Download or read book France Before 1789 written by Jon Elster and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-13 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "France before 1789 presents the main features of the prodigiously complex social system of the ancien regime which proceeded the French Revolution. In doing so Jon Elster goes beyond formal institutions to show how they worked in practice. He draws on a host of examples and contemporary texts to illuminate the perverse and sometimes pathological effects of this system and seeks to provide a detailed analysis of the political institutions that undergirded it. Whereas Tocqueville, in his famous analysis of the ancient regime, wanted to understand the old regime as a prelude to revolution, Elster views it as a prelude to constitution-making prompted by and intended to resolve these perversities. He views these as overlapping, yet important enough to render distinct. In addition to defending a particular set of substantive propositions about the conditions which led to the Constituent Assembly, Elster argues for a specific methodological approach to history, which emphasizes supplementing the historian's craft with approaches from the social sciences. Ultimately, he does not claim to answer the historians' questions better than they do. But he does aspire to ask and sometimes answer questions that historians have not formulated in order to better understand one of the most significant examples of collective decision-making history offers us"--
Download or read book An Introduction to Karl Marx written by Jon Elster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1986-07-25 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical introduction to Marx's social, political and economic thought that stresses the relevance and importance of many of the philosopher's theories. It can be considered a standard basic reference work for the study of Marx in conjunction with the author's companion selection of Marx's writings, Karl Marx: A Reader.
Download or read book Alchemies of the Mind written by Jon Elster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive book on the emotions considering the full range of theoretical approaches.
Download or read book Making Sense of Marx written by Jon Elster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1985-05-09 with total page 584 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A critical examination of the social theories of Karl Marx.
Download or read book Sour Grapes written by Jon Elster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-26 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is Jon Elster's influential study of irrationality, challenging orthodox theories of rational choice.
Download or read book Closing the Books written by Jon Elster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-09-06 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of transitional justice - retribution and reparation after a change of political regime - from Athens in the fifth century BC to the present. Part I, 'The Universe of Transitional Justice', describes more than thirty transitions, some of them in considerable detail, others more succinctly. Part II, 'The Analytics of Transitional Justice', proposes a framework for explaining the variations among the cases - why after some transitions wrongdoers from the previous regime are punished severely and in other cases mildly or not at all, and victims sometimes compensated generously and sometimes poorly or not at all. After surveying a broad range of justifications and excuses for wrongdoings and criteria for selecting and indemnifying victims, the 2004 book concludes with a discussion of three general explanatory factors: economic and political constraints, the retributive emotions, and the play of party politics.
Download or read book Deliberative Democracy written by Jon Elster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-03-28 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume assesses the strengths and weaknesses of deliberative democracy.
Download or read book Explaining Social Behavior written by Jon Elster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A substantially revised edition of Jon Elster's critically acclaimed book exploring the nature of social behavior and the social sciences.
Download or read book Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy written by Jon Elster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-08 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contributions in this volume offer a comprehensive analysis of transitional justice from 1945 to the present. They focus on retribution against the leaders and agents of the autocratic regime preceding the democratic transition, and on reparation to its victims. Part I contains general theoretical discussions of retribution and reparation. The essays in Part II survey transitional justice in the wake of World War II, covering Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, and Norway. In Part III, the contributors discuss more recent transitions in Argentina, Chile, Eastern Europe, the former German Democratic Republic, and South Africa, including a chapter on the reparation of injustice in some of these transitions. The editor provides a general introduction, brief introductions to each part, and a conclusion that looks beyond regime transitions to broader issues of rectifying historical injustice.
Download or read book Securities Against Misrule written by Jon Elster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-22 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is often argued that democratic institutions should be designed to produce good outcomes, assuming that we know what good outcomes are and which institutions will track them. This book denies both assumptions. The idea of the general interest is ill-defined and our understanding of social causality is fragile. Instead, one should reduce as much as possible the impact of self-interest, passion, prejudice, and bias on the decision makers, and then let the chips fall where they may. In addition to making novel theoretical proposals, this book discusses a welter of case studies and historical episodes.
Download or read book Addiction written by Jon Elster and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1999-10-28 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Addiction focuses on the emergence, nature, and persistence of addictive behavior, as well as the efforts of addicts to overcome their condition. Do addicts act of their own free will, or are they driven by forces beyond their control? Do structured treatment programs offer more hope for recovery? What causes relapses to occur? Recent scholarship has focused attention on the voluntary aspects of addiction, particularly the role played by choice. Addiction draws upon this new research and the investigations of economists, psychiatrists, philosophers, neuropharmacologists, historians, and sociologists to offer an important new approach to our understanding of addictive behavior. The notion that addicts favor present rewards over future gains or penalties echoes throughout the chapters in Addiction. The effect of cultural values and beliefs on addicts, and on those who treat them, is also explored, particularly in chapters by Elster on alcoholism and by Acker on American heroin addicts in the 1920s and 1930s. Essays by Gardner and by Waal and Mørland discuss the neurobiological roots of addiction Among their findings are evidence that addictive drugs also have an important effect on areas of the central nervous system unrelated to euphoria or dysphoria, and that tolerance and withdrawal phenomena vary greatly from drug to drug. The plight of addicts struggling to regain control of their lives receives important consideration in Addiction. Elster, Skog, and O'Donoghue and Rabin look at self-administered therapies ranging from behavioral modifications to cognitive techniques, and discuss conditions under which various treatment strategies work. Drug-based forms of treatment are discussed by Gardner, drawing on work that suggests that parts of the population have low levels of dopamine, inducing a tendency toward sensation-seeking. There are many different explanations for the impulsive, self-destructive behavior that is addiction. By bringing the triple perspective of neurobiology, choice, and culture to bear on the phenomenon, Addiction offers a unique and valuable source of information and debate on a problem of world-wide proportions.
Download or read book Rational Choice written by Jon Elster and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 1986-11 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This series brings together a carefully edited selection of the most influential and enduring articles on central topics in social and political theory. Each volume contains ten to twelve articles and an introductory essay by the editor.
Download or read book Local Justice written by Jon Elster and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1992-05-14 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The well-being of individuals routinely depends on their success in obtaining goods and avoiding burdens distributed by society. Local Justice offers the first systematic analysis of the principles and procedures used in dispensing "local justice" in situations as varied as the admission of students to college, the choice of patients for organ transplants, the selection of workers for layoffs, and the induction of men into the army. A prominent theorist in the field of rational choice and decision making, Jon Elster develops a rich selection of empirical examples and case studies to demonstrate the diversity of procedures used by institutions that mete out local justice. From this revealing material Elster fashions a conceptual framework for understanding why institutions make these crucial allocations in the ways they do. Elster's investigation discloses the many complex and varied approaches of such decision-making bodies as selective service and adoption agencies, employers and universities, prison and immigration authorities. What are the conflicting demands placed on these institutions by the needs of applicants, the recommendations of external agencies, and their own organizational imperatives? Often, as Elster shows, methods of allocation may actually aggravate social problems. For instance, the likelihood that handicapped or minority infants will be adopted is further decreased when agencies apply the same stringent screening criteria—exclusion of people over forty, single parents, working wives, and low-income families—that they use for more sought-after babies. Elster proposes a classification of the main principles and procedures used to match goods with individuals, charts the interactions among these mechanisms of local justice, and evaluates them in terms of fairness and efficiency. From his empirical groundwork, Elster builds an innovative analysis of the historical processes by which, at given times and under given circumstances, preferences become principles and principles become procedures. Local Justice concludes with a comparison of local justice systems with major contemporary theories of social justice—utilitarianism, John Rawls's A Theory of Justice, Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia—and discusses the "common-sense conception of justice" held by professional decision makers such as lawyers, economists, and politicians. The difference between what we say about justice and how we actually dispense it is the illuminating principle behind Elster's book. A perceptive and cosmopolitan study, Local Justice is a seminal work for all those concerned with the formation of ethical policy and social welfare—philosophers, economists, political scientists, health care professionals, policy makers, and educators.
Download or read book Choice Over Time written by George Loewenstein and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1992-10-27 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of our most urgent national problems suggest a widespread lack of concern for the future. Alarming economic conditions, such as low national savings rates, declining corporate investment in long-term capital projects, and ballooning private and public debt are matched by such social ills as diminished educational achievement, environmental degradation, and high rates of infant mortality, crime, and teenage pregnancy. At the heart of all these troubles lies an important behavioral phenomenon: in the role of consumer, manager, voter, student, or parent, many Americans choose inferior but immediate rewards over greater long-term benefits. Choice Over Time offers a rich sampling of original research on intertemporal choice—how and why people decide between immediate and delayed consequences—from a broad range of theoretical and methodological perspectives in philosophy, political science, psychology, and economics. George Loewenstein, Jon Elster, and their distinguished colleagues review existing theories and forge new approaches to understanding significant questions: Why do people seem to "discount" future benefits? Do individuals use the same decision-making strategy in all aspects of their lives? What part is played by situational factors such as the certainty of delayed consequences? How are decisions affected by personal factors such as willpower and taste? In addressing these issues, the contributors to Choice Over Time address many social, economic, psychological, and personal time problems. Their work demonstrates the predictive power of short-term preferences in behavior as varied as addiction and phobia, the effect of prices on consumption, and the dramatic rise in debt and decline in savings. Choice Over Time provides an essential source for the most recent research and theory on intertemporal choice, offering new models for time preference patterns—and their aberrations—and presenting a diversity of potential solutions to the problem of "temporal myopia."
Download or read book Karl Marx written by Karl Marx and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A selection of Karl Marx's most important writings are contained in this volume. It was designed as a companion to Elster's "An introduction to Karl Marx" but may be used alone.
Download or read book Foundations of Social Choice Theory written by Jon Elster (red.) and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1986 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1986, this volume of essays offers an examination of the philosophical foundations of social choice theory, in its context as the outgrowth of welfare economics. The essays advance both criticisms and suggestions for alternative approaches.
Download or read book The Multiple Self written by Jon Elster and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1987-07-31 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers how the hypotheses of a multiple self can deal with the problems of self-deception and weakness of will and how the conceptual tools developed in the study of interpersonal conflict can be applied.
