Two years after the Soviet invasion of Hungary, Janos Kadar, the leader installed by the Soviets was already proclaiming that 'anyone who is not against us is for us.' Two years after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, only the highest levels of party and government had been effectively...

Non-cognitivism, the belief that normative statements, unlike empirical statements do NOT convey objective knowledge is deeply embedded in mainstream social science methodology and strongly influences the views of social scientists on the status of values in social science. This article...

Explores difficulties that inevitably spring up when the attempt is made to define the “interests of society.” The needs of individual members of society differ, and often conflict with each other, with the interests of other members of society, and with the interests of “society as a...

Case study research can be viewed as continuous with both experimental science and history, and as theoretical in character. In experimental science, typical initial conditions are held constant, yet initial conditions may range from the very general and abstract to the very rich and specific. A...

Social orders cannot be changed like suits of clothes. It is one thing to expose serious defects in a social and political order. It is a different matter to transform that order into something better. Widespread antipathy toward the GDR regime was well-known, so it came as no surprise when the...

Holding unlimited economic freedom to be nearly as dangerous as physical violence, Karl Popper advocated "piecemeal" economic intervention by the state. Jeremy Shearmur's recent book on Popper contends that as the philosopher aged, his views grew closer to classical liberalism than those...

Many attempts have been made to create Newspeaks. But in light of what is now known about such attempts, it is clear that not even the most successful of them have come anywhere near to realization of Orwell's projection. Rather than these Newspeaks becoming increasingly fine-tuned,...

For seven months after the invasion of Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968, not only did the reformist leadership remain in power, virtually intact, but many aspects of the reform movement which had disturbed the Soviets actually continued to develop, almost as if there had been no military...

Attempts to explain why attempts at reform of post-Soviet agriculture following the demise of the Soviet commando-administrative economic system were so disappointing. Looks briefly at some of the obvious explanations: dependency on subsidies, inadequate physical and social infrastructure,...