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Justice can be approached from many angles in ethical and political debates, including those involving healthcare, biomedical research, and well-being. The main doctrines of justice are liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, luck egalitarianism, socialism, utilitarianism, capability approach, communitarianism, and care ethics. These can be further elaborated in the light of traditional moral and social theories, values, ideals, and interests, and there are distinct dimensions of justice that are captured better by some tactics than by others. In this article, questions surrounding these matters are approached with the hermeneutic idea of a distinction between “American” and “European” ways of thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Immigrants and refugees are constantly depicted in dehumanizing ways or as a function of economic gains for the hosting nation. These descriptions, added to the current socio-political European situation, could be dangerous due to infrahumanization levels among minorities who are target of prejudice. In this study, we attempted to reduce infrahumanization levels towards Maghrebian people through a ritualistic collective activity, manipulating the information participants had to use. Results indicate that participation was different among conditions and infrahumanization levels were reduced. Also, participants who used utilitarian information could humanize when an economic gain was perceived, while also increasing prejudice levels. The results are discussed in terms of collective rituals and the dualistic effect of utilitarian information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a theoretically oriented contribution seeking to review the existing literature directly or indirectly addressing the “diversity gap” in political parties. Within this particular field I identify two main areas to conduct research: participation and representation. The premise is that the particular features of political parties, given their role in the democratic system, implies that they cannot be neutral when they identify the diversity gap as a problem, and therefore have to follow some strategies to deal with it. Based on the literature review and by preparing the theoretical framework of the different case studies for this Special Issue, I propose an interpretative framework comprising four main channels of potential analysis. I will end by arguing that what all these studies highlight is that in dealing with the incorporation of immigrants into political parties, the utilitarian logic prevails over any argument based on equality and power sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review article offers a European perspective on the pluralistic, principles-based model of intellectual property (IP) advanced by Robert Merges in his book Justifying Intellectual Property. After introducing Merges’s model and theory of IP with reference to IP theories generally, other pluralistic legal models, and patterns of judicial reasoning in the patent and copyright fields, the article argues that European jurisprudence offers broad support for Merges’s operational model of IP, while also challenging certain aspects of his wider analysis. They include his ‘one size fits all’ foundational theory of IP, his account of key IP rules and practices, and his choice and conception of IP’s midlevel principles. Through this critique the article draws attention to the utilitarian bias of Merges’s model; a bias which undermines its pluralistic claims, in part by undermining Merges’s own foundational theory of IP. The result is to underline the limits of a regime unconcerned with its own normative basis, and the need for more rather than less discussion of IP theory, including more work of the type that Merges’s book undertakes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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This paper examines the tight coupling between European climate science and policy. Drawing upon the analytical idiom of co-production it examines how knowledge-making practices are incorporated into European climate policy-making, and more importantly, how EU climate policy has influenced the funding, making and interpretation of useful European climate policy research. The paper identifies a tension between the critical/reflexive ambition built into the co-production idiom, and the more utilitarian interpretation of the term. Whereas the former sets out to expose and interrogate the ontological assumptions underpinning public policy, the latter seeks to be useful by responding to the knowledge needs of societal decision-makers. This tension is analysed through a case study of the integrated research project ADAM (Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies: Supporting European Climate Policy) funded under the 6th Framework Programme of the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With a unique longitudinal data set covering a time-span of 18 years, we test to what extent euroscepticism evolved among the Dutch between 1990 and 2008. We compare Eurosceptic attitudes on the eve of the signing of the Treaty of Maastricht with attitudes after the Dutch ‘no’ in the referendum on the European Constitution. We find a strong increase in euroscepticism among the Dutch. This change did not develop evenly across the educational strata. We propose to explain these differences through the utilitarian, political cueing, political cynicism and identity approaches. Over the years, the less educated have become more cynical about politics and have come to perceive a greater ethnic threat than before, which explains their stronger increase in euroscepticism. In contrast to 1990, perceived ethnic threat was the main predictor of euroscepticism in 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

While the changing positions of ethnic and regionalist parties towards European integration have been studied in detail recently, there has been comparatively little attention given to the attitudes of sub-state electorates. This paper assesses the impact of socio-economic status, partisanship, national identity and other explanatory factors on attitudes towards European Union membership in two distinct regions of the UK. It uses binary logistic regression estimation to assess which factors influence 'utilitarian' support for the European Union in Scotland and Wales with data from the British Household Panel Survey which allows for robust subgroup analysis. Socio-economic status, in particular educational attainment, gender, age grouping, religious commitment, partisanship and political interest, have an impact, while national identity-contrary to expectation-has surprisingly little effect. This paper makes a contribution to the study of public opinion towards the EU at the sub-state level and the attitudes of the Scottish and Welsh electorates since devolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Post-communist anti-Semitism in Romania and elsewhere in East Central Europe is not necessarily driven by the same motivations. Basically, each of the categories I employ in the taxonomy (updating earlier endeavors) acts out of a different motivation and has a different temporal orientation. What they all share, however, is precisely the attempt to respond to the need to produce what Benedict Anderson called an "imagined community," in albeit significantly different positive terms of reference. A distinction is made between the following taxonomic categories of "producers" of anti-Semitism: a) "Self-exculpatory nostalgic anti-Semitism;" b) "Self-propelling anti-Semitism"; c) "Neo-populist mercantile anti-Semitism": d) "Utilitarian anti-Semitism"; e) "Reactive anti-Semitism; and, finally, f) "Vengeance anti-Semitism." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article explores meanings of EUrope as they emerged in individual interviews and focus- groups organized around the question of European attachment. The article shows that the ways people make sense of EUrope can be divided into three major categories: cultural-national, cultural-transnational, and functional-utilitarian. Cultural-national referents describe EUrope through the prism of the nation-state and reproduce the isomorphism between territory and identity which has characterized, at least in theory, the nation-state itself. Cultural-transnational referents present EUrope as a normative model for the rest of the world, a model for ‘another’ globalization, more social and less liberalist, and a champion of humanitarianism and international peace. Functional-utilitarian referents address EUrope as a space which could help the individual and/or the collectivity to which the individual belongs to enhance their well-being. In this latter case, EUrope resonates with a post-national space, one which goes beyond the isomorphism between territory and identity. The article argues that the reasons why people might identify with and support EUrope are different, and not always driven by feelings of emotional attachment. As such, the article brings empirical evidence to the thesis that a EUropean demos, understood as a sense of collective identity, should not be considered as a necessary condition for the existence of a EUropean polity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article offers an analysis about the Bologna process from the Focault's theory. It notes on the foundation of process that started on an efficiency framework which defines the possible actions of time and shapes the future as the knowledge that serves to increase the legitimacy of the European Commission while seeking intervention in the higher education policies of Europe. It concludes that Bologna process is a result from the passage from one episteme of efficiency to another, thus, showing a new mode of governmentally in Focauldian sense.

This article examines the relative merits of competing explanations of public support for European Union membership in thirteen Central and Eastern European candidate countries. While noneconomic factors—attitudes toward domestic politics and feelings of social identity—have a consistently strong effect, the impact of human capital is contingent on exposure to the distributive consequences of European integration. The results of an ordered logit analysis of Candidate Country Eurobarometer data are consistent with these predictions. These results suggest a revision of theories of EU support to account for the role of exposure to the consequences of integration in shaping utilitarian judgments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a good deal has been written about the contacts between British and continental reformers in 1848 and afterwards, the same cannot be said of the 1820s and 1830s. This article will investigate the involvement in European affairs of Thomas Perronet Thompson and John Bowring, two of the closest colleagues of the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. This article has three main purposes: first, to establish the relevance to British radicalism of a European perspective, using Thompson and Bowring as exemplars who can be taken to represent one of the most important strands in the British radicalism of their day; secondly, to improve our understanding of reform agitation and ideologies in early nineteenth-century Britain and Europe; and, thirdly, in view of the customary focus of historians on 1848 and after, to begin to redress this imbalance in the historiography by drawing attention to the 1820s and 1830s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of the U.S., Europe, and Israel to the religious revivalism in the Middle East. According to the author, the policies of the these three countries are pushing the region toward religious revivalism and away from secularism. One example given was the Islamic Republic of Iran, wherein they have threatened and refused to engage the Iranians and thereby strengthened the regime's hold on power.