Nevertheless, during these years climate scientific knowledge and analysis have changed dramatically. We identify several ways in which the scientists achieved flexibility in maintaining the same numbers for climate sensitivity while accommodating changing scientific ideas. We propose that the remarkable quantitative stability of the climate sensitivity range has helped to hold together a variety of different social worlds relating to climate change, by continually translating and adapting the meaning of the `stable' range. But this emergent stability also reflects an implicit social contract among the various scientists and policy specialists involved, which allows `the same' concept to accommodate tacitly different local meanings. Thus the very multidimensionality of such scientific concepts is part of their technical imprecision (which is more than just analytical lack of resolution); it is also the source of their resilience and value in bridging (and perhaps reorganizing) the differentiated social worlds typical of modern policy issues. The varying importance of particular dimensions of knowledge for different social groups may allow cohesion to be sustained amidst pluralism, and universality to coexist with cultural distinctiveness.

Decision-Making Processes on Ethical Issues: The Impact of a Social Contract Perspective

Abstract:This paper develops a framework for examining decision making about ethical issues and tests the applicability of a social contract perspective. Using two separate samples of students and salespeople, we determine that community members (salespeople) tend to judge a potentially unethical act to constitute a violation of an implicit social contract and non-community members (students) do not. Also, consistent with the emphasis on context specificity of integrative social contracts theory, situational variables influence perceptions of ethicality for the community members, but do not affect the perceptions of individuals outside the community. The study finds considerable support for the use of a social contractarian perspective in the study of decision-making processes about ethical issues.

Decision-Making Processes on Ethical Issues

This paper develops a framework for examining decision making about ethical issues and tests the applicability of a social contract perspective. Using two separate samples of students and salespeople, we determine that community members (salespeople) tend to judge a potentially unethical act to constitute a violation of an implicit social contract and non-community members (students) do not. Also, consistent with the emphasis on context specificity of integrative social contracts theory, situational variables influence perceptions of ethicality for the community members, but do not affect the perceptions of individuals outside the community. The study finds considerable support for the use of a social contractarian perspective in the study of decision-making processes about ethical issues.

Judgements of compensation for misfortune: The role of expectation

AbstractIn three questionnaire studies, we asked subjects how much compensation should be provided, by a third party, to an accident victim. We tested the hypothesis, derived from norm theory, that compensation would be greater when the injury was less to be expected, e.g. when the injury was caused by failure ‐ as opposed to success ‐ of a safety routine. To rule out the possibility that such expectation effects depended on subjects' anticipations of the reactions of the parties involved in the accident. the parties were said to be ignorant of factors that could affect these reactions. Effects of expectation were still found, even when subjects themselves judged the accident to be equally serious in all conditions. Information about what would have happened in the absence of the cause (e.g. if the routine had succeeded instead of failed) affected compensation. as predicted by norm theory, but expectation effects were found even when this information about counterfactuals was held constant, so norm theory cannot account for all the results. We suggest that subjects are applying simple heuristics unreflectively Subjects may also have attempted to fulfil an implicit social contract through their awards. The results cannot be explained through the hypothesis that compensation was optimal: the accident was the same, and it had no deterrent effect, so optimal compensation should be the same in all cases.

American Science Policy since World War II by Bruce L. R. Smith

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 191 remains essentially political. We would do well to acknowledge that fact and turn our attention to broadening and deepening participa­ tion of the public at the beginning of the process. It may not be the easiest course to follow, but for the sake of participatory democracy, it is probably the only course open to us. Such a solution requires, however, that a program in general educa­ tion of the sort that James B. Conant originally conceived for the Harvard undergraduate (his leaders of tomorrow) be revitalized and transformed into standard fare for each and every one of us. Else, rising public alienation and the growing cynicism and lack of confidence in public policy processes are destined to engulf and destroy the very framework on which our unique political strength is built. Stanley Goldberg Dr. Goldberg is preparing a biography of General Leslie R. Groves, head of the Manhattan Project. American 'Science Policy since World War II. By Bruce L. R. Smith. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1990. Pp. ix + 230; fig­ ures, tables, notes, index. $34.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). The time is right to examine the development of U.S. science policy since the Second World War. Nearly a half century of growth and change are available for inspection, and many say that the present moment is a watershed, when the implicit social contract between science and government is up for renegotiation. Bruce Smith’s timing could therefore have been superb for providing what he describes as a “re­ statement of core concepts” (p. 5) in postwar science policy. His task, he writes, is both to describe how the nation has used its technical resources and “to cast some light on ways it can do so more effectively” (p. 15). Unfortunately, the light cast is less a beacon showing the way than soft background illumination for a well-known display. Smith’s treat­ ment of science policy is thoroughly conventional, strangely unbal­ anced, and myopic. After a platitude-filled introductory chapter, the body of the book is organized in a matrix. Chapters 2—5 each deal with a period of science-government relations. Chapter 2 reviews prewar develop­ ments, chapter 3 takes the story to 1965, and chapter 4 carries it to 1980. Chapter 5 focuses entirely on the Reagan era, a treatment that is much too long (one-fourth of the book’s length), contains much undigested information, and is already dated. Within each chapter, the matrix is created by crosscutting themes: basic research, applied research, commercialization, regulation, and international issues. These elements cut across the conventional cat­ egories of “science” and “technology” policies, and the international 192 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE theme, which draws on Smith’s experience at the State Department, seldom appears in this sort of discussion. The themes might therefore have provided insight through juxtaposition, but they are not closely integrated in Smith’s treatment. The final chapter, “The Unfinished Agenda,” unveils an unstated but unmistakable agenda of the book, to counter proposals for a combined Department of Science and Technology with a reaffirma­ tion of the accomplishments of the current pluralistic funding system. It also includes such startling recommendations as setting priorities for research, paying government scientists more, strengthening uni­ versities, modernizing industry, keeping the peer review system, and solving environmental problems through more research and devel­ opment. No analytical thread ties these pronouncements to the preceding descriptive chapters. The book is short on discussion of biomedicine, a glaring omission given that about half of U.S. government support for science goes to that endeavor. The list of other items not treated is equally puzzling. There is no recognition of the growth of world science around the U.S. scientific enterprise, and thus no discussion of competition from Japan or Europe for technical leadership. Fraud is just barely mentioned, and animal rights controversies do not appear at all. Despite the extensive treatment of the 1980s, controversy over university-industry relations does not play any major role in the discussion. Indeed, although Smith is well known for his part in a landmark study of the state of academic science in the 1970s, he reveals no concept...

“No Margin, No Mission”

Rapid changes in the social and financial environment have driven many hospitals to adopt new strategies to remain financially viable. Especially in the case of older not-for-profit hospitals, however, these strategies are often perceived as violating the mission goals for which the hospital was founded. This report describes an empirical case study of a religious hospital's attempts to remain financially viable in a competitive market while still maintaining its commitment to its historical social mission of serving the poor. Powerful subgroups within the hospital community?administrators, the medical staff, and the Board of Directors?tended to disagree about whether specific accom modations were in agreement with the hospital's mission and formed c-ifferent justifications for their beliefs. The administrative group, which gained increasing power, defended its priority of focussing on fiscal solvency as necessary for the achievement of the mission. However, if this critical task becomes an end in itself, the hospital's original implicit social contract with the community may be altered and the true meaning of the mission distorted. This analysis calls into question whether the hospital's mission can be accomplished and its social responsibilities can be met through strict adherence to the prevailing business strategies adopted by most hospitals and the traditional paradigm of clinical medicine. This study examines the changes which hospital leadership imple mented in the organizational structure of a Catholic hospital as the economic environment made it increasingly difficult to achieve its tradi tional goals?the goals which were determined by its identity as a Catholic organization belonging to a specific religious congregation. To protect its anonymity I have called this hospital Community Hospital.

Academic Medicine as a Public Trust

Academic medicine is entrusted by society with the responsibility to undertake several important social missions toward improving the health of the public, including education, patient care, and research. This trust is given implicit authority by generous public funding and considerable autonomy. Medical academia can take pride in its successes, manifested by a premier scientific establishment, the development and use of sophisticated medical technologies and drugs, and the recent dramatic declines in death rates from heart disease and stroke. Academic medicine, however, has been relatively unresponsive to a number of vexing public problems, including skyrocketing expenditures for medical care, substandard indexes of population health, uneven quality of care, an unfavorable geographic and specialty mix of physicians, and widespread disability from long-term medical and psychiatric problems. Although there are many cogent reasons why academic medicine has chosen to define its task relatively narrowly (the nature of its funding successes, the intractability of the social problems, and the attractiveness of the biomedical model), the central issue is how well academic medicine is fulfilling its responsibilities to the public. To the degree that academic medicine defines its central mission narrowly, it may violate its implicit social contract and jeopardize its primary source of financial support. Alternatively, in recognition of its public responsibilities, academic medicine can choose to expand its current activities to be more responsive to the health concerns of the general population.

The effect of inflationary pressure on government expenditure

Using a sample of 115 nations with internationally comparable data from Summers and Heston (1984) I test the hypothesis that inflation increases government expenditure share as a consequence of political pressure brought about by unsettled implicit social contracts. Using OLS regression with primarily stationary time-series the hypothesis is broadly but not universally supported for the nations in the sample.

The rise (and sometimes fall) of guerrilla governments in Latin Asmerica

Guerrilla governments arise where landlord or central government authority has decayed. In such situations, the guerrillas often establish a new “implicit social contract” with the peasantry, replacing the previous social contract, the abrogation of which has reduced the traditional authorities from legitimate to predatory powers in their relationships with peasants. Guerrillas build up their authority by carrying out three “contractual obligations” of authority: (1) defense of the people from external enemies; (2) maintenance of internal peace and order; and (3) contributions to the material security of the populace, the last by increasing peasant incomes and by providing health services, literacy training, and sometimes land to rural cultivators. As a result of such activities, peasants often come to perceive guerrillas as the new legitimate authorities in the region. Such authority has decayed, however, where the guerrillas in turn fail to fulfill the obligations of the social contract. Loss of authority can appear when guerrillas fail to defend the peasantry against military attackers, or when guerrillas themselves come to employ terror against the rural populace, thus violating the social contract uniting legitimate authorities and their subjects. This paper concludes with a discussion of the relevance of the study of guerrillas to social movement theory.

A model of income transfers for the urban poor

In developing nations cash transfers between households play a role in maintaining poor urban families at income levels sufficient to meet expenditures on basic needs. In our analysis, a social network is seen as redistributing income to those member households who fall below a perceived basic needs threshold. This redistributive mechanism can be though of as the outcome of an implicit social contract whereby households insure themselves against the risk of falling below a perceived basic needs level. Using data from El Salvador, regression estimates which account for transfers received by poor households are found to be consistent with the proposed model.

Social contract and social integration in adolescent development.

Eighty-nine subjects from two high schools were tested during the spring of their sophomore and senior years, when their mean ages were 16 years, 1 month, and 18 years, 1 month, respectively. Composites measured social contract with: (a) independence, (b) implicit social contract, societal norms and expectations, and (c) explicit social contracts, rules. Composites and single items measured social integration with: (d) role commitment, (e) social-American Dream, accepting the belief in the American Dream that hard work would lead to social success, (f) self-American Dream, belief that hard work will produce personal satisfaction and success, (g) raw deal, perceptions of being treated unfairly, (h) self-blame, and (i) feelings of hopelessness. The results of the cross-lagged panel correlations generally support the hypothesis that students respond to implicit social contracts through role commitment, which is further expressed by a belief in the American Dream for social fulfillment, while responding to the perception of explicit social contracts by not believing in the benefits of the American Dream for personal fulfillment. These results were interpreted as supporting Dienstbier's theory of moral development.