bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
To Prosecute or Not: Prosecutors as Agenda Setters
Authors: Boyd Christina L. , Nelson Michael J. , Ostrander Ian , Boldt Ethan D.
Published: February 2021

In Chapter 6, we examine the highly discretionary decision of federal prosecutors to bring or decline to bring prosecutions in individual criminal matters. This is a critical agenda-setting decision for the criminal justice system: when a prosecutor declines to bring a prosecution, no further action is taken against a suspect. Despite the importance of these decisions, there is also no formal oversight mechanism in place for individual federal prosecutorial choices to pursue or decline prosecution. After examining the descriptive data and underlying policies on federal declinations, we present an empirical test of how presidential, congressional, and local public political factors affect the decision to prosecute or decline to prosecute federal criminal matters. To do so, we analyze data containing nearly 200,000 federal criminal matters from 1996 to 2011 involving violent crime. Our results reveal sizable political effects on whether U.S. Attorneys bring violent crime prosecutions.
The Charging and Bargaining Decisions
Authors: Boyd Christina L. , Nelson Michael J. , Ostrander Ian , Boldt Ethan D.
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines U.S. Attorneys’ decisions regarding charging and bargaining with federal criminal defendants. Based on our theoretical expectations about the importance of political responsiveness in prosecutorial decisions, we expect that prosecutors will be less likely to demonstrate leniency in providing charge reductions and offering substantial assistance downward sentencing departures when their political principals and local public send strong signals regarding their prosecutorial priorities for a given area of crime. We test this expectation empirically, relying on DOJ and U.S. Sentencing Commission data on federal violent crimes. We find evidence that political responsiveness helps drive prosecutorial behavior for both charge reductions and substantial assistance departures.
The Pensions Multiverse
Authors: Berry Craig
Published: February 2021

The form that pensions provision takes is far from uniform, even among highly developed capitalist economies. This chapter surveys this diversity, but also the flawed ways in which pensions variation is usually understood, in both officialdom and academic scholarship. The intention, however, is not to replace one typology with another; while some of the most important differences across countries are actually understated, there is also a tendency to overstate systemic differences based on a highly parsimonious account of varieties within (welfare) capitalism. The chapter considers the main features and implications of pensions provision across many developed and developing countries, and recent reform agendas (including Europeanization), and develops a new approach to understanding private pensions in capitalist economies with reference to the temporal and cross-generational nature of provision.
False Dawn
Authors: Berry Craig
Published: February 2021

The introduction of auto-enrolment in the UK is a genuinely transformative moment. While the earlier neoliberal ‘revolution’ in wider economic governance encompassed important changes to pensions policy and provision, auto-enrolment encompasses an extensive set of reforms designed to alter how the vast majority of people engage with private pensions provision. However, the flaws in the approach established by the Pensions Commission in the mid-2000s—arising largely from its acceptance of the dominance of defined contribution—have created myriad new challenges for policy-makers, and indeed enabled subsequent elites to reinforce individualized and marketized provision (with inegalitarian outcomes) in a way that severely undermines the Commission’s plan. The chapter explores the hugely flawed imaginary of the individual and rationality encompassed by elite support for defined contribution saving, and the crude behavioural assumptions upon which auto-enrolment is based.
Introduction
Authors: Deumert Ana , Storch Anne
Published: February 2021

Debates about the legacy of colonialism in the academy are not new. In linguistics, however, critiquing and interrogating the history of the discipline and its status as being part of the practices and epistemes of colonialism, which continue into the here-and-now, have only been carried out reluctantly. This chapter introduces the reader to key themes in critical research on the historical foundations of linguistics. It is concerned with the contexts in which data has been and is produced, the ways in which analysis is carried out, and how expert knowledge is formed.
Transcending the colonial?
Authors: Mesthrie Rajend
Published: February 2021

This chapter revisits the Linguistic Survey of India (Sir George Grierson, ed. 1903–28, eleven volumes in nineteen parts) in the context of its times, as well as from the hindsights of colonial linguistics. It reviews the motivation for the project, its intentions and practices, and adopts a critical perspective in also considering its interface with local rather than colonial concerns. In some ways the LSI is a product of its times, especially in terms of occasional stereotypes and prescriptive remarks. In most ways, however, it transcends Western “orientalist” preconceptions in terms of its field methods, data presentation, and discursive commentaries. Grierson could well be considered the first modern or even postmodern dialectologist. The chapter concludes by considering the application of the work to modern postcolonial contexts, such as post-plantation Indian communities in Trinidad and South Africa.
On colonization and ‘awesome materiality’
Authors: Faraclas Nicholas G.
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines a founding text of German philology from a postcolonial perspective: Herman Paul’s Principles of the History of Language (1880). It focuses on a reading of this comprehensive and important document of European linguistics, attempting to take up the idea of colonial entanglements. This means that texts of the Global North reveal linkages with colonial epistemes, even if they seem not to be directly connected with colonialism. The aim is to work out the ambivalences of texts from the Northern project of linguistics and to re-evaluate one of their important authors. On the one hand, the chapter seeks to contribute to an understanding of linguistics in its long historical, also colonial, trajectories, and on the other hand, it aims to better understand the pre-formations of contemporary discussions in linguistics. Hermann Paul’s work is deeply liberating in its reflections on language but also entangled in its time.
The grammar of decoloniality
Authors: Shepherd Nick
Published: February 2021

The iconoclastic impetus to destroy Western colonialism lies at the heart of modern anticolonial practices. This commentary takes a look at decolonizing iconoclasms that are characterized by destruction and removal, mutilation or disfigurement of things, images, or words, perceived to be embodiments and symbols of colonial oppression and domination. Statues and monuments, for instance, figure prominently in this history of decolonization as iconoclastic action. The fantasy of historical rupture from the colonial past inhabits the gesture of the iconoclastic decolonizer. This commentary argues that statues can be seen as decolonial fetishes, whose extinction would be equivalent to the absolute disappearance of an over-domineering “colonialism”; it is as if their physical erasure would create a rupture in human time, inaugurating a perfect new epoch, without imperial idols and forever free from the chains of coloniality. Yet the gestures of destroyers, paradoxically, endow the colonial statues with high powers.
The EU’s engagement with the United Nations on human rights
Authors: Chané Anna-Luise
Published: February 2021

In line with the European Union’s (EU’s or Union’s) dual commitment to human rights and effective multilateralism, cooperation with the United Nations (UN) is an important element of the Union’s external human rights policy. Owing to a strong internal coordination mechanism, the EU acts as one of the most cohesive regional blocs at the UN. It successfully promotes a range of resolutions and ranks among the principal donors of UN human rights institutions. Nevertheless, the EU’s engagement with the UN is not without challenges, both external and internal in nature. Limited participation rights and time-consuming internal coordination processes, but also the increasing tendency among EU Member States to act outside of the Union, limit the EU’s potential for assuming its intended leadership role. This chapter provides a brief introduction to the UN human rights system and explores the Union’s political commitment to engaging with the UN, as well as the legal framework for doing so. After a brief overview of the Union’s internal coordination and external representation mechanisms, the chapter analyses the different tools that the EU has at its disposal in the UN. Finally, the chapter explores the opportunities and the challenges of EU-UN cooperation and concludes with a set of recommendations.
The EU human rights and democratisation policy
Authors: Muguruza Cristina Churruca , Isa Felipe Gómez
Published: February 2021

The promise of the Lisbon Treaty to put human rights, democracy, and the rule of law at the centre of all external action led to renew the EU’s efforts to frame an effective response to the challenges that human rights and democracy face worldwide. A Strategic Framework and Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy was adopted in June 2012 followed by a second Action Plan for 2015–2019. The Action Plans looked to increase the coherence and complementarity of all the tools that support human rights and democracy across the world. This chapter first analyses the objectives and priorities that guide the EU human rights and democratisation policy and the specific tools and instruments developed by the EU to implement them. Then it sheds light on the opportunities and challenges posed by the human rights and democratisation policy using as an example some of the questions raised in the relations between the EU and Egypt, a country under the European Neighbourhood Policy. This case shows that to effectively promote and defend human rights and democracy would mean first of all integrating consistently their promotion in the different EU policies involved in a region such as development, migration, security, counter-terrorism, women’s rights and gender equality, enlargement, and trade. The chapter concludes that the EU should strive to keep its commitment and not to conceal its values in order to be a leading actor in the field of human rights.
The EU’s engagement with human rights defenders
Authors: Benedek Wolfgang
Published: February 2021

Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) globally have become subjected to increased repression, harassment, and criminalisation and therefore are in need of continued support from the EU. Before embarking on this critical analysis of EU action on HRDs it is necessary to define the different types of HRDs, such as digital defenders, before further examining EU policies and instruments, actors, and processes that support them. The roles of the European Parliament and its Sakharov prize/network is discussed as are the roles of the Working Party on Human Rights, the EU Special Representative on Human Rights, and the liaison officers in the EU Delegations as well as the work of the European Endowment for Democracy for democracy defenders. The boost in support for HRDs pledged by the EU Action Plan on Human Rights and Democracy is checked against the performance of the European Instrument on Democracy and Human Rights and its support for HRDs most at risk through the Human Rights Defenders Mechanism, which identifies its strengths, but also its gaps and shortcomings. The conclusions and recommendations aim to strengthen existing tools, updating the EU Human Rights Guideline on Human Rights Defenders of 2004 (revised 2008) and suggesting a new guideline on freedom of association and assembly to strengthen support for HRDs.
Ecology and Wildlife Ecology as Distinct Academic Disciplines
Authors: Veech Joseph A.
Published: February 2021

As academic disciplines ecology and wildlife ecology both recognize the importance of habitat to the daily survival of individuals and long-term persistence of populations. Although the explicit and direct study of habitat originally emerged in ecology, wildlife ecologists historically have been more involved in its study and in the analysis of species–habitat relationships. This is partly due to wildlife ecologists being interested in habitat management for particular species and applying a resource-based concept of habitat to better understand population growth rates, particularly for harvested or hunted species. In the 1930s onward for several decades, Aldo Leopold played a prominent role in establishing wildlife ecology (and management) as its own academic field and practice. Leopold was keenly aware of population dynamics although he seemed to not directly link his empirical observations of population fluctuations to any of the emerging mathematical population growth models of the day. This may have also indirectly allowed the early growth of wildlife ecology to proceed without any of its own emergent theory. Despite historical, paradigmatic, practical, and subject matter differences between the two disciplines, both are becoming more similar to one another as interdisciplinary collaboration and communication continue to increase.
The Primacy of Habitat
Authors: Veech Joseph A.
Published: February 2021

Habitat may have a primary role in determining the distribution and abundance of species, yet ecologists have historically overlooked its importance. Models of habitat selection are briefly reviewed. A new conceptual and analytical model is presented that explains how dispersing organisms find and settle at a given location based upon habitat structural features providing cues for settlement. The model is based on a sequential process of dispersal, settlement, and establishment that can be described by probabilities. The spatial settlement pattern of juvenile individuals determines adult distribution and abundance. Evidence is provided that structural features of the habitat may be more effective cues than are food supply, conspecific density, or the absence of an antagonistic species. This is the habitat-cue hypothesis of species distribution and abundance. The hypothesis is intended to stimulate greater investigation into the role of physical structure and environmental cueing in habitat selection by all types of organism. The hypothesis also predicts that a species distribution in nature is determined by habitat more than any other factor.
Design and Statistical Issues Related to Habitat Analysis
Authors: Veech Joseph A.
Published: February 2021

There are many different design and statistical issues that a researcher should consider when developing the data collection protocol or when interpreting results from a habitat analysis. One of the first considerations is simply the area to include in the study. This depends on the behavior (particularly mobility) of the focal species and logistical constraints. The amount of area also relates to the number of survey locations (plots, transects, or other) and their spatial placement. Survey data often include many instances of a species absent from a spatial sampling unit. These could be true absences or might represent very low species detection probability. There are different statistical techniques for estimating detection probability as well as analyzing data with a substantial proportion of zero-abundance values. The spatial dispersion of the species within the overall study area or region is never random. Even apart from the effect of habitat, individuals are often aggregated due to various environmental factors or species traits. This can affect count data collected from survey plots. Related to spatial dispersion, the overall background density of the species within the study area can introduce particular challenges in identifying meaningful habitat associations. Statistical issues such as normality, multicollinearity, spatial and temporal autocorrelation may be relatively common and need to be addressed prior to an analysis. None of these design and statistical issues presents insurmountable challenges to a habitat analysis.
Under the Empire
Authors: Faust Avraham
Published: February 2021

Chapter 4 (‘Under the Empire: Settlement and Demography in the Southwestern Margins of the Assyrian Empire in the Seventh Century bce’) describes the settlement and demography in the period of Assyrian control. Comparing the detailed information available from the region with that provided in Chapter 2 allows us to estimate what were the consequences of the imperial takeover. The evidence shows that the provinces in the north were mostly devastated, whereas the client kingdoms prospered and, moreover, for the first time in history the south flourished more than the north. The dramatic decline in the north is also exemplified by the large number of place names that were forgotten following the Assyrian conquests. The chapter ends with an appendix on the demographic significance of deportations.
A Province Too Far?
Authors: Faust Avraham
Published: February 2021

The final chapter (‘A Province Too Far? The Assyrian Empire, Its Southwestern Margins, and the Dynamics of Imperial Expansion, Conquest, and Rule’) briefly reviews how imperial rule in the southwest unfolded and what the consequences of the conquests and the establishment of provinces in large parts of the area were, as well as the processes that took place during the century of Assyrian rule. The chapter reviews the main conclusions of the book concerning the imperial activity in the southwest, and the considerations that guided Assyrian policies in general, and discusses the implications of this research on the study of imperial strategies at large. Based on the differences in the ways the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Persian empires treated their remote provinces, the last part of the chapter discusses the historical development of empires, and the ‘Achaemenid revolution’, which transformed the imperial economy and the way provinces were perceived, and subsequently broke the limitations on the size of empires posed by earlier imperial mindsets.
Behavioural and emotional aspects of Huntington’s disease
Authors: Quarrell Oliver
Published: February 2021

This chapter focuses on the behavioural and emotional aspects together with problems relating to thinking (cognitive defects). In many ways, these problems are often more difficult to manage for the families than the physical problems described in the previous chapter. Some of the issues discussed include: lack of perception of the needs of others; depression, apathy, and anxiety; difficulty planning ahead and changing plans in the light of new information; outbursts of temper; preoccupations or perseveration. There is a discussion of how a carer may have to change or adapt in order to avoid some of these problems. Some of the drugs used to help with the behavioural problems are the same as the ones used to treat the physical problems.
Genetic counselling: a new diagnosis in the family
Authors: Quarrell Oliver
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes the process of genetic counselling in general but with an emphasis on Huntington’s disease. The chapter discusses issues for a new diagnosis in the family and describes the challenges of telling children that they are at risk. Medical doctors often lead genetic counselling teams as they are specially trained to give information about genetic disorders and explain the implications of genetic tests. The doctor or counsellor has to understand your particular circumstances and support you in a way that allows you to make your own decisions. A diagnosis of HD has implications for you and all your close relatives.
Changes in the brain
Authors: Quarrell Oliver
Published: February 2021

This chapter explains the change which can be seen in the structure of the brain of someone with Huntington’s disease (HD). There is a recognized pattern of damage which occurs. Several areas of the brain are affected but the brunt of the damage occurs in the basal ganglia especially the caudate and putamen nuclei, these are sometimes called the corpus striatum. There are complex connections between the areas of the brain: in the case of HD the direct and indirect pathways are important for understanding some of the physical features and why drugs which block the dopamine 2 receptors are used to treat chorea.
Treatment of Huntington’s disease
Authors: Quarrell Oliver
Published: February 2021

Treatment of Huntington’s disease (HD) is currently symptomatic and supportive. This is sometimes expressed as saying that there is no treatment to alter the natural history of the condition. There is no specific drug treatment for HD but drugs which are commonly used are dopamine blockers or selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Sometimes mood stabilizers are used. Non drug treatments are also very valuable and should not be overlooked. As important as the drug treatment is the input from other support services such as social services, physiotherapists, and speech therapists. This is not an exhaustive list.
Contradictory Christology
Authors: Beall Jc
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents the book’s principal thesis in a concise, big-picture way.
Establishing a New Currency and Central Bank in Fragile States
Authors: Coats Warren
Published: February 2021

This chapter presents the author’s personal experiences in providing technical assistance to central banks in the areas of central bank and banking laws (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, and Kosovo); central bank organizational structure (Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, Kazakhstan, and West Bank and Gaza); designing and introducing new currencies (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Republika Srpska, Slovenia, West Bank and Gaza, and Zimbabwe); non-cash payment systems; and central bank policy instruments to promote and function in private sector money markets (Afghanistan and South Sudan).
Exiting Fragility
Authors: Gelbard Enrique , Albertin Giorgia , Engstrom Lars , Gijon Jose , Mira Clara
Published: February 2021

Finding a path out of fragility is a complex and lengthy progress. This chapter examines the experience of five sub-Saharan African countries who are at different stages in the resilience- building process—Rwanda, Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, and the Central African Republic. It concludes that building resilience is the outcome of a virtuous circle of good policies and political and social inclusion that foster economic stability and growth, improve security, and enable the state to deliver basic services. For this to happen, a leadership capable of implementing a strategy with enough internal consensus and a mechanism to mobilize support is necessary. In addition, coordination among stakeholders on early and well-tailored financial and technical support and long-term engagement is key in supporting fragile countries. However, an uneven evolution of the above factors including weak capacity and governance easily lead to reversals and continued fragility.
Ecological Interactions Influencing the Emergence, Abundance, and Human Exposure to Tick-Borne Pathogens
Authors: Diuk-Wasser Maria A. , Fernandez Maria del Pilar , Davis Stephen
Published: February 2021

Tick-borne pathogens pose the greatest vector-borne disease burden in temperate areas of Europe and North America. We synthesize key aspects of tick life history that enable ticks to persist, spread and impact human health, including a two-year life cycle, multiple transmission pathways and dependence on hosts for tick feeding, movement and pathogen transmission. We discuss modeling advances that incorporate these traits in the context of climate-driven variation in tick feeding phenology. For established pathogens, such as the Lyme disease agent in the United States, we disentangle the linkages between land use change, habitat fragmentation and host diversity influencing human risk of infection along an urbanization gradient. We propose a coupled natural-human system framework for tick-borne pathogens that accounts for nonlinear effects and feedbacks between the enzootic cycle and human spillover. A deeper understanding of the eco-bio-social determinants of these diseases is required to develop more effective public health interventions.
Incorporating Vector Ecology and Life History into Disease Transmission Models: Insights from Tsetse (Glossina spp.)
Authors: English Sinead , Barreaux Antoine M.G. , Bonsall Michael B. , Hargrove John W. , Keeling Matt J. , Rock Kat S. , Vale Glyn A.
Published: February 2021

Accurate models are crucial for predicting the spread of vector-borne diseases, and for developing appropriate control policies. Simple models often ignore finer details of vector biology, commonly due to lack of pertinent field data. However, for tsetse (Glossina spp), vectors of the parasites causing debilitating human and livestock trypanosomiasis in Africa, extensive field and laboratory data facilitate improved models and predictions of vector control outcomes. We review studies on the effects of environmental temperature, and fly age and sex, on survival and reproduction in tsetse, savannah species particularly–emphasizing the extreme maternal investment and sensitivity of early life stages to high temperatures. We consider implications of these results for predictive models of tsetse populations, and of the transmission and control of African trypanosomiasis. We discuss how further research on vectors, and improved models of vector populations and disease dynamics, can lead to improved predictions of vector abundance and disease spread.
On the Fraught Internationalism of Intellectuals
Authors: Feichtinger Johannes
Published: February 2021

This chapter investigates the idea and practice of intellectual cooperation as a tool of international governance: an innovation of the League’s International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC). It shows how Austria’s involvement decisively shaped both the ICIC’s agenda and the future European intellectual order. From the mid-1920s onwards, cooperation included the newly emerging area of cultural heritage and its institutions, such as libraries, archives, and museums, all of which had a rich imperial tradition in Vienna. The chapter also elaborates how interwar intellectual cooperation subsequently informed the strategy that UNESCO, ICIC’s successor organization, would adopt after 1945. This chapter provides a relational history of the development of international intellectual cooperation between Austria and the League of Nations, and aims to illuminate the opportunities, expectations, and realities of international intellectual cooperation from a regional, actor- and institution-oriented perspective. It reconstructs the ‘international’ of intellectual cooperation in the making.
An Epilogue to the Making and Unmaking of Central Europe and Global Order
Authors: Clavin Patricia
Published: February 2021

This epilogue uses the key themes of the book as a means to sketch out three directions for future research. The first explores the relationship between international orders embodied in international institutions and global currents. The second theme stresses the League’s emergent interest in environmental questions, and recovers the importance of geography in geopolitics, a term usually taken to mean a crude form of power politics. It looks, in particular, at the internationalization of river governance in Central Europe. The epilogue concludes by assessing the implications of Covid-19 for historians writing on the League and Central Europe, and global orders past and future.
Actors and Authority in the International Tax Ecosystem
Authors: Laage-Thomsen Jakob , Seabrooke Leonard
Published: February 2021

This chapter provides an interdisciplinary framework for understanding changes in the international tax ecosystem. The chapter describes three broad disciplinary approaches to taxation grouped according to assumptions of how actors operate and project authority. On this basis, the international tax ecosystem framework consists of four components, with associated actors and forms of authority: jurisdictions, political mandates, markets, and normative environments. The framework emphasizes a sensitivity to different kinds of actorhood, and how changes are driven by actors’ claims to different forms of authority. After outlining the history of the international tax ecosystem, the framework is applied to present the most important changes to the tax ecology in the last decade. We argue that the evolution in the ecosystem is characterized by persistent legal indeterminacy and political complexity. The scholarly concern, then, is being open to different forms of actorhood and authority while untangling evolution within the international tax ecosystem.
Sophisticated Financial Engineering and Tax Arbitrage
Authors: Palan Ronen , Nesvetailova Anastasia , Petersen with Hannah , Phillips Richard
Published: February 2021

This chapter delves into the inner sanctum of corporate organization in order to find evidence of rise or decline in the use of techniques of tax arbitrage by the corporate sector within the EU region. We follow then with an analysis of the use of sophisticated financial instruments in tax mitigation techniques in the EU to assess the impact of finance-oriented tax mitigation techniques. Our conclusion is not positive. It appears to us that in comparison with the US (and possibly China), the European fiscal regime failed to address a core political issue. These political conditions encourage the use of those diverging rules and regulations one against the other and affect jurisdictional arbitrage with the overall aim of tax mitigation. Europe is emerging as the playground for international corporations’ tax arbitrage and financial techniques of tax mitigation.
Uber Global Wealth Chains
Authors: Wigan Duncan
Published: February 2021

Information asymmetries between regulators, suppliers, and clients in Global Wealth Chains (GWCs) are animated by conceptual uncertainty and legal indeterminacy. This chapter explores the impact of this uncertainty and indeterminacy in the digital economy where a concept-regulation-corporate form (C-R-C) gap obstructs tax traction. Firms such as Amazon, Airbnb, Facebook, Google, and Uber host services on digital platforms enabling consumers and businesses to connect and exchange. The chapter examines the C-R-C gap as the platform business model intersects with urban transport to impact fiscal sustainability. The immediate fiscal impact arises from a growth strategy that systematically generates tax assets, a mode of service delivery that circumvents the sales tax and an employment relation that removes social security obligations for the platform based multinational company.
Policy Reform Effects in the Tax Ecosystem
Authors: Gerbrands Peter , Unger Brigitte
Published: February 2021

International tax policy reforms such as Country-by-Country Reporting and Automatic Exchange of Information aim to increase tax compliance and revenues. Using a tax ecosystems perspective, this chapterapplies an agent-based simulation to assess the effects of these reforms. We demonstrate for EU Member States and selected European countries that reforms can be counteracted by tax competition and tax spillover effects which reduce their effectiveness. The model estimates European corporate tax revenue losses from tax avoidance and evasion of €104.9 billion in 2019. Without further reforms they would increase to €135.8 billion in 2029. A complete implementation of both Country-by-Country Reporting and Automatic Exchange of Information would help to decrease the total CIT gap by 16.4 per cent to €113.5 billion in the year 2029 The model explains why the seemingly small effect of CbCR is not so small and why the effect of AEoI may not be as promising as it seems.
Conclusion: Memory in the Balance
Authors: Collings Justin
Published: February 2021

This conclusion takes stock of the preceding chapters. It asks whether courts should invoke the memory of historical evil and, if so, how. It summarizes the virtues, defects, and dangers of the parenthetical and redemptive modes of memory. The redemptive mode has the virtue of taking the evil past seriously and intervening aggressively to redress its legacies. But it runs the risk of underwriting judicial activism, undermining the rule of law, promoting a sense of exceptionalism, and attaining a status of permanent exception. The parenthetical mode, by contrast, has the virtue forging ties to a deeper past and promoting a sense of normalcy. But, when applied too early and too often, it fails to take the evil past seriously and cure its lingering influence. The chapter ultimately argues that a hybrid redemptive-parenthetical approach, in which the redemptive mode takes temporal and substantive precedence, is the most desirable.
Italy
Authors: de Lisle Christopher
Published: February 2021

The nature of the source material means that our understanding of Agathokles’ activities in Italy will always be patchy. This chapter reconstructs the course of events in the region during his reign as far as is possible. Agathokles’ activities in this region are best understood in the context of earlier Syracusan interventions in Italy. Like them, he entered the region as a result of the ideology of Sicilian tyranny, the absence of a clear border at the Straits of Messana, the pull of internal Italian conflicts, and the desire to have a forward defence against invasion from mainland Greece. The goal was not control of territory per se but the control of movement through that territory.
Did You Say ‘Theories of Choice’?
Authors: Sibony Anne-Lise
Published: February 2021

This chapter takes up two difficult questions: ‘does the law contain one or more theories of choice?’ and, if it does, ‘is there a meta-theory to tell us which theory of choice to use in which cases?’ Even if one retains a loose definition of what counts as a ‘theory of choice’, there are reasons to be sceptical about the enterprise of mapping out theories of choice underpinning the law. This is because the supply of such theories is both abundant and incomplete while the demand is generally weak. Consumer protection, which purports to protect ‘consumer choice’, would seem to be a designated area of law to look for theories of (consumer) choice. However, an enquiry into legislative work on consumer protection reveals paradoxical efforts to confirm the theory that consumers do well with information rather than investigate alternative theories. It also appears that consumer law embeds several different conflicting theories of consumer choice without any sign of a meta-theory indicating which theory applies to which cases. In addition, where there is a theory of consumer harm justifying legislative intervention, it seems to matter little that we do not have a theory for how consumer choice is distorted. In short, the legislative appetite for theories of choice seems limited. Legal scholarship offers a different picture. A space has emerged in which to discuss theories of choice within legal analysis, which is still in the process of being shaped. Tentatively, it is suggested that the legal literature offers a contrast between deep and narrow discussions of theories of choice, and wide and shallow ones.
Collective Intelligence
Authors: Engert Andreas
Published: February 2021

The chapter provides an introduction to the social science of ‘collective intelligence’, the aggregation of individual judgments for purposes of collective decision making. It starts from the basic logic of the Condorcet jury theorem and summarises the main determinants of the accuracy of collective cognition. The recent research has focused on developing and refining formal aggregation methods beyond majority voting. The chapter presents the main findings on the two general approaches, surveying and prediction markets. It then contrasts these techniques with informal deliberation as a basic and prevalent aggregation mechanism. One conclusion is that while deliberation is prone to herding and can distort collective judgment, it is also more versatile and robust than formal mechanisms.
The Puzzle of Predictability
Authors: Myrvold Wayne C.
Published: February 2021

This chapter begins with a puzzle: how is it that reliable prediction is ever possible, in physics? The reason that this is puzzling is that, even if the systems we are making predictions about are governed by deterministic laws that are known to us, the information available to us is a minuscule fraction of what might in principle be required to make a prediction. The answer to the puzzle lies in the phenomenon of statistical regularity, first identified in the social sciences. In a sufficiently large population, reliable predictions can be made about the total number of events that, taken individually, are unpredictable. Aggregate order arises out of individual disorder. This means that, as James Clerk Maxwell perceived already in the nineteenth century, all observed regularities are statistical regularities. To understand these requires the use of probabilistic concepts. This means that probabilistic reasoning is required even in our most certain predictions. Probability permeates physics, and we are going to have to make sense of it.
Two Senses of “Probability”
Authors: Myrvold Wayne C.
Published: February 2021

The word “probability” has long been used in (at least) two distinct senses. One sense has to do with a rational agent’s degree of belief, commonly called credence in the philosophical literature. The other sort of probability is thought to be characteristic of a physical system, such as a roulette wheel; these are “in the world” rather than in our heads. This concept is called chance. It would be a mistake to think of these as rivals for the title of the single correct interpretation of probability. Rather, they are both useful concepts, with different roles to play. This chapter is an introduction to these concepts and their relations. It includes a discussion of the proper formulation and justification of a principle that links the two concepts, the Principal Principle. It is argued that neither of these concepts is dispensable. This raises the question of whether there is a notion of probability that can play the role of objective chance and is compatible with deterministic laws of physics.
What Could a “Natural Measure” Be?
Authors: Myrvold Wayne C.
Published: February 2021

The invocation of probabilistic considerations in physics often involves, implicitly or explicitly, some notion of relative sizes, or measures, of sets of possibilities. In equilibrium statistical mechanics, certain standard measures are introduced explicitly. It is often said that these measures are “natural,” in some sense. This chapter explores what that could mean. It does so by means of a toy example, a fictitious machine that I call the parabola gadget. The dynamics of the parabola gadget pick out a measure on the space of states of the gadget that other measures converge towards. In this sense, that measure is a natural one to use for systems that have been evolving freely long enough for the requisite washing-out of disagreements among input distributions to have taken place. We have good reason to think that the standard measures evoked in equilibrium statistical mechanics are of this sort One upshot of this is that this notion of standard measure is of no use for making judgments about probability or improbability of conditions in the early universe.
Conclusions
Authors: Kettemann Matthias C.
Published: February 2021

The concluding chapter sums up the main themes of the book: this study has established the emergence of a normative order of the internet. This order integrates norms that are materially and normatively connected to the use and development of the internet at three different levels (regional, national, and international), of two types (privately and publicly authored), and of different character (from ius cogens to technical standards). The consideration of the initial hypotheses, as addressed in the preceding chapters, is summarized and brought together here, demonstrating the logical progression and overall coherence of the study’s discussion, arguments, and final conclusions.
Growth and returns across countries
Authors: Rangvid Jesper
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines the relation between long-run economic growth and returns across countries. Have countries that have experienced high GDP growth historically also experienced high stock returns? The chapter contains three main messages. First, there is no clear tendency that countries that have grown fast in the past are also countries that have delivered high stock returns in the past. Second, as in the US, stock prices have in many countries followed economic activity in the long run. Third, real interest rates relate to economic growth across countries in the long run.Another conclusion emerging from this chapter is that long-run stock returns exceed long-run rates of economic growth and long-run risk-free rates by a wide margin.
The stock market over the business cycle
Authors: Rangvid Jesper
Published: February 2021

This chapter describes how the stock market relates to the business cycle. Stocks do badly during recessions and excellently during expansions. Earnings of firms drop during recessions. Stock prices drop as well, whereas dividends do not. This means that the stock-price dividend multiple contracts during recessions. If stock prices drop by more than dividends, it must be because investors have increased their expectations of future discount rates and/or lowered their expectations to future dividend/earnings growth. The chapter discusses the academic research on this issue. The chapter also shows that bonds do better than stocks during recessions. This has not least to do with the fact that central banks lower the monetary policy rate during recessions.Lower interest rates lead to higher bond prices, causing bonds to perform well during recessions.
Monetary policy, interest rates and stock markets
Authors: Rangvid Jesper
Published: February 2021

This chapter examines how monetary policy, in itself and through its dependence on the business cycle, affects prices on financial assets. The chapter shows that changes in the monetary policy rate affect yields on government bonds with longer maturity as well as corporate bonds. This typically dampens economic activity. Changes in monetary policy typically also have a negative impact on the stock market. The chapter discusses whether monetary policy in itself affects the stock market or whether it works via its effect on the business cycle. It turns out that economic activity in itself, and monetary policy in itself, both affect the stock market. It is important to be aware of both channels, i.e. how economic activity affects the stock market and how monetary policy affects the stock market.
The 2008–2009 financial crisis and its aftermath
Authors: Rangvid Jesper
Published: February 2021

This chapter analyses the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The purpose is to further the understanding of the behavior of business cycles by moving from insights based on many years of data to a specific example of a business cycle: The 2008–2009 financial crisis and the years surrounding it. This specific example is, on top of it, a fascinating one. The chapter explains the situation prevailing before the crisis (the expansion), then moves on to the crisis itself (the contraction), and finally its aftermath.
Value, size, sector, and momentum stocks
Authors: Rangvid Jesper
Published: February 2021

This chapter studies the characteristics of the most important and well-known factors. Factor portfolios are portfolios of stocks based on certain characteristics, such as the size of the company, the price of the stock in relation to, e.g., the earnings of the company, the sector within which the firm operates, etc.Factors that perform better than the overall stock market tend to suffer more during recessions. To compensate investors for their underperformance during recessions, returns on these factors during expansions are so high that average stock returns over the full business cycle end out being high. Conversely, those factors that provide lower average returns than the overall stock market do so because they perform relatively better during recessions. The business cycle again plays an important role for understanding stock-market patterns.
The Chinese Armed Forces and the Challenges of Globalization
Authors: Ghiselli Andrea
Published: February 2021

How did the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) react to the securitization act initiated by the civilian leadership? This chapter shows that the PLA was relatively hesitant to accept a more inclusive understanding of security beyond traditional territorial defense, and therefore of a broader role for itself in China’s peacetime foreign policy. The PLA’s approach to non-traditional missions was similar to that of other countries’ armed forces, as they did not look favorably on so-called interventionist uses of force. It was in the aftermath of the 2011 Libyan crisis that the position of the PLA changed in an unequivocal way and the soldiers’ attitude towards the expansion of their peacetime portfolio became very similar to that of the civilians. While the soldiers’ natural desire to contribute to the security of the people played an important role in this process, it is important to emphasize how crucial the establishment of a causal link between non-traditional security threats and inter-state conflict was in the debate within the PLA.
Plato’s “Two Worlds” Epistemology
Authors: Moss Jessica
Published: February 2021

How should we set about understanding epistêmê and doxa? Plato in fact offers us explicit instructions, in the famous “powers” argument of Republic V: he seems to say that each is to be defined as the cognition of a special kind of object. But there is a difficulty: over the past half-century, this interpretation—the “Two Worlds” or “Distinct Objects” reading—has been so widely questioned as to now be declared “outrageous.” The aim of this chapter is to shift the burden of proof onto those who reject that reading. I explain the debate, mount textual evidence and, through a survey of Plato scholarship over the past 2400 years, and a brief discussion of Distinct Objects epistemologies in other thinkers, argue that resistance to the Distinct Objects reading is motivated largely by the assumption that Plato must be talking about knowledge and belief as we understand them now.
Plato’s Objects-Based Epistemology
Authors: Moss Jessica
Published: February 2021

When we read Plato’s epistemology—both the Republic’s powers argument and other texts—without in any way trying to avoid a Distinct Objects interpretation, we find ample evidence not only for that interpretation, but also for a stronger one. First, cognitive powers and their accomplishments are individuated by their objects. Second, cognitive powers and their accomplishments are defined by their objects: it is the objects that make them what they are (section 2). Finally, cognitive accomplishments—understood as occurrent cognitions—inherit their character from their objects: cognition works on the principle Aristotle calls “like-by-like.” Thus Plato’s epistemology is thoroughly objects-based. Epistêmê is, in essence, the kind of thing one can have only in relation to a special kind of object; doxa is, in its essence, the kind of thing one can have only in relation to a different special kind of object