In this captivating yet troubling book, Ian Shapiro offers a searing indictment of many influential practices in the social sciences and humanities today. Perhaps best known for his critique of ...rational choice theory, Shapiro expands his purview here. In discipline after discipline, he argues, scholars have fallen prey to inward-looking myopia that results from—and perpetuates—a flight from reality. In the method-driven academic culture we inhabit, argues Shapiro, researchers too often make display and refinement of their techniques the principal scholarly activity. The result is that they lose sight of the objects of their study. Pet theories and methodological blinders lead unwelcome facts to be ignored, sometimes not even perceived. The targets of Shapiro's critique include the law and economics movement, overzealous formal and statistical modeling, various reductive theories of human behavior, misguided conceptual analysis in political theory, and the Cambridge school of intellectual history.
What should we expect from democracy, and how likely is it that democracies will live up to those expectations? In The State of Democratic Theory, Ian Shapiro offers a critical assessment of ...contemporary answers to these questions, lays out his distinctive alternative, and explores its implications for policy and political action. Some accounts of democracy’s purposes focus on aggregating preferences; others deal with collective deliberation in search of the common good. Shapiro reveals the shortcomings of both, arguing instead that democracy should be geared toward minimizing domination throughout society. He contends that Joseph Schumpeter’s classic defense of competitive democracy is a useful starting point for achieving this purpose, but that it stands in need of radical supplementation--both with respect to its operation in national political institutions and in its extension to other forms of collective association. Shapiro’s unusually wide-ranging discussion also deals with the conditions that make democracy’s survival more and less likely, with the challenges presented by ethnic differences and claims for group rights, and with the relations between democracy and the distribution of income and wealth.
"Deep, informed, and reeks of common sense." -Norman
Ornstein "It is now beyond debate that rising
inequality is not only leaving millions of Americans living on a
sharp edge but also is threatening ...our democracy…For activists and
scholars alike who are struggling to create a more equitable
society, this is an essential read." -David Gergen We are
in an age of crisis. That much we can agree on. But a crisis of
what, exactly? And how do we get out of it? In a follow up to their
influential and much debated Death by a Thousand Cuts ,
Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro focus on what really worries people:
not what the rich are making or the government is taking from them
but their own insecurity. Americans are worried about losing their
jobs, their status, and the safety of their communities. They fear
the wolf at the door. The solution is not protectionism or class
warfare but better jobs, higher wages, greater protection for
families suffering from unemployment, better health insurance, and
higher quality childcare. And it turns out those goals are more
achievable than you might think. The Wolf at the Door is
one of those rare books that doesn't just diagnose our problems, it
shows how to address them. "This is a terrific book, original,
erudite, and superbly well-informed, and full of new wisdom about
what might and what might not help the majority of Americans who
have not shared in our growing prosperity, but are left facing the
wolf at the door…Everyone interested in public policy should read
this book." -Angus Deaton, Princeton University "Graetz and Shapiro
wrestle with a fundamental question of our day: How do we address a
system that makes too many Americans anxious that economic security
is slipping out of reach? Their cogent call for sensible and
achievable policies…should be read by progressives and
conservatives alike." -Jacob J. Lew, former Secretary of the
Treasury
Containment Shapiro, Ian
2007., 20090209, 2009, 2007, 2007-01-01
eBook
In this powerfully argued book, Ian Shapiro shows that the idea of containment offers the best hope for protecting Americans and their democracy into the future. His bold vision for American security ...in the post-September 11 world is reminiscent of George Kennan's historic "Long Telegram," in which the containment strategy that won the Cold War was first developed. The Bush Doctrine of preemptive war and unilateral action has been marked by incompetence--missed opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden, failures of postwar planning for Iraq, and lack of an exit strategy. But Shapiro contends that the problems run deeper. He explains how the Bush Doctrine departs from the best traditions of American national-security policy and accepted international norms, and renders Americans and democratic values less safe. He debunks the belief that containment is obsolete. Terror networks might be elusive, but the enabling states that make them dangerous can be contained. Shapiro defends containment against charges of appeasement, arguing that force against a direct threat will be needed. He outlines new approaches to intelligence, finance, allies, diplomacy, and international institutions. He explains why containment is the best alternative to a misguided agenda that naively assumes democratic regime change is possible from the barrel of an American gun.
Since the 1960s a resurgence of interest in the moral foundations
of politics has fueled debates about the appropriate sources of our
political judgments. Ian Shapiro analyzes and advances these
...debates, discussing them in an accessibly style. He defends a view
of politics called critical naturalism as a third way
between the neo-Kantian theory of John Rawl's and the contextual
arguments of Richard Rorty, Michael Walzer, Alasdair MacIntyre and
others. He formulates a new justification for democratic politics
and an innovative account of the nature of political argument.
Among the most influential writings in the history of Western political thought, John Locke'sTwo Treatises of GovernmentandA Letter Concerning Tolerationremain vital to political debates today, more ...than three centuries after they were written. The complete texts appear in this volume, accompanied by interpretive essays by three prominent Locke scholars.Ian Shapiro's introduction places Locke's political writings in historical and biographical context. John Dunn explores both the intellectual context in which Locke wrote theTwo Treatises of GovernmentandA Letter Concerning Tolerationand the major interpretive controversies surrounding their meaning. Ruth Grant offers a comprehensive discussion of Locke's views on women and the family, and Shapiro contributes an essay on the democratic elements of Locke's political theory. Taken together, the texts and essays in this volume offer invaluable insights into the history of ideas and the enduring influence of Locke's political thought.
Wearable devices that include pulse oximetry (SpO
) sensing afford the opportunity to capture oxygen saturation measurements from large cohorts under naturalistic conditions. We report here a ...cross-sectional analysis of 72 million SpO
values collected from 33,080 individual participants in the Apple Heart and Movement Study, stratified by age, sex, body mass index (BMI), home altitude, and other demographic variables. Measurements aggregated by hour of day into 24-h SpO
profiles exhibit similar circadian patterns for all demographic groups, being approximately sinusoidal with nadir near midnight local time, zenith near noon local time, and mean 0.8% lower saturation during overnight hours. Using SpO
measurements averaged for each subject into mean nocturnal and daytime SpO
values, we employ multivariate ordinary least squares regression to quantify population-level trends according to demographic factors. For the full cohort, regression coefficients obtained from models fit to daytime SpO
are in close quantitative agreement with the corresponding values from published reference models for awake arterial oxygen saturation measured under controlled laboratory conditions. Regression models stratified by sex reveal significantly different age- and BMI-dependent SpO
trends for females compared with males, although constant terms and regression coefficients for altitude do not differ between sexes. Incorporating categorical variables encoding self-reported race/ethnicity into the full-cohort regression models identifies small but statistically significant differences in daytime SpO
(largest coefficient corresponding to 0.13% lower SpO
, for Hispanic study participants compared to White participants), but no significant differences between groups for nocturnal SpO
. Additional stratified analysis comparing regression models fit independently to subjects in each race/ethnicity group is suggestive of small differences in age- and sex-dependent trends, but indicates no significant difference in constant terms between any race/ethnicity groups for either daytime or nocturnal SpO
. The large diverse study population and study design employing automated background SpO
measurements spanning the full 24-h circadian cycle enables the establishment of healthy population reference trends outside of clinical settings.
The elastic modulus and hardness of different silicon carbide (SiC) coatings in tristructural-isotropic (TRISO) fuel particles were measured by in situ high temperature nanoindentation up to 500 °C. ...Three samples fabricated by different research institutions were compared. Due to varied fabrication parameters the samples exhibited different grain sizes and one contained some visible porosity. However, irrespective of the microstructural features in each case the hardness was found to be very similar in the three coatings around 35 GPa at room temperature. Compared with the significantly coarser grained bulk CVD SiC, the drop in hardness with temperature was less pronounced for TRISO particles, suggesting that the presence of grain boundaries impeded plastic deformation. The elastic modulus differed for the three TRISO coatings with room temperature values ranging from 340 to 400 GPa. With increasing measurement temperature the elastic modulus showed a continuous decrease.
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