Working paper
Цивилизационный контекст мультилинейного развития стран Европы
This book presents a comprehensive theory of why human freedom gave way to increasing oppression since the invention of states – and why this trend began to reverse itself more recently, leading to a rapid expansion of universal freedoms and democracy. Drawing on a massive body of evidence, the author tests various explanations of the rise of freedom, providing convincing support of a well-reasoned theory of emancipation. The study demonstrates multiple trends toward human empowerment, which converge to give people control over their lives. Most important among these trends is the spread of 'emancipative values', which emphasize free choice and equal opportunities. The author identifies the desire for emancipation as the origin of the human empowerment trend and shows when and why this desire grows strong; why it is the source of democracy; and how it vitalizes civil society, feeds humanitarian norms, enhances happiness, and helps redirect modern civilization toward sustainable development.
This article deals with compensation theory, according to which humans in modern culture need to compensate modernization and rationalization processes to construct their identity. As a result, the tendency to the conserve and re-actualize its historical origins is a characteristic feature of modern culture.
Before the avalanche of democratization that occurred around 1990, happiness was strongly correlated with democracy: at the national level, subjective well-being showed correlations close to.8 with such measures of democracy as the Freedom House political rights and civil liberties scores. This could mean that: (1) living under democratic institutions makes people much happier than living under authoritarian ones; or (2) high levels of subjective well-being are conducive to democracy. It is also possible that the correlation could be spurious or reciprocal. Using data on happiness levels of 42 publics from 1981 to 2007 and measures of democracy levels from 1972 to 2008, this paper attempts to clarify why subjective well-being is linked with democracy. If democracy causes democracy, then transitions to democracy should be followed by dramatic increases in happiness. But if happiness is a relatively stable variable that is conducive to democracy but not necessarily raised by it, democratization not be followed by rising happiness – and by moving large numbers of less happy societies into the ranks of the democracies, a major wave of democratization would weaken the subsequent correlation between democracy and happiness.
We contribute to the debate on the optimal structure of Competition Authorities (CAs), a debate of particular relevance in younger developing country jurisdictions. We propose a model of a reputation-maximizing CA in which reputation is increasing with enforcement success. This predicts that generalist CAs will focus on decisions in activities with low probability of annulment and low investigation and litigation costs and that this could be detrimental to welfare (relative to the more balanced activity portfolio of specialist CAs). We use a data set of appealed decisions of the Russian CA to provide an empirical support for the model’s assumptions and predictions.
Several approaches to the concept of fatherhood present in Western sociological tradition are analyzed and compared: biological determinism, social constructivism and biosocial theory. The problematics of fatherhood and men’s parental practices is marginalized in modern Russian social research devoted to family and this fact makes the traditional inequality in family relations, when the father’s role is considered secondary compared to that of mother, even stronger. However, in Western critical men’s studies several stages can be outlined: the development of “sex roles” paradigm (biological determinism), the emergence of the hegemonic masculinity concept, inter-disciplinary stage (biosocial theory). According to the approach of biological determinism, the role of a father is that of the patriarch, he continues the family line and serves as a model for his ascendants. Social constructivism looks into man’s functions in the family from the point of view of masculine pressure and establishing hegemony over a woman and children. Biosocial theory aims to unite the biological determinacy of fatherhood with social, cultural and personal context. It is shown that these approaches are directly connected with the level of the society development, marriage and family perceptions, the level of egality of gender order.