適正な公共インフラ政策についての世論形成やそれに基づく政策判断を促すためには，公衆一人一人の事実情報の認識形成のプロセスについての知見が重要な基礎的知見となる．本研究ではこうした認識に基づき，「公共政策におけるキッチュ」の存在についての心理実証実験を行った．これは，「明らかな危険性を含んだ公共政策を，崇高にして達成可能な美しい理想のごとく絶対化し，そのような姿勢をとるうえで都合の悪い一切の事柄を，汚物のごとく見なして排除したがる態度」という，特定事実を無視する不合理かつ不条理な態度を意味する．本研究では「公共事業の縮小」「緊縮財政」「新自由主義的な改革推進」の三つの政策について「キッチュ」の存在を確認する心理学実験を行い，その存在を実証的に示した．

一七七六年にイギリス領北アメリカ植民地がヨーロッパ諸国に公表した 「独立宣言」 は、イギリス本国において一六八八年の名誉革命を経て形成された議会主権が植民地にも及ぶという主張に対する異議申し立てであった。

　一七八三年のパリ条約で独立が承認されたアメリカ合衆国は、条約義務の履行のために統一的な国家を創設する必要に迫られたが、「独立宣言」 に記された革命の原則が、主権を有する国家の設立の足枷となったのである。

　アメリカにおいて主権的国家の設立の最大の障害となったのは、アメリカ入植以来約一六〇年にわたって主権を行使してきた一三諸邦の存在であり、それらを超えて存在する国家主権とは彼らの経験にないものであった。

　本稿では、ジョン・アダムズ、アレクザンダー・ハミルトン、ジェイムズ・マディソンら、「建国の父たち」 の議論を中心に、初期共和政体における主権国家の創設の試みを検討し、特にアメリカにおいては、司法権力がアメリカ合衆国における主権的機能の担い手となった経緯を明らかにするものである。

近年、福祉資本主義の機能不全を背景に資本主義経済を民主的にコントロールする手段として産業民主主義や職場民主主義の議論が復活している。こうした流れの中で、20世紀を代表する政治哲学者のジョン・ロールズが正義にかなう体制として生産用資産と人的資本を広く分散させる財産所有制民主主義を提唱し、その主要制度の一つとして労働者管理型企業の可能性について言及していることは注目に値する。ロールズの正義論に内在的な理由から労働者管理型企業を擁護する論者は、格差原理が目指す影響力や自尊心の互恵的な分配には何らかの職場民主主義が要請されると主張する。本稿では、これまであまり注目されてこなかった財産所有制民主主義の 「単位」 の問題に焦点を当て、個別の企業や職場内部の民主主義がミクロな単位で最不遇者の境遇改善に寄与したとしても、ロールズの正義論が目指すマクロな制度的正義が実現されるとは限らないことを明らかにする。その上で企業や職場内部の民主主義を基本構造の正義とつなげる三つの可能性について検討する。

During the 1840s, the US expanded, largely in consequence of the War with Mexico. Accompanying this territorial expansion were technological advances in printing and publishing, unprecedented population growth, and the formation of a discernible “middle-class.” These changes both called for and promoted a virtuous and informed citizenry. In this milieu appeared the rise of “advice” literature and domestic fiction, both of which embraced the cult of domesticity and the ideology of “separate spheres.” First published in 1841, and reprinted almost every year until 1869, Catharine E. Beecher’s Treatise on Domestic Economy was one of the most influential and popular manuals in the 19^th century.

Whereas Angelina and Sarah Grimké argued for women’s right to participate in the public sphere on a basis of equality, Beecher spoke of women as limited to the domestic sphere; she called for voluntary self-sacrifice for the “general good of all.” Yet, Beecher did not regard this deferral of political and economic power to men as sexism per se; instead, her aim was to reduce hostilities, tensions, and confusion that might have been generated by women’s participation in politics: she held that women should instead take charge of “the political economy” through their nurturing work at home. Beecher argued, in the opening chapter of her Treatise, that women, though “confined within the narrow circle of domestic life,” could serve the good of all even as men could in the wider civic, public sphere. Paradoxically, the home was not some isolated haven from the world; instead, it was, for her, a semi-public site charged with nationalistic and cultural values. Dolores Hayden, insightfully, regarded Beecher as the “ultimate domestic feminist.”

Beecher’s Treatise was not only influential in promoting the cult of domesticity. It was also an innovation in print media, disseminating, in unprecedented ways, prescriptive domestic manners. As her title page indicates, she wrote her “all-purpose” manual, covering various fields of domestic practices, “for the use of young ladies at home and at school.” In the 18th century, domestic manners and instruction had been orally transmitted within a rather narrow circle, from mothers to daughters, or amongst female neighbors in a community. However, Beecher, a pioneer authority in female education, prescribed a standardized code of domestic manners and disseminated it in textbook form through her educational network. She thus made good use of the developing print culture, and of the rise of female education in antebellum society. The first edition of her book was issued by a small publisher in Boston, but she soon won a larger market through a contract made with the Harper and Brothers in New York. Moreover, as public schooling grew in extent, Beecher sought to secure through textbooks a new market for her ideas. Her earliest textbooks bore little fruit, but the 2^nd edition of her Treatise(1843) was published under the sanction of the Massachusetts Board of Education for school libraries, and the 3^rd edition was widely adopted in the better female academies in the East and the West.

Beecher’s Treatise is a rational and educational text. She holds that domestic manners could be neither taught by the mother at home nor learned from books alone: domestic economy should be studied as a proper subject in a systematized curriculum along with other subjects. The most distinctive feature of the Treatise is the domestic economy and efficiency illustrated in its pages. Beecher hoped to “civilize” women—white, middle-class women, needless to say; and she aspired to teach them how to reach beyond the roles of mere mothers and wives at a time when they were, indeed, not yet legally and officially “citizens.”