Political Science and Prevision

1965 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bertrand de Jouvenel

The political scientist is a teacher of public men in the making, and an adviser of public men in activity; “public men,” that is, men who are taught, invited or assumed to feel some responsibility for the exercise of political power; “political power,” that is, concentrated means of affecting the future.Obviously we can not affect the past, or that present moment which is now passing away, but only what is not yet: the future alone is sensitive to our actions, voluntary if aimed at a pictured outcome, rational if apt to cause it, prudently conceived if we take into account circumstances outside our control (known to decision theorists as “states of nature”), and the conflicting moves of others (known in game theory as opponents' play). A result placed in the future, conditions intervening in the future, need we say more to stress that decisions are taken “with an eye to the future,” in other terms, with foresight?

Legal Studies ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 248-278
Author(s):  
Michael Harker ◽  
John Street ◽  
Samuel Cross

In this paper, we consider the Leveson inquiry's use of a narrative device – the policy cycle – to justify the need for a break with the past. We challenge that narrative, which runs through much of the literature, and posit a more nuanced and complex account of the politics and history of press inquiries, drawing upon the political science literature. We then reflect upon the implications of our findings for the future of press regulation.


1927 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-791 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Deborah Ellis

Political science is at the parting of the ways. Its foundations have been undermined by the claims of law and jurisprudence, into whose hands it has been deliberately surrendering itself for the past half-century or more, and now its chief strongholds are under fire from the neighboring fields of sociology, economics, and ethics. So severe and so persistent have these attacks become that the time has arrived when the political scientist must decide whether he will allow his subject to be absorbed in any one or all of these various fields, or will attempt to reëstablish it as a distinctive discipline.The reasons for this state of things are not difficult to discover. They quite obviously lie in the fact that in the pursuit of their basic problem—the search, namely, for the nature and source of sovereignty—political philosophers have so generally followed two equally futile and fruitless paths: either the path of pure speculation leading to a supernatural or metaphysical theory, or the path of legal analysis, leading ultimately to the juristic theory of the state. Indeed, during these recent years political theory has been so increasingly “under bondage to the lawyers” that it is little wonder that a reaction has come, and that thinkers in their determination to find the reality behind the formal juristic conception, are now repudiating not only the legal, but even the political, character of the state.


2003 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Zeller

Elements of a geography of capitalism. Despite the variety of new approaches economic geography developed rather one-sided in the past decade. The regional and the firm lenses hardly enabled to recognize how economic processes and political power relations interact on different scales. These empirical deficits also express a restricted theoretical base. The approaches of the new “regional orthodoxy” claim to explain conditions of an improved competitiveness of firms and of regions. However, many socially relevant and spatially differentiated problems are ignored. In contrast, this paper argues for an integrative understanding of the capitalist economy in its historical dynamics and with its reciprocal effects for actors on various scales. In the course of neoliberal deregulation policies and globalization processes, a finance-dominated accumulation regime emerged in the USA which shapes the economy on a global scale. Institutional investors gained decisive control over investments. The political power relations and hierarchies between states remain important. Therefore, the paper suggests a shift of economic geographical research. In the perspective of an integrative geography of capitalism the paper outlines a research agenda of a geography of accumulation, a geography of production as well as a geography of power


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-52
Author(s):  
Miroslav Tuđman

The author gives an overview of the history of National Security and the Future (NSF). The first editorial board accepted a clear vision and mission of the NSF. That is why the NSF had to react to the political circumstances in which the journal has operated for 20 years. In the first period, international circumstances and the policy of detuđmanization directly influenced the choice of topics and papers published in the journal. For the past five years, the NSF has paid particular attention to the security of national and European critical infrastructure. A total of 257 texts were published on more than 8,000 pages and authored by 134 authors from 25 countries. The NSF has published studies on historical forgery, information operations, production of "fake news" and contributions to the theory and methodology of intelligence activities.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Button

No-futurists (‘growing block theorists’) hold that that the past and the present are real, but that the future is not. The present moment is therefore privileged: it is the last moment of time. Craig Bourne (2002) and David Braddon-Mitchell (2004) have argued that this position is unmotivated, since the privilege of presentness comes apart from the indexicality of ‘this moment’. I respond that no-futurists should treat ‘x is real-as-of y’ as a nonsymmetric relation. Then different moments are real-as-of different times. This reunites privilege with indexicality, but entails that no-futurists must believe in ineliminably tensed facts.Published in Analysis 66.2: 130–35.


2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (1/2) ◽  
pp. 143-160
Author(s):  
Richard Alston

This essay considers the nature of historical discourse through a consideration of the historical narrative of Lucan’s Pharsalia. The focus is on the manner in which Lucan depicts history as capable of being fictionalised, especially through the operation of political power. The discourses of history make a historical account, but those discourses are not, in Lucan's view, true, but are fictionalised. The key study comes from Caesar at Troy, when Lucan explores the idea of a site (and history) which cannot be understood, but which nevertheless can be employed in a representation of the past. yet, Lucan also alludes to a ‘true history’, which is unrepresentable in his account of Pharsalus, and beyond the scope of the human mind. Lucan’s true history can be read against Benjamin and Tacitus. Lucan offers a framework of history that has the potential to be post-Roman (in that it envisages a world in which there is no Rome), and one in which escapes the frames of cultural memory, both in its fictionalisation and in the dependence of Roman imperial memory on cultural trauma.


1974 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 5-7

During the past forty years the dominant preoccupation of scholars writing on Livy has been the relationship between the historian and the emperor Augustus, and its effects on the Ab Urbe Condita. Tacitus’ testimony that the two were on friendly terms, and Suetonius’ revelation that Livy found time to encourage the historical studies of the future emperor Claudius, appeared to have ominous overtones to scholars writing against the political backcloth of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Though the subject had not been wholly ignored previously, the success of the German cultural propaganda-machine stimulated a spate of approving or critical treatments. While some were hailing Livy as the historian whose work signalled and glorified the new order, others following a similar interpretation were markedly scathing.


2021 ◽  
pp. 281-298
Author(s):  
Joseph D. Kearney ◽  
Thomas W. Merrill

This chapter reviews how the political settlements and legal understandings canvassed in the account continue to affect the Chicago lakefront today. It offers brief snapshots of five more recent developments on the lakefront that reflect the influence of the past — and that may be indicative of the future. The chapter begins by recounting the boundary-line agreement of 1912 which planted the seeds of the Illinois Central's demise on the lakefront. Today, the railroad has largely disappeared from the lakefront, in both name and fact. The chapter then shifts to discuss the Ward cases, which continue to affect the shape of the lakefront. It chronicles the success of Millennium Park and the Illinois Supreme Court's demotion of the public dedication doctrine to a statutory right limited to Grant Park. The chapter also recounts the Deep Tunnel project and the challenges in the South Works site. Ultimately, it discusses the appearance of the public trust doctrine on the lakefront, being invoked by preservationist groups to challenge both a new museum and the construction of President Barack Obama's presidential library (called the Obama Presidential Center).


Author(s):  
Jill Ehrenreich-May ◽  
Sarah M. Kennedy ◽  
Jamie A. Sherman ◽  
Emily L. Bilek ◽  
David H. Barlow

Chapter 8 of the Unified Protocols for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders in Children: Workbook (UP-C) focuses on emotional awareness by teaching a new Emotion Detective skill to experience feelings while learning three present-moment awareness steps— learning to pay attention to what is going on in the present moment without thinking about the past or the future, experiencing feelings without avoiding them or doing something to make them go away, and beginning to approach or face things or situations the child has been avoiding in the past because they make the child feel scared, sad, angry, or worried. Child clients practice these present-moment awareness steps using their five senses, and they also learn about and practice non-judgmental awareness.


2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren Schreiber

Neuropolitics is the intersection of neuroscience and political science, and it has the interdisciplinary goal of transforming both disciplines. This article reviews the past 20 years of work in the field, identifying its roots, some overarching themes—reactions to political attitudinal questions and candidates faces, identification of political ideology based on brain structure or reactivity to nonpolitical stimuli, and racial attitudes—and obstacles to its progress. I then explore the methodological and analytical advances that point the way forward for the future of neuropolitics. Although the field has been slow to develop compared with neurolaw and neuroeconomics, innovations look ripe for dramatically improving our ability to model political behaviors and attitudes in individuals and predict political choices in mass publics. The coming advancements, however, pose risks to our current norms of democratic deliberation, and academics need to anticipate and mitigate these risks.


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