Normative Choices Research Articles

A Constituição do Estado e da sociedade: uma análise da força normativa da Constituição brasileira de 1988

The brazilian Constitution had its role within the amended law. Longer a Constitution which organizes State to be a constitution that regulates the life of society. Became the document that sets out the roadmap for the exercise of political power and not just limiting the exercise of that power, as in the model of liberal rule of law. However, this fact brings -fact/real- questioning the ability of the Constitution to order the life of the state, or, the ability - and even the legitimacy of the Constitution - a rule the life of future generations while guiding through normative choices that must be made by the political powers programs. This clash is an assessment of the effectiveness of the Constitution, or , the ability of the Constitution is to link policy choices and judgments through its standards . This analysis requires the recognition of historical time in which the Brazilian Constitution was designed, and what the legal and social effects arising from the option of making a Construction Manager.

Race as/and the Trace of the Ghost: Jurisprudential Escapism, Horizontal Anxiety and the Right to be Racist in <i>BoE Trust Limited</i>

This contribution draws on critical race theory and critical legal theory in order to read and critique the Supreme Court of Appeal judgment of Erasmus AJA in BoE Trust Limited 2013 3 SA 236 (SCA). It will specifically focus on the contested jurisprudential and racial politics reflected in the reasoning followed in the judgement. It specifically takes issue with the way in which the judge avoided dealing directly with the constitutional and political implications of racially-exclusive testamentary provisions. Three specific features of the judgment are highlighted in the note as problematic: first, the rhetorical moves and ‘legal interpretive techniques’ by which the judge escaped the basic legal texts governing the situation in which a racially discriminatory provision is included in a will, as well as the substantive reasoning and normative choices that those texts necessarily invite. Secondly, how the escape from those legal texts evinces, or perhaps even facilitated, a certain evasion of, or anxiety towards the horizontal application of the Bill of Rights which explicitly proscribes overt (racial) discrimination by private non-state actors. And thirdly, how by following a formalist legal approach, one in which the basic assumptions of liberal legalism and capitalism are viewed as natural, normal and immutable, the judgment lacks a decisive rejection of racism. The judgment’s uncritical adulation of the common law of succession (and specifically the principle of freedom of testation) and its negation of a more substantive, constitutionally-infused mode of reasoning and adjudication generally reflects a conservative or traditional view of law. It is suggested that this view of law is problematic in our current post-apartheid context for two central reasons: it stands in tension with the project of transformative constitutionalism and prevents the coming into being of a more critical race jurisprudence for post-apartheid South Africa.Keywords: BoE Trust Limited, Race; Colour-blindness; Formalism; Horizontal application of the Bill of Rights; Transformative constitutionalism; Critical race legal analysis; White privilege; Constitution of the Republic of South Africa; Private law.

Disability weights in the global burden of disease 2010 study: two steps forward, one step back?

In the global burden of disease (GBD) project, the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) is used as a measure of disease burden. DALYs combine years of life lost to premature death and years lived with a disability or condition, weighted for the severity of the condition. This combined measure makes it possible to compare conditions with different symptoms and outcomes using a standardized metric. Initiated in the early 1990s, the methods used to measure the GBD recently underwent major revision. Details about the new methods and up-to-date information about the state of in the world were published in the December 2012 issue of the Lancet, which was devoted entirely to the GBD 2010 study. (1) Although the new methods used to calculate the GBD are a considerable improvement over previous ones, central concerns about the utility of DALYs for making decisions about the prioritization of conditions and the allocation of resources remain unaddressed. General concerns and how they were addressed Since their inception, GBD studies have been criticized for their methodological and normative choices in four areas: the use of age weighting (i.e. the assignment of different weights to years of life lost at different ages); the use of different life expectancies for men and women; discounting (i.e. the assignment of a lower weight to years of life lost in the future); and the determination of disability weights, which are intended to capture the severity of a condition. The team that conducted the GBD 2010 study took these criticisms seriously and enlisted experts in multiple disciplines to help revise its methods. In response to the first three criticisms it dropped discounting, made age weights uniform and used the same life expectancy for men and women (86 years) to calculate years of life lost. (1) To address the fourth criticism, the team revised its method for determining disability weights. These are standardized values that are assigned to non-fatal outcomes to capture their severity on a scale between 0 (full health) and 1 (death). For example, in the GBD 2010 study, complete hearing loss and severe chronic neck pain were assigned disability weights of 0.033 and 0.286, respectively. Many critics of earlier GBD studies, which were originally commissioned in 1990 and have been updated twice since, were dissatisfied with the particular person trade-off method used to determine disability weights. The method consisted of asking respondents to choose between different hypothetical public interventions. (2) Subsequently, critics questioned the feasibility of developing a standardized measure. They argued, furthermore, that the disability weights incorporated into the DALY, which were originally elicited from a small group of highly educated experts, could not be generalized to respondents from different geographic, cultural or socioeconomic backgrounds. Many doubted that a single universal measure of could be validly applied to all settings, given marked differences among countries in baseline levels of and socioeconomic development. Finally, some critics contended that health cannot--or should not--be separated from general welfare, which is shaped not only by an individual's symptoms but also by the interaction of those symptoms with the environment. The GBD 2010 study team formulated several responses to these concerns. First, the GBD 2010 study surveys employed brief lay descriptions of the symptoms and functional consequences of various states in an attempt to isolate losses in from losses in welfare and from the impact of the social environment. (3) This method reflected the assumption that the GBD study should capture health in a narrow sense. The insistence on a narrow understanding of stemmed from the conviction that, even though the experience of a particular condition (e. …

Welfare Effects of a Shift of Joint to Individual Taxation in the German Personal Income Tax

We empirically derive the welfare effects of a shift from joint to individual taxation of married households in Germany. For the welfare evaluation we estimate the preference heterogeneity and use normative welfare concepts proposed by Fleurbaey (2006) to address the difficulties of comparison between and aggregation of heterogeneous agents. Our results suggest that the normative choice of the welfare metric can be crucial, in particular for the simple question who are the gainers and who are the losers in a reform. Further, we find that it is possible to design a system of individual taxation that would be welfare-improving for different welfare metrics.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow? Student Mobility Decision-Making in an Economic Crisis Context

This article engages with the theme of student mobility, focusing on prospective after the completion of present course of study in one of the European societies most affected by the global financial crisis, Portugal. Empirical evidence is drawn from two surveys (N=800) conducted in Lisbon during 2011 and 2012. Results provide indications of level of mobility intentions among these students, as well as estimated durations of stays abroad. While the level of mobility intentions is high, the decision to leave is not generally attributed to the economic crisis. This implies that post-diploma mobility is more of a normative choice among Portuguese students than a specific reaction to growing economic marginalisation. That the level of mobility intentions has declined across the two years surveyed is explained in terms of parental resource depletion after the expansion of austerity measures. Results in regard to anticipated stays were largely inconclusive, and failed to provide a definite sign as to whether Portugal is to witness an imminent exodus of its young people as part of a brain drain or brain circulation process.

CO2 equivalences for short-lived climate forcers

With advancing climate change there is a growing need to include short-lived climate forcings in cost-efficient mitigation strategies to achieve international climate policy targets. Tools are required to compare the climate impact of perturbations with distinctively different atmospheric lifetimes and atmospheric properties. We present a generic approach for relating the climate effect of short-lived climate forcers (SLCF) to that of CO2 emissions. We distinguish between three alternative types of metric-based factors that can be used to derive CO2 equivalences for SLCF: based on forcing, activity and fossil fuel consumption. We derive numerical values for a wide range of parameter assumptions and apply the resulting generalised approach to the practical example of aviation-induced cloudiness. The evaluation of CO2 equivalences for SLCF tends to be more sensitive to SLCF specific physical uncertainties and the normative choice of a discount rate than to the choice of a physical or economic metric approach. The ability of physical metrics to approximate economic-based metrics alters with changing atmospheric concentration levels and trends. Under reference conditions, physical CO2 equivalences for SLCF provide sufficient proxies for economic ones. The latter, however, allow detailed insight into structural uncertainties. They provide CO2 equivalences for SLCF in short term strategies in the face of failing climate policies, and a temporal evolution of CO2 equivalences over time that is noticeably better in line with cost-efficient climate stabilisation.

Does Industrial Relations Research Support Policy?

This article reviews the English-speaking literature on Spanish and German industrial relations published in the top 10 journals in this field between 2000 and 2010. The analysis contributes to the ongoing debate about the relevance of industrial relations by establishing the state of the art in research on Spain in comparison to Germany. Following this assessment we then ask whether existing research on Spain is well situated to orient policymakers. The consequences of either normative or normative-free research have largely been overlooked; our discussion expands on two contrasting positions: suggesting a move away from ideology in research (Mitchell, 2001) or recommending normative assumptions as a necessary precondition (Frege, 2007) in the context of Spain. Our findings reveal a greater convergence in research regarding its restricted multidisciplinary character, its focus on the international level and a strong emphasis on empirical, quantitative work with analysis conducted at various levels. At the same time, some path dependency continues to exist, particularly concerning the active participants in research and the subjects for investigation. The results point to deficiencies in research on Spanish industrial relations. We conclude by advocating an openly stated, normative base in industrial relations research to guide policymakers in Spain. While an evidence-based approach in policy making is desirable, normative choices are highly consequential and should feature in research in order to avoid a “democratic shock” in Spain.

Innovation-Framing Regulation

This article provides insights into the effective regulation of private sector innovation. It coins a term—“innovation-framing regulation”—to describe a particular quality of much of financial regulation in the recent era. It sketches a particular financial innovation (securitization and the marketing of securitized assets on derivatives markets), and describes three regulatory interactions having to do with that innovation. I identify three key assumptions that are ripe for re-evaluation: the notion that private sector innovation is beneficial, virtually by definition; the assumption that the regulatory moment is the crucial moment in regulatory design; and the belief that regulation somehow sits outside innovation and can be untouched by it. I argue that effective regulation of private sector innovation requires a clearer and more nuanced understanding of innovation, and engagement with the normative choices underpinning innovation-framing regulation.

Axiomatic Choice Theory Traveling between Mathematical Formalism, Normative Choice Rules and Psychological Measurement, 1944-1956

The following analysis is meant to contribute to a history of rational choice theory. More specifically, I provide a multi-layered account of rational choice theory in terms of its biography as a scientific object. I argue that its axiomatic version, choice theory traveled between different research sites, became specified through different mathematical formalisms and occupied distinct epistemic functions; it was being applied to prescribe rules of proper behavior, as representation of behavioral hypotheses, and as measurement device to capture individual values. New modifications of what I call ‘axiomatic choice theory’ did not fully replace old versions of it, which prevents the reconstruction of its journey as a continuous process of progressive knowledge production and suggests a more nuanced account of axiomatic choice theory that acknowledges its different versions currently used in the social sciences. Furthermore, by revealing the diversity of its manifestations within the context of social networks and within particular research sites, the account of axiomatic choice theory developed here will ultimately contributes to an explanation of the disunity and confusion surrounding current debates about rational choice theory and allows for providing a more nuanced picture of its nature and scope. Jacob Marschak’s professional development is used as a guide through this history of axiomatic choice theory to illustrate its journey.

The Use of Official Languages Act: Diversity Affirmed?

A full sixteen years after the coming into force of the 1996 Constitution, Parliament responded to the constitutional obligation to regulate and monitor, by legislative and other means, the use of official languages by adopting the Use of Official Languages Act 12 of 2012. The Act represents a very limited normative appreciation of this constitutional instruction. The official language clause of the Constitution expresses a normative commitment regarding the positive affirmation of linguistic diversity, which is directly informed by and closely aligned to the core normative values of the Constitution. The Constitution’s positive evaluation of difference, including linguistic difference, inter alia, flows from the values of substantive equality, equal citizenship, dignity and proportionality. However, the way in which the Act institutionalises the promotion of inclusive linguistic diversity does not reflect an unambiguous recognition of this obligation being normatively embedded in the foundational value structure of the Constitution. The real responsibility for decisions regarding official language use is located in the policy-making competence of non-independent administrative bodies. The Act itself is devoid of instructive standards of its own to guide administrative decisionmaking regarding official language use. This results in the responsibility for making the most important normative choices regarding the use of official languages not being reserved for the legislative process, but entrusted to non-independent advisory administrative bodies. The nature of the Act confirms that it never was the intention of the government to be bound by legislation in this respect. This modus operandi is democratically deficient and compromises both the separation of powers and the principle of legal certainty as fundamental tenets of the rule of law.KEYWORDS: Official Languages Act; linguistic diversity; constitutional rights; language rights; core normative constitutional values

Promoting democratic norms? Social constructivism and the ‘subjective’ limits to liberalism

This article argues that, since the end of the Cold War, the understanding of democratic norm promotion has shifted through three conceptually distinct and chronologically distinguishable stages: the early 1990s view that democratic norms would be universalized with the Cold War victory of liberal ideals and the spread of new global norms of good governance; the mid- to late-1990s view that barriers to the promotion of democratic norms could be understood as the product of state or elite self-interests; and the perspective dominant since the 2000s, that the promotion of democratic norms necessarily involves much deeper and more extensive external intervention in order to transform social institutions and societal practices. Through charting the shifts in the understanding of democratic norm promotion, this article seeks to highlight the problems inherent in norm promotion discourses that emphasize the importance of subjective agency, normative choices, and cultural and ideational frameworks of understanding. A key problem being that, in the downplaying of social and economic context, agency-based understandings tend to degrade the rational capacities of – and to exoticize and problematize – the non-Western subject. The social constructivist approach, which presupposes a closed or endogenous framework of societal reproduction, has thereby been a crucial paradigm through which Western democracy promotion discourses have shifted to emphasizing the subjective policy barrier posed by the allegedly ‘non-liberal’ mindset of the non-Western subject.

Normative Rational Choice Theory: Past, Present, and Future

The paper shows that the theory of rational choice should be better understood as a normative, prescriptive, and not as a descriptive theory of human behavior. Such an interpretation amounts to claiming that there is a «normative turn» in economics. This turn means that the majority of economists no longer regards rational choice theory as an adequate description of economic activity. The author also tries to free the normative issues from ethical meanings that are commonly attributed to it in economic theory. Perspectives of the normative turn in the context of a recent development of behavioral and experimental economics are also discussed.

The tussle with trust: Trust in the news media ecology

This article offers a conceptual exploration of the changing notion of trust and distrust in today's news media ecology. Central is the question whether the relationship between the traditional media actors, media organisations, journalists and news users, can be increasingly characterised by distrust. Do we really notice a decline in trust in the news media? And moreover, are these feelings of distrust grounded? In order to answer these questions, we look at the changing economic, technological and societal context and how this might explain the strained relationship between these actors. We find that to a large extent the goals of the media actors diverge or even conflict. Mutually bridging these goals is difficult as they boil down to ideological and normative choices. This requires us to reconsider our ways of looking at trust. Therefore, this article's central argument is that a trusted relationship between the media actors is unlikely to result from a definitive settlement between the actor's conflicting goals. Rather, maintaining a trusted relationship is likely to become a matter of constant renegotiation. For this renegotiation to succeed, transparency and integrity are key. We find inspiration in the recent work of Solove (2001), Nissenbaum (2004) and Mansell (2008, forthcoming) to take a different, more contextual approach towards the notion of trust. As regards the relationship between news organisations and users, we suggest these norms should be negotiated in a balanced and transparent way, giving users an equal say in the process. The relationship between journalists and news users should be guided by a mutual interest in truth telling, whereby users are not only merely seen as consumers, but also as potential contributors to news stories. Policy makers in turn should act as facilitators of such spaces of renegotiation.

International Adjudication of Global Public Goods: The Intersection of Substance and Procedure

This article, based on the non-controversial proposition that the way and degree in which international courts can contribute to the protection of a public good depends, in part, on the procedural law of such courts, sets out to expose the plurality of connections between procedure and substance. Procedures can further the substantive values of public goods but can also serve interests of their own and can even work against such substantive values. This article articulates the normative choices that courts inevitably have to make and reflects on the question of whether, and to what extent, the shaping of these connections is properly part of the international judicial function, taking into account problems of legitimacy that may arise when judge-made procedures undo state-made substantive law.

Den gode sædcelle... En antropologisk analyse af arbejdet med sædkvalitet.

THE GOOD SPERM CELL … | Questions about who has the right to be pregnant, and with whom, and which children should be allowed to be born are fundamentally political and normative. However, when fertilization involves reproductive tech nologies these normative questions are often translated into questions of quality whereby they come to appear technical. This becomes clear in thework to ensure “good sperm quality”. Sperm quality is measured both at a population level, in connection to fertility treatment of infertile men, in the recruitment of sperm donors and in connection with attempts to produce so-called artificial sperm. What is regarded as good quality is not only based on “medical evidence” but also on beliefs about what is wished for and what is not. Put differently, medical evidence is produced in light of specifically desired outcomes. This article asks how one determines sperm quality and what kind of practices and normative choices this evaluative process involves. The article builds on medical literature, fieldwork at both a laboratory dealing with sperm analysis and at sperm banks and on interviews with scientists working on the development of artificial sperm.

Reply to J.N. Perry et al

The authors of “The anglerfish deception” respond to the criticism of their article.

The evaluation of lifestyle interventions in the Netherlands

Current investments in preventive lifestyle interventions are relatively low, despite the significant impact of unhealthy behaviour on population health. This raises the question of whether the criteria used in reimbursement decisions about healthcare interventions put preventive interventions at a disadvantage. In this paper, we highlight the decision-making framework used in the Netherlands to delineate the basic benefits package. Important criteria in that framework are 'necessity' and 'cost-effectiveness'. Several normative choices need to be made, and these choices can have an important impact on the evaluation of lifestyle interventions, especially when making these criteria operational and quantifiable. Moreover, the implementation of the decision-making framework may prove to be difficult for lifestyle interventions. Improvements of the decision-making framework in the Netherlands are required to guarantee sound evaluations of lifestyle interventions aimed at improving health.

The ends of information systems research

In this paper, we argue that any effort to understand the state of the Information Systems field has to view IS research as a series of normative choices and value judgments about the ends of resea...

The Ends of Information Systems Research: A Pragmatic Framework

In this paper, we argue that any effort to understand the state of the Information Systems field has to view IS research as a series of normative choices and value judgments about the ends of research. To assist a systematic questioning of the various ends of IS research, we propose a pragmatic framework that explores the choices IS researchers make around theories and methodologies, ethical methods of conduct, desirable outcomes, and the long-term impact of the research beyond a single site and topic area. We illustrate our framework by considering and questioning the explicit and implicit choices of topics, design and execution, and the representation of knowledge in experimental research--research often considered to be largely beyond value judgments and power relations. We conclude with the implications of our pragmatic framework by proposing practical questions for all IS researchers to consider in making choices about relevant topics, design and execution, and representation of findings in their research.

‘Your new smart-mouthed girlfriends’: postfeminist conduct books

Postfeminist popular culture celebrates women's entitlement to makeover and female sociality. This article examines the confluence of body image and expert girlfriendship in the conduct books, What not to wear (Susannah Constantine and Trinny Woodall) and Skinny bitch (Kim Barnouin and Rory Freedman). These co-authors brand themselves ‘best friends’ and market this female relating as evidence of expertise. Extending their friendship to their readers, they create an intimate female site in order to guide the reader into making normative choices around body image. In particular, they employ strategies of policing and surveillance, appealing to self-responsibility. The girlfriends write the body through an ethical code, employing the rhetoric of guilt, punishment and humiliation if the consumer fails to conduct herself and those around her correctly. I ask what happens when policing is applied to female friends: how far is female friendship, or girlfriend culture, governed by the neoliberal market forces into privileging the mechanics of makeover? What is the significance of having women dictate how other women relate? How far are women involved in the public shaming of other women?