The importance of socio-economic background will become increasingly important for school success. But segregation in the school area is steadily growing and inequality is increasing, a development tha

Jens Krause, Humboldt University, Berlin In his talk Krause will explain some of the basic principles of collective behaviour and collective cognition. Some of the case studies are based on experiments

In N. Marschner, C. Richter, J. Patz, & A. Salheiser (Eds.), Contested climate justice – Challenged democracy: International perspectives (pp. 59-71). Campus Verlag GmbH Abstract Earth is on a catastryet, there is little sign of halting the rise of global greenhouse gas emissions orstopping the extraction of fossil fuels. Against this background, in this articlewe re-engage with a recently proposed typology supposed to cover three modesthrough which effective climate action has been obstructed. These are, first,primary obstruction, that is, the spread of disinformation and/or denying the veryexistence of anthropogenic climate change. Second, secondary obstruction concernsmore or less deliberate obstruction via opposition to climate action and policiesvia, for example, reference to “the threat of deindustrialisation”. Finally, tertiaryobstruction denotes modes of living which, while not necessarily obstructingeffective climate change intentionally, concerns “living in denial”. Drawing onrecent research and examples, we revisit this typology.

Is it possible to study emotions using mathematical models? Frank Schweizer is one of the resesarchers who have tried and he finds for example that we are quite nice to each other online. He came to te

This paper analyzes the time it takes for Swedish college graduates to start a full-time job that lasts for six month or more, the study period being 1991–1999. The results show that the risk of unemp

Beyond Operation Protective Edge

This is a seminar on international law and war ethics, taking Operation Protective Edge as an example. The seminar was held at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm 2015. Participants: He

Luke Russell - What is forgiveness? On the philosophical disagreements of what forgiveness is

In this episode we are going to talk about forgiveness. Recently Luke Russel, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Sidney, held a research seminar here at the institute titled What i

Research seminar with Bo Rothstein.AbstractMost definitions of democracy rely on a set of procedural rules for how political power should be accessed legitimately. The basic norm for these procedural ru realized by equal democratic rights. In this understanding of political legitimacy, democracy is a “partisan game” where various interests are given fair possibilities to compete for political power. The concept of “quality of government” relates to the legitimacy in the of political power and is based on the norm of  that is the opposite of partisanship. This is to be realized by, for example, the rule of law and a public administration built on meritocracy. Several tensions between these two bases for achieving political legitimacy will be present. For example, a democratically elected government may want to politicize the public administration and may establish public services and benefits directed only to their political supporters. The rule of law includes the principle of equality before the law, but a democratically elected government may take actions that put itself “above” the law. Various empirical measures and philosophical principles for understanding these type of tensions between democracy and the quality of government will be presented in this lecture.

Bo Rothstein: Is there a contradiction between democracy and quality of government?

Most definitions of democracy rely on a set of procedural rules for how political power should be accessed legitimately. The basic norm for these procedural rules is according to noted democracy theor

The usual way of thinking about climate change is that the present generation will have to make large sacrifices in order to reduce emissions. For example, by consuming less goods and services. This is one reason why cutting emissions is so hard. But what if there is a way to get climate change under control where no one needs to sacrifice?