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In the 1990s, the New York City Police Department expanded its focus on reducing behaviors that detract from the overall quality of life (QOL) in the city. Many have credited this effort for the decline in the city's overall crime rate. They often cite the fixing broken windows argument, which maintains that reducing disorder sets off a chain of events leading to less crime. However, systematic research has not yet documented this chain of events. Looks at one of the first linkages, whether QOL policing sends a message to offenders not to engage in disorderly behaviors in public locales. The project interviewed 539 New York City arrestees in 1999. Almost all of them were aware that police were targeting various disorderly behaviors. Among those that engaged in disorderly behaviors, about half reported that they had stopped or cut back in the past six months. They reported a police presence was the most important factor behind their behavioral changes. These findings support the idea that QOL policing has a deterrent effect.

I suggest that the search for Adam Smith’s theodicy is likely to be in vain. The paper begins with a brief history of approaches to evil, emphasizing the context in which they arose, and the questions authors were addressing. Approaches most relevant to Adam Smith include those of Augustine and Calvin, and the early modern theodicies of Leibniz, Samuel Clarke and William King, as well as the attacks on them by Bayle and Voltaire. Scottish Enlightenment writers were not terribly interested in theodicy, though Hutcheson and Kames did devote space to their versions of problems of evil. David Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion are often taken to be classic statement of the problem of theodicy and argument against religious belief, but his concern was to demolish rationalistic theodicies rather than religious belief or practice. The paper then turns to Smith’s writings, considering similarities and differences to these approaches to evil. Smith emphasizes the wisdom and beneficence of God, and that evils we observe are part of a larger providential plan. He makes no attempt to justify the God in the face of evil, and in this respect Smith shares more with Augustine and Calvin than he does with the early modern theodicists. Smith’s approach to evil is simple and ameliorative. Smith’s approach contrasts with early nineteenth century English political economists, from Malthus onwards, for whom theodicy was important. Whatever view we take of the theodicists project of justifying an all-powerful and good God in the face of evil may, we still struggle to make sense of economic suffering and evil.

The question of whether at present Smith is of any importance for economic analysis is dealt with. The attempts of a number of authors to reach a new interpretation of Smith are examined. The emphasis is on the argument on which the decision to come to a reorientation on Smith would be based. Reasons are given for why the current Smith interpretation might be disqualified as an anachronism. Finally, on the basis of a number of specific passages from The Wealth of Nations, there is a particularisation in the questions one might justly ask regarding the current interpretation of Smith′s economic thought.

In 1976, amid the vastly greater celebrations of the bicentennial anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, there was the greatest orgy of historical nostalgia in the history of economics, occasioned by the bi‐centenary of the Wealth of Nations. In addition to a veritable deluge of scholarly books, articles, pamphlets, conferences, and symposia, and also innumerable popular and ephemeral effusions, all the mass media were enlisted. There were countless magazine and newspaper articles, some radio and T.V. programs, at least one especially commissioned technicolor film and, for all I know, there may also have been bicentennial poems, paintings, sculptures, and choral symphones!

In the Theory of Modern Sentiments Smith distinguishes between the actual impartial spectator and the ideal; the man within the breast – a mechanism that allows Smith to extend the theory of moral approbation to judge the actions and motives of the agent himself. Argues that the significance of this is that Smith is then able to postulate standards of morality which are in some sense absolute, valid for all times and places. Shows that Smith deploys these absolute standards in evaluating how custom and tradition pervert the moral sentiments in some instances. This in turn allows him to legitimately speak of progress in human societies. Smith′s bias in favour of commercial society over the early and rude state is, therefore, rooted in his moral philosophy.

Is liberalism premised on an unrealistically individualist anthropology? In one regularly told story about modernity, the earliest liberals grounded their arguments for political liberty in a picture of human nature that centered on our moral autonomy, perhaps epitomized best in Kantian thought. However, a range of critics have now compellingly argued that such accounts of our agency are descriptively inaccurate, and that normative social projects beginning from such flawed foundations are thus unstable. While this paper accepts this criticism of individualist anthropologies, it proposes that this need not identify a problem with liberalism overall. To make this case, this paper turns to Adam Smith, who grounded his early advocacy of liberalism in an anthropology grounded in natural theology that depicts us as morally interconnected, rather than as autonomous, and as always morally impressionable. As it will explain, Smith presumed an account of character as integrally related to and influenced by the agent’s social context, for both better and worse. Furthermore, he wove his attentiveness to this complex interaction between the agent and their context into both his economic analyses and political proposals. Smith’s social vision thus illustrates how a strong regard for individual liberty is fully compatible with a sophisticated anthropology that recognizes our malleability as moral agents – and even with political proposals that capitalize upon this malleability. Smith’s thought thus offers useful resources for contemporary proponents of liberalism who wish to value the dignity of individuals without basing that valuation in unrealistic abstractions, or ignoring the responsibilities engendered by the fact of our ongoing moral formation by our social contexts.

Amidst the backlash against gay rights in the U.S., a rapidly expanding number of companies are instituting inclusive policies. While in 1990 no major corporations provided health insurance for the partners of lesbian and gay employees, by early 2004, over 200 companies on the Fortune 500 list (approximately 40%) had adopted domestic partner benefits. This study of Fortune 1000 corporations reveals that the majority of adopters instituted the policy change only after facing pressure from groups of lesbian, gay, and bisexual employees. Despite such remarkable success, scholars have yet to study the workplace movement, as it is typically called by activists. Combining social movement theory and new institutional approaches to organizational analysis, I provide an “institutional opportunity” framework to explain the rise and trajectory of the movement over the past 25 years. I discuss the patterned emergence and diffusion of gay employee networks among Fortune 1000 companies in relation to shifting opportunities and constraints in four main areas: the wider sociopolitical context, the broader gay and lesbian movement, the media, and the workplace. Next, using the same wide-angle lens, I explain the apparent decline in corporate organizing since 1995. My multimethod approach utilizes surveys of 94 companies with and without gay networks, intensive interviews with 69 networks and 10 corporate executives, 3 case studies, field data, and print and virtual media on gay-related workplace topics. By focusing on not simply political but also broader institutional opportunities, I provide a framework for understanding the emergence and development of movements that target institutions beyond the state.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the US Department of Labor's final regulations under Section 408(b)(2) of ERISA, concerning the fact that information investment advisers to ERISA‐covered pension plans and private investment funds deemed to hold the “plan assets” of ERISA‐covered pension plans must disclose regarding the services they provide and the compensation they receive to such ERISA plans.

The paper summarizes the material provisions of the Final Regulations that apply to investment advisers to funds deemed to hold plan assets, including definitions of “covered service providers” and “covered plans,” a listing of required disclosures, an explanation of disclosure timing and format, and a discussion of possible responses for advisers that are not covered service providers.

Under the Final Regulations, investment advisers to ERISA‐covered pension plans and private investment funds deemed to hold the “plan assets” of ERISA‐covered pension plans must disclose certain information regarding the services they provide and the compensation they receive to such ERISA plans.

The paper provides practical guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

In the history of economic thought, a number of heterodox economic thinkers have focused upon the manner in which economic doctrines are built upon an essentially unexamined vision of social reality. Karl Marx referred to this vision as an ideology generated in the interest of the ruling class. Thorstein Veblen saw it as a complex of preconceptions reflecting prevailing beliefs. Joseph Schumpeter saw these visions as providing the “raw material for the analytic effort” of economists. [Schumpeter, 1954:42] In all three instances the vision was understood as a complex of assumptions concerning social reality that economists accept uncritically, if not unconsciously, and upon which the science of economics is constructed.