Unequal chances Bowles, Samuel; Bowles, Samuel; Gintis, Herbert ...
2005, 2005., 20091015, 2009, 2005-01-01, 20050101
eBook, Book
Is the United States "the land of equal opportunity" or is the playing field tilted in favor of those whose parents are wealthy, well educated, and white? If family background is important in getting ...ahead, why? And if the processes that transmit economic status from parent to child are unfair, could public policy address the problem? Unequal Chances provides new answers to these questions by leading economists, sociologists, biologists, behavioral geneticists, and philosophers.
La France semble incapable de réformer les droits de succession. Il faut changer d'approche et taxer les plus-values réalisées plutôt que les montants transmis.
The increase in the number of States in the 20th century has not abated in recent years. The independence of many small territories comprising the ‘residue’ of the European colonial empires alone ...accounts for a major increase in States since 1979, while the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the USSR in the early 1990s further augmented the ranks. With these developments, the practice of States and international organisations has developed by substantial measure in respect of self-determination, secession, succession, recognition, de-colonisation, and several other fields. This book discusses the relation between statehood and recognition; the criteria for statehood, especially in view of evolving standards of democracy and human rights; and the application of such criteria in international organisations and between States. Combining a general argument as to the normative significance of statehood with analysis of numerous specific cases, this second edition gives an account of the developments which have led to the birth of so many new States.
The Logic of Political Survival Mesquita, Bruce Bueno de; Smith, Alastair; Siverson, Randolph M ...
2003, 2005, 2005-01-14, 20030101, Volume:
1
eBook, Book
The authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office while those who preside over corruption, war, and ...misery endure? Considering this political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some countries experience successful economic development and others do not. The authors construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically.
Hopkins argues the succession to the throne was a burning topic not only in the final years of Elizabeth but well into the 1630s, and drama, with its disguised identities and oblique relationship to ...reality, was a safe way to air it. Hopkins analyzes some of the ways in which plays-from Marlowe's and Shakespeare's to Webster's and Ford's-reflect, negotiate and dream the issue of the succession.
In A Woman's Kingdom, Michelle Lamarche Marrese explores the development of Russian noblewomen's unusual property rights. In contrast to women in Western Europe, who could not control their assets ...during marriage until the second half of the.
This study, based on Florentine repudiations of inheritance, reveals that inheritance was not simply an automatic process where the recipients were passive, if grateful. In influential European ...societies of the past, it was in fact a process that continued long after the deceased's death. Heirs also had options: at the least, to reject a burdensome patrimony, but also to manoeuvre property to others and to avoid (at times deceptively, if not fraudulently) the claims of others to portions of the estate. Repudiation was a vestige of Roman law that once again became a viable legal institution with the revival of Roman law in the Middle Ages. Florentines incorporated repudiation into their strategies of adjustment after death, showing that they were not merely passive recipients of what came their way. Further, these strategies fostered family goals, including continuity across the generations.
Focusing on the last will and testament as a legal, literary, and cultural document, Cathrine O. Frank examines fiction of the Victorian and Edwardian eras alongside actual wills, legal manuals ...relating to their creation, case law regarding their administration, and contemporary accounts of curious wills in periodicals. Her study begins with the Wills Act of 1837 and poses two basic questions: What picture of Victorian culture and personal subjectivity emerges from competing legal and literary narratives about the will, and how does the shift from realist to modernist representations of the will accentuate a growing divergence between law and literature? Frank’s examination of works by Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Samuel Butler, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, and E.M. Forster reveals the shared rhetorical and cultural significance of the will in law and literature while also highlighting the competition between these discourses to structure a social order that emphasized self-determinism yet viewed individuals in relationship to the broader community. Her study contributes to our knowledge of the cultural significance of Victorian wills and creates intellectual bridges between the Victorian and Edwardian periods that will interest scholars from a variety of disciplines who are concerned with the laws, literature, and history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Contents: Part I Writing the Will: Introduction: novel bequests; Writing the will: Victorian testators and legal culture; Writing the novel: Victorian testators and literary culture. Part II Proving the Will: Victorian daughters and the burden of inheritance; Edwardian sons and the burden of inheritance redux. Part III Contesting the Will: Broken trusts: Cy Près, fiction and the limits of intention; Fictions of justice: testamentary intention and the illegitimate heir; Conclusion; Works cited; Index.
Cathrine Frank is Assistant Professor of English at the University of New England, USA.
This volume offers the first comprehensive analysis of wills in late medieval Krakow. It presents the origins of testamentary acts in the Kingdom of Poland and its centre, Krakow, and their ...subsequent transformation from so called ‘canonical wills’ to ‘communal wills’. Wysmułek discusses the socio-cultural role of wills and sets them in their contemporary legal, social, and economic context. In doing so, he uncovers their influence on property ownership and family relations in the city, as well as on the religious practices of the burghers. Ultimately, this work seeks to change the perception of wills by treating the testamentary act itself as an important agent of historical social change – a ‘tool of power’. Readership: Urban historians of the late medieval period interested in the socio-cultural development of law, and anyone interested in medieval documentary history.