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In dialogues with other disciplines, Protestant theologians need to balance the use of non-scriptural but common language with the commitment to scriptural beliefs. Neglecting this would result in unprincipled inclusivism and narrow-minded exclusivism. This paper argues that Herman Bavinck's organic view of revelation has conceptual resources that help theologians avoid those extremes. According to Bavinck's organic motif, theology and other disciplines, as well as their respective sources (special and general revelations), are interrelated by a set of concepts and rules that can be abstracted from reality. These concepts, which consist of what Bavinck and the Reformed Scholastics call common notions and ideas, constitute an informational blueprint that connect all things. Inheriting the Augustinian-Thomist metaphysics, Bavinck sees common notions and ideas (e.g., logic, values, essences) as the deliverances of the divine intellect. For this reason, these abstract objects make up the framework of both cosmos and human reason, and pervasively structure all meaningful discourses. The use of common notions and ideas, therefore, becomes the indispensable condition for interdisciplinary dialogues. Bavinck's view, however, entails the role of theology as the queen of sciences, since theology provides the metaphysicalnarrative basis for the organic unity of all disciplines. In integrating her worldview with other sciences, theology needs the assistance of philosophy, which is a discipline that essentially deals with common notions and ideas. Here we can also find Bavinck's nuanced views of the natures of philosophy and natural theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As emerging donors play a growing role in international development cooperation, attention has turned to understanding their motivations and strategies. While current studies predominantly draw on the role of power, economic interests and values in emerging donors’ development assistance towards the Global South, there has been a lack of attention to the role of domestic ideas and interests in governmental preference formation. How do these domestic factors shape ideational and material interests-driven development policy preferences? Drawing on the case of Mexico under the government of President Calderón, this study analyses bilateral development assistance through a domestic politics lens of international political economy. I argue that while the government's rhetorical stance significantly correlates with dominant societal ideas, domestic interests provide only a limited explanation for development policy choices. This study enriches the literature by revealing the often-hidden domestic roots of value-based and interest-driven development assistance preferences among donors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant states that ideas give us the rule for organising experience and ideals serve as archetypes or standards against which one can measure copies. Further, he states that ideas and ideals can be practical. Understanding how precisely these concepts should function presents a challenging and understudied philosophical puzzle. I offer a reconstruction of how ideas and ideals might be practical in order to uphold, to my mind, a conceptually worthy distinction. A practical idea, I argue, is best understood as a reference to the categorical imperative (and its various formulations), which guides conduct directly as a rule. A practical ideal, by contrast, I think is a substrate that serves two functions: one that (a) helps us gauge moral deficiencies and another that (b) reveals the potential for moral improvement. In response to well-grounded sceptical concerns, I argue that ideals are indirectly practical in that they ground the possibility to recognise moral states of affairs and be moral in the first place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine how and why the European Commission's ideas on fiscal policy have changed over the course of the European Semester. Empirically, we rely on a semi-supervised scaling approach to identify economic ideas as they appear in Semester documents from the aftermath of the financial crisis onwards (2011-2022). Our findings demonstrate a gradual shift in ideas from an ordoliberal to a Keynesian direction, especially during the overlapping Von der Leyen and Covid-19 crisis years. We identify substantial country-specific differences throughout 2011–2022, with some countries receiving exclusively Keynesian recommendations, and others distinctively ordoliberal ones. These patterns can be explained in part by economic conditions in those member states but not by the public's trust in the EU. These results underscore the reactive nature of the Commission's economic ideology; crises, as well as member states' economic conditions, shape the direction of its fiscal policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conversation with Quinn Slobodian's Crack-up capitalism, the commentary explores the book's innovative but for the most part implicit methodological and expositional strategy, reflecting on some of the implications for the geographical analysis of ideas and ideation. Ideation certainly matters, but never mechanically or predictably, so the challenging questions concern how to specify, and to assign explanatory weight to, particular ideas in particular situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the euro crisis, politicization patterns led the institutions of the European Union to gradually redirect the bloc's socioeconomic governance away from austerity. It is less clear whether the erosion of austerity was mirrored in national economic discourses. To fill this gap, this article provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of parliamentary budget debates in four country cases: France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal, from 2014 to 2020. The results show contrasting patterns of "fiscal discipline" frame resilience in national economic discourse in ways consistent with intergovernmental bargaining around the pandemic recovery agenda. Moreover, shared preoccupations relating to investment in the economy, social inequality, and climate change emerge as major threads shaping budget making. These findings suggest an increasingly integrated multi‐level system of economic governance and call for further investigation into the links between ideas shaping EU economic governance and economic discourses in member states. Related Articles: Pi Ferrer, Laia, and Pertti Alasuutari. 2019. "The Spread and Domestication of the Term 'Austerity:' Evidence from the Portuguese and Spanish Parliaments." Politics & Policy 47(6): 1039–65. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12331. Zamponi, Lorenzo, and Lorenzo Bosi. 2016. "Which Crisis? European Crisis and National Contexts in Public Discourse." Politics & Policy 44(3): 400–26. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12156. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, policymakers in the U.S. have leveraged accountability policy as a governing tool to lift school performance and close the achievement gap. Accountability become so widespread that it arguably became a "policy paradigm" with the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2002. Yet after just 13 years of implementation, policymakers replaced NCLB with the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which gave states more control over the policy tools and mechanisms to regulate school improvement. This qualitative project captured the evolution of the accountability paradigm by studying the policy ideas and moral narratives of policy elites in California and Tennessee during the transition period between NCLB and ESSA. The study finds that interview participants legitimized the core design features of ESSA, but attached their underlying worldviews and beliefs to the flexible design features, which created unique accountability models with different institutional arrangements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Path-dependency theory says that complex systems, such as health systems, are shaped by prior conditions and decisions, and are resistant to change. As a result, major policy changes, such as health system reform, are often only possible in policy windows—moments of transition or contextual crisis that re-balance social power dynamics and enable the consideration of new policy ideas. However, even in policy windows there can be resistance to change. In this paper, we consider the role of ideas in constraining change. We draw on political science theory on the dynamic relationship between foreground ideas (policy programmes and frames) and background ideas (deeply held collective cognitive and normative beliefs) to better understand how ideas exert influence independently of the contextual conditions that give rise to them or the actors that espouse them. To do so, we examine two apparent policy windows in the South African National Health Insurance policy process. The analysis reveals how ideas can become institutionalised in organisations and procedures (such as policy instruments or provider networks), and in intangible cultural norms—becoming hegemonic and uncontested ideas that shape the attitudes and perspectives of policy actors. In this way, ideas operate as independent variables, constraining change across policy windows. While health policy analysts increasingly recognise the influence of ideational variables in policy processes, they tend to conceptualise ideas as tools actors wield to drive change. This analysis reveals the importance of considering ideas (values, norms, and beliefs) as persistent features of the policy-making context that constrain actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent shift in social science research toward philosophies of the more‐than‐human has pushed many scholars to question their understanding of units of analysis and agency. While many engage with agencies of the material, few have attempted to address what might be called the agency of ideas. Here, Alexander Pratt argues that engaging with the agency of ideas is particularly important when dealing with issues like racism, which is the focus of this article. He believes that one reason for the lack of such engagement is the seemingly undefined nature of what we might think of as ideas. In this article, Pratt offers a conception of agential ideas developed through his reading of the metaphysics of Charles S. Peirce and those who have utilized Peirce's theories. This conception will provide an entry point for posthuman researchers to incorporate the protean nature of ideas into their own research methodologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their volume The American Political Economy, Jacob S. Hacker et al. seek to renew the study of American political economy (APE) through a direct engagement with other areas of political science, including and especially comparative political economy (CPE). In the introduction of their volume, they lay out the foundations of APE as both a field of research and an approach to American politics that seeks to contribute to the study of the United States as well as to the broader discipline of political science. In this review essay, I will discuss the APE as an intellectual project to stress its key assumptions and its potential contribution to the study of politics and public policy, in the United States and beyond. Then, I will discuss two key issues that, while not explicitly central to APE as developed in The American Political Economy, could help enrich this novel approach. These two issues are policy feedback, a concept already prominent in the institutionalist tradition APE draws on, and the role of ideas in politics, which in recent decades has gained more currency in the study of politics, public policy and CPE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the soul's capacity to see God. This is the process by which a human subject can apprehend and define the nature of God on a philosophical and theological level. Two conceptually very close philosophers, Plato and Dionysius the Areopagite (pseudo-Dionysius), highlighted this metaphysical function. The article will look into light as a concept of the mind and an expression of God's nature. For Plato, God is the visible light, whereas for Areopagite, it is the invisible light. At the conceptual level, "God" will eventually combine the Platonic (Form of) Good(ness), or the "Good", with the Christian God, perceived and defined as Goodness, beauty, perfection, and virtue. In attempting to know God, the soul follows an ascending or descending path, and the concept of negation will play a crucial role in this metaphysical and theological function. It will eventually be shown that the Good is the essence of God and, at the same time, what defines his unique singularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the Historical Institutionalism literature on stability and change by unpacking how an institution has persisted for more than 70 years despite substantial contextual changes. The overall stability of the institution comes both through changes in policy instruments and their settings, and through the incorporation of differing, but aligned rationales. Ideational multidimensionality yields stability by providing leeway to recondition the institution in response to changing circumstances. This allows for different interests in the coalition to stimulate overall institutional stability by supporting incremental changes in policy instruments whilst avoiding institutional exhaustion and third order changes. This shows that policies initiated under a certain set of circumstances may be better equipped to persist when circumstances change if they are able to incorporate differing, but aligned, rationales and to respond to upcoming issues through policy instrument changes. The theoretical arguments are exemplified through a case study analysis of Norwegian agricultural policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there empirical evidence for a liberal paradigm that informs South American immigration governance? And how does this paradigm relate to other ideas on managing immigration? Based on Pécoud's (2020) categorization of immigration governance philosophies, and the content analysis of all final declarations of the South American Conference on Migration between 2000 and 2022, we confirm a dominant liberal paradigm in the region. We further find that in South America, Pécoud's global rights-based philosophy operates as a hinge between three other philosophies: the free (non) governance of migration, anti-migrant governance, and managerial/development global migration governance philosophy. Through our analysis, we demonstrate the applicability of Pécoud's (2020) immigration governance philosophies to a major immigrant receiving region in the Global South, and contribute to the ideational literature by showing how paradigms and philosophies represent ideational building blocks that can be combined, merged, and adapted by political actors to different regional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article defends that according to Descartes there are two kinds of sensorial perception. One that operates on impulse, confusing properties of the physical things with our ideas of them; and another one that proceeds by deduction and distinguishes between those properties of physical things that have an adequate representation in our ideas and the properties that do not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates changes in decision-makers' attitudes toward environmentally sustainable urban development in selected Norwegian urban settlements between 1991 and 2020. Changes in general environmental attitudes, problem perceptions and policy preferences concerning urban development are analyzed based on a survey conducted three decades apart in the same case areas among similar samples of decision-makers. The results show a general picture of some mainstreaming of environmental concern, environmentally friendly attitudes and positive attitudes toward measures supporting nature and climate friendly urban development. At the same time, there has been an increased divide between the political left and the political right in their attitudes toward environmental issues in general, as well as toward environmentally sustainable urban development. The results point to a widening gap between environmental attitudes and problem perceptions on the one hand, and the physical reality of escalating crises in the natural world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international system is in a period of transition, marked by a weakening of multilateralism, challenges to the liberal order and the consolidation of new global leaderships. In addition, various cross-border crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic, have compounded the effects of these changes at a regional level. Given this context, what room is there for regional cooperation in Latin America? As a tool for regional coordination and integration into international flows and dynamics, regionalism can boast achievements, but challenges remain. In analytical terms, this paper proposes an approach that enables an examination of the combination of interests, ideas and institutions at play on a regional level in Latin America. The central argument is that the changing dynamics of regionalism are a product of the way in which states' interests interact with ideas about the region in a specific institutional environment over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Next Generation Science Standards regard biological structures at both the micro and macro levels as a core idea of life sciences and expect students to understand animals have external structures that perform diverse functions. Using the common creature of bees as a case, this study aimed to ascertain teenage students' ideas of bees through their visual representations. A total of 73 seventh-grade students aged approximately 13 years from two classes took part in a draw-bee(s) test (DBT), which requests them to create a drawing of a bee or bees. Then their completed drawings were scored against a tentative rubric of bees' basic external structures. The results highlight that many students hold alternative ideas about bees. Notably, a high number of students fail to depict bees' external structures scientifically, with some morphological features being most often missing, inaccurately numbered, inappropriately shaped, or disproportionately sized in their drawings. Based on these results, some implications are elucidated for improving students' understanding of bees in biological teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the sovereign debt crisis, scholars concluded that euro area member states (EAMS) and non-EAMS embarked on diverging paths of integration. Yet, their united response countering the economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis contradicts the path-dependency argument. This article takes an ideational approach. It demonstrates that the different crisis outcomes regarding differentiated integration (DI) in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) coincide with variations of how DI influenced elite crisis perceptions as an idea. While policymakers perceived the sovereign debt crisis as a currency area crisis with threats and spillovers applying to EAMS, they interpreted the COVID-19 crisis as a health emergency threatening all EU member states. These differences in elite crisis perceptions facilitated different outcomes regarding DI despite unchanged economic and fiscal circumstances among EAMS and non-EAMS. The findings challenge deterministic assumptions on the self-reinforcing nature of DI in EMU and establish DI as an idea structuring elite perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metaphysics is the inquiry having categorial form as its aim. Once all but defunct, metaphysics has now revived, though without disciplinary focus. Nine points of entry dominate current studies, each separate from and largely oblivious to the others. This essay characterizes the nine, expressing its preference for a discipline grounded in the empirical sciences while pursuing issues they ignore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines variation in early childhood education and care (ECEC) expansion in four 'latecomer' reformers: Germany, England, South Korea and Japan. Taking a comparative approach through an analysis of policy documents, it focuses on the role of ideas as coalition magnets in explaining the more extensive and sustained policy shifts in Germany and Korea, in contrast to the more limited and fragmented reforms in England and Japan. As the comparative literature struggles to explain variation in ECEC expansion, this focus on ideas provides a significant contribution, highlighting why ECEC reform became supported by a broad cross-class coalition in Germany and Korea but not in England or Japan. The theoretical contribution argues that coalition magnets are formed when the polysemic potential of a policy is drawn out by key actors strategically linking it to several problem definitions, which can appeal to diverse political actors and forge lasting consensus for reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2022, a new parental leave system with equal leave rights for parents saw daylight in Finland. The road towards this reform was not entirely uncontroversial, and one stumbling block was different interpretations of the meaning of gender equality. This article contributes to the literature by analysing how seven political parties in Finland politicised the idea of gender equality and leave quotas during the 2010s. We argue that ideological factors delayed a reform of the leave system in a more gender-equal way, since leftwing parties not only put more emphasis on gender equality and state-regulated leave quotas for fathers than conservatives, they also did so for somewhat different reasons connected with the Social Investment paradigm. Moreover, although the conservatives did warm up to the idea of gender equality on a general level during this period, and some of them started to support the use of leave quotas, providing some of the consensus needed for the 2021 reform, this did not alter their traditional views on the family and gender roles. Instead, the policy idea of leave quotas was reframed as an instrumental tool to achieve higher (maternal) employment, and only secondarily as a tool for gender equality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to unravel how a weak state develops state capacity – an aspect hitherto ignored in mainstream literature. This is a study of a sub-national case of Bihar in India. Historically, Bihar is considered a weak state, lacking state capacity. Yet, improvements have occurred in recent decades. By profiling two areas of improved outcomes: infrastructure (roads and bridges) and welfare (distribution of bicycles to school-going girls), the article argues that the improvements are the outcome of the political and bureaucratic elite's ideas and political will. The case of Bihar shows that the rationalities within a state depend on social learning, puzzling, and powering, having a powerful impact on policy paradigms even in weak states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bernard Bolzano offers a criterion of individuation for ideas, according to which ideas are distinct if and only if they represent different objects or are composed differently. It fails to individuate ideas that are both simple and fail to represent, in particular syncategorematic ideas and logical constants. However, Bolzano also provides the means to close this gap. He suggests that we can distinguish ideas if they are not substitutable for each other in propositions, which we can, in turn, distinguish in terms of their truth-values. This paper explicates this suggestion and develops it into an improved individuation criterion for ideas: ideas also are distinct if we cannot replace them for one another in propositions salva veritate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Engaging frontline clinicians and staff in quality improvement is a promising bottom-up approach to transforming primary care practices. This may be especially true in federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) and similar safety-net settings where large-scale, top-down transformation efforts are often associated with declining worker morale and increasing burnout. Innovation contests, which decentralize problem-solving, can be used to involve frontline workers in idea generation and selection. Objective: We aimed to describe the ideas that frontline clinicians and staff suggested via organizational innovation contests in a national sample of 54 FQHCs. Interventions: Innovation contests solicited ideas for improving care from all frontline workers—regardless of professional expertise, job title, and organizational tenure and excluding those in senior management—and offered opportunities to vote on ideas. Participants: A total of 1,417 frontline workers across all participating FQHCs generated 2,271 improvement opportunities. Approaches: We performed a content analysis and organized the ideas into codes (e.g., standardization, workplace perks, new service, staff relationships, community development) and categories (e.g., operations, employees, patients). Key Results: Ideas from frontline workers in participating FQHCs called attention to standardization (n = 386, 17%), staffing (n = 244, 11%), patient experience (n = 223, 10%), staff training (n = 145, 6%), workplace perks (n = 142, 6%), compensation (n = 101, 5%), new service (n = 92, 4%), management-staff relationships (n = 82, 4%), and others. Voting results suggested that staffing resources, standardization, and patient communication were key issues among workers. Conclusions: Innovation contests generated numerous ideas for improvement from the frontline. It is likely that the issues described in this study have become even more salient today, as the COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating impacts on work environments and health/social needs of patients living in low-resourced communities. Continued work is needed to promote learning and information exchange about opportunities to improve and transform practices between policymakers, managers, and providers and staff at the frontlines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to understand the interactions among the engaged actors regarding water management in the city of San Miguel de Allende, in Guanajuato, the involved frameworks of perception and government institutions were subject to analysis. Having a qualitative research approach as a starting point, the analytical framework of the public policy regime was used, focusing on three variables: actors, institutions and ideas. As a methodological strategy, in-depth interviews were conducted, and the institutional grammar methodology was implemented. It was found that there is a lenient regulation, an institutional framework that does not favor robust governance, and conflicts that arise because of the water supply shortage in the city that do not achieve political attention due to the dispersion of environmental issues and the lack of mechanisms for citizen participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: India uses the Indian Disability Evaluation and Assessment Scale (IDEAS) for quantifying disability due to mental illness. The cutoff score for benchmark disability is 7. India has adopted International Classification of Functioning and Health (ICF) and thereby is a signatory to use World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule (WHODAS). Cutoff for benchmark disability in WHODAS in a community-based sample is lacking. Methods: The study was conducted in Jagaluru Taluk, Davanagere District, Karnataka. It is a part of an ongoing research funded by Indian Council of Medical Research. Frequency, percentages, mean, standard deviations, mode, median, Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve were used in analyzing the data. Results: The study included 184 persons with severe mental illness with mean age of 47 and average duration of illness (DOI) of 11 years. They had mild disability (5.99) in IDEAS. The corresponding cutoff score in WHODAS, as compared to IDEAS, when the influence of DOI is removed was 24. Conclusions: A shift from IDEAS to WHODAS is feasible. With the undue influence of DOI removed, both hospital and community-based samples show the score of 24 as cutoff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today it is rare to find a political scientist who rejects that "ideas matter"—at least in the abstract. But if ideationally inclined theorists have gained seats at the disciplinary table, their approaches still occupy disadvantaged positions. Ideational theories typically must confront nonideational alternatives to achieve salient publication, but nonideational theorists routinely design and publish research without considering ideational alternatives. This is even true on topics where all scholars seem to agree a priori on the importance of ideas. Erratic attention to ideas appears to be justified by widespread views that even if ideas plausibly "matter," they are too intractable to address in concrete research: too difficult to measure empirically, to relate in explanatory ways to action, or to connect to goals of theoretical generalization. This article first highlights major problems with these views in the abstract, and then illustrates them in the example of early Latin American constitutional design. On this terrain, there are good reasons to think that an ideational account connects in more concrete ways to available evidence than leading nonideational hypotheses about constitutional choice. Political science should move toward better balanced debates between plausible explanations, upgrading the rigor of the discipline overall. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present transcript follows an online discussion held on April 3, 2022, between Ian Miller, author of Clinical Spinoza: Integrating His Philosophy with Contemporary Therapeutic Practice (2022), and Endre Koritar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual objects, such as online shops, the elements that go to make up virtual life in computer games, virtual maps, e-books, avatars, cryptocurrencies, chatbots, holograms, etc., are a phenomenon we now encounter at every turn: they have become a part of our life and our world. Philosophers—and ontologists in particular—have sought to answer the question of what, exactly, they are. They fall into two camps: some, pointing to the chimerical character of virtuality, hold that virtual objects are like dreams, illusions and fictions, while others, citing the real impact of virtuality on our world, take them to be real—an actual part of the real world, just like other real objects. In this article, we defend the thesis that both sides are wrong. Using Roman Ingarden’s phenomenological ontology, we advocate a position according to which a virtual object is a computationally grounded intentional object that has its existential foundation in computational processes, which are compliant with a certain model of computation. We point out that virtuality is framed by some kind of ideal mathematical objects: i.e., mathematical models of computation, which in turn fall, each of them, under their respective ideas. We also refer to the idea of natural computation, which in conjunction with the ontological analysis carried out leads to the thesis that an object can be more or less virtual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last three decades, the literature on innovation policy and ideas has expanded. Yet the ideas deployed by governments and elected politicians in day-to-day budgetary discourses have mostly escaped research attention. Against this background, this article provides an extensive empirical case study on the policy ideas (policy solutions and related problem definitions) invoked in the Finnish government and parliamentary discourses over budget allocations to the Finnish innovation funding and governance agency in the 2010s. The article argues that the interplay of three policy ideas motivated the Finnish governments and members of parliament to decrease public innovation funding in the 2010s. It is suggested that policymakers’ interpretations of macroeconomic developments, institutions and industrial change shaped the salience and feasibility of these ideas. The Finnish case illustrates that during prolonged economic crises austerity and business subsidies are particularly powerful policy ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the emergence of ideas and the knowledge networks involved in producing a counter-narrative to the liberal and neoliberal ideational consensus of the 1990s and 2000s, this contribution traces the intellectual trajectory of the illiberal turn in Poland and Hungary. We make use of the ideational scholarship differentiating between public philosophies, problem definitions and policy solutions to discuss how illiberal state transformation and heterodox socio-economic policies became the new paradigm that the two ruling parties PiS and Fidesz have promoted during the last decade. We suggest that the viability of PiS and Fidesz's policies was largely conditioned by the increasing influence of conservative networks in the public sphere which prepared the grounds for these reforms. The contribution discusses the main intellectual actors, structures, and ideas paving the way and legitimizing illiberalism in the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Berkeley seems to be committed to the view that human sensible ideas are identical to certain divine ideas. However, this interpretation is subject to three objections. I argue that Berkeley holds that human sensible ideas are qualitatively identical to certain divine ideas, and I argue that objections to this view can be satisfactorily answered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central question that guides this work is: How did the Inter-American Development Bank (idb) support a political neoliberal model in South America between 1990 and 2017? To respond, the interaction between the idb and this model is examined. Therefore, some assertions of it are reviewed, which are linked with the model in the region. Furthermore, the interaction with the Peruvian model is particularly addressed. Thus, it is possible to appreciate some concrete actions performed to consolidate it. The mentioned interaction is usually associated with the development and financing development concepts, which in this work are addressed from an approach of critical international political economy. This enables us to comprehend the conjugation of ideas, material capabilities, and power in the scope of providing financing under development labels. In addition, it reveals the employment of the development financing image for concealing actions to support a certain political model. Likewise, this support implies the contribution to sustaining the established structure of power relations. The idb has performed such actions by linking the political and economic, domestic and international spheres, through projecting ideas and providing material capabilities (financing) to its borrowers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociologists commonly adopt a bifurcated understanding of the neoliberal state, showing how neoliberalism's advance coincides with the growing authority of specific actors and ideas inside the bureaucratic state as others' authority declines. This article complicates this view by probing the dynamics of non-neoliberal action inside the state, demonstrating the ways even demoted state actors can strategically muster power resources to forward distinct policy agendas. Taking a long-term perspective on social policy developments since the early 2000s, this article reviews the case of Israel, where neoliberal policies' new hegemony and adverse outcomes triggered counter-actions inside the state, ultimately leading to policy change. Paying particular attention to the role of ideas, this article argues that by rearticulating their policy mission to align with market conventions, non-neoliberal actors were able to persuade neoliberal actors to support their policy proposals, succeeding to advance creative policy alternatives under hostile political conditions. Highlighting this strategic capacity and ideational resilience and acumen in adapting to neoliberal critique reveals how demoted state actors can manage to sustain entrenched organizational goals and institutional motivations even as they help ease the adaptation of their historical mission to the neoliberal zeitgeist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we analyze the Argentinian drug policy in relation to the possession of illicit substances for personal use. To do so, we articulate ideational theory with the perspective of moral public policy. The aim is to show how the ideas formed by the Argentinian leadership in the 1970s when the drug problem entered the legislative agenda have endured throughout the development of drug policy. We examine the processes that resulted in drug laws 20771 and 23737, using transcripts of the debates in Congress, interviews conducted by the author and secondary sources. Finally, we analyze the failed attempt for the depenalization of drugs possession in 2012 and the ideas that recent presidents have had about this problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I explore the challenges faced in design practice, where the approach to inquiry depends on understanding the context as a whole with all of its interconnected parts, and its successful transformation from one developmental phase to another. The specific goal of this article is to reflect on the meaning behind and the significance of the Issue Mapping Strategy in the exploratory research process of problem finding and discuss challenges encountered in the process of discovery that might lead to invalid topics and thus to design process fallacies. Therefore, this article explores three major areas of concern—places of invention, process of invention and product of invention—where the risk for design process fallacies is greatest. The significance of discovering commonplaces of arguments and the process of reasoning that help to identify issues in problematic situations is discussed and examples are given. The Issue Mapping strategy is useful in all of the cases that focus on problem finding in complex environments and situations of uncertainty in human experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why, despite being contextualised alongside the Great Depression of the 1930s and inflation and growth crisis of the 1970s, did the Great Crash of 2008–2009 not exert a similarly transformative dynamic in dominant, neoliberal, economic ideas? Drawing on an agent-centred constructivism stressing the centrality of crisis construction and narration, yet with particular emphasis placed upon the incorporation of strategic processes of framing, this article provides fresh insights into the means by which key actors exercise their agency in attempts to ensure continuing adherence to, rather than fundamentally transforming, the status quo. This is explored with reference to macroeconomic policy assumptions in the IMF, an instance which provided all the pre-conditions for a widely interpreted moment of crisis, yet which nevertheless resulted in untransformed ideas and structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implications of idea production and knowledge capital for monetary business cycles. We construct a sticky‐wage model where workers produce goods based on firm‐specific knowledge capital and researchers develop new ideas aided by economywide knowledge. As a quantitatively small group in the economy, researchers are inconsequential for the real effects of monetary shocks when the returns to research are low. However, when the returns to research are high, the result can be overturned. Monetary shocks can have significant real effects, even if wages are perfectly flexible for workers, who are quantitatively dominant in the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present brief commentary to Englert’s recent article on Kant’s distinction between practical ideas and ideals extends the significance of its contribution by considering the psychological dimensions underpinned by those ethical concepts. According to regulatory focus theory, in the moral domain the prevention focus subsumes duties and obligations, whereas the promotion focus underlies aspirations toward virtue. I argue here that prevention motives induce the enactment of behaviours consistent with ethical rules corresponding to Kant’s practical idea, and that promotion motives inspire imitation processes aimed at advancement toward the archetypal excellence of Kant’s practical ideal. I conclude discussing the relevance and value, beyond Kant’s ethical conception, of a psychological analysis of the main Western normative theories through the lens of regulatory focus and the other motivational primitives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international political economy literature features competing explanations for when states move from protectionist to liberal trade policies, and when states transition from authoritarian to democratic regimes. The concepts of interests, institutions, and ideas are the most commonly accepted accounts for those transitions. I examine each of these concepts in order to explain Mexico's transition from a strict economic policy of import substitution industrialization (ISI) to one of trade liberalization following the 1982 debt crisis, identified as part of a critical juncture. In particular, I challenge the conventional belief that domestic institutions best explain transitions from ISI to trade liberalization, and the associated causal relationship between democratization and trade liberalization. I find democratization does not necessarily lead to trade liberalization. Using process tracing and in-depth case-oriented analysis, I identify the educational lineage of Mexico's executives and argue although interests and institutions played a role in the state's economic transition, the role of ideas has been overlooked and provides a nuanced causal explanation for the case. The research approach taken in this article allows for the framework to be transported to other states that underwent similar economic transitions without democratizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the centrality of education to economic growth and social development, successive governments in post-colonial Ghana have implemented policies to improve the quality of education in the country. In line with this, Ghana embarked on its first major education reform in 1987 under the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) government. While several studies have been conducted to explain this reform, these studies have largely been descriptive and theoretically, have over relied on the conditionality thesis. Our study draws on ideational literature and research interviews to offer an alternative explanation of the 1987 reform. Drawing extensively on the ideational concepts of bricolage and translation and focusing on the actors using these two mechanisms, the study argues that, while exogenous forces did impact the 1987 reform, it was mainly driven by endogenous factors featuring both path dependent and departing changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Substantial proportion of bipolar affective disorder (BPAD) patients are symptomatic more than half of their lives despite receiving pharmacological treatment leading to functional impairment and disability. Objectives: To study the correlation of disability with socio-demographic and clinical variables in euthymic patients with BPAD. Methods: A hospital-based cross-sectional study was conducted on 100 euthymic patients of BPAD using purposive sampling. Data were collected using semi-structured proforma and diagnostic categorization of patients was done according to ICD-10 research criteria, Hamilton's Rating Scale for Depression (HAM-D), and Young Mania Rating Scale (YMRS). Indian Disability Evaluation Assessment Scale (IDEAS) was administered for disability assessment. The variables were analyzed using appropriate tests, namely, analysis of variance (ANOVA) test, two independent sample t test, Fisher's exact test, and Spearman's correlation coefficient. Results: 81% patients of BPAD had a mild disability and 19% patients had a moderate disability. The total duration of illness score (mean 3.8) was the major determinant of disability on IDEAS. There was a statistically significant association of age (P < 0.001), gender (P = 0.027), subsyndromal manic features (P < 0.001), and number of previous episodes (P < 0.001) with disability, and there was no association of socioeconomic status, marital status, occupational status, duration of illness, age of onset, and number of previous hospitalizations with disability. Conclusion: Bipolar affective disorder is associated with mild-to-moderate disability on evaluation using IDEAS instrument. There is a need for further studies on the utility of IDEAS and its individual domains in the assessment of disability due to bipolar affective disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the changes in the Brazilian government's actions at the Specialized Meeting on Family Farming of Mercosur (REAF). Created in 2004, REAF is a regional forum for political dialogue between governments and social organizations to develop public policies for family farming. Drawing on dialogues between historical neo-institutionalism and debates on policy paradigm and dismantling, the article defines four dimensions (political context and power relations, ideas and policy paradigms, characteristics of institutions, and interests and strategies of political actors) to explain and typify the processes of institutional strengthening and dismantling. Based on such dimensions and on data collected through participant observation, document analysis and interviews with key actors, the article analyses the Brazilian government's actions in comparison to prevailing types of institutional change. The analysis shows that, between 2004 and 2016, the prevailing strategy for institutional strengthening was 'discursive and symbolic' and operated through 'institutional densification'; in turn, from 2016 on, strategies of 'discursive and symbolic' dismantling and 'dismantling by change in the institutional linkages' prevailed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This progress report reviews research on climate change adaptation through a political economy lens, explaining the way ideas, institutions and interests enable diverse forms of adaptation practice. It reviews research on community-based adaptation, and spatial planning and investments in capital works for the purposes of adaptation. The analysis explains how practices that reduce vulnerability to climate change come into being, though it is as yet unclear if these existing political economies of adaptation are able to bring about the kind of (re)assembling of environments, technologies and practices over space and time necessary to sustain human needs and values through a dramatically changed climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this study is to reveal the religious dimension as a story and the Qur'an and Hadith as ideas and sources of stories in Ahmad Tohari's works. The method used in this study is a descriptive interpretive method. Data were collected through literature study, interviews, and observations. Data analysis was carried out using qualitative content analysis techniques. The result is that Ahmad Tohari's works are a sublimation of religious values derived from the Qur'an and Hadith. Ahmad Tohari uses the two sources of Islamic law as a source of stories. Thus, although Ahmad Tohari's works are known as literary works of human value, they contain religious values or religiosity. Many short stories and novels have raised issues about the economic and social life of the community or the marginalized. However, the work is a literary work that has conditions with religious and prophetic values originating from the Qur'an and Hadith and makes religion a story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article clarifies where philosophical practice breaks with more established and evident tendencies of modern academic Western philosophy. It proposes a way to rediscover the central contradiction, as well as connection, between thought and feelings. Only philosophical practice grounds philosophy and thought in general on experience, sensations, and feelings. This union is essentially characterized by discontinuity. Discontinuity means that in an antinomic, aporetic way, a part of a whole seems at the same time also itself a whole of equal importance. So, we can understand that what Lou Marinoff terms the "flowering of oneself" is this plurality of ideas in a conciliated and/or conflicted way of being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]