bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Lectures on the holographic duality of gauge fields and strings
Authors: Semenoff Gordon W.
Published: September 2019

This chapter gives a pedagogical review of the holographic duality between string theory and quantum field theory. The main focus is on the duality of maximally supersymmetric Yang–Mills gauge theory in four dimensions with string theory in asymptotically anti-de Sitter backgrounds. This duality is motivated using the large N expansion in the rank of the gauge group, as well as the D-brane solution for the AdS string theory background. The computation of Wilson loops on both sides of the duality is given as an example.
Integrability in sigma-models
Authors: Zarembo K.
Published: September 2019

The following topics are covered in this chapter: (1) Homogeneous spaces, (2) Classical integrability of sigma-models in two dimensions, (3) Topological terms, (4) Background-field method and beta-function, (5) S-matrix bootstrap in the O(N) model, (6) Supersymmetric coset models and strings on AdS(d) x X.
Applications of integrable models in condensed matter and cold atom physics
Authors: Essler Fabian H.L.
Published: September 2019

This chapter starts with a discussion of approximate physical realizations of 1+1-dimensional integrable models in solids and systems of ultra-cold trapped atoms. It then turns to local properties of energy eigenstates away from the edges of the spectrum. In generic models these states are thermal, while in integrable models non-thermal states with finite entropy densities coexist with thermal states. It discusses how to construct these atypical states by means of the Bethe Ansatz in the Heisenberg model. Finally, it outlines the crucial role these states play in describing the stationary states reached at late times after quantum quenches to integrable theories.
Introduction to integrability and one-point functions in N=4 supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory and its defect cousin
Authors: de Leeuw Marius , Ipsen Asger C. , Kristjansen Charlotte , Wilhelm Matthias
Published: September 2019

This chapter gives a basic introduction to N 7equals; 4 SYM theory and the integrability of its planar spectral problem as seen from the perspective of a recent development, namely the AdS/dCFT correspondence and the application of integrability to the study of one-point functions in a defect CFT version of the theory.
Launch
Authors: Woollings Tim
Published: September 2019

This introduction sets the scene for the book, motivating the main storyline. It also introduces a few general concepts, such as the vertical structure of the atmosphere and the system of observations which are used to provide starting conditions for weather forecasts. Some aspects of Caribbean climate are discussed, and the chapter gives a basic description of the jet stream.
Split
Authors: Woollings Tim
Published: September 2019

Over the North Atlantic the eddy-driven jet stream finally separates from the subtropical jet, forming a split jet structure. Free from the steady influence of the Hadley cell, the northern jet is highly variable and its shifts and meanders affect weather and climate patterns around much of the hemisphere. This chapter introduces the North Atlantic Oscillation, the dominant pattern of jet variability, giving an overview of its history and impacts.
Exit
Authors: Woollings Tim
Published: September 2019

We have reached the end of the jet stream spiral and the jet exit over Europe. This chapter describes some of the jet-related phenomena here, such as occasional extreme cyclones. The prevailing westerly winds driven by the jet stream help to support Europe’s thriving wind power industry. Blocking events are discussed, which bring disruptive easterly winds and are often linked to heatwaves in summer but also cold snaps in winter.
Communal Contributions and Racial Hierarchies
Authors: Hassett Dónal
Published: September 2019

This chapter analyses the place of the Great War in the rhetoric of the extreme-right movements that played a central role in the politics of interwar Algeria. It argues that the visions of the Great War that they promoted reflected an intrinsically racial understanding of Algeria’s wartime contribution. It examines the rhetoric these organizations developed around the participation of the Jewish, Muslim, and European communities, considering how these organisations’ evocation of the war embodied their wider aspirations for the reshaping of colonial society in line with imagined racial hierarchies. It also explores how those who resisted these exclusionary visions of Algeria’s past, present, and future mobilized their own counter-narratives of the colony’s contribution to the First World War in the struggle against the extreme right. In doing so, the chapter demonstrates both the potential positives and the potential pitfalls for political movements who mobilized the memory of the Great War in Algeria.
Scribal Performance in the Ptolemaic Wild Papyri of the Homeric Epics
Authors: Ready Jonathan L.
Published: September 2019

This chapter turns to work on performance, especially in linguistic anthropology and folkloristics, in order to flesh out what it meant for the scribe behind the text of a Ptolemaic wild papyrus of the Homeric epics to perform as he copied. Providing close readings of a number of the wild papyri, the chapter first applies the model of entextualization to the papyri and then applies work on how oral performers show their competence by aiming for a maximalist presentation and one that evinces “affecting power.” It then touches on three other dimensions of the scribe’s performance—the scribe as one who perpetuates a tradition, the phenomenon of traditionalization, and the negotiation of an intertextual gap—and considers how the production of a bookroll becomes a performance. Next, it argues that understanding the scribe as a performer can help scholars of scribal activity out of four difficult spots into which they tend to work themselves. The chapter concludes by juxtaposing the model of scribal performance with the alternative proposals surveyed in Chapter 4 for what is going on with these papyri.
The fundamentals of competitive interactions
Authors: Mittelbach Gary G. , McGill Brian J.
Published: September 2019

Interspecific competition is a major factor influencing the structure of communities. This chapter examines the principles of interspecific completion, defined as a reduction in the population growth rate of one species due to presence of one (or more) other species due to their shared use of limiting resources or active interference. The chapter begins with a presentation of the classic Lotka–Volterra competition model, but quickly moves on to more recent consumer–resource competition models. Conditions leading to competitive exclusion and species coexistence are discussed, as are empirical tests of the predictions of resource competition theory. In general, coexistence requires that each species has a greater negative effect on its own population growth rate than on the population growth rate of another species. Shared predation also can result in species having negative effects on each other’s population growth rate, a condition known as “apparent competition”.
Species in variable environments
Authors: Mittelbach Gary G. , McGill Brian J.
Published: September 2019

Species and communities may exist in a dynamic state of change in response to environmental variation and disturbance. This chapter explores the consequences of variable environments and disturbance to species interactions and community structure. In particular, it examines how disturbance can result in the succession of ecological communities, how disturbance may promote (or hinder) species coexistence, how a varying environment can promote species coexistence through a mechanism called the “storage effect”, and how communities may shift between alternative states in response to environmental change. The latter topic is particularly relevant to the management of biotic resources and the restoration of degraded ecosystems, as systems may respond to environmental change abruptly at a “tipping point”, leading to alternative community states that can be difficult to reverse.
The Death of Cardinal Allen and the Wisbech Stirs
Authors: Lake Peter , Questier Michael
Published: September 2019

The passing in 1594 of William Allen, the charismatic leader and moving spirit behind the new English seminaries on the Continent, allowed latent tensions well and truly out into the open. These were publicly very visible in places where Catholics were concentrated, notably in the prison at Wisbech in East Anglia. News about the resulting ruderies was spread far and wide.
After Wisbech
Authors: Lake Peter , Questier Michael
Published: September 2019

The disorders described in Chapter 1 provided much of the impetus for the imposition of a reform programme on the English Catholic community. There was a consensus that some mechanism was needed to produce order and discipline in a region with the makings of an organized Church but no formal structures for governing it. An attempt by clergy who opposed the Society of Jesus and the positions and principles that it was taken to endorse and represent tried to set up self-regulating clerical associations in England. This proposal was overtaken by further disharmony, notably in the flagship college in Rome.
Temporal and Spiritual, Pope and Prince, the Right Way Up
Authors: Lake Peter , Questier Michael
Published: September 2019

These identifications of the community of interest between the ill-intentioned (that is to say, Jesuits and puritans) in turn provided a platform for cases to be made about the right relationship between political and spiritual authority and, in particular, for an interrogation of what was the proper place in western Christendom of the pope and whatever authority it was that he possessed. The appellants’ claims on this score provoked, not unpredictably, Robert Parsons into an equal-and-opposite defence of papal authority. Here, however, appellant writers were also trying to distance themselves from the more strident analyses of this topic which had been associated, for example, with William Allen and which, with the collapse of the French Holy League and the approach, as seemed likely, of some sort of peace in northern Europe, and the very likely accession of James VI in England, were arguably inappropriate. This also raised the issue of how Catholicism might eventually be restored in England again.
Episcopacy and the Government of the Church
Authors: Lake Peter , Questier Michael
Published: September 2019

Central to the debates between Catholics during the archpriest business, and indeed long after, was the question of episcopacy and, more precisely, of how far episcopal regulation was needed in order to guarantee the integrity of the Catholic community in England and whether the pope was in any sense obliged to appoint a proper episcopal hierarchy and not rely upon the allegedly novel device of the archpresbyterate. Appellant arguments here linked up easily, of course, with the ongoing debates about presbyterianism in the national Church.
Epilogue
Authors: Lake Peter , Questier Michael
Published: September 2019

The appellant programme was first and foremost a series of petitions presented to the Roman curia; but it was also a major public appeal for a radical change in the way that the English State and Church were constituted. In that respect, the most important member of the public audience for it was James VI, who followed the course of the Archpriest Controversy and was aware of what it represented. When he took Elizabeth’s crown in 1603 he was confronted with waves of further Catholic (as well, of course, as puritan) agitation, and among the Catholic petitioners were increasingly disappointed appellants. Their hopes were ended, at least temporarily, with the exposure of the so-called Bye and Main plots.
Cumberland
Authors: Crisp Roger
Published: September 2019

This chapter discusses the views on self-interest and morality of Richard Cumberland (1631–1718). Cumberland’s view that it is a natural necessity that human beings act always to advance their own self-interest (this view being a form of psychological egoism) is explained, along with his claim that ultimate moral motivation is possible, despite the fact that agents can never do what they believe will be worse for them overall. His utilitarian natural law ethics is described. His arguments for utilitarianism—based on preservation, sanctions, human make-up, agreement, and maximization—are critically interpreted.
Clarke
Authors: Crisp Roger
Published: September 2019

This chapter discusses the views on self-interest and morality of Samuel Clarke (1675–1729), the most important Newtonian philosopher of his day. Clarke’s views on ‘fittingness’ are explained, along with his idea that there are three ‘great branches’ of ethics: piety, righteousness, and sobriety. His broad welfarism in ethics is described, along with his commitment to the existence of certain absolute evils. His view of the afterlife is discussed, along with his use of the notion to resolve tensions between the elements in his ethical theory as well as between self-interest and morality. A problem for his view on morality and the afterlife is raised.
Reid
Authors: Crisp Roger
Published: September 2019

This chapter discusses the views on self-interest and morality of the Scottish ‘common-sense’ philosopher Thomas Reid (1710–96). The influence of Joseph Butler on Reid’s conception of human nature is explained, and the similarities and differences between their positions elucidated. Reid’s arguments against rational egoism are discussed. His view that virtue is a component of well-being is outlined, and it is suggested that his position on the pleasures of virtue may be said to be somewhat exaggerated. Reid’s appeal to the afterlife to guarantee complete overlap between self-interest and morality is explained.
Hume
Authors: Crisp Roger
Published: September 2019

This chapter discusses the views on self-interest and morality of the Scottish empiricist philosopher David Hume (1711–76). The view that Hume’s ethics is purely anthropological or descriptive is criticized. Hume’s deontological ethics of action is compared with his utilitarian ethics of motive. It is shown that his utilitarianism is a view about rather than within morality: morality itself is a device for the promotion of happiness, so that non-utilitarian or deontological moral views may be conceptually confused. Hume’s conception of impartiality is explained, and finally his dualism of the practical reason, which allows for the rationality of self-sacrifice as well as that of immorality, depending on circumstances.
Smith
Authors: Crisp Roger
Published: September 2019

This chapter discusses the views on self-interest and morality of the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Adam Smith (1723–90). Smith’s theory of sympathy is explained. The notion of the impartial spectator is discussed, in connection with both propriety and utility, and it is shown how the view of the spectator itself incorporates certain aspects of the human point of view. Smith is claimed to be a deontologist, at least concerning human ethics. His version of the dualism of practical reason is outlined, and the difficulties of combining a utilitarian conception of God with the notion of divine retribution are noted.
Price
Authors: Crisp Roger
Published: September 2019

This chapter discusses the views on self-interest and morality of the Welsh dissenting minister, theologian, probability theorist, and philosopher, Richard Price (1723–91). Price’s deontological pluralism is described, and his distinction between practical and abstract virtue elucidated. Price’s volitionalism is compared with the views of Adam Smith. The question of whether Price believes partial virtue sufficient for virtue is discussed. Price’s view of supererogation, and his opposition to rational egoism are explained. Price’s identification of the truth about duty with God is elucidated, along with its implications for any conflict between morality and self-interest.
Introduction
Authors: Corry Richard
Published: September 2019

This introductory chapter sets out the aim of this book: to investigate the metaphysical assumptions that underlie a pattern of ‘reductive explanation’ whereby we attempt to explain or predict the behaviour of a complex system by studying the system’s parts in isolation. It is argued that the success of reductive explanation is evidence for the truth of these metaphysical assumptions, and it is suggested that the ontology assumed by reduction can be put to use to shed light on the metaphysics of powers, causation, causal models, laws, emergence, and even normative ethics. This task is taken up in the remainder of the book.
Putting Things Together
Authors: Corry Richard
Published: September 2019

This chapter brings together the discussions of the previous chapters in order to develop a model of reductive explanation that clarifies the role of causal powers and causal influences, and identifies a number of metaphysical assumptions made by the method of reductive explanation. These assumptions are metaphysical in the sense that they bear on issues of traditional concern to metaphysicians. In so far as the model presented here is an accurate account of how reductive explanation works, the great success of the reductive approach will be evidence for the truth of these presuppositions, and so will give us an empirical handle on various metaphysical questions. The presuppositions unearthed in this chapter will inform the metaphysical picture that is developed in subsequent chapters.
Causation
Authors: Corry Richard
Published: September 2019

This chapter investigates the relation between an ontology of power and influence and the metaphysics of causation. A traditional approach to this task might involve an attempt to provide a conceptual analysis of causation in terms of power and influence, but that is not the approach taken here, for it is argued that there is no single concept of causation. Rather, following Ned Hall, the various concepts of causation are divided into two main camps, causation as production and causation as dependence. In both camps, it is shown, the characteristic features of causation can be generated by the existence of appropriate powers and influences, and questions about whether causation has occurred can be answered, in part, by looking at the arrangement of relevant powers and influences. Thus, it is argued that causation is grounded in structures of causal influence.
Poeta in Vinculis I
Authors: Fludernik Monika
Published: September 2019

Chapter 2 contrasts the writings of Thomas More and John Bunyan. The chapter foregrounds these authors’ strategies of imaginative and psychological coping, considering how their texts reflect the traumatic experience of incarceration in the imaginative re-enactment of their fiction. The chapter introduces a number of prison tropes besides the world as prison/prison  as world metaphor, most prominently in Bunyan the sin as prison trope. A major focus of the chapter concerns the difficult relationship between fact, fiction, and allegory in the work of the two authors and their contemporaries. A final section of the chapter links Bunyan’s poetry to the tradition of late medieval and early modern prison verse.
Prisons as Homes and Homes as Prisons
Authors: Fludernik Monika
Published: September 2019

Chapter 4 discusses the common home as prison/prison as home tropes. It first illustrates the paradox of the happy prison in a discussion of Dickens’s Little Dorrit. Turning to the negative trope of the home as prison, it traces its ramifications in Dombey and Son and Little Dorrit as well as Nathaniel Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables. The uncanny ambivalence of metaphoric imprisonment is then illustrated in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Focusing on domesticity, the chapter next turns to the home as prison topos and its manifestation in the marriage as prison metaphor. Case studies include texts about both male and female marital incarceration: Charles Johnson’s Middle Passage, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Doris Lessing’s ‘To Room Nineteen’ and Fay Weldon’s ‘Weekend’.
The Prison as Cage
Authors: Fludernik Monika
Published: September 2019

Chapter 5 analyses recurrent cage metaphors, discussing how this trope both evokes sympathy in the image of the unhappy bird in the cage and supplies more ambivalent reactions in reference to caged wild beasts. One section of the chapter illustrates the golden cage metaphor on the example of D. H. Lawrence’s novella ‘The Captain’s Doll’. Eugene O’Neill’s Hairy Ape serves to delineate the political and social ramifications of the beast in the cage metaphor. The second half of the chapter looks to the possibility of transcending one’s state of imprisonment. It outlines tropes of transcendence in English poetry from the Renaissance to the Romantic period and uses William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (1794) to mark an important turning point in that history.
Enthralment and Bondage
Authors: Fludernik Monika
Published: September 2019

Chapter 8 introduces the prison amoureuse topos featuring the enslavement of the Petrarchan lover to his innamorata. The chapter opens with a reading of Mary Cholmondeley’s Prisoners (1906) as an instance of a juxtaposition of literal and metaphorical imprisonment. The following section introduces the medieval prison amoureuse trope (Boethius, Froissart, Diego de San Pedro, Charles d’Orléans, James I), and its Renaissance repercussions in the work of Shakespeare, Spenser, and Lovelace. This leads on to a consideration of masochism and bondage, with Angela Carter’s short story ‘The Bloody Chamber’ as an illustrative example. John Dryden’s play All for Love with its opposition of love and duty as bondage concludes the chapter.
Sustainable Materialism
Authors: Schlosberg David , Craven Luke
Published: September 2019

A growing number of environmental groups focus on more sustainable practices in everyday life, from the development of new food systems, to community solar, to more sustainable fashion. No longer willing to take part in unsustainable practices and institutions, and not satisfied with either purely individualistic and consumer responses or standard political processes and movement tactics, many activists and groups are increasingly focusing on restructuring everyday practices of the circulation of the basic needs of everyday life. This work labels such action sustainable materialism, and examines the political and social motivations of activists and movement groups involved in this growing and expanding practice. The central argument is that these movements are motivated by four key factors: frustration with the lack of accomplishments on broader environmental policies; a desire for environmental and social justice; an active and material resistance to the power of traditional industries; and a form of sustainability that is attentive to the flow of materials through bodies, communities, economies, and environments. In addition to these motivations, these movements demonstrate such material action as political action, in contrast to existing critiques of new materialism as apolitical or post-political. Overall, sustainable materialism is explored as a set of movements with unique qualities, based in collective rather than individual action, a dedication to local and prefigurative politics, and a demand that sustainability be practiced in everyday life—starting with the materials and flows that provide food, power, clothing, and other basic needs.
Environmental and Social Justice in Sustainable Materialist Movements
Authors: Schlosberg David , Craven Luke
Published: September 2019

Many of the movements we examine define themselves, in part and in name, as movements for social and environmental justice. We explore what activists and organizations actually mean by justice. Unlike other movements for environmental justice, equity is rarely an explicit concern. We find three key areas of justice articulated by movement activists: the crucial nature of political and material participation, the importance of responding to power, and, in particular, the necessity to address basic capabilities and everyday needs. All of these are articulated at both individual and community levels, with the functioning of communities, and social attachments to that community, central to conceptions of justice.
Sustainability and the Politics of Materialist Action
Authors: Schlosberg David , Craven Luke
Published: September 2019

Sustainable materialist movements have a very particular, and vital, understanding of the meaning and practice of sustainability. Activists are actively trying to replace a politics of separation with one of immersion and flow, a politics of the domination of nature with one that recognizes human beings as animals in embedded material relationships with ecosystems and the non-human realm. A key focus is the importance of ethically informed material action that embodies such sustainable practice. One core argument is that sustainable materialist action offers a substantive response to the misplaced critiques of the ‘apolitical’ or ‘post-political’ nature of such materialist-focused environmental and social movements.
New Directions and Virtues in Sustainable Materialist Movements
Authors: Schlosberg David , Craven Luke
Published: September 2019

After extensive examination of the specifically political motivations of sustainable materialist movements, this chapter focuses on what is new and unique about these movements, and what differentiates them from past notions of environmentalism and ethical or political consumerism. We discuss three key unique properties or strategies of the movements: that they are explicitly focused on collective action, engage a specific notion of systems-based and material sustainability, and embody a prefigurative politics or practice that is based in everyday material needs. Sustainable materialist movements also illustrate a set of key values or virtues, including humility, critical pluralism, and a political boldness that pushes beyond classic and limited notions of political action.
Lenin
Authors: Bergman Jay
Published: September 2019

Chapter 4 focuses on the politics surrounding the emergence in 1903 of the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks as discrete factions in the newly established Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDLP). It pays special attention to Lenin’s ability to finesse attacks—from Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and Plekhanov, among others—that explicitly analogised him to Robespierre, and, more generally, the Bolsheviks to the Jacobins. In response, Lenin turned an ostensible defect into a virtue, proclaiming in 1904 that ‘a Jacobin is a revolutionary Social Democrat’. But because Robespierre and the Jacobins remained for Russian Marxists mere ‘bourgeois’ revolutionaries, their utility was always limited. By the end of the chapter, the reader should be aware of the ambivalence with which the Bolsheviks viewed not only the Jacobin phase of the French Revolution, but also the relationship between the revolution as a whole and the proletarian revolution in Russia that was their ultimate objective.
The Phantom of the Soviet Thermidor
Authors: Bergman Jay
Published: September 2019

Chapter 8 describes the origins of the debate over Thermidor—the phase in the French Revolution following the Jacobin Terror—in the New Economic Policy Lenin initiated in 1921. It also shows the role the concept played in the struggle for power to succeed Lenin. The debate over what its realization in the Soviet Union would entail reflected the very real fear among the Bolsheviks that their revolution might end before the construction of socialism had even begun. To them, Thermidor was virtually a synonym for counter-revolution. For mostly political purposes—but also because their fear of it was real—Stalin and Bukharin, in the mid-1920s, argued that to evoke the danger of a Soviet Thermidor was tantamount to advocating it. Trotsky, who always considered analogies with French revolutions instructive, in the 1920s defined Thermidor as a form of counter-revolution. But since, in his opinion, it had not yet occurred in the Soviet Union, there was reason to believe it could be avoided altogether.
Stalin
Authors: Bergman Jay
Published: September 2019

For Stalin, the Jacobins, while undeniably bourgeois, acted like NKVD agents during the Great Terror of the 1930s, linking treason inside France with the revolution’s reactionary enemies in the rest of the Europe. Chapter 9 also includes discussion of Stalin’s ambivalence towards Napoleon, and the intellectual contortions required of Soviet historians of France to remain in Stalin’s good graces. It also demonstrates how Stalin’s views on the Jacobins were reflected in Soviet culture. Finally, the chapter describes and explains the change in Trotsky’s conception of Thermidor; in 1935 he reversed himself, claiming now that while the Soviet Union was already experiencing it, it was merely a period of reaction that would end once Stalin lost power and Trotsky replaced him.
The Phantom of the Russian Bonaparte
Authors: Bergman Jay
Published: September 2019

Chapter 14 traces the evolution of the concept of Bonapartism. Marx and Engels thought it a remediable ‘wrong turn’ in history’s evolution that happily occurred only under capitalism; Louis Napoleon and Bismarck were its archetypical expressions. Initially, the Bolsheviks did not take issue with this characterization. But by the 1920s the Bolsheviks recognized that Bonapartism could also occur under socialism, and that the dictatorship it entailed would be a military one; the dictator would either be an army general or a civilian totally dependent on the military for his power. This caused the Bolsheviks to consider Napoleon Bonaparte, rather than Louis Napoleon, the prototypical Bonapartist in power. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the role the accusation of Bonapartism played in Khrushchev’s dismissal of Marshal Zhukov as Minister of Defence in 1957.
Status and Intervention in Darfur, Sudan 2004–2008
Authors: Fung Courtney J.
Published: September 2019

Chapter 4 analyzes China’s decision to shift its position on intervention in Sudan over the Darfur crisis. China went from viewing Sudan’s problems as domestic affairs not for the UN Security Council’s purview, to actively supporting intervention. China wrangled and effectively “enforced” consent from Khartoum for a UN Charter Chapter VII peacekeeping mission, and acquiesced to a referral of the Sudan case to the International Criminal Court, which led to an indictment of sitting President Omar al-Bashir. Though this case is popularly understood as being determined by material drivers—like shielding the Sino-Sudanese economic relationship, or addressing the reputational threat of the “Genocide Olympics” to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games—the chapter demonstrates that status is the key variable to explain China’s shifting position. Under mounting pressure from both the great powers (the “P3” of the United States, the United Kingdom, France) and the African Union, in particular, China gravitated to supporting and permitting intervention with a yes vote for the UN-AU Hybrid Peace Operation (UNAMID) and an abstention vote for an International Criminal Court referral in 2005, and again in 2008.
Status and Intervention in Libya, 2011–2012
Authors: Fung Courtney J.
Published: September 2019

Chapter 5 analyzes China’s response to the 2011 Libya crisis. In the space of three weeks, China would vote on two landmark resolutions at the UN Security Council: a yes vote for a unanimous referral of a sitting head of state to the International Criminal Court, and shortly after, an abstention vote permitting sanctions and a “no-fly zone plus” over Libyan territory. China’s votes were largely a surprise—many analyses had predicted that China and Russia would cast tandem vetoes. Status is key to understanding China’s response. China was particularly sensitized to status due to a well-publicized speech by Colonel Gaddafi citing his domestic repression as a parallel to the Tiananmen Square Incident of 1989. Against this status trigger, the great powers (the “P3” of the United States, the United Kingdom, France) came out forcefully for intervention, and representatives of China’s Global South peer group—the African Union, the League of Arab States, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the Gulf Cooperation Council—were among the first to call for a strong response. China was able to reconcile its concerns regarding an International Criminal Court referral of the Libya case as China prioritized status; China was socially isolated from its great powers peers at the UN Security Council and from its Global South peers in regional organizations. When the Global South reference group disagreed about the call for a no-fly zone, China viewed the next most feasible option as an abstention vote, so as to offend no peer.
Introduction
Authors: Fung Courtney J.
Published: September 2019

The introduction outlines the puzzle and research question for the book: what explains China’s response to intervention at the UN Security Council? China is increasingly forthright about the specter of regime change, viewing the UN Security Council as directly or indirectly executing regime change—the forcible or coerced removal of the political leadership of a state by outside actors—via non-consensual intervention. Broad changes in the international system, like the norms of protection of civilians, accountability, and the responsibility to protect are invoked to secure populations under threat of mass abuse by their governments. However, China’s response to UN Security Council intervention in the trinity of post-9/11 cases where heads of state were marked for dispatch by public discourse is varied: China condoned, acquiesced or prevented action. China’s record cannot be robustly explained by existing theory. This book argues that status is an overlooked determinant in understanding China’s varying position regarding intervention at the UN Security Council. Under certain conditions, China’s status peer groups can modify China’s intervention-resistant preferences in these most difficult cases. China’s pursuit of status is partly driven by consequentialist calculation, but it is also inherently social, to conform to an intersubjective standard of good behavior as a member of the peer group guided by a logic of appropriateness. China faces a status dilemma in that China seeks status from two sometimes competing peer groups: the great powers and the Global South.
Internalism to the Rescue?
Authors: Richard Mark
Published: September 2019

If meanings are interestingly like species, meanings are multitudes and what our words mean isn’t up to us. This chapter doesn’t deny that one finds things that can reasonably be labeled ‘meanings’ at the level of the individual, or that these are of theoretical interest. It does deny that internalist theorizing about meaning provides a way to resuscitate the notion of analyticity. It also argues that meanings turn out to be much like diachronic ensembles of mental states related by analogs of descent—i.e. analogous to species. The first half of this chapter discusses a popular response to ‘Two Dogmas’ and demonstrates that this response requires an untenable picture of meaning. The second half takes up an internalist response to Quine due to David Chalmers, who suggests we think of conceptual constancy only in the intrapersonal case, identifying it with constancy of conditional credence. Chalmers’ proposal is worth serious consideration. But even from an internalist perspective, it’s unacceptable.
Bottom-Up or Top-Down?
Authors: Green-Pedersen Christoffer
Published: September 2019

This chapter presents an overview of the literature that deals with the issue content of West European party politics. As argued by de Vries and Marks (2012), there are basically two theoretical approaches to the struggle for the content of party politics. First, a bottom-up approach that sees the issue content of party politics as a reflection of social conflicts. Second, a top-down or strategic approach in which the issue content of party politics reflects the strategic competition among political parties. The presentation of the bottom-up approach focuses on presenting the most recent, prominent examples of such an approach, namely the works by Kriesi et al. (2008, 2012) and Hooghe and Marks (2018). The presentation of the top-down approach is more fragmented as the literature within this approach mainly consists of journal articles in which different elements of this approach have been developed.
The Development of the Party System Agenda in Western Europe
Authors: Green-Pedersen Christoffer
Published: September 2019

This chapter provides an overview of the general patterns that the following chapters on particular issues aim to explain. The development after 1980 should be seen in a more long-term perspective in which the decline of class politics has led not only to an expansion of the party system agenda as seen by the substantial growth in the length of party manifestos, but also to a more complex agenda on which more issues receive substantial attention. This development matches the idea of party politics becoming more issue-based. In terms of issue attention, traditional left–right related issues such as the economy, labour, and business, but also defence and foreign policy have seen declining attention, but they have not disappeared from the agenda. Other issues such as health care, education, crime and justice, and to a more limited extent, immigration have gained attention. Attention to the environment grew considerably in the beginning of the period, but then declined somewhat again. Attention to social policy has remained stable at a high level throughout the period, whereas European integration has remained an issue with limited attention.
The Dynamics of the Party System Agenda
Authors: Green-Pedersen Christoffer
Published: September 2019

This chapter first addresses the question of whether the 23 issues included in the book can be reduced to a few dimensions in order to study attention to these dimensions. Such an approach would be very much in line with studies focusing on positional competition among political parties. To discuss this further, the chapter presents the results of a multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis for each country based on the correlations of the 23 issues presented. MDS is a way of analysing whether groups of issues grow or decline together over time, which indicates that they are driven by similar attention dynamics. The MDS analysis does not find that issues argued to belong to the new, second dimension constitute a distinct group of issues in terms of issue attention dynamics. The chapter furthermore presents the reasons for studying immigration, the EU, the environment, education, and health care in the following chapters, including the ‘nested’ analytical strategy that will be pursued.
An Ever-Sleeping Giant?
Authors: Green-Pedersen Christoffer
Published: September 2019

This chapter provides an analysis of party system attention to European integration. The expectation based on the issue incentive model was that large, mainstream parties were not interested in, and largely able to avoid the issue becoming an important issue on the party system agenda despite pressure from EU-sceptic issue entrepreneurs. This expectation was, by and large, confirmed. European integration continues to play a rather limited role on the party system agenda. Even events like the European debt crisis, which can be used by issue entrepreneurs to push the issue on the party system agenda, may generate ‘punctuations’, but not a stable position of the issue as important on the party system agenda. The deepening and broadening of the European Union has only led to a limited increase in the party system attention. Furthermore, referendums only function as alternative venues of attention if they have dramatic results like Brexit.
Up and Down with the Environment
Authors: Green-Pedersen Christoffer
Published: September 2019

This chapter provides an analysis of party system attention to the environment based on the issue incentive model. The importance of issue characteristics and especially problem information is clear. During the 1980s, all countries struggled with environmental performance, and focusing events like the Chernobyl disaster drew attention to the issue. The conditions were perfect for parties that wanted to draw attention to the environment, and in the second half of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, party system attention to the environment peaked in almost all countries. The improvement of the state of the environment in all countries from the 1990s has generated less attractive conditions for parties wanting to draw attention to the environment, and party system attention has declined, but far from disappeared. Green parties, and to a lesser extent Social Liberal parties, are the ones that focus more on the environment than do other parties. The importance of studying the incentives of the large, mainstream left-wing parties is also clear. These parties do not automatically focus on the issue, but coalition considerations can make it attractive, and then they are able to push the environment towards the top of the party system agenda. There are typically two situations when coalition incentives make the issue attractive. One is when a Social Democratic party is seeking to win government power with a Green party. The other is when Social Democratic parties are trying to draw environmentally friendly Social Liberal/Centre parties away from the right-wing bloc.
The Contestation of the IMF
Authors: Tokhi Alexandros
Published: September 2019

Few international organizations wield as much political authority over nation states, and provoke substantial political controversies, as does the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This chapter investigates the extent to which rising powers in the global economy, notably Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS), contest the IMF’s policies and rules. Do they express a general discomfort with its economic policy paradigm, or do they seek to improve their position within the institution and extend their influence over it? In a quantitative analysis of statements during the meetings of the International Monetary and Financial Committee over time, the chapter finds that both rising and established powers contest the IMF to a comparable extent. Yet, the BRICS’ contestation behaviour differs qualitatively from that of the major advanced economies. While the latter demand institutional reforms, the former strongly criticize institutional procedures and rules. The BRICS most strongly contest the issue of their institutional representation in the IMF’s quota-based decision-making system and the Fund’s (neo)-liberal policy paradigm does not seem to play an important role in that behaviour.
Negotiating the UN Human Rights Council
Authors: Binder Martin , Eisentraut Sophie
Published: September 2019

This chapter examines the negotiation of the UN Human Rights Council in order to systematically analyse and compare the preferences that rising powers, established powers, and NGOs have expressed with regard to its institutional design. The UN Human Rights Council is the key institution in the human rights regime and one of the few recent cases of institutional reform. The negotiation surrounding its creation offers unique insight into the conflict lines that run between ‘old’ powers, ‘new’ powers, and NGOs in the field of human rights. In this chapter, new data have been collected and analysed consisting of more than 500 written statements in which states and NGOs express their demands about the policy content and the authority structure of the new human rights institution.
Contestation in the UNFCCC
Authors: Prys-Hansen Miriam , Hahn Kristina , Lellmann Malte , Röseler Milan
Published: September 2019

This chapter analyses contestation surrounding the issue of climate finance and its regulation in global climate regime, within the institutional boundaries of the UNFCCC. It focuses on the BRICS and several pivotal NGO coalitions, including the Climate Action Network and the International Chamber of Commerce. Using techniques of qualitative content analysis, the chapter outlines the shifts on positions and conflict lines over time as a result of a change in status of at least some of the BRICS states. While the chapter shows that the BASIC coalition (formed by Brazil, South Africa, India, and China as part of the Copenhagen summit in 2009) has lost cohesion, the results also present the BRICS states as defenders, rather than challengers, of the institutional status quo, particularly when it comes to the continued relevance of the central norm of the UNFCCC original treaty, the ‘Common But Differentiated Responsibilities’. Particularly the conflict over who should take on the responsibility to pay for mitigation divides the community of transnational NGOs, which has been shown to lower their overall impact.
Transnational Private Authority and Its Contestation
Authors: Coni-Zimmer Melanie , Flohr Annegret , Wolf Klaus Dieter
Published: September 2019

The chapter investigates the preferences of BRICS and NGOs with regard to the exercise of transnational private authority. Three such governance schemes are selected: the Kimberley Process, the Global Compact, and the Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000) certification scheme. Transnational governance schemes are part of the liberal status quo. Yet, preferences of BRICS and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are so diverse that there is rarely joint contestation nor is there an alliance between the two groups of actors. The analysis shows that it is mainly civil society organizations (CSOs) which contest privatized governance schemes. Business-related interest groups are generally supporting such schemes, to little surprise. BRICS also show a remarkable level of support for privatized forms of governance. The clearest differences in preferences exist between CSOs and BRICS: whereas CSOs champion stronger international institutions, the support of BRICS for private governance schemes increases in proportion to the weakness of a given arrangement or to the extent of national discretion it still affords them. In light of BRICS’ and NGOs’ different preferences, on the one hand, and among the members of each of these groups, on the other hand, neither of these two ‘groups’ can be considered close to having a single shared vision of global order. As a result, there is also little potential for strategic cooperation between BRICS and NGOs when it comes to contesting the status quo of transnational private authority.
The Internet and Access to Information about Politics
Authors: Dutton William H. , Reisdorf Bianca C. , Blank Grant , Dubois Elizabeth , Fernandez Laleah
Published: September 2019

Concern over filter bubbles, echo chambers, and misinformation on the Internet are not new. However, as noted by Howard and Bradshaw (Chapter 12), events around the 2016 US presidential election and the UK’s Brexit referendum brought these concerns up again to near-panic levels, raising questions about the political implications of the algorithms that drive search engines and social media. To address these issues, the authors conducted an extensive survey of Internet users in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the US, asking respondents how they use search, social media, and other media for getting information about politics, and what difference these media have made for them. Their findings demonstrate that search is one among many media gateways and outlets deployed by those interested in politics, and that Internet users with an interest in politics and search skills are unlikely to be trapped in a filter bubble, or cocooned in a political echo chamber.