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Using market-based pro-poor development policy in the global South as an example, this paper engages with the rise of behaviourism and experimentalism as a challenge to the neoclassical orthodoxy and the more recent transformation into an influential policy script. After charting the rise of behavioural economics and discussing the key conceptual building blocks of the emerging behavioural mainstream in economics, the paper turns to the marketization of anti-poverty policy in the global South. Based on an analysis of policy documents, project reports and academic interventions, it is argued that the behavioural approach to poverty shifts the focus from the market to the market subject and engages in often thinly veiled attempts at behavioural engineering. This is achieved with the combined work of behavioural economic knowledge and socio-technical market devices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As obesity constitutes a growing health concern over the world, it has also become an important part of public policy agendas. This paper critically analyses the development of the policy debate and measures around obesity in the UK. The paper contributes to the debate by challenging the current individualized nature of nudge policies as the most popular application of behavioural economics to policy. We argue that it may be possible to change the choice architecture of individuals through nudge, but the overall effectiveness of such policies would be limited because the broader social, economic and political architecture shaping individual choices is ignored. The case of the UK provides a good illustration where concrete policy measures are predominantly focused on choice despite growing recognition of the structural determinants of obesity, and the governments are thus able to avoid threatening free markets and existing economic interests. Whilst the recently introduced sugar tax constitutes a certain shift in policy, it clearly remains an exception within the whole policy package. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we characterise a tension between two views about how an agent could achieve efficient action selection. On one hand, it is common in some of the cognitive and behavioural sciences to maintain that efficient action selection requires that the value of all actions or options available to an agent are represented on a unidimensional scale of values, in other words that action selection make use of a “common currency”. On the other hand, early work in situated, embodied robotics and distributed control associated with Rodney Brooks maintained that “intelligence” could be achieved without the instantiation of any representations at all, and without centralised control systems. This line of thinking has exerted significant influence in situated and enactivist approaches to human cognition. If what situated roboticists count as “intelligence” includes capacity for efficient action selection, then their claim that intelligence can be achieved without representations is in tension with the views of those who argue that efficient action selection requires that a common currency be represented. We argue here that the apparent tension is genuine, develop an analysis of the tension itself, and offer a preliminary overview of the considerations relevant to navigating it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper analyzes a set of 9,035 salaryman senryū poems over an eighteen-year period (1990-2007) in order to track salaryman reactions to workplace transition from an organizational behavioralist perspective. Major findings include: (i) the number of submissions and votes for the major poetry competition, Salaryman Senryū, have been falling since 1994, suggesting a decline in shared salaryman mentality; (ii) there has been a shift in the relative importance of broad themes, so that the workplace as a category of senryū poems is of less centrality in 2007 than it was in 1990; (iii) within the workplace category, (negative) interpersonal relations, especially with supervisors, still dominate; and (iv) workstyle is also a strong subtheme, with workers showing more interest in work processes than actual work conditions. The analysis also shows that the years 1996 and 1997 are a watershed where poems shift from a more jocular to strident tone. The overall implication of the study is a potential breach of the social contract between Japanese employers and regular employees, which will require the assiduous application of supportive employment practices (SEP) in order to ensure a high level of employee performance and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of key constructs underpin educational action research. This paper focuses on the concept of 'truth' and by doing so hopes to highlight some debate in this area. In reflecting upon what 'truth' might mean to those involved in action research, I shall critically evaluate Thorndike's 'Law of Effect' and Bruner's 'Three Forms of Representation', and explain how these perspectives might help us find 'the truth' of an area under study and how they might inform the methodology of research. I shall close by suggesting that teacher-researchers should allow for a constructivist approach in their action research methodology in order to help them in their sense-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1967, the burgeoning discontent of many political scientists culminated in the establishment of the Caucus for a New Political Science. The Caucus included political scientists of many diverse viewpoints, but it was united methodologically by a critique of behavioralism and by the idea that political science should abandon the myth of a value-free science. In recent years, political scientists have authored numerous commentaries on “the tragedy” of political science, “the crisis” in political science, and “the flight from reality in political science,” while in 2000 these discontents resurfaced in the “perestroika” rebellion, which again denounced the American Political Science Association as an organization that promotes a “narrow parochialism and methodological bias toward the quantitative, behavioral, rational choice, statistical, and formal modeling approaches.” This paper reviews the intellectual origins of New Political Science by examining some of the major works of the late 1960s and early 1970s purporting to establish the foundations of a new political science. It concludes that new political science offers a methodological critique of behaviorialism and a sociological critique of the relationship between political science and political power, but there is no consensus on what constitutes a new political science beyond its critical stance toward the existing discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the dominant view, the later Wittgenstein identified the meaning of an expression with its use in the language and vehemently rejected any kind of mentalism or intentionalism about linguistic meaning. I argue that the dominant view is wrong. The textual evidence, which has either been misunderstood or overlooked, indicates that at least since the Blue Book Wittgenstein thought speaker's intentions determine the contents of linguistic utterances. His remarks on use are only intended to emphasize the heterogeneity of natural language. Taking into account remarks written after he finished theInvestigations, I show how Wittgenstein anticipated the basic tenets of Gricean intention-based semantics. These are, in particular, the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘non-natural’ meaning and the distinction between what a speaker means by an utterance and what the expression uttered means in the speaker's natural language. Importantly, Wittgenstein also believed that only the meaning of the speaker determined the content of ambiguous expressions, such as ‘bank’, on a particular occasion of utterance [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Authority is considered to be the main source of agency and influence of international organizations. This article argues that authority is a volatile and contested good that might be successfully manipulated by international organizations themselves. Drawing on the case of UN peacekeeping reforms at the beginning of the new century, it identifies three behavioural patterns—adding authority from outside; overacting; mandate stretching—that helped the UN Secretariat to regain peacekeeping authority that the organization had lost at the end of the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Classical international organizations are formally governed by ministers who have their primary institutional affiliation at the national level. The European Commission, on the other hand, represents a notable organizational innovation in the way that executive politicians at the top, i.e., the commissioners, have their primary institutional affiliation at the international level. Thus, the Commission constitutes a ‘laboratory’ for experiments in supranational institution-building: what is the relative importance of nationality and organizational position with regard to explaining actual decision behaviour? This article takes stock of the existing literature in the field, and also launches a future research agenda. Concerning Commission officials, nationality seems to play a minor role. Nationality matters somewhat more regarding commissioners' behaviour, but makes up only one of several components of their highly compound role, thus making behaviour at the top of the Commission qualitatively different from behaviour in, for example, the European Council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the career developments of researcher Audrey L. Holland. It informs that Holland has measured the conceptual standards including behaviorism, functionalism, and cognitive neuropathology. It mentions that Holland has contributed to the bring a social change in the society. It states that Holland has contributed to the functional communications. It is also stated that the modus operandi is useful in the clinical research.

Comments on politics and government in developing countries in Asia. Emphasis on behaviorism; Significance of democracy; Key features that are essential to democracy; Practice of election by vote in Indonesia.