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Despite these advancements, we still face difficulties in making sense of the large extent of cross-national variation in welfare state attitudes which cannot be attributed to welfare state regimes as should be expected. I argue that cross-national variation in the characteristics of media systems plays an important role in affecting attitudes, independent of the impact of welfare state regimes. While welfare states should leave their imprint on individual-level attitudes because individuals experience the functions of the welfare state, e.g., when becoming old, sick, or unemployed (Soss & Schram, Citation2007), direct contact with the welfare state is not the only factor shaping attitudes. The way the media provides information can be considered as an important factor shaping support for redistribution and the welfare state (Larsen, Citation2013).

Numerous, largely experimental studies have shown that media coverage of social policy and redistributive issues leaves its imprint on individual-level attitudes (e.g., Barnes & Hicks, Citation2018; Hopmann et al., Citation2017; Kneafsey & Regan, Citation2020; Slothuus, Citation2007). When welfare state recipients are portrayed as undeserving, support for welfare state retrenchment increases (Hopmann et al., Citation2017; Slothuus, Citation2007). Barnes and Hicks (Citation2018) similarly show that how austerity was framed in the British media after the financial crisis had an impact on individual-level support for deficit reduction. However, while the strength of many of those experimental studies is their high internal validity, with regard to external validity we hardly know what drives actual variation in media coverage and how relevant it is in explaining variation in redistributive attitudes across countries.Footnote2

The ‘struggle for recognition’ is fast becoming the paradigmatic form of political conflict in the late twentieth century. Demands for ‘recognition of difference’ fuel struggles of groups mobilized under the banners of nationality, ethnicity, ‘race’, gender, and sexuality. In these ‘post-socialist’ conflicts, group identity supplants class interest as the chief medium of political mobilization. Cultural domination supplants exploitation as the fundamental injustice. And cultural recognition displaces socioeconomic redistribution as the remedy for injustice and the goal of political struggle. That, of course, is not the whole story. Struggles for recognition occur in a world of exacerbated material inequality—in income and property ownership; in access to paid work, education, health care and leisure time; but also more starkly in caloric intake and exposure to environmental toxicity, hence in life expectancy and rates of morbidity and mortality. Material inequality is on the rise in most of the world’s countries—in the United States and in Haiti, in Sweden and in India, in Russia and in Brazil. It is also increasing globally, most dramatically across the line that divides North from South. How, then, should we view the eclipse of a socialist imaginary centred on terms such as ‘interest’, ‘exploitation’, and ‘redistribution’? And what should we make of the rise of a new political imaginary centred on notions of ‘identity’, ‘difference’, ‘cultural domination’, and ‘recognition’? Does this shift represent a lapse into ‘false consciousness’? Or does it, rather, redress the culture-blindness of a materialist paradigm rightfully discredited by the collapse of Soviet Communism? Neither of those two stances is adequate, in my view. Both are too wholesale and un-nuanced. Instead of simply endorsing or rejecting all of identity politics simpliciter, we should see ourselves as presented with a new intellectual and practical task: that of developing a critical theory of recognition, one which identifies and defends only those versions of the cultural politics of difference that can be coherently combined with the social politics of equality. In formulating this project, I assume that justice today requires both redistribution and recognition. And I propose to examine the relation between them. In part, this means figuring out how to conceptualize cultural recognition and social equality in forms that support rather than undermine one another. (For there are many competing conceptions of both!) It also means theorizing the ways in which economic disadvantage and cultural disrespect are currently entwined with and support one another. Then, too, it requires clarifying the political dilemmas that arise when we try to combat both those injustices simultaneously. My larger aim is to connect two political problematics that are currently dissociated from one other. For only by articulating recognition and redistribution can we arrive at a critical-theoretical framework that is adequate to the demands of our age. That, however, is far too much to take on here. In what follows, I shall consider only one aspect of the problem. Under what circumstances can a politics of recognition help support a politics of redistribution? And when is it more likely to undermine it? Which of the many varieties of identity politics best synergize with struggles for social equality? And which tend to interfere with the latter? In addressing these questions, I shall focus on axes of injustice that are simultaneously cultural and socioeconomic, paradigmatically gender and ‘race’. (I shall not say much, in contrast, about ethnicity or nationality.footnote1) And I must enter one crucial preliminary caveat: in proposing to assess recognition claims from the standpoint of social equality, I assume that varieties of recognition politics that fail to respect human rights are unacceptable even if they promote social equality.footnote2 Finally, a word about method: in what follows, I shall propose a set of analytical distinctions, for example, cultural injustices versus economic injustices, recognition versus redistribution. In the real world, of course, culture and political economy are always imbricated with one another; and virtually every struggle against injustice, when properly understood, implies demands for both redistribution and recognition. Nevertheless, for heuristic purposes, analytical distinctions are indispensable. Only by abstracting from the complexities of the real world can we devise a conceptual schema that can illuminate it. Thus, by distinguishing redistribution and recognition analytically, and by exposing their distinctive logics, I aim to clarify—and begin to resolve—some of the central political dilemmas of our age. My discussion proceeds in four parts. In section one, I conceptualize redistribution and recognition as two analytically distinct paradigms of justice, and I formulate ‘the redistribution–recognition dilemma’. In section two, I distinguish three ideal-typical modes of social collectivity in order to identify those vulnerable to the dilemma. In section three, I distinguish between ‘affirmative’ and ‘transformative’ remedies for injustice, and I examine their respective logics of collectivity. Lastly, I use these distinctions, in section four, to propose a political strategy for integrating recognition claims with redistribution claims with a minimum of mutual interference.

Introduction and Definitions The concept of social welfare refers broadly to the resources and opportunities people need to lead satisfying and productive lives (Midgley & Livermore, 2009). Virtually everything the government does affects social welfare, from tax and national defense to education and healthcare policy, but so does government inaction; that is, the failure to respond to human need (DiNitto & Johnson, 2016). More narrowly, definitions of social welfare policy focus on policies and programs that provide income assistance and social services to those in need. In the United States, with its tradition of federalism or shared government, social welfare policy is made at local, state, and national levels. Policy is made by the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government in the form of laws, executive orders and administrative regulations, and court decisions. A broad view of social welfare policy also recognizes that corporations as well as nonprofit and for-profit social service agencies make policies that affect the well-being of those they serve and the broader community and therefore have social implications. Many of today’s social welfare policies address basic human needs such as food, housing, healthcare, and employment, and many of them have roots in the New Deal programs of the 1930s, which were responses to the Great Depression. The civil unrest of the 1960s, the “Great Recession” of 2008, and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 have also brought about social policy responses. Policies, including social welfare policies, rest on who has the power to make policy and how they conceptualize and respond to human need. Poverty, unemployment, lack of healthcare and housing, and child maltreatment have been targets of social welfare policies, but the forces that vie to influence policy often view these problems differently. The same is true for policies that affect the civil rights of people who have been disenfranchised, such as women, people of color, sexual minorities, and people with disabilities. Social workers, with their intimate knowledge of human needs, influence policy by helping to define social problems and develop corresponding policy responses. The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and its policy and political arms engage in the policy process, and the 2013 program Grand Challenges for Social Work, initiated by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (2021), is a major response of the social work profession to addressing human needs in contemporary society. To meet human needs, conservatives (sometimes called neoliberals) have generally supported “residual,” means-tested, time-limited social welfare policies and services, whereas liberals have argued for “universal” or “institutional” social welfare policies that provide assistance to citizens as communal rights. Universal social insurance programs (primarily the Social Security retirement and disability programs and Medicare, which focus largely on helping older people) have become part of the fabric of the U.S. social welfare system. However, institutional social welfare policies adopted by other countries that can meet needs across the lifespan have never received broad political support in the United States; instead, residual programs providing limited assistance to those regarded as having genuine need have been favored (Patterson, 2000). Socially constructed norms strongly influence how social issues are defined. Traditions of public debate and discourse encourage interest groups to influence the definition of social problems and lobby for policies that will advantage their members. Sometimes social issues are redefined in the policy arena, such as in the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, which allowed for government financing of healthcare programs for certain populations. Before the passage of this legislation, the U.S. Congress had largely rejected the federal government’s involvement in such programs. Sometimes it is the nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court rather than the 535 members of the U.S. Congress who resolve policy conflicts. For example, the Court’s 1896 “separate but equal” doctrine in Plessy v. Ferguson defined policies regarding race for decades, but in 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, the court ruled that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” (DOCSTeach, n.d., p. 11). Debates about the meaning of “family” and “marriage” also exemplify how social policies, such as the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, may enforce specific norms and delegitimize behavior deemed inappropriate by those who hold power. The federal government and state legislatures clashed over the meaning of marriage and whether state recognition of same-sex marriage, also labeled “marriage equality,” violated federal policy until 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationally in Obergefell v. Hodges (Street Law, Inc., n.d.). U.S. history is rife with abuses of indigenous people and those brought as slaves and their successors who were denied the same rights as Whites, leaving a legacy of social and economic disparities. In the current social policy environment, some experts believe that corporate and business sectors have become so powerful that they dominate the policy process, making government (the president, Congress) less responsive to the social welfare needs of all but the wealthiest (Stiglitz, 2012). For example, opening public lands to oil, timber, and mineral corporations can have devastating effects for people and environments if appropriate safeguards are not in place (Gore, 2007). The dynamics of the competitive, globalized marketplace have adversely affected the industrial U.S. work force as corporations downsized, disappeared, or moved operations to other countries. The well-being of the American middle class has been affected by loss of purchasing power and reduced opportunities for upward social mobility. Tax legislation favoring the wealthiest Americans has exacerbated income inequality. The structural obstacles to social advancement faced by those with few economic resources and those who are targets of systemic discrimination remain numerous. The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic and racial protests in 2020 magnified these disparities. Discrimination can take many forms. For example, in 1941, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II, discrimination against people of Japanese heritage resulted in the internment of Japanese Americans in camps for fear they might act against the United States. Survivors of internment eventually received meager reparations. Recently, Asian Americans again became targets of violence over beliefs about the origins of COVID-19. The early 21st century in the United States was marked by the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon and U.S. involvement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the wake of these events, the civil rights of Muslims in the United States were threatened, and more resources were allocated to national defense and homeland security. Given the range and importance of policy choices, social welfare competes with all other choices for attention and resources. Conservatives often oppose policies and programs directed at public social welfare provision as ineffective and inappropriate interference in the marketplace, and, at least since the Reagan administration, as causing dependency. Social policies that transferred and redistributed income from the wealthy to those who are poor, such as programs assisting women with young children struggling at the margins, have been harshly criticized and their recipients demonized. Since George W. Bush’s administration, efforts have been made to alter the structure of the Social Security system, which is the most universal and effective U.S. social welfare program for reducing poverty. In the United States, groups such as the Poor People’s Campaign work to maintain a focus on meeting needs as social welfare policy faces continuous challenges. However, during the latter part of the 20th century, as political parties continued to debate how to promote overall economic growth, solutions to poverty and inequality largely faded from the public policy agenda (DiNitto & Johnson, 2016). The economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the deaths of Blacks at the hands of police shed new light on these issues. Joseph R. Biden’s administration sought to address these issues by appointing a cabinet marked by racial and gender diversity and supporting legislation such as a new COVID relief package called the American Rescue Plan. This legislation provided stimulus checks to individuals and families, extended unemployment benefits, increased subsidies to help Americans afford health insurance, and aided small businesses, among other provisions. Biden also accelerated the pace of administering COVID-19 vaccinations so the country could return to normalcy. While many of the plan’s provisions were short-term solutions to address the pandemic, Biden also hoped to achieve longer-term solutions that liberals or progressives identified as necessary to reduce income and wealth disparities. These proposals include a $15 federal minimum hourly wage; an increase in taxes for the wealthy to support free prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds, 2 years of free community college education, and paid medical and family leave; an extension of tax credits included in the plan; and programs to help Blacks close the homeownership gap. Philosophical and Ideological Underpinnings of U.S. Social Welfare Policy The notion of citizenship carries specific rights and obligations. Individualism, personal liberty, and the rights of persons to pursue activities freely and without excessive governmental intrusion are hallmarks of U.S. political philosophy that inform policymaking. Political and social conservatives support market-oriented, limited government and private activities to promote social well-being and social welfare for those who are poor. Accordingly, conservatives support social welfare policies through tax spending initiatives that focus on the private social support systems such as homeownership, small business assistance, and other programs that tend to distribute wealth upwards. Liberals also support many such initiatives. Recognizing that social conditions often limit people’s ability to access opportunities that can increase self-sufficiency, liberals also promote public social programs that offer direct support to those who are economically disadvantaged, including the country’s working poor. These programs include Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly the Food Stamp Program), and others that provide either direct cash or in-kind assistance and distribute wealth downward (Faricy, 2015). Both liberals and conservatives support the largest cash assistance program for lower-income workers: The Earned Income Tax Credit, which conservatives endorse because it is based on recipients’ employment and liberals endorse because it provides significant cash payments to lower-income earners.

Recent “ideational” research on populism (Hawkins et al., 2019) has demonstrated that populist beliefs are widespread in national populations. These beliefs refer to shared representations of a social order based on the competitive and antagonistic relationship between two loosely defined social categories, “the people” (represented as a morally upright but victimized group), and “the elite” (represented as a deceitful and corrupt group that takes advantage of the masses) (Mudde, 2004).¶ Endorsement of populist representations has been shown to be linked with various societal and individual antecedents. At the societal level, populism has been associated with weak, unstable, and corrupt governments (Ziller & Schübel, 2015), with specific events and time periods such as economic or social crises (Hernández & Kriesi, 2016; Pappas & Kriesi, 2015), and with negative evaluations of elite performance, and more generally with dissatisfaction with democracy (Berman, 2019). Individual factors associated with the endorsement of populist attitudes include motivational drivers such as existential uncertainty (Hogg, 2021), distrust in people and in institutions (Staerklé & Green, 2018), as well as low levels of education (Arzheimer, 2009).¶ A general sense of injustice, victimization, and entitlement may underlie many of the factors that have been shown to be associated with populism. In line with this argument, studies have pointed to relative deprivation as a key driver of populism (Elchardus & Spruyt, 2016). Feelings of relative deprivation are based on (often implicit) comparisons between two parties and emerge when collective circumstances are consistently perceived as unfavorable for oneself or one's group. As a result, the perceived disadvantages are seen as unfair, especially when they are seen to reflect fundamentally unfair social arrangements that provide significant privileges to some parts of the population. Such perceptions of system-embedded injustice may fuel the idea of the existence of two antagonistic categories of people, those whom the system favors and those whom it does not. This representation of the social order based on the cleavage between the lucky few and the unlucky many may then form a fertile ground for populist ideas.¶ Studies in Western and industrialized countries have explored relative deprivation as a consequence of globalization processes and ensuing labor market changes and have labeled those individuals who feel relatively deprived and attracted to populism as the “losers of globalization” (Kriesi et al., 2008; Norris & Inglehart, 2019). In a rapidly changing world with radically new sources of information and communication technologies, people can be more easily aware of their situation and opportunities relative to those of others. Regardless of whether comparative evaluations are true or not, they make structurally disadvantaged (that is, unemployed, underemployed, low-skilled, low-educated, and precarious) individuals believe that they are left behind, and that they are entitled to more than what they have. Relatively deprived individuals would therefore be particularly sensitive to populist arguments that both vilify elites and glorify the “forgotten” people.¶ Variants and Subdimensions of Populism: Antielitism and People Sovereignty¶ Populism is a heterogeneous political phenomenon both in terms of its multiple belief dimensions and its concrete manifestations. On one hand, prior research has evidenced the multidimensional structure of populist beliefs, organized as distinct subdimensions involving attitudes towards the elite (e.g., antielitism, elite distance) and the people (e.g., people sovereignty, people homogeneity) (Akkerman et al., 2014; Rooduijn, 2014; Schulz et al., 2018; Spruyt et al., 2016). On the other hand, as a thin ideology, populism is generally associated with broader host ideologies that connect its core claims to concrete sociopolitical issues and shape individuals' political preferences (Loew & Faas, 2019).¶ Regarding its multidimensional structure, research so far has not examined the specific relationships between populist subdimensions, crisis-related science skepticism, and crisis-mitigation attitudes. In the present research, we heed calls for a more refined approach to measurement of populism (Rooduijn, 2019) by differentiating two fundamental dimensions, one related to negative judgments of elites (“antielitism”), the other to decision sovereignty of the people (“people sovereignty”). These subdimensions emphasize respectively within- and between-group dynamics of populism: People sovereignty emphasizes the intrinsic moral and political credentials of the ingroup and asks for decision-making power legitimized by the “simple, naturalistic, and reliable epistemology of ordinary people” (Mede & Schäfer, 2020, p. 481). Antielitism, in turn, refers to negative and often hostile attitudes toward various types of elites, including epistemic and scientific elites. Since populism is based on a moral antagonism between the people and the elites, these two subdimensions are likely to be related to each other, but in our study, we examine (1) whether relative deprivation is equally associated with them, and (2) whether they play specific roles in accounting for crisis-related science skepticism, and subsequently for crisis-mitigation attitudes.¶ The association with broader host ideologies is revealed by the left- or right-wing orientation of a given variant of populism. Left-wing populism conceives “the people” mostly in socioeconomic terms, claims their rights as a sovereign entity, and condemns the abuses of the elites towards them. The right-wing variant sees the people mostly in ethnonational terms, advocates the preservation of national culture and identity, and targets those groups that are seen as eroding these (Abts & Rummens, 2007). While both focus on the people and blame the ruling elites for the misfortunes that come their way, they differ in what they consider a misfortune for the people and the groups that are responsible for them.¶ Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser (2017) distinguished between exclusionary (right-wing) and inclusionary (left-wing) populism, based on the degree of inclusiveness of its material, political, and symbolic dimensions. Differences between these two types thus depend on which groups are included in the “people” and in the “elite.” Exclusionary populism tends to define the people in ethnonational terms, thereby othering immigrants and members of the elite who are seen as “globalized” and distanced from national culture. Inclusionary populism, in turn, puts greater emphasis on social equality and associates the people with the socioeconomic underdog (Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017). In a recent taxonomy, Zulianello (2020) adds valence populism as a third category representing a “pure” form of populism that does not interact with other ideological elements.¶ With respect to relative deprivation, political elites represent an outgroup target easy to blame for one's misfortunes. To the extent that members of political elites are thought to be advantaged in the existing social order, their actions—or lack thereof—are seen as selfishly contributing to and perpetuating the inequality between the advantaged and the disadvantaged. We therefore expect relative deprivation to be related to the antielitist subdimension of populism.¶ Relative deprivation may also affect the way individuals think about the “people.” In populist discourse, the “people” is portrayed as a victimized social category suffering the detrimental impacts of self-interested elite misbehavior. To redress this inequality, populist discourse urges the “people” to take matters into their own hands and make political decisions that are favorable for them. As a result, the “people” becomes a positively valued political identity. Hence, we expect relative deprivation to be associated with the subdimension of people sovereignty of populism.¶ Populism, Common Sense, and Science Skepticism¶ As exemplified by countless science-hostile declarations by populist leaders, skeptical attitudes towards science are a key component of populist discourse. Indeed, widespread science skepticism—understood as the systematic and unwarranted rejection of scientific knowledge and its forms of production—has gained traction over the last decade to become a defining feature of contemporary zeitgeist (Rutjens et al., 2021).¶ Science skepticism has been explained in terms of an experiential discrepancy between individuals' own concrete experiences and more distant forms of knowledge that cannot be verified firsthand (Mede & Schäfer, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic has strengthened this perceptual divergence as dire media accounts of pandemic hotspots were often inconsistent with people's own experiences in (largely rural) places without a large number of infections. As a result, many citizens may have thought that the crisis was overblown and that measures of containment such as movement restrictions and lockdowns were excessive (Brubaker, 2021).¶ But more research is needed to reach a better understanding of the psychological factors underlying science skepticism. We argue that science skepticism is likely to run deeper than experiential discrepancy and may in fact reflect a fundamental epistemological cleavage between lay and expert forms of knowledge. Indeed, in populist discourse, concrete, immediate and familiar everyday thinking—“common sense”—is portrayed as a form of knowledge that is equal to, if not superior, to expert and scientific knowledge (Imhoff et al., 2018).¶ Variations of such a cleavage between everyday and scientific knowledge have been described in various disciplines. In modern anthropology, Lévi-Strauss (1962) compared the “savage” to the “scientific” mind, and in social psychology, Moscovici (1961) opposed “novice” to “expert” thinking, the former being a key feature of social representations (Moscovici & Hewstone, 1983). While these various conceptualizations differ in their analysis of the nature of this epistemological discrepancy, they concur that everyday thought follows its own logic, is qualitatively different from scientific thought, and should therefore not be considered an impoverished or biased form of higher-order thinking (see Wagner & Hayes, 2005, for an overview). Everyday thinking is shaped by pragmatic concerns of ordinary social life, is based on relative consensus within a social collective, and develops out of the necessity to communicate meaningfully with others (Moscovici & Hewstone, 1983). In contrast to scientific thought, it signals belongingness to social groups and has therefore an important identity-generating function: We are what we believe.¶ In recent years, the antagonism between lay and scientific thinking has become increasingly politicized. Common sense—as a legitimized and emancipated form of knowledge of its own—is now mobilized as a political argument against elites. Commonsense thinking has become associated with “ordinary people” whereas scientific thinking has become associated with despised elites. In other words, common sense has become a political weapon in itself against purported elite and scientific dominance. This view suggests that the “people” are different from experts in a deeply psychological sense, namely that they think differently, and that their everyday mode of thinking is, in fact, as valid or even more valid than the cold and complicated logic of scientific and expert thinking (Mede & Schäfer, 2020). This “epistemological populism” is based on assumptions according to which firsthand experience might sometimes be the more trustworthy form of knowledge and considers common sense to be virtuous and legitimate because it rests on authentic and unmediated everyday experience (Saurette & Gunster, 2011).¶ Distrust in science is expressed across various domains, including climate change denial (Huber, 2020), pandemic containment policies, vaccine hesitancy and refusal (Stecula & Pickup, 2021), and the rejection of evolution as a basic principle of the development of life on earth (see Rutjens, Heine, et al., 2018; Rutjens, Sutton, et al., 2018). This dimensionality is important for our analysis of the effects of politicization of the lay knowledge-science discrepancy. In the present research, we focus on skepticism towards scientists and expert knowledge on two specific global topics: climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. This choice of a narrower approach to science skepticism implies that our results can hardly be generalized to science skepticism in general, but it has the distinct advantage of closely reflecting the crisis-related political debate of recent years, thereby providing the opportunity to examine the relationship between variants of populism and science attitudes. Indeed, an important cleavage in the populist family in their reactions to both climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic has been observed, especially in Europe (Stavrakakis & Katsambekis, 2020). This study allows us to examine the ways in which the lay populist mentality predicts crisis-related skepticism in contexts where populist actors accept the “science” behind climate change and the COVID-19 pandemics.¶ We expect crisis-related science skepticism to be associated with both antielitism and people sovereignty as subdimensions of populism, but for different reasons. Scientific knowledge is incarnated by scientists (e.g., professors, researchers, academics) who can be cast as members of the “elite” by populists. Hence, negative attitudes towards elites should imply negative attitudes towards scientists and scientific institutions and therefore increase skepticism towards knowledge produced by these elite members. In this view, science skepticism would be mostly based on distrustful attitudes towards the producers of scientific knowledge rather than on the intrinsic superiority of populist epistemology. A positive relationship between people sovereignty and crisis-related science skepticism, in turn, would suggest that the “will of the people” and the request for popular sovereignty is legitimized with the purported superiority of the certain, practice-oriented, and straightforward “wisdom” of ordinary people, as opposed to abstract, out-of-touch, and uncertain scientific knowledge.¶ Science Skepticism and Crisis-Mitigation Attitudes¶ The main goal of our study is to provide a comprehensive model that explains how populist attitudes and crisis-related science skepticism are related to attitudes towards mitigation measures of global crises. We examine two outcome variables that refer to internal versus external dimensions of global crisis mitigation, namely a sense of personal responsibility (and thus an internal motivation) to fight climate change, and an attitude towards external governmental measures destined to contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. This choice allows us to cover a broad spectrum of possible reactions to global crises, as both the individual and the collective level are mobilized.¶ We therefore expect crisis-related science skepticism, as a form of politicized commonsense knowledge, to be associated with a lower sense of personal responsibility to reduce climate change, and with greater opposition to a governmental measure to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. We further hypothesize that such science skepticism mediates the relationship between the two populist subdimensions (antielitism and people sovereignty) and crisis-mitigation attitudes, but it does not exclude the possibility of a direct link between both populist subdimensions and crisis-mitigation attitudes.¶ To sum up, we test a model in which relative deprivation should lead to antielitism and people sovereignty. These populist subdimensions are in turn expected to be associated with crisis-related science skepticism, which then should predict lower personal responsibility for climate change mitigation and greater opposition to a governmental COVID-19 containment policy. We leave open the possibility of a direct link between populist subdimensions and crisis-mitigation measures, without the mediating role of science skepticism (see Figure 1, Panel 1).

Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune once wrote that "the progress of the world will call for the best that all of us have to give." After everything that's happened this year, many Americans would be forgiven for questioning whether their best is good enough; there are so many reasons to feel cynical about political progress right now.

George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake and too many others were harmed or killed by those who were meant to protect and serve. These tragedies occurred amid a pandemic that has taken over 226,000 lives in the U.S., devastated workers and small businesses and torn apart the fabric of American life. Racial biases entrenched in our health care system, economy and housing market increased the pain for African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans. In the face of unthinkable grief and despair, Americans of all ages, colors and creeds rose up in righteous anger to demand change.

Whether the invasion of Ukraine or any other event will result in nuclear war raises desperately important questions. For the individual: should I take shelter somewhere relatively safe? For human society: should global food production systems prepare for nuclear winter? In the worst-case scenario, a nuclear war may cause the collapse of global civilisation, potentially resulting in massive harm into the distant future. However, whether an event will result in nuclear war is deeply uncertain, as are the consequences. Reconciling this tension between the importance of evaluating nuclear war risk and the difficulty of doing so is a primary focus of my research. So, how do we approach these uncertainties, and what can it tell us about how to interpret present-day events? Risk is generally quantified as the probability of some adverse event occurring, multiplied by the severity of the event if it occurs. Common risks can be quantified using past event data. For example, to quantify the risk of you dying in a car crash, one can use abundant data on past car crashes and segment them according to various criteria such as where you live and how old you are. You personally have never died in a car crash, but many other people have, and those data make for reliable risk quantification. Without this and similar data, the insurance industry couldn't operate their business. The risk of you dying in a nuclear war cannot be calculated in the same way. There has only been one previous nuclear war – World War Two – and one data point is not enough. Furthermore, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred 77 years ago, under circumstances that no longer apply. When WW2 began, nuclear weapons had not yet been invented, and when the bombings in Japan occurred, the US was the only country with nuclear weapons. There was no nuclear deterrence, no threat of mutual assured destruction. There was also no taboo against the use of nuclear weapons, nor were there any international treaties governing their use. If WW2 was all we had to go on for evaluating nuclear war risk, our understanding would be very limited. However, while there may be only one piece of data to rely on, there is also a lot of relevant information – sources of insight that can help us understand the risk. One example is events that went partway to nuclear war, such as the Cuban missile crisis. The ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine will hopefully turn out to be another – the only way that it won't is if it turns into an actual nuclear war. I am aware of 74 "partway" events: 59 compiled in a study my group did on the probability of nuclear war and, in a separate study, an additional 15 events in which asteroid impacts produced explosions that may have been mistaken for a nuclear attack. There are almost certainly more such events, including some for which there is no public record. Broadly speaking, there are two types of scenarios: intentional and inadvertent Another important source of information is a conceptual mapping of the various scenarios in which nuclear war could occur. Broadly speaking, there are two types of scenarios: intentional nuclear war, in which one side decides to launch a first-strike nuclear attack, such as WW2. And inadvertent nuclear war, in which one side mistakenly believes it is under nuclear attack and launches nuclear weapons. Examples include the 1983 Able Archer incident, when the USSR initially misinterpreted Nato military exercises, and the 1995 Norwegian rocket incident, when a scientific launch was briefly mistaken for a missile. Finally, there is information about specific events that may provide a guide. For example, in the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, an important parameter is Vladimir Putin's mental state. Nuclear war is more likely if he is angry, temperamental, humiliated, or even suicidal. Other factors include whether Ukraine succeeds in fighting off the Russian military, whether Nato gets more involved in direct military operations, and whether any major false alarms occur. These sorts of details – to the extent that we are able to learn about them – are valuable for informing our understanding of the probability of this particular event resulting in nuclear war. All of the above pertains to the probability of nuclear war. To evaluate risk, we also need the severity. This has two parts. First are the details of the war itself. How many nuclear weapons are detonated? With what explosive yield? At which locations and altitudes? What other, non-nuclear attacks also occurred during the conduct of the war? These details determine the initial harm. The second part is what happens next. Are survivors able to maintain basic needs – food, clothing, shelter? How severe are secondary effects such as nuclear winter? Given all the various stressors, are survivors able to maintain any semblance of modern civilisation, or does civilisation collapse? If collapse does happen, do survivors or their descendants ever rebuild it? These factors determine the total, long-term harm caused by the nuclear war. Any nuclear war, however "small", would be catastrophic for the affected areas. However, what makes nuclear weapons so worrisome is not the damage that can be caused by a single explosion. That can be large in its own right, but it's still comparable to the damage that can be caused by conventional, non-nuclear explosives. WW2 is illustrative: of the roughly 75 million people who died in this conflict, only around 200,000 were killed by nuclear weapons. Comparable amounts of destruction were caused by the carpet bombing of cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, and Dresden. Nuclear weapons are terrible, but so are conventional weapons used in sufficient quantity. What makes nuclear weapons so worrisome is that they make it so easy to cause so much devastation. With a single launch order, a country can cause many times more harm than occurred in all of WW2, and they can do it without sending a single soldier overseas, by instead delivering nuclear warheads with intercontinental ballistic missiles. Mass destruction has long been possible, but it has never been so easy. This is why the taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is so important. The taboo serves to help countries resist any temptation they may have to use nuclear weapons. If it's OK to use one nuclear weapon, then maybe it's also OK to use two, or three, or four, and so on until there has been massive global destruction. In risk terms, the distinction between a "small" and a "large" nuclear war is important. Any given person – you, for example – is a lot more likely to die in a nuclear war in which 1,000 nuclear weapons are used compared to one in which only one nuclear weapon is used. Furthermore, civilisation as a whole can readily withstand a war with a single nuclear weapon or a small number of nuclear weapons, just as it did in WW2. At a larger number, civilisation's ability to withstand the effects would be tested. If global civilisation fails, then the impacts enter a fundamentally more serious category of severity, a situation in which the big-picture, long-term viability of humanity is at stake. Suffice to say, the number of nuclear weapons needed to push the impacts into this category is another point of deep uncertainty. Given all this uncertainty, it is fair to consider what the risk analysis is good for. In this context, my group's research on nuclear war risk gets two common criticisms. Some people say that it is too quantitative. Other people say that it is not quantitative enough. The "too quantitative" people argue that nuclear war is a risk that inherently cannot be quantified, or at least cannot be quantified with any adequate degree of rigor, and therefore it is wrong to even try. The "not quantitative enough" people argue that risk estimates are essential for sound decision-making and that some estimate, however flawed and uncertain, is better than none. In my view, both perspectives have some merit, and have informed my approach to nuclear war risk analysis. There are important decisions that hinge on the risk of nuclear war, such as on how nuclear-armed countries should manage their weapons and proceed on disarmament. This gives us strong reason to attempt to quantify the risk. However, in so attempting, it is important to be humble and not claim to know more about the risk than we actually do. Spurious quantification of the risk creates its own risk – the risk of bad decision-making. Given the exceptionally high stakes, it is important that we get this one right. What then for the current situation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine? What is the risk of that resulting in nuclear war? I can't quote you a precise number due to the myriad uncertainties and the rapidly changing state of affairs. What I can say is that it is a prospect worth taking extremely seriously.

Goldman, Addis. "The Socialist Calculation Debate | Addis Goldman." Lapham’s Quarterly, 1 May 2023, https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/socialist-calculation-debate.

According to historians Allin Cottrell and Paul Cockshott, the conceptual viability of “market socialism” (a term Lange never used) already had been established by the Italian economists Vilfredo Pareto and Enrico Barone in the early twentieth century, when they purportedly demonstrated “the formal equivalence between the optimal allocation of resources in a socialist economy and the equilibrium of a perfectly competitive market system.” Lange’s designs nonetheless seemed to constitute a fresh rejoinder to the strong Austrian School claim that rational economic activity under socialism was impossible. The Russian-born American–British economist Abba P. Lerner, a social democratic thinker who would go on to collaborate with Lange, agreed that socialist systems would benefit from incorporating market logic into their designs (as did the British economist H.D. Dickinson), arguing by the mid-1930s, “without the pricing system…it is impossible for an economic system of any complexity to function with any reasonable degree of efficiency.” The neoclassical model of market socialism represented a partial concession to the proposition that market mechanisms are indispensable to the coordination of complex economic activity. Unsurprisingly, this conceptual development exposed an intra-socialist rift. For the Marxist economist Maurice Dobb, incorporating market principles into designs for a socialized economy was a contradiction in terms. Adopting the “competitive solution” only served to enshrine the principle of “consumer sovereignty,” which betrayed the collectivist ideal. Dobb was deeply suspicious of the analogy, drawn by free-market thinkers, between consumer choice and democratic choice. Not only did Dobb critique the fetishization of possessive individualism and “exchange value,” the oldest of Marxian hobbyhorses, implied by the incorporation of market principles into a socialized economy. In his 1933 work “Economic Theory and the Problems of a Socialist Economy,” he assailed the “purely formal character of economic theory” in the neoclassical mold, anticipating a critique that economic theorists across the political spectrum would take up throughout the mid-twentieth century: that neoclassical analysis was a disinterested science that had become detached from reality. For Dobb, neoclassical economics had nothing to say about ends, only means. For his part, Lerner responded that Dobb—and Soviet Communists—held “superior contempt for the tastes and judgment of the masses,” who seem to “become more and more a recalcitrant material for the weaving of social patterns pleasing to bureaucratic aesthetics.” In the mid-to-late 1930s, with the market socialist position firmly established, free-market thinkers shifted the debate onto fresh terrain. Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian free-market guru and admiring student of Mises, had weighed in on the debate in 1935 with Collectivist Economic Planning, a collection of essays (not all his own) on socialist economic thought and the status of the calculation debate. In “The Nature and History of the Problem,” Hayek criticized historical materialists for their faith in the inexorable rise of socialism, and in “The Present State of the Debate,” he claimed that the “central direction of all economic activity presents a task which cannot be rationally solved under the complex conditions of modern life.” It was not until the late 1930s and into the 1940s, however, that Hayek refined what is often considered the ‘second line of defense’ in the Austrian position. In a series of articles published in Economica and the American Economic Review—“Economics and Knowledge” in 1937, “Socialist Calculation: The Competitive Solution” in 1940, and “The Use of Knowledge in Society” in 1945—Hayek moved away from arguments about the theoretical impossibility of rational accounting in a socialized economy, and instead emphasized the practical infeasibility of centralized economic planning, given the nature of knowledge and its dispersal. For Hayek, the beauty of capitalism—indeed, the “marvel” of the invisible hand—was that unregulated interactions between private individuals and firms, each bringing to bear on their economic decision-making processes forms of “tacit knowledge,” produce a form of “spontaneous order” that no amount of planning could simulate. Economic historian Max Hancock explains that, for Hayek, “the dispersal of knowledge in society is so complete…and the mechanism by which order emerges from discrete transactions is so opaque, that it is not possible to possess a functional overview of the economy. Ergo, rational economic planning is an oxymoron, and socialists cannot hope to replicate the wisdom of the price mechanism.” Hayek’s concerns about economic planning—and his scorn for the Promethean visions of socialist administrators and their economic theorists—were not without precedent. By 1932 Leon Trotsky had already lambasted the Soviet bureaucracy for imagining it “had at its disposal a universal mind” that could “register simultaneously all the processes of nature and society.” In some sense, Hayek’s position rested on an inverse but similar proposition: that market society itself constituted a universal mind; markets were capable of registering simultaneously all the processes of nature and society. The notion of “spontaneous order” was not entirely new, either. Such ideas had been espoused by luminaries like Adam Smith, David Hume, Bernard Mandeville, Jeremy Bentham, Karl Polanyi, and the Chinese philosopher Zhuang Zhou in the fourth century bc. In reality, as political theorist Bernard E. Harcourt explains, “the history of modern economic thought begins with the introduction of ‘natural order’ into the field of political economy in the mid-eighteenth century: the idea that economic exchange constitutes a system that autonomously can achieve equilibrium without government intervention.” Hayek’s epistemological arguments complicated the case for economic planning and enriched the debate, but in the early 1940s, it still seemed as though market socialists had not been effectively refuted at the level of theory. The Austrian-born American economist Joseph Schumpeter, a heterodox figure famous for popularizing the term “creative destruction” to describe innovation engendered by entrepreneurship, concluded as much in his 1942 book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, in which he usefully narrated the debate.

But few of economics’ conceits raise the ire of its critics more than Homo economicus, the rationally self-interested actor lurking at the core of mainstream economic theory. Indeed, Homo economicus has become a favorite whipping boy for critics of the dismal science. In taking over this column from the superb stewardship of Jonathan Zhou, I thought it would be appropriate to examine its controversial namesake. Our subject is a selfish, single-minded creature: her sole concern is the minimization of cost and the maximization of her own utility. Economists assume that she is fully informed at all times, makes no mistakes, and is able to instantaneously make complex optimization decisions. With these outlandish assumptions, you can probably see why critiques of Homo economicus come from all angles. Economists since Keynes have argued that total rationality and complete knowledge are poor assumptions: real people have limited time to process information and make optimal choices; in most situations, a rough guess is good enough. Psychologists and behavioral economists criticize Homo economicus’s selfish motivations: laboratory experiments have shown that people care about fairness and occasionally even act altruistically. All of these criticisms have their merits. But here’s a confession: Homo economicus is at most a useful fiction—in economic jargon, a model. Human beings do not actually think like Scrooge McDuck, but, in approximation and in aggregate, we often behave like we do. Just as maps simplify the terrain, economic models shed extraneous detail to focus on the features that are analytically relevant. This simplification makes complex problems tractable. Consider the humble swai fish sitting on your dining hall plate. The chain of economic relationships necessary that takes this fish from Vietnamese farmers on the Mekong to the HUDS cooks who prepare it is an immense feat of social organization. Starting our analysis by invoking altruism or the behavioral idiosyncrasies of Vietnamese farmers quickly gets us lost in the theoretical weeds. But make the simple assumption of rational self-interest, and the toil and effort that goes into producing those little beige fillets make sense (at least for those who don’t have to eat it). To borrow a phrase, it is not from the benevolence of the swai farmer, the truck driver, or the HUDS dining hall worker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. The utility of Homo economicus is not limited to money and product markets. One of the major contributions of the Nobel Prize-winning economist Gary Becker, who died earlier this year, was to apply the logic of Homo economicus to the phenomenon of crime. As Becker points out, people commit crimes not necessarily because they are morally deficient, but simply because the benefits of crime outweigh the costs. Society can modulate the level of crime by altering the incentives; for instance, as the probability of conviction increases, Becker’s model predicts that crime will fall. Though simplistic, this model is far superior to the categorical view that all criminals are moral failures. In fact, this analytical tool so often accused of being dehumanizing can serve as a conduit for empathy. It turns out that there may be a bit of Scrooge McDuck in all of us.

Fifth and finally, sustaining America’s post–Cold War strategy entails persuading the American public to recommit to that strategy and the investments it requires. The state of American opinion on that subject is currently ambiguous. Polling data indicates that public support for most key aspects of American internationalism has recovered somewhat from where it was in 2012–13, and is again at or near postwar averages.32 But the 2016 election cycle and its eventual outcome revealed strong support for candidates who advocated rolling back key elements of post–Cold War (and post–World War II) grand strategy, from free trade to U.S. alliances. This atmosphere reflects discontent with the failures and frustrations of U.S. grand strategy in the post–Cold War era, no doubt, yet it also reflects the fact that American strategy seems at risk of becoming a victim of its own success.33 By helping to foster a comparatively stable and congenial environment, American policies have made it more difficult for Americans to remember why significant investments in the global order are needed in the first place. Today, this ambivalence is becoming increasingly problematic, for the simple reason that properly resourcing American strategy requires making politically difficult trade-offs with respect to entitlements and other ballooning domestic costs. It is also becoming problematic, of course, because even if the American public seems to support particular aspects of American grand strategy, the public has shown itself willing to elect a president who appears to care little for the successful postwar and post– Cold War tradition, even if he has, so far, maintained more aspects of that tradition as president than his campaign rhetoric might have led one to expect. In the future—and indeed, looking beyond Trump’s presidency— sustaining American grand strategy will thus require more intensive political efforts. American leaders will need to more effectively make the case for controversial but broadly beneficial policies such as free trade, while also addressing the inevitable socioeconomic dislocations such policies cause.34 They will need to more fully articulate the underlying logic and value of alliances and other commitments whose costs are often more visible—not to say greater—than their benefits. They will need to remind Americans that their country’s leadership has not been a matter of charity; it has helped produce an international order that is exceptional in its stability, liberalism, and benefits for the United States. Not least, they will need to make the case that the costs that the country has borne in support of that order are designed to avoid the necessity of bearing vastly higher costs if the international scene returned to a more tumultuous state. After all, the success of American statecraft is often reflected in the bad things that don’t happen as well as in the good things that do. Making this point is essential to reconsolidating domestic support now and in the future—and to preserving a grand strategy that has delivered pretty good results for a quarter century.

Using data from the late 1990s until 2019 for the United States and Germany, we find that an increase in government spending is expansionary. It raises output, consumption and crowds in private sector investment. The increase in domestic absorption does not come at the cost of an appreciated real exchange rate. Indeed, the relative price of home-produced goods actually falls, causing the real exchange rate and terms of trade to depreciate. The expansionary effects of government spending are not confined to the home economy. Spillovers between the US and the G7 countries are positive, as are those between Germany and her European neighbours. The dynamics of the macroeconomy implied by the BVAR pose a challenge for macroeconomic modelling, with most existing studies finding negligible or even negative spillovers, as pointed out by Cwik and Wieland (2011). We show that a model with heterogeneous households, firms facing borrowing constraints and nominal rigidities can explain the key salient empirical features following a government spending shock. The model sheds light on potential factors determining the size of international spillovers in response to fiscal shocks. Relative country size matters, with bigger economies generating larger spillovers, as does openness to trade and the import content of government spending. The monetary policy response to fiscal policy also matters; a delayed monetary tightening to what is an inflationary fiscal expansion greatly increases the size of the international spillover. Neither the empirical evidence, nor the theoretical model, suggest an important role for the exchange rate regime in determining the size of the spillover effects of fiscal policy shocks. Criticism of policy proposals for fiscal coordination often hinge on the lack of supporting evidence for international spillovers. Our findings shed new light on this topic by showing not only that the estimated foreign output effects of domestic spending shocks are large but also, that these ca

In our own lives and careers, we have seen remarkable changes in women’s empowerment and opportunity, not only here in America but around the world. Healthier women with access to education and the opportunity to use that knowledge in starting a business or running for office has meant less poverty, more stability, and more fair and equal societies. But, due in part to the pandemic and the recent democratic backsliding around the world, so much of what we gained is being undone. As UN Secretary General António Guterres told delegates earlier this month, the “progress won over decades is vanishing before our eyes”. These setbacks mean that women’s equality is now at an estimated 300 years away. But while the setback is disheartening, we must respond with resolve, not remorse. From our own time in Congress, we’ve seen the change just a small investment can make, and we do not need to wait another 300 years to make a difference in the lives of girls and women. With American investments and partnerships, we can close the gap and help put this and the next generation of women on a path to opportunity and equality. This Women’s History Month, we have an opportunity to prepare for a more equitable future by uplifting the ways America’s leadership can have a global impact, as well as here at home. That is why we believe this is a unique moment for bipartisan solidarity for American’s investments in women globally. As former members of the U.S. Congress, we know what it takes for America to lead, and we also know that women and are trailblazers in our own right. Rep. Jenkins has written about women’s leadership in her home state and has supported the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Rep. Long Thompson represented women on the Agriculture Committee and sponsored National Women in Agriculture Day. Rep. Margolies was dedicated to women’s health, both in her time in Congress and after when she served as the director and deputy chair of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women. And Rep. Comstock has been a longtime supporter of women’s leadership sponsoring an ongoing program for young women and in 2017 authored legislation requiring anti-discrimination and anti-harassment training during each session of Congress. Now, at a time when global threats and crises are impacting women more and more severely, we believe we need to redouble our support for these programs. Strengthening American investments in diplomacy and global development is critical for strengthening women’s equality. From ensuring access to clean, drinkable water, to protecting a girl’s right to go to school, we know these investments all lead us to healthier communities, more stable countries, and a safer and more prosperous world. With America’s support, women are beginning to start and scale businesses at the same rate as men, potentially adding $6 trillion to the global economy. Programs such as We-Fi, supported by the U.S. Department of State, and the 2x Women’s Initiative are reaching women all over the world to support them and their brighter futures. America’s contributions are also helping women around the world gain access to education, health care, and the safety needed to enter more leadership roles. America’s investments in programs such as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) have contributed to reducing the child mortality rate by 35 percent and the maternal mortality rate by 25 percent between 2004-2018. In addition to women’s health, investments in women as leaders is helping them attain more leadership roles in both the public and the private spheres. In 1995, just 11 percent of the world’s parliamentarians and legislators were women. By 2022, that was up to 26 percent and climbing as women continue to break down barriers and claim their power. That means that in the past 30 years, the percentage of female legislators in parliaments worldwide has grown by over 135 percent. We are living proof of this. Despite America’s investments in women domestically and internationally, there is so much work left to be done towards strengthening women’s health, promoting economic prosperity, and securing equal rights for American women, as well as for women around the world. First, that means a whole-of-government approach to Women, Peace, and Security policies that advances security for women globally. Second, we must encourage greater participation for women across all facets of security, leadership, and development. A 135 percent increase in participation over a decade is impressive, but it is clear there is so much further to go until we hit 50 percent participation. And finally, we need policies that help women participate more in and benefit from global trade, making it not just an avenue for economic growth but also an opportunity for economic justice. Women and girls experience higher rates of poverty than men and we need to turn that tide not only to bring prosperity to the global economy but to right economic injustices that have been perpetrated against women for centuries. We can achieve all of these goals, and advance women’s equality, by investing resources in diplomacy and development around the world. But we cannot be alone in this fight. As America steps up, this is also an opportunity for us to rally all the allies and partners that we can to do more for women’s lives everywhere. The U.S. International Affairs Budget supports programs that are critical for promoting efforts such as furthering education opportunities for women and girls, and fostering growing businesses, and maternal and child health. As former congresswomen, we call on our colleagues to make the investment and fully fund the International Affairs budget. We’re now in budget season, and as Congress begins its work, we must ensure that this investment for women — both here at home and around the world — is robust. Americans of all political stripes — Democrats, Republicans, and Independents — can feel proud that their country is taking a leadership role and working to build strong diplomatic and development initiatives that help women prosper. Working to better empower half of our population is the right thing and the smart thing to do — for communities, for the U.S., and for women across the world.

HEGEMONY AND THE UNITED STATES The United States has arguably been and continues to be one of the most influential and powerful states in the international system. After the end of the Cold War, it is the only state to have had a truly global circle of influence and control in almost all aspects of international relations and global affairs. Mearsheimer argues that there are five assumptions that prove that the world is a realist one. I argue that three of these assumptions in context with the United States argue that not only are these assumptions correct, but a hegemon also goes one extra step than a state in doing so. Mearsheimer’s assumptions are somewhat hard-lined and definitive; however, for these assumptions, I will characterize factors into two groups: fundamental and sentimental. Fundamental factors include more realistic ones, for instance, military strength and wealth. Sentimental factors are inclined towards the more soft forms of power such as popular culture, international standing in global organizations, etc. Firstly, “The second assumption is that great powers inherently possess some offensive military capability, which gives them the wherewithal to hurt and possibly destroy each other” (Mearsheimer, 2001, ch. 10), this assumption gives an insight into the military and economic character of a hegemon. The United States has the largest and the most advanced military in the world. The United States government after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 changed its attitude towards military interventions, wars, and armed conflicts dramatically (Herring, 2008). The amount of wealth that goes into maintaining and developing such an enormous military is no small amount either. One observes that other great powers such as Russia and China also pour considerable funds into their military but not to such an extent as the United States does (Mearsheimer, 2001, ch. 10). This shows that for a hegemon, military strength and capability are of the foundational parts of ensuring complete hegemony. The United States clearly endorses this ideology and though diplomatic ways are preferred, it is good to know that it can fall back on its militaristic strength. The very fact the States endorsed the methodology of “preemptive war” and the message of “good versus evil” after 9/11 shows how much trust it had in its military and technology (Herring, 2008) (Ikenberry, 2011). This fundamental factor is one of the biggest reasons that ensure US hegemony to date. The amount of American troops offshore continues to be an intimidating factor for other states who may or may not have conflicting intentions (Mearsheimer, 2001, ch. 10). Secondly, the assumption that Mearsheimer works with is that “survival is the main goal of the state”. The United States embodies this perfectly and then some more. While the majority of the states focus on survival and basic economic growth, the United States has continued to experience unprecedented economic and financial growth. Its currency is widely accepted and demanded throughout the world, adding all the more to it. American investments and companies have risen dramatically since the 1990s. The amount of foreign investments made by Americans that are tied in other states is humongous and some technological and real estate giants make up large parts of it. On this account, even Liberals agree with the realists, that economic leverage is a clear and proper tool wielded by a state to gain power and position (Keohane, 1984). This is a fundamental factor mixed with parts of being a sentimental one. Since, economic might can be gained through channels such as cultural imports in form of films, fashion, and art, economic gains, and their use become subject to public opinion and become more sentimental in nature (Keohane, 1984). Finally, the assumption that is made is that “states are rational actors” is intensified in the case of hegemons (Mearsheimer, 2001, ch. 2). No hegemon will want to get tied down to agreements and alliances that it cannot ever break or which might someday curb its own ambition. Great powers do often lead towards a particular set of ideologies as witnessed during the Cold War, yet at the same time, they act with diplomatic tact in order to ensure their independence and free movement from obligations in the international realm.'' They are aware of their external environment and they think intelligently about how to maximize their prospects for survival. In particular, they try to gauge the preferences of other states and how their own behavior is likely to affect the actions of those other states, as well as how the behavior of those other states is likely to affect their own strategy. When they look at the different strategies that they have to choose between, they assess the likelihood of success as well as the costs and benefits of each one. Finally, states pay attention not only to the immediate consequences of their actions but to the long-term effects as well” (Mearsheimer, 2009). This describes how states care about their long-term goals and interests more than sticking to one set of methods and ideas. This helps in gaining sentimental solidarity with the masses. The United States which sees itself as the harbinger of “peace” and “democracy” throughout the world has used such tactics time and time again (Mathews, 2021). It uses the more sentimental ideas around democracy and liberty to justify its actions and gain a certain kind of power with its own and foreign populations. This can also be seen as a sort of hegemony of ideas and preferences where the majority of the people in the world would want US values and laws in their own states. Thus, we see that the United States is a hegemonic power in the 21st century. Although, how certain its future is, is still very much up for debate.

As heat ramps up ahead of what forecasters say will be a , electricity experts and officials are warning that states  to meet demand in the coming months. And many of the nation’s grid operators are also not taking climate change into account in their planning, even as extreme weather becomes more frequent and more severe.

All of this suggests that more power outages are on the way, not only this summer but in the coming years as well.

Anthony Mecke had drifted to sleep in the break room when a loud knock roused him at 1:23 a.m. “We just got the call,” a coworker said.

Mecke, a moonfaced 45-year-old, is the manager of systems operation training at CPS Energy, the city-owned electricity provider that serves San Antonio. He started at the company not long after high school, working at one point as a cable splicer, a job he performed in hot tunnels beneath the sidewalks of San Antonio. He thought he’d seen it all. But when he hustled from the break room, where he’d sneaked in a power nap after an all-day shift, into the company’s cavernous control room, housed in a tornado-proof building on the city’s East Side, what he witnessed unsettled him. 

In October 2009, after a series of controversial talks, the European Union (EU) and South Korea finally initialled the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) they had been negotiating for just over two years. This will serve as the most visible expression so far of the Global Europe communication, which was announced in October 2006 by the Commission's Directorate-General (DG) for Trade. The strategy spelled the end of the ‘moratorium’ on new FTA initiatives that had been at the heart of EU trade policy since 1999 with a new emphasis on negotiating bilateral trade agreements with emerging (and largely Asian) economies. More importantly, Global Europe stressed the need for a ‘rejection of protectionism at home’ implicitly targeting Europe's few remaining ‘pockets of protection’ (European Commission Citation2006b). In exchange for offering trade partners liberalisation in these areas, the European Commission was to seek reciprocal concessions where EU firms were competitive. The EU–Korea FTA is a case in point, obtaining substantial gains for European service suppliers and investors in Korea in exchange for a significant opening of the automobile sector, which was still reeling from the effects of the economic crisis.

In light of the collective action problem identified by the literature on the domestic sources of trade policy (Baldwin Citation1985; Hillman Citation1989; Grossman and Helpman Citation1994; Hiscox Citation2002) – that protectionists are more likely to mobilise and shape policy than the ‘winners’ from liberalisation, due to the concentrated and more immediate nature of the losses incurred and the greater diffusion of the benefits (see Olson Citation1965, Citation1983) – accounting for liberal trade policy outcomes has often been seen as an intellectual puzzle for scholars of International Political Economy (IPE) (see, e.g. Dür Citation2010). In this vein, the literature on EU trade policy often points to the institutional insulation of policy-makers from protectionist pressures (Meunier and Nicolaïdis 1999; Meunier Citation2005; this argument is also made for the USA, see Destler Citation2005; Chorev Citation2007). However, in our view, this is not a sufficient explanation of the EU–Korea FTA since the evidence suggests that import-competing interests enjoyed good access to key officials during both the negotiation and ratification of the agreement. Although the elected European Parliament (EP) was the focal point of many of their high-profile interventions, protectionists were also shown to have access to supposedly more insulated policy-makers in Member States and the Commission itself, particularly in DG Enterprise and Industry. This suggests that even in politically insulated policy structures, decision-makers cannot avoid the distributive politics of liberalisation. This point is rendered all the more poignant by the advent of the 2008 Financial Crisis which galvanised opposition to the FTA, especially from the powerful automobile sector. This did not stop the EU, however, from signing the agreement in October 2010 and then ratifying it without significant revisions in February 2011. In sum, as there was a strong mobilisation of protectionists with good access to policy-makers, this liberal policy outcome cannot be explained purely in terms of institutional insulation nor be simply ‘read off’ from the material interests of societal actors.

In this version of empiricism, empiricism is insulated from scepticism by setting its focus on the manner in which we update our beliefs, and not on their initial formation. According to van Fraassen, “It is possible to remain an empiricist without sliding into scepticism, exactly by rejecting the sceptics’ pious demands for justification where none is to be had.” (1989, 178) Once we are committed to the general framework of observable phenomena we will be in a position critically to examine the ways in which we change our beliefs, but there is no useful prospect of a critical examination of our initial commitments. Critics of empiricism can wonder whether this pessimism about the scope of epistemology is justified, and whether van Fraassen is right to characterize of our initial position as involving no commitments other than commitments to observables. It has also been suggested that what is in dispute between empiricism and realism may not be decidable on the basis of considerations acceptable to both sides, and this has generated some scepticism about the legitimacy of this conflict. Penultimate draft of article published in The Philosophy of Science: An Encyclopedia, Sarkar and Pfeifer, eds. (Routledge, 2006), 235-243. 19 5. Scepticism about empiricism Both the empiricist and the realist are committed to the project of giving a philosophical analysis of the aim of science; Arthur Fine argues that there is something wrong with that project. According to Fine, realists and empiricists are mistaken in supposing that science has a single essence amenable to philosophical examination. There is nothing in scientific practice itself, Fine argues, that requires our possession of a philosophical theory of the point of science, and nothing in the deliverances of scientific enquiry yields an answer to whether empiricism or realism is correct. As an alternative, Fine advocates what he calls the natural ontological attitude, according to which we allow science to ‘speak for itself’, and refrain from attempting to construct a notion of truth that goes beyond that ‘already in use in science.’ Of course both realists and empiricists take themselves to be articulating exactly that conception of truth that is already in use in science; Fine’s contention is that they do not have any neutral or unprejudiced perspective from which to pass judgment on what science involves. One of Fine’s central criticisms of empiricism is that the empiricist’s effort to create a special epistemic status for our claims about observables could only be based on a priori commitments that do not square well with the basic orientation of empiricism. Our observations alone do not force upon us any particular epistemic attitude to observation. If Fine is right about that, then the empiricist has some reason to resist the naturalist suggestion that the claims we advance in epistemology are, like the claims of empirical science, themselves warranted only by experience. (See van Fraassen 1995 for an argument along these lines.) Empiricism is then a theory about what claims are warranted within science; the separate question of what claims are warranted within epistemology would lie beyond the scope of empiricism itself.

The plausible assumption behind Devitt’s questions is that S is justified in believing any claim about the world only if there is some link through which information from the world makes its way to S’s mind. For a posteriori justification, this link is experience. We have a fairly clear idea of how experience relates us to the world: we have sensory organs that, via causal processes, receive information from the world and then somehow we represent that information in the form of sense-perception. It is currently not clear exactly how the brain produces sense-perceptions, but there should be little doubt that science will eventually have a good answer about this. However, matters are less clear with a priori justification. According to rationalists, a priori justified beliefs are about the world, not meanings or concepts. So, S has a priori justified beliefs only if there is some non-experiential link through which the information about the world travels to S’s mind. What is this link? BonJour’s answer is “apparent rational insight.” However, beyond giving the alleged non-experiential connection a name, he says little that is very informative. The empiricist’s story about experience is good for two main reason: first, we have a fairly clear idea of what experience is phenomenologically (it involves raw feels, representations, etc.) and, 24 second, we have a causal account of how it connects us to the world. However, the phenomenological evidence for rational insight is much weaker than it is for experience, and it is unclear how rational insight fits with our metaphysical and scientific views. The basic objection, then, is this: we have an answer for how experience connects us to the information from the world in the way required for justification, but no answer for how anything other than experience could connect us to the world in this way. Hoping to avoid this anomaly, the radical empiricist tries to show that experience can function as our link to all information from the world. Devitt takes these two considerations to establish a “nice abduction,” according to which radical empiricism is the best explanation of how we know what we know (Devitt 2005, 106).

Recessions happen frequently—there have been 7 recessions in the last 50 years (National Bureau of Economic Research [NBER] n.d)—and they cause disruption and damage to individuals and communities. The Great Recession of 2007–9 was the most-severe economic downturn since the Great Depression. It did long-term damage to businesses; state, local, and federal budgets; and people’s life trajectories. Its effects live on in diminished prosperity for many Americans. In the years since the Great Recession, economists have studied which policy responses worked and which ones did not, and two findings stand out: First, fiscal policy is an important tool to combat a recession; and second, it is crucial to have a quick and effective response to a recession to limit its longest-lasting and most-severe effects.

Recessions cause sizable damage in the short term and lead to millions of lost jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in lost output. Over the last 4 recessions, as shown in figure 1, the unemployment rate rose 2 to 5 percentage points, leaving millions of workers without jobs. Output also fell on average by about 2 percent (roughly $400 billion as a share of the current economy).

I think we made a mistake after 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed and the socialist system in Europe collapsed, “now democracy has won.” We all know what happens when you are overestimating your capacities. There is going to be a way to problems.

Now we have faced rather substantial problems, not only in Europe but here in the United States as well. Democratic institutions are not working like they should. Trust in democratic institution is on the low level.

Widespread association of climate change with security means that in the most general, colloquial, sense climate change has already been ‘securitized’ – certainly in Europe and among many in the policy community. Early reports linking security and climate change were received with considerable skepticism as doomsday scenarios dealing with a remote future, but in a relatively short space of time the link has come much closer to being accepted as part of mainstream thinking. Key proponents have been the United Kingdom and the EU, as well as small island developing States in the Pacific. If, however, one applies to climate change the theoretical postulate of the Copenhagen School that securitization has not occurred until extraordinary measures have been adopted, this would suggest that climate change will not have been fully securitized until international security institutions, led by the UN Security Council, assume a lead role in the global policy response. The Council may have nudged closer to adopting a Chapter VII decision overtly on climate change by adopting a Presidential statement on the subject at its 2011 debate on climate change, and by the enthusiasm with which the United States appeared to participate in the debate.

If climate change were to be fully securitized and the Security Council to take a lead role in the global response to climate change mitigation and adaptation, we may well witness a far more streamlined and efficient response. We already know what needs to be done in terms of minimizing the rupture in the carbon cycle and adapting to the changes already in train. The governance problem with which the world is struggling is that of how to bring it about, particularly when the action required of wealthy countries is politically unpalatable to domestic constituencies, certainly within the timeframe needed to avert catastrophic environmental change.