bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Indigenous Rights in the Inter-American System
Authors: Urrejola Antonia , Neira Elsy Curihuinca
Published: February 2024

For decades, various Indigenous organizations have appealed to the Inter-American Human Rights System seeking protection for their rights, when these have been threatened or violated within States. On this basis, the Inter-American System, through both of its organs, has set standards and adopted specific measures to ensure Indigenous peoples’ right to self-identification and recognition, their right to collective property, special protection from ethnic-cultural discrimination, among other human rights that they are entitled to. The present chapter provides an overview of the main inter-American human rights standards on Indigenous peoples, analyzing their specific application through the mechanism of precautionary measures implemented by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). The methodology used was a qualitative approach, carried out through the analysis of the resolutions of the IACHR. It is possible to affirm that significant gaps persist in the implementation of precautionary measures, mainly due to the lack of State agencies that ensure compliance with this approach. The foregoing reveals the need to join forces among the different actors, to make effective the fulfillment of the precautionary and protective functions of the Inter-American Commission regarding the human rights of Indigenous peoples, when they are at imminent risk of irreparable harm.
The Human Right to Defend Human Rights in the Inter-American System
Authors: Fachin Melina Girardi
Published: February 2024

How does the Inter-American System react to violations of the rights of human rights defenders in the configuration of what has been called the right to defend rights? This is the central question that this chapter aims to critically analyze. The topic could not be more current and urgent in the Latin American region, where many violations of human rights defenders occur, and impunity usually surrounds such crimes. Thus, the importance of the dialogue between different protective human rights levels to establish the inter-American standards of protection for human rights defenders. This product conflict intends to expand and magnify the rights protection of human rights defenders, based on a multilevel order.
Impact of the Inter-American Human Rights System in the Struggle against Impunity
Authors: Vera Oscar Parra
Published: February 2024

This chapter identifies some situations that affect compliance with the obligation to investigate, prosecute, and punish those responsible for serious human rights violations that, at the same time, constitute a reparation measure ordered by the Inter-American Court in contentious cases against Colombia. Through this preliminary diagnosis, it was possible to identify obstacles in the follow-up carried out by the Inter-American Court, determined by the generality of some of the inter-American orders, the type of obligation they involve, and the delays and difficulties that the Inter-American Court has in obtaining quality information to assess compliance. On the other hand, judicial authorities in Colombia face significant evidentiary obstacles and are immersed in a context of armed conflict that hinders their work. This general approach aims to show the complexity of administering justice in cases of serious human rights violations from a public policy perspective, in order to reflect on possible differentiated strategies, both at the Inter-American Court and within the States, with the objective of strengthening the fight against impunity.
The Independence of Justice as a Human Right and an International Obligation in Inter-American Jurisprudence
Authors: Corao Carlos Ayala
Published: February 2024

This chapter analyzes the independence of justice as a human right and an international obligation in inter-American case law. It focuses on the right to effective judicial protection, highlighting the State parties’ duty to protect rights via independent judges and courts, considering the UN Basic Principles on the Independence of the judiciary. The chapter also addresses several elements of the independence of judges, discussing professional stability, the exceptional nature of provisional judges, as well as the system for removing judges from office. In particular, the chapter characterizes the arbitrary removal or dismissal of judges as a failure to respect the guarantees of judicial independence. As a conclusion, this chapter endorses judicial independence as an essential element of the rule of law and constitutional democracy and as a human right within the guarantees of due process.
Conclusion
Authors: Bogdandy Armin von , Piovesan Flavia , Mac-Gregor Eduardo Ferrer , Antoniazzi Mariela Morales
Published: February 2024

By building upon the scholarship on ICCAL, this book analyzed the transformative impact caused by the actions of the Inter-American System of Human Rights (IASHR). It conceptualizes transformative impact as “structural changes resulting from the Inter-American System’s responses to human rights violations, which tackle systemic regional challenges by addressing the root causes and institutional enablers of violations.” Three characteristics have been singled out as significant enablers of IASHR’s structural impact: the system’s victim-centric approach, community of practice, and institutional resilience. These three elements -and the positive transformations they foment- are the bedrock that enables the system to succeed in improving the protection of human rights in the America despite deep-rooted historical and current challenges in the region.
Increasing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Employee Attraction
Authors: Hebl Mikki , King Eden
Published: February 2024

Organizational diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) depends heavily on the people who apply to join the organization. In other words, equitable and inclusive recruitment or attraction of people from diverse backgrounds is necessary to support DEI in organizations. This chapter offers a set of recommendations based on extensive scientific studies on organizational recruitment. After reviewing existing recruitment tools and strategies, organizations can pursue strategic recruitment opportunities, project authentic DEI optics, explicitly and implicitly communicate about DEI, and offer policies that are appealing to a wide and diverse applicant pool. Careful attention to the ways that DEI intersects with the recruitment process in its broadest sense—the process of increasing the attractiveness of the organization to potential employees—is critical for organizations.
Procedural Due Process and the Day-in-Court Ideal
Authors: Redish Martin H.
Published: February 2024

This chapter focuses on the doctrines of res judicata and collateral estoppel, which prevent litigants who have already had their day in court from relitigating cases or issues which were already litigated in prior adjudications. It has long been recognized (quite wisely) that the bars imposed by these doctrines cannot be imposed upon litigants who have not had their day in court. However, in recent years, some courts have developed the theory of “virtual representation,” pursuant to which even litigants who had not had their actual day in court may be bound by prior judgments, as long as the losing party in those prior cases possessed interests and motivations parallel to those of the new litigant. This was so, even though the new litigant may well have had absolutely no connection to or knowledge of the prior litigant. The US Supreme Court wisely rejected this doctrine as a violation of due process. However, in doing so, the Court failed in two important ways: first, while purporting to rely on the so-called “day in court” ideal, the Court failed completely in providing a sophisticated theoretical rationale to justify the litigant’s right to a day in court; second, the Court failed to consider situations in which competing constitutional interests might be sufficiently compelling to justify overcoming a litigant’s right to her day in court. This chapter answers both questions by drawing on the foundation of liberal adversary democratic theory.
The Islamic Republic of Iran in Historical and Institutional Perspective Ruptures and Continuities
Authors: Hunter Shireen T.
Published: February 2024

There have been vast discontinuities between Iran’s historical and institutional past under the Islamic Republic. The Islamic Republic was a sharp break with Iran’s past. Religion has had a significant social, cultural, and, to some degree, political role in both pre and post-Islamic Iran. But throughout its history, Iran never had a religion-based government either under indigenous or foreign rulers. The possible exception is when Iran was under Arab Caliphates’ rule. Even then, the clergy were not engaged in governance as the Caliph combined both sacred and temporal power. Iran’s transformation from a monarchy to a republic marks another significant break. This transformation, however, could have been expected, because monarchies in other countries were being abolished as well. There has also been a downgrading of “Iran” and an elevation of “Islam” as the sole foundation of national identity and the focus of loyalty and unprecedented attacks on Iran’s pre-Islamic heritage. The Islamic system does show some continuities with the past. However, many of its institutions and practices are a departure from the past. Meanwhile, the country’s political culture, especially its tendency towards the cult of personalities and towards authoritarianism, reflect significant continuity with the past.
The Velayat-e Faqih
Authors: Mahdavi Mojtaba
Published: February 2024

The innovative position of the velayat-e faqih, conventionally translated as Supreme Leader, has a remarkable breadth of powers in the Islamic Republic. As the core of the postrevolutionary state, the office of the velayat-e faqih enjoys enormous political, military and financial power. Under Ayatollah Khomeini the velayat-e faqih’s power was largely derived from Khomeini’s revolutionary and religious charisma as well as the semi-totalitarian nature of the state he founded in the first decade of the postrevolutionary polity. With no or limited religious and revolutionary charisma, his successor Ayatollah Khamenei, however, has mostly relied on his conservative peers and the security-military apparatuses backed by petrodollars and the rentier structure of the state. The second vali faqih has bureaucratized, routinized and institutionalized the office of velayat-e faqih, turning his office, the beyt, into the headquarter of Iran’s deep state, in charge of multi-mega revolutionary financial conglomerates.
Introduction and Acknowledgments
Authors: Schechter Nicole , Jacocks Connie , Butt Lester , Wegener Stephen T.
Published: February 2024

Rehabilitation, and the management of chronic health conditions, requires patients to be proactive and engaged in their health care. Clinicians need strategies and tools to build trusting therapeutic alliances, support goal-setting, and promote behavior change that engages patients as partners in care and make patient-centered care a reality. Motivational interviewing (MI) is an evidenced based approach shown to change behaviors and increase engagement in many patient populations. MI spirit and skills are an ideal fit with the ethos and needs of the rehabilitation community. The goals of this book are to (1) provide rehabilitation professionals with the foundations of MI; (2) describe how this approach can be applied by a range of rehabilitation disciplines to address common barriers to rehabilitation engagement; and (3) provide guidance for those interested in implementing MI training in rehabilitation settings. Chapters are authored by rehabilitation experts from the many disciplines found on the interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary rehabilitation team. A unique dimension of this book is the interplay with the website—www.rehabengage.org. At this website there are video presentations on MI spirit and skills as well as video demonstrations by rehabilitation professionals using these skills in a variety of clinical situations. While the book is intended for practicing rehabilitation clinicians, educators preparing students for careers in rehabilitation will find several tools to assist them in their efforts, including recommended readings and learner reflection/discussion questions.
Family and Caregiver Dynamics
Authors: Ali Asma , Jacocks Connie
Published: February 2024

Quality of psychosocial and caregiver support is known to have a direct impact on a range of outcomes in rehabilitation populations for both the caregiver and care recipient. Caregiver involvement can improve care recipients’ access to services and reduce unmet needs, and integrating the caregiver into care planning has been shown to reduce readmissions, shorten rehospitalizations, reduce post-discharge costs, and improve quality of life for the care recipient. Potential challenges to caregiver participation include varying emotional readiness, physical ability, confidence, changing roles in the care dyad, and development of physical, psychological, or medical problems due to strain or burden associated with additional responsibilities. This chapter explores how clinicians can utilize a solution-focused narrative and integrate motivational interviewing spirit and skills to facilitate a collaborative and productive relationship with the family or caregiver. Practical vignettes, which illustrate skill implementation, are also provided.
The Turning Point
Authors: Galea Sandro , Stein Michale D.
Published: February 2024

This book takes a critical look at the COVID-19 moment through the lens of public health science. The events of the pandemic unsettled much about the world and created a turning point for public health. The book examines how the pandemic intersected with a range of core issues, including mental health, gun violence, mass incarceration, political decision-making, vaccination, health equity, racism, poverty, digital surveillance, social and economic justice, corporate profiteering, the challenge of grief, HIV, and the work of addressing long COVID. Through these reflections, the book offers a forward-looking vision of a post-pandemic world. It argues that by addressing the conditions that shaped the COVID-19 moment, this turning point moment can yield a better future.
Defining Our Goalposts
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter addresses the collective difficulty in understanding where health care providers stood during the pandemic and agreeing on what the pandemic’s endgame might look like. The chapter suggests that properly defined goalposts are necessary not just in times of pandemic but also in engaging with any health challenge. These goalposts can help health care providers better navigate such moments, guiding them toward a more effective pursuit of health.
COVID-19 and the Office
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores how the pandemic shaped the ways work is conceptualized. The chapter discusses the innovations of remote work and observes how digital work options, although useful, are no substitute for human connection.
From the Cold War to Putin’s Pivot
Authors: Ziegler Charles E.
Published: February 2024

This chapter focuses on political developments in Russia’s relations with the Asia Pacific following the collapse of the Soviet state. Boris Yeltsin’s new government was preoccupied with domestic reforms and resolving constitutional and governance questions; foreign policy was oriented primarily toward the United States and Europe but nurtured an emerging partnership with China. Under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s foreign policy evolved into confrontation with the West, while domestic politics became more centralized and authoritarian. Relations with China continued to improve, and a pivot toward Asia was announced in 2012 with ambitious development plans for the Far East and reinvigorated ties with Asian Pacific nations. The strategic partnership with China has been central to Russia’s policy, though Moscow is hedging against becoming a junior partner to Beijing by engaging with India, Vietnam, and other countries in East and South Asia. As in the past, foreign policy is formulated by an autocratic executive advised by a narrow circle of loyal supporters; administration is left to a centralized and often ineffective bureaucracy unresponsive to local interests.
Russia’s Economic Prospects in the Pacific
Authors: Ziegler Charles E.
Published: February 2024

Economic backwardness has historically been the weak link in Russian capabilities, and this problem is magnified in the huge and sparsely populated regions of Siberia and the Far East. This chapter assesses the economic dimension of Russia’s pivot eastward, including development programs for the Russian Far East, trade and energy agreements with the Asian Pacific countries, demographic trends, and pipeline politics. Kremlin rhetoric has emphasized trade and investment in Russia’s Asia Pacific policy, but as in the past, political and security considerations frequently outweigh economic imperatives. Hyper-centralized, statist approaches stifle local initiative and entrepreneurial creativity. Bureaucratic mismanagement, a preference for showy state mega-projects over small or medium private businesses, and arbitrary decision-making generate waste and corruption, while the absence of a genuine rule of law discourages foreign investment. Economic potential is central to Moscow’s claim to great power status in the Pacific, but the historical pattern suggests Russian weakness on this power dimension will lead to greater reliance on military instruments.
Logic and Arguments
Authors: Sehon Scott R.
Published: February 2024

This chapter provides an introduction to nature of logical arguments and to the method of analyzing arguments by laying them out in numbered steps, with premises and inferences clearly labeled. The distinction between a valid argument and a sound argument is described. By way of illustration of the logical points, the chapter analyzes an apparent argument against socialism that is based on the example of Venezuela. The chapter explains that on some readings the argument about Venezuela is logically fallacious, and on other readings one of its premises is obviously false. The plan for the rest of the book is briefly presented.
Introduction
Authors: Pillai Sohini Sarah
Published: February 2024

The introductory chapter of Krishna’s Mahabharatas lays out the basic argument of the book about premodern devotional Mahabharata retellings in regional South Asian languages. It begins with an overview of the Sanskrit Mahābhārata and its story for readers who may be unfamiliar with the epic. It then introduces and compares the two regional retellings at the center of the book: Villiputturar’s fifteenth-century Tamil Pāratam and Sabalsingh Chauhan’s seventeenth-century Bhasha (Old Hindi) Mahābhārat. There is also a discussion of some recent approaches that have been employed in scholarship on bhakti (devotional) literature. The introduction concludes with a chapter-by-chapter summary of the trajectory of the book.
Setting the Scene
Authors: Pillai Sohini Sarah
Published: February 2024

Chapter 1 examines the depiction of Krishna in the Sanskrit Mahābhārata along with some of the earliest interpretations of Krishna’s character in the epic. This chapter begins by analyzing the confusing ways in which the Mahābhārata presents Krishna. Then there is a discussion of how the roughly contemporaneous ninth-century Kashmiri poetician Anandavardhana and the South Indian author(s) of the Sanskrit Bhāgavatapurāṇa are unperturbed by the perplexing depiction of Krishna in the Mahābhārata. This chapter shows how Anandavardhana uses the story of Krishna in another Sanskrit text, the Harivaṃśa, to argue that Krishna is the most important figure in the Mahābhārata. This chapter also demonstrates how the Bhāgavatapurāṇa recasts the Pandavas from the Sanskrit epic as Krishna’s dedicated devotees and brings together two distinct forms of Krishna: the young Krishna of Vrindavan and the adult Krishna of the Mahabharata.
Electrophysiological properties of thalamic relay neurons
Authors: Destexhe Alain , Sejnowski Terrence J.
Published: February 2024

This chapter looks into the electrophysiological properties of thalamic relay neurons. It explains that thalamocortical (TC) neurons are the only neurons whose axons project from the thalamus to the cortex. TC cells have intrinsic properties that allow them to actively participate in oscillations that occur in the isolated thalamus as well as in the thalamocortical system. Models like the single-compartment model and reconstructed neuron model are expected to address dendritic integration in thalamic cells and the interplay between synaptic currents and voltage-dependent currents in dendrites. The chapter expounds on the contributions of these complex properties that will be determinant to explain network behaviour.
Character and Crime Propensity
Authors: Wikström Per-Olof H. , Treiber Kyle , Roman Gabriela Diana
Published: February 2024

What makes people crime prone, and what shapes these propensities over adolescence and into young adulthood? SAT argues that people’s crime propensities are primarily determined by their law-relevant personal morality and ability to exercise self-control. This chapter explores in detail these characteristics, how they can be measured, how they change across adolescence and into young adulthood, and how their stability and change is associated with that of crime involvement. It identifies distinct trajectories of development for personal morality, the ability to exercise self-control, and crime propensity as a composite construct. To better understand what distinguishes young people who develop differing levels of crime propensities at different ages, it examines how following different trajectories of crime propensity are (and are not) associated with differences in participants’ demographic characteristics, selected childhood experiences, and key cognitive capacities. This chapter finds that young people are more distinguished by their levels of crime propensity than how their propensities change over time, but that those with the highest propensities in early adolescence experience the greatest reductions during the transition to young adulthood. It also finds some indication that the increase in young people’s crime propensities in early adolescence is mainly associated with reductions in their personal morality, while the decrease in their propensities in late adolescence and early adulthood is more associated with increases in their ability to exercise self-control.
Does Childhood Social Disadvantage and Social Adversity Set People on Particular Pathways in Crime?
Authors: Wikström Per-Olof H. , Treiber Kyle , Roman Gabriela Diana
Published: February 2024

Do people’s childhood conditions and experiences set them onto particular pathways in crime? This chapter examines the extent to which childhood experiences of childhood social disadvantage and social adversity predict the development of crime propensities and criminogenic activity fields, and related criminal careers. The fact that social disadvantage is at best only weakly associated with crime involvement is a consistent but provocative finding in criminological research. Seeking to better understand if and how childhood experiences of social disadvantage and social adversity set people on particular trajectories of crime involvement, this chapter examines relationships between these experiences and trajectories of crime propensity, criminogenic exposure, and crime across adolescence and into young adulthood. It delves into how changing social relationships with family, peers, and schools during this time period are associated with changes in crime propensity and criminogenic exposure, and subsequently crime involvement. It finds that a slightly elevated proportion of people who experience childhood disadvantage and social adversity develop heightened trajectories of crime propensity, criminogenic exposure, and subsequently crime involvement, but most people do not, regardless of their experiences of childhood disadvantage and social adversity. Analyses highlight some differences in the social experiences of participants’ following an adolescence-limited crime trajectory that may have implications for understanding why their crime involvement drops so dramatically after age 16.
The Additions to Daniel
Authors: Grillo Jennie
Published: February 2024

In line with the renewed attention to the material lives of texts within biblical studies, this chapter offers a material history of the Additions to Daniel: that is, the story of the physical instantiations of Greek Daniel from their earliest known existence as objects. It is a story at first of inclusion, of growing variety, then of excision, and finally of persistence. The Additions are fully included within the first biblical manuscripts of Daniel in Greek, Latin, and Syriac; in late antiquity and the Middle Ages they also inhabit a variety of formats such as psalters, picture Bibles, Books of Women, and historical chronicles. The Additions are incompletely excised from printed Greek Bibles beginning with the work of the early sixteenth-century reformer Johannes Lonicerus, but their verbal traces persist, and Bible illustrations even of the Hebrew and Aramaic text reflect the memory of the Additions.
Is This Intimate Image Abuse?
Authors: Helfer Margareth , Rosani Domenico
Published: February 2024

This chapter argues that certain current tendencies in the area of virtual child pornography and self-generated sexual images and videos might disregard fundamental principles of criminal law, such as the harm principle and the ultima ratio canon. In particular, the criminalization of fully virtual child pornography, created without resorting to depictions of existing minors, runs the risk of legitimizing punishment of an individual before any harmful act has actually been committed. The increasing proliferation of self-generated material, where minors freely create pornographic content depicting themselves, also calls for a critical revision of criminal provisions. In fact, the issue has increasingly been the focus of international soft law, calling on states to reconcile protection measures with the recognition of children’s agency. By providing recent examples from Italy, this chapter offers a critical analysis of ongoing trends in Europe and advocates a stricter adherence to the fundamental principles of criminal law.
The Changing Role of Internet Service Providers
Authors: Rinceanu Johanna
Published: February 2024

This chapter addresses the regulatory framework that governs unlawful online content, including harassment, racism, extremism, and other illegal online content, with a special focus on cyberviolence and online ‘hate speech’—including non-consensual nudity sharing (commonly referred to as revenge porn)—against women. In addition to independent efforts undertaken by Internet Service Providers to combat online criminality by means of self-imposed Community Guidelines or Terms of Use, regulations have been introduced in order to more effectively combat hate and incitement as well as extremism on the Internet. In this respect, this chapter provides an overview on international conventions and action plans, recommendations, resolutions, EU directives, guidelines, and regulations––particularly on the recent enactment of the EU’s Digital Service Act (DSA)––as well as on Germany’s Act to Improve Enforcement of the Law in Social Networks (Network Enforcement Act, NetzDG), as an example of a national regulatory model. NetzDG requires Internet Service Providers with more than two million registered users in Germany (e.g. those on the scale of Google, Facebook, YouTube, X (formerly, Twitter), and Instagram) to set up a transparent complaints management system as private actors in order to efficiently handle complaints about illegal content as defined in NetzDG. The Act imposes on Internet Service Providers the responsibility of balancing human rights and fundamental freedoms against each other, thereby changing the role of these private actors—against their will—and making them gatekeepers at the threshold of fundamental and human rights.
Seventh Conversation
Authors: Pattison George
Published: February 2024

The conversation takes place in Glasgow’s necropolis on Easter eve. Prompted by the location, the narrator and Dostoevsky discuss memory as an essential element in spiritual development—as well as the negative effects of forgetfulness. But can there be an ‘eternal memory’? Or does the remembrance of the dead also pass away? Dostoevsky cannot answer all the narrator’s questions about heaven, including questions about his post-mortem relationships with his two wives, but he explains that it is a place in which human beings are mutually present in love, illuminated by the light of Christ that, in turn, proceeds from God and that is experienced by them as joy.
Coda
Authors: Reynolds Anna
Published: February 2024

The coda briefly imagines a day in the life of an early modern housewife and her frequent encounters with waste paper, outlining the ways in which such textual and material encounters meant that repurposed paper came to form a prominent scaffold for thought in the period. At once impermanent, discarded, and a frequently handled remnant that lingers, waste paper enacts a particularly strong affective pull. The coda meditates on the nature of this pull and the intimacy that early moderns felt with their waste material, and the distinction between this and our own relationship with our rubbish today.
The Emergence and Resilience of New Public Management (NPM)
Authors: Lapsley Irvine , Miller Peter
Published: February 2024

New Public Management (NPM) has been the most significant public policy reform in decades. Despite its widespread use, it has been a contested policy from its initial adoption. There has been a succession of replacement policies which have been proposed over its life to date. Yet NPM is still in evidence. The expression NPM was coined by Hood (1991). It referred to the mimicry of private sector practices (on management structures and styles, on ownership models and the focus on accounting practices, and quantification and performance management within private sector organisations). Writings on New Public Management (NPM) have been extremely influential, even if it can no longer be described as ‘new’. It is often described as a set of management techniques and practices, which have now achieved global significance. The attractiveness of NPM to policy makers is evident. The NPM focus on results coincides with political imperatives. NPM has the appearance of ready-made answers to policy proposals. Many management consultants have become adept at advancing the case for NPM, generally, and as a solution to specific problems. However, many academic commentators have criticised NPM implementation programmes. Despite such criticism, the adherence of policymakers to NPM has ensured its prominent role in public life. This chapter outlines four dimensions of NPM, which focus on understanding both the pervasive nature of NPM and the challenges to the prevailing logic of NPM in public policy: mature NPM, NPM in action, alternative models to NPM, and NPM’s role in contemporary society.
Twenty-Five Years of the Audit Society
Authors: Power Michael
Published: February 2024

In this chapter I revisit the motivation and core arguments in Power (1997) and focus on three specific weaknesses raised by critics: UK centrism; the tendency to ‘sample on the dependent variable’; and, despite articulating a logic of auditability, the absence of any theory of the underlying mechanism by which audit society effects persist and mutate. An answer to these criticisms and a possible research agenda has appeared over 20 years later in the form of a dynamic model of the audit trail as a formative process (Power, 2021). The chapter outlines the key elements of this model and suggests how they might inform the next generation of audit society studies focused on organisational microprocesses.
Co-existence? NPM in a Network World
Authors: Agostino Deborah , Arnaboldi Michela
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses the role and the importance of New Public Management (NPM), in a changing world, where the network paradigm has been adopted in public sector entities. The focus is on performance management, a seminal feature of the NPM since its inception, which has been hardly criticised by network proponents. In the NPM paradigm, performance management plays a central role which is intended to ensure an efficient and effective service delivery. The context in which NPM developed was characterised by an emphasis on accountability, pushing towards the disaggregation of the heavy public sector in subunits, with the desire to trace more easily the responsibility between input and outputs. This theoretical configuration of a single institution in charge of service delivery facilitated the promotion of measures for management and control. This chapter examines the tensions in three organisations which individually have NPM performance management systems, but which collectively have an overarching governance system.
A Multidimensional Framework on Civil Society’s Contributions to Democracy
Authors: Bolleyer Nicole
Published: February 2024

Which civil society organizations (CSOs) contribute to democracy, how, and why? This introduction synthesizes existing research on the roles and functions ascribed to interest groups, non-profits, civic associations, and political parties in democratic regimes. Building on this synthesis, it proposes a framework distinguishing three normative yardsticks—intra-organizational participation, engagement in interest representation, and the societal responsiveness of CSO behaviour – to evaluate CSOs’ contributions to democracy. These yardsticks are translated into four analytical dimensions that allow us to theorize and empirically capture the diverse (direct and indirect) contributions: first, the cultivation of member activism indicating organizations’ participatory activities involving members; second, the engagement in interest representation activities; third, the organizational accountability of CSO decision-making and fourth, a stable CSO identity, as two complementary indications of whether organizational behaviour is likely to be responsive to societal concerns.
The Distinct Internal Logics of Associations and Professionalized Voluntary Organizations
Authors: Bolleyer Nicole
Published: February 2024

This chapter explains how a synthesis of incentive-theoretical and resource dependency approaches provides a sound foundation for specifying central organizational trade-offs that confront membership-based organizations reliant on voluntary support when engaging in processes or activities essential to their democratic contributions (e.g. the cultivation of member activism, political engagement and societally responsive behaviour). These trade-offs make clear why organizations often realize their democratic potential in some way but not another. How these trade-offs are handled by CSOs essentially depends on the interplay of three groups of intra-organizational actors. Members, organizational leaders, and managers can be associated with different orientations and priorities with regard to CSO self-maintenance and external goal attainment, two demands that can be difficult to reconcile. The two contrasting governance templates—‘voluntary association’ and ‘professionalized voluntary organization’— in which these three actor types have different positions allow us to theorize how these trade-offs (such as between member control and leader autonomy; between stable linkages and the maximization of external, short-term support) play out on the level of individual CSOs that share characteristics associated with each template.
The Distinct Roles of Members in Civil Society Organizations
Authors: Bolleyer Nicole
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores CSOs’ varying potential to contribute to democracy through the cultivation of two different forms of member activism: member involvement and control. Member control (denoting members’ say over decisions central to a CSO’s authority structure) generates an organizational trade-off from the perspective of a CSO’s leadership (encompassing organizational and managerial leaders) keen to enhance its autonomy, a trade-off that is balanced by CSOs—depending on central structural features—differently. An incentive-theoretical perspective not only suggests that most features of both governance templates support member involvement as a useful organizational resource, it also suggests that features of the ‘professionalized voluntary organization’ (putting leaders and managers centre stage) impact negatively on member control, while features of the ‘voluntary association’—representing a wide variety of value orientations—have no repercussions for member control. This is widely substantiated. Most interestingly, the findings suggest that growing reliance on paid staff central to the ‘voluntary professionalized organization’ is positively related to involvement and negatively to control, stressing the importance of the professionalization of organizations’ human resources.
CSOs’ Political Engagement
Authors: Bolleyer Nicole
Published: February 2024

Chapter 8 deals with CSOs’ varying propensities towards engaging in political activities and the different breadths of their political action repertoires. It theorizes the implications of investing in political activity as a collective, non-exclusive incentive from which non-members also profit (making it less effective to sustain member support than selective incentives restricted to members). Features of a ‘voluntary association’ are expected to invite a different balance between collective (outward-orientated) and selective (inward-orientated) incentive provision than features of a ‘professionalized voluntary organization’. Being orientated towards member interests and being composed of individual members—both voluntary association features—have significant negative relationships with political engagement. In contrast, all characteristics associated with professionalized voluntary organizations—professionalization, bureaucratization, and state funding dependency—relate to political engagement positively. These findings challenge traditional ideas that ‘voluntary associations’ constitute a cornerstone of political civil society, while the (often problematized) features of the ‘professionalized voluntary organization’ appear as enabling factors that allow for CSO voices to be heard in the political process.
Conclusions
Authors: Hardwick Alexandra
Published: February 2024

The conclusion discusses connections between the depictions of off-stage groups analysed in this book. It highlights their power, which often compels characters’ actions and drives plot events, and their polyvalent nature, created by having these groups only exist in characters’ narratives and through their viewpoints. It then explores the relationship between off-stage groups and choruses: choruses sometimes represent a subset of the off-stage group, but sometimes are defined in opposition to this group (and may even feel vulnerable due to the group’s threatening numbers). Finally, the conclusion comments briefly on patterns that may emerge from rearranging source material chronologically or by author.
Damage to ‘Other Property’: Exploring the Boundary Between Property Damage and Pure Economic Loss
Authors: Nolan Donal
Published: February 2024

This chapter is concerned with the boundary between property damage and pure economic loss, specifically what amounts to damage to ‘other property’ in the law of tort. Where a component causes damage to the composite product of which it is a part, it is argued that there is damage to other property where the former was added to the latter when the latter was already in the claimant’s hands. In other cases three factors should be considered, namely the physical integration of the component and the composite product; a ‘commercial reality’ test; and the functional distinctness of the component part.
Who Can Sue the Obligor When Receivables Are Financed?
Authors: Gullifer Louise
Published: February 2024

This chapter examines whether a business can enforce debts without unveiling the existence and interest of the financier under the context of various financing models. The financing models range between the outright sale of the receivables, a loan secured by a mortgage over the receivables, and a loan secured by a charge over the receivables. The chapter defines receivables as the most valuable asset of that business. Thus, a finance provider to that business likely wants some kind of proprietary interest in the receivables as protection against credit risk. The chapter looks into the argument that a joinder should not be required when an assignor can give a good discharge for payment.
Mistakes of Law, Again
Authors: Scott Helen
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores mistakes of law. It considers Ewan McKendrick’s contribution in a collection of essays regarding the role of mistakes. Renewed focus on the test of reasonable discoverability in section 32(1)(c) of the Limitation Act has prompted new perspectives on the role of mistakes in the law of unjust enrichment. The chapter considers the notion of mistake as a cause of action, as a factor delaying limitation, and as a proxy for the absence of the claimant’s liability to pay. It then considers the decision in Test Claimants in the Franked Investment Income Group Litigation v HMRC [2020] against the backdrop of the decisions in the Kleinwort Benson and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell cases.
The Life of Constantine-Cyril
Authors: Ivanova Mirela
Published: February 2024

This chapter builds on the groundwork of Chapter 1, and offers a new reading of the Life of Constantine-Cyril, arguing that it is a profoundly Byzantine hagiography, originally written by a Byzantine author and most probably in Greek. Perhaps precisely due to the fact the Life was written so soon after the alphabet’s initial invention, the script creation is by no means the central focus of the text. Its brief appearance in the text is best integrated within the wider argument the text makes for the sanctity of Cyril, as a philosopher and saint. The chapter posits that the text is organised around a tripartite process of learning and the application of learning through disputation. This learning intentionally harmonises the tension between piety and ‘outside’, or classical, education present in ninth-century Constantinopolitan culture.
Speculation, Prediction, and the Great Crash of 1929
Authors: Crosthwaite Paul
Published: February 2024

Chapter 1 provides much of the historical and conceptual framing and groundwork for the book as a whole by showing how the temporal rhythms of Wall Street speculation—the recurrent oscillations between boom and bust, exuberance and panic, accumulation and crisis—became popular obsessions in the early decades of the twentieth century. The chapter begins by considering the Wall Street seer William D. Gann’s work of speculative fiction The Tunnel Thru the Air (1927) as the starting point for an exploration of the growing public fascination with the future movements of the financial markets, which became a central element of a wider American “culture of prediction” around the turn of the century. It goes on to explain how the 1920s stock market surge occurred amid heated debates over whether a familiar pattern of boom and bust would repeat itself, or whether the business cycle had been superseded in the movement into a “New Era” of perpetual industrial and financial growth. It then traces how the Great Crash and ensuing Great Depression put paid to such visions of limitless prosperity and lent unprecedented force and credibility to visions of terminal capitalist crisis emanating from the radical left. Building on the foregoing discussion, the chapter shows how a conception of speculative or financial futurity shaped wider understandings of temporality in the period, the figure of the stock market speculator or the oracular output of the ticker machine emerging as powerful models for future-thinking in ways that are repeatedly evident across subsequent chapters.
“Stock-Market Luck Has Become One and the Same Thing as Fate”
Authors: Crosthwaite Paul
Published: February 2024

Chapter 5 examines Christina Stead’s House of All Nations (1938). Portraying the aftershocks of the Wall Street Crash as felt in Paris, London, and Berlin, the novel inaugurates the Australian Stead’s sustained (if sometimes oblique) concern with American social and economic life. The chapter shows how House of All Nations satirizes purportedly scientific systems of financial, economic, and political prediction that ultimately rest on superstitious notions of fate, destiny, and providence. Reading the narrative alongside economic writings by Stead’s partner—the adventure novelist, Marxist theoretician, and Wall Street speculator William Blake—the chapter argues that Stead advocates a Marxism that, contrary to the charges of rigid determinism leveled by anti-Marxist critics, recognizes the interplay between identifiable structural tendencies and unforeseeable contingencies in the dynamics of capitalist crisis. The chapter argues that via House of All Nations’ dialogic form—as an exemplary “novel of ideas” structured by a series of speculative conversations and debates—Stead presents multiple perspectives on Europe’s future direction amid economic breakdown, fascist advance, and military tension, while refraining from assigning inevitability to any particular outcome (including those that had in fact already occurred). In this way, the chapter suggests, Stead contests the alignment of Marxism with what Michael André Bernstein influentially terms “apocalyptic history” and affirms Marxist thought’s speculative dimensions.
“Filigreed Webs of Dreams and Politics”
Authors: Crosthwaite Paul
Published: February 2024

The book’s final chapter engages in depth with Richard Wright’s 1940 masterwork Native Son. It shows how the novel’s protagonist, Bigger Thomas, dreams of mingling with the traders of Chicago’s LaSalle Street, but is trapped by a system of predatory and racist real estate speculation—an attractively profitable channel for white investment capital in the wake of the Great Crash. A system of this kind—extracting extortionate rents from the Black residents of virtually uninhabitable properties—is a form of what Kris Manjapra (drawing on Achille Mbembe) calls “necrospeculation.” The chapter examines how a desire for virtually risk-free profit-taking on the part of white real estate operators, like the novel’s Henry Dalton, gave rise to the structures of racial exclusion and containment manifest in urban phenomena such as the South Side “Black Belt,” in which Bigger’s family resides in a cramped and unsanitary dwelling. The chapter argues that the novel’s portrayal of Bigger’s fugitive movements across the Chicago grid—following his accidental killing of Dalton’s daughter, Mary—re-enacts his confinement to a tightly circumscribed segment of the city by a segregationist regime of urban planning and speculative finance—one bound up with racialized mappings of urban space and the maintenance of a condition of temporal stasis. The chapter further argues, however, that—in dialogue with the work of the critic Kenneth Burke—Wright seeks to appropriate the logics of speculative temporality and value by which Bigger is objectified and deploy them as the bases for his character’s own subjective revaluation.