bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
8 Constructing Capabilities in Entrepreneurial Technology Firms: A Comparative Institutional Analysis of Germany, Sweden, and the UK
Authors: Whitley Richard , Casper Steven
Published: January 2008

This chapter explores the mechanisms linking dominant institutions to distinctive business competences in Germany, Sweden, and the UK, and looks at the relative success of these mechanisms in some detail by focusing on the characteristics of different subsectors. Specifically, it compares how the institutional frameworks in these countries have affected strategies for dealing with two major kinds of organizational problems that firms have to manage in developing new technologies in the biotechnology and software industries. It focuses on the role of different kinds of skill formation systems and labour market institutions in encouraging the development of contrasting kinds of organizational capabilities. While the predominantly arm's length institutions in countries such as the USA or UK are conducive to the development of project-based entrepreneurial technology start-ups focusing on discontinuous radical innovations, there are other subsectors of these industries where more complex and stable organizations are effective. Success in such segments is strongly advantaged by institutional structures that encourage competence enhancing human resource strategies.
11 Developing Transnational Organizational Capabilities in Multinational Companies: The Role of Cross‐National Authority Sharing and Organizational Careers
Authors: Whitley Richard
Published: January 2008

This chapter discusses how the framework exploring the connections between dominant institutions and the development of distinctive organizational capabilities outlined in earlier chapters could be extended to multinational companies (MNCs) by analysing how international companies from different kinds of market economy are likely to develop varied patterns of employer-employee commitment across national institutional regimes, and so generate different cross-border capabilities. The chapter first considers how MNCs from four ideal types of institutional regimes are likely to share authority with, and provide organizational careers for foreign managerial and skilled employees in the relatively weakly institutionalized international business environment. It then suggests how different kinds of MNCs that combine different degrees of transnational authority sharing and organizational careers develop different types of transnational organizational capabilities.
Towns in the Polity
Authors: Gunn Steven , Grummitt David , Cools Hans
Published: January 2008

This chapter asks how the demands of war changed towns' relationships with other elements in the polity. War accelerated their direct communication with central government, whether through correspondence or princely visits. Provincial councils took some part in steering towns into compliance with princely policy in war, but more important were intermediaries from the local nobility. Their role declined over time in England, though fluctuating with the character and courtly power of individual noble patrons. It remained significant in the Netherlands whenever campaigns came near or princely tax demands had to be considered. Representative institutions — parliament in England and the provincial states and States-General in the Netherlands — were important forums in which towns could trade consent to taxation for favourable legislation or other concessions. At times they even enabled towns collectively to manage the war effort in their own strategic interest.
War and Noble Power
Authors: Gunn Steven , Grummitt David , Cools Hans
Published: January 2008

This chapter analyses the role of war in the construction of the nobility's power. War could foster competition between great lords or enforce collaboration. Noble kinship networks were important in the organization of war and local politics. Military service, sometimes rewarded by the conferral of knighthood, was both a force in shaping noblemen's affinities or clienteles, and an important function of those affinities. Military failure and a breakdown in trust could cripple local government, as it did for the fifth and sixth earls of Northumberland; military success and the development of a loyal following could facilitate provincial political management, as it did for Maximiliaan van Egmond-Buren. War conditioned the relations between nobles and the towns and ecclesiastical institutions in the areas where they aspired to exercise influence, especially given the proximity of campaigning in the Netherlands.
Introduction
Authors: Gunn Steven , Grummitt David , Cools Hans
Published: January 2008

This chapter introduces various ways in which rulers in England and the Netherlands were assuming greater powers over their subjects, and the role of war in such developments. Princely ambition was evident in the wider provision of justice and in the regulation of religion in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation; in the use of propaganda to shape public opinion and national identity; and the development of economic and social policy. Some of these trends were more closely related to war than others, but all interacted with it in shaping the relationship between princes and subjects.
The Trials of War
Authors: Gunn Steven , Grummitt David , Cools Hans
Published: January 2008

This chapter asks how the ill-effects of war and princes' efforts to mitigate them affected their relationship with their subjects. Attempts to discipline soldiers often failed to prevent them from terrorizing civilians, while wartime disturbance bred crime more generally. Both problems were more severe in the Netherlands than in England, as was the disruption to trade and agriculture caused by war. However, they did not always alienate subjects from rulers, for the rulers' case that war was to be blamed on the enemy seems to have been widely accepted. Those engaged in the arms trade benefited from war, but they were not a significant interest group. Governments took significant powers over food supply, transport, trade with the enemy, and fishing in contested waters, which increased their ability to direct economic life, yet in so doing compromised with wealthy groups to secure funding for their wars.
War, State, and Society
Authors: Gunn Steven , Grummitt David , Cools Hans
Published: January 2008

This chapter concludes the book by testing its findings against various models for the process of state formation in early modern Europe. In England and the Netherlands, it seems that war did shape the state in significant ways not only in the development of taxation, armies, and navies, but also in changing political relationships of many sorts. War was not the sole force for the concentration of power, but interacted with judicial, religious, ideological, and social drivers. Many differences in the impact of war, not only between the two polities but between different parts of each polity, can be attributed to geopolitics. Others highlight the differences in the political institutions each polity had inherited; the differences in the economic and social configuration of the two societies; the different dynastic traditions of the Habsburg and Tudor houses; or the different dynamics of their respective multiple monarchies.
A Game-Theoretic Perspective on Coalition Formation
Authors: Ray Debraj
Published: January 2008

The formation of coalitions to achieve both collaborative and competitive goals is a phenomenon we see all around us. The list of examples of this phenomenon is long and varied: production cartels, political lobbies, customs unions, environmental coalitions, and ethnic alliances are just a few everyday instances. This book looks at coalition formation from the perspective of game theory. How are agreements determined? Which coalitions will form? And are such agreements invariably efficient from a social perspective? The book brings together developments in both cooperative and non-cooperative game theory to study the analytics of coalition formation and binding agreements. It concentrates on pure theory, but discusses several potential applications, such as oligopoly and the provision of public goods.
Irreversible Agreements: The General Case
Authors: Ray Debraj
Published: January 2008

This chapter takes up the more general problem of coalition formation when the symmetry assumption is dropped. The analysis is necessarily complex and several new considerations arise. The chapter proceeds in two main steps. First, a theory of coalition formation is developed for the theory for situations in which there are no payoff externalities across coalitions. The Markovian equilibrium payoffs for such games have a simple structure: they are unique for each set of active players, and they are amenable to computation by the use of a recursive algorithm. The efficiency properties of such equilibria are discussed in detail. The second step extends the theory to cover externalities across coalitions. The chapter therefore obtains a fairly general theory of coalition formation when commitments to form coalitions are irreversible.
Introduction
Authors: Kallendorf Craig
Published: January 2008

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of a revolution that occurred in education across Europe from the 1500s where Latin emerging as the main language of instruction. It then discusses the significance of Virgil's poetry, which has been linked to the high culture of the early modern period and the institutions that supported it. It identifies the existence of another Virgil, one that was available to those who had reason later in life to question the unquestioned verities they had learnt in school and to use Virgil's poetry, more specifically the Aeneid, as a way to envision a society that was different in one or more ways from the one in which they lived. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.
Burdens of Enlightenment
Authors: Halmi Nicholas
Published: January 2008

This imagined transposition of nature from nature itself to a book is analogous to the experience that Enlightenment aesthetics designated the sublime, in which, precisely by means of a subjective substitution of the phenomenal for the noumenal or the finite for the infinite. But as in the case of the sublime, Diderot's description of the Encyclopédie as a landscape could not help betraying the desire that had motivated it — a longing to reconcile anthropocentrism with the idea of ‘nature's truth’ as perspectivally neutral. This chapter argues that the Enlightenment's incomplete satisfaction of such longing would condition the Romantic theorization of the symbol.
Uses of Philosophy
Authors: Halmi Nicholas
Published: January 2008

This chapter argues that the Enlightenment in its multiplicity made the Romantic concept of a universal and inherently meaningful symbolism not only intellectually desirable, but philosophically possible. Four developments, each entailing in its way a rejection of dualism, were crucial: (1) the non-subjectivist recuperation of sensible intuition in the disciplines comprising ‘ natural history’; (2) the interpretation of humanity's cognitive relation to nature in terms of a microcosm-macrocosm analogy; (3) the increased acceptance of metaphysical monism after the reported affirmation of Spinoza's philosophy by the much-admired Lessing; and (4) the replacement of mechanistic with vitalist theories of matter in the later 18th century. These developments were not necessarily compatible with each other: vitalism, for example, rejected the mechanistic concepts that Spinoza applied more rigorously and comprehensively than anyone else. But by a process of syncretic assimilation the Romantics, especially Schelling (with active encouragement from Goethe), undertook to develop out of the various anti-dualist tendencies in Enlightenment thought ‘a markedly unified interpretation of matter and spirit, of nature and history, as elements of a single ascending process’ — in short, the Naturphilosophie on which the claims for the symbol would be based.
Uses of Theology
Authors: Halmi Nicholas
Published: January 2008

This chapter explores the theological nature of the Romantic concept. It argues that to claim the concept for theology is to reclaim it from aesthetics, and in that respect, the claim constitutes an assertion of custodial rights rather than an act of explanation. What the symbol gains by being subsumed under the category of the theological is not greater clarity but greater legitimacy, since its irrationality can now be dignified as a mystery of transcendent origin. Underlying this claim is the assumption that the institutional divisions between the fields of theology and literary criticism correspond to actual distinctions between the chosen objects of study of these fields, so that whatever concerns the theologian should not concern the literary critic or intellectual historian. An important question is whether the appeal to transcendence is even necessary, as far as the historical legitimacy of the Romantic symbol is concerned. If the concept's irrational content can be explained rationally in terms of its social function, then it should not require the protective custody of a discipline in which inexplicable mysteries are accepted as a norm. The chapter shows that accepting the concept on the Romantics' terms rather than claiming it for a particular discipline entails the risk of discovering that it is not what it seems: that it is neither strictly aesthetic nor theological but sui generic.
PRODUCTION OF IONS IN THE LIQUID
Authors: Borghesani A.F.
Published: January 2008

This chapter describes the main techniques exploited to produce ions in the liquid. Several ingenious techniques have been devised to produce or inject electron and ions in liquid helium. The most used techniques are described, including those based on direct liquid ionization, field emission and field ionization, photoelectric effect, tunnel junctions, glow discharge, thermionic emission, ion implantation, and laser ablation.
ION MOBILITY IN 3HE AT INTERMEDIATE TEMPERATURES
Authors: Borghesani A.F.
Published: January 2008

This chapter reports the small number of experiments on the ion mobility in liquid 3He at intermediate temperatures between the critical point at Tc=3.3 K and T=1 K. The inadequacy of the theoretical description in this cross-over region is pointed out.
MULTIPLE SPECIES OF POSITIVE IONS IN NORMAL LIQUID 3HE
Authors: Borghesani A.F.
Published: January 2008

The realization that ions of different size are produced in liquid 3He with different concentrations of 4He isotopic impurities has allowed researchers to select the ion to be studied just by changing the purity of the liquid. At about 70 mK, the positive ion mobility has a discontinuity related to the impossibility of further increase of an 4He-rich halo around the ion. Below the discontinuity, the temperature dependence of the mobility in the zero-field limit is well described by theory. At the discontinuity, it has been possible to determine the growth dynamics of the halo. The field dependence of the mobility also follows fairly accurately the theoretical description that takes into account ion recoil. The drift velocity non-linearities have put into evidence the equivalence of temperature and drift velocity in determining the ion mean energy.
5 Partisan Government and Employment Protection
Authors: Rueda David
Published: January 2008

This chapter explores the relationship between government partisanship and employment protection in Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK since 1970. The analysis of the Spanish case shows that the social democratic party [Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE)] was decidedly pro-insider. Facing increasing economic challenges (unemployment, inflation, etc.), the PSOE responded by staunchly maintaining the high protection of insiders and by facilitating the entry into the labour market of outsiders. Regarding the Netherlands, the analysis shows very similar developments to those described in the Spanish analysis. The analysis of the UK displays the consequences of unfettered conservative government. In the 1980s and 1990s, prime ministers Thatcher and Major engineered a dramatic attack on insiders in the UK. Labour's return to power since has meant a very timid attempt to promote insider protection.
6 No Man's Island: Fugard, Kani, and Ntshona's The Island
Authors: Goff Barbara , Simpson Michael
Published: January 2008

This chapter investigates The Island, devised jointly by Athol Fugard, John Kani, and Winston Ntshona. It enquires into how the play, when witnessed in performance, seems to be both an arena of real historical forces coursing across the stage and yet, since the demise of apartheid, a ritual re-enactment. These two versions of itself are coordinated in the play-within-the-play, the Antigone, itself staged as both a dead, oppressive letter at the heart of The Island and as a vehicle of liberation that erupts from and yet energizes the larger play. To stage this internal play requires a submission to the European canon, but this very submission permits Winston to find his own voice, and that of his people, within and beyond the voice of Antigone. Scripts of routinely baleful authority are thereby re-made as pretexts for a dramatic liberation.
An Empiricist Critique of Constructive Empiricism: The Aim of Science
Authors: Percival Philip
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines the aim of science according to constructive empiricism. It argues that empirical adequacy is not the only scientific non-instrumental theoretical value. A tautologous theory is empirically adequate, and yet such a theory would not be valued in science. It further argues that the scientific evaluation of theories is context-dependent.
Accepting Contradictions
Authors: Lipton Peter
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines the general idea of acceptance, from an angle somewhat different from van Fraassen's. It focuses on the sort of case where the argument for acceptance rather than belief is particularly compelling, namely where the full set of claims in question are contradictory. Here, acceptance may be the only live cognitive option. Some of the different forms these contradictions may take, and some of the reasons that the proper response to some of them is acceptance are considered. The chapter concludes with some brief remarks about what the need for a strategy of acceptance tells us about our general epistemic situation.
Putting a Bridle on Irrationality: An Appraisal of van Fraassen's New Epistemology
Authors: Psilos Stathis
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines van Fraassen's conception of rationality. It reviews the Bayesian structural conception of rationality and argues that it has been found wanting. It goes on to analyze van Fraassen's voluntarism. Some objections are raised about van Fraassen's reliance on prior opinion, and it is argued that the content of a belief matters to its rationality. Then it criticizes van Fraassen's view that inference to the best explanation is incoherent. Finally, it is shown that van Fraassen's conception of rationality is too thin to capture rational judgement fully.
From a View of Science to a New Empiricism
Authors: van Fraassen Bas C.
Published: January 2008

This chapter presents Bas van Fraassen's responses to the critique of his works. He mentions the ways he has changed his mind in the years since The Scientific Image. He highlights two themes as especially important. The first is the role of values in epistemology. The second is the turn in the empiricist tradition, which leaves many ‘central’ problems of traditional epistemology behind.
Chapter 8 Perspectives from the President's Commission on Social Security Reform
Authors: Cogan John F. , Mitchell Olivia S.
Published: January 2008

In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security, composed of sixteen members from both major political parties. Members were tasked with providing the president with recommendations on how to modernize the Social Security system, restore its fiscal soundness, and develop a workable system of personal retirement accounts as part of a newly structured program. This chapter presents perspectives on Social Security reform, drawn from service on the President's Commission. It begins with a discussion of the use of personal retirement accounts as a method of prefunding the Social Security system. The Commission to Strengthen Social Security developed three reform scenarios that incorporate personal retirement accounts as a central element in a modernized system of old-age security. The chapter focuses on one reform plan in particular — one that promises an enhanced and more reliable safety net while also providing workers the opportunity to invest in personal accounts with diversified investment choice and potentially lower risk. It is argued that reforms of this sort can help put Social Security on a self-financing basis for the first time in over a quarter of a century.
Erinyes
Authors: Sewell‐Rutter N. J.
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines those endlessly polymorphous entities, the Erinyes, sometimes the enforcers or even the embodiments of curses and the rectifiers of familial transgression. It first looks at their history and nature in life and in genres other than tragedy to learn about their range and prerogatives. Analysis of their appearances in a number of plays where they are crucial shows that in all these texts, they share certain features that set them apart from curses and inherited guilt. Their central place in Aeschylus' Eumenides is then considered, which is often taken, more or less consciously, for a locus classicus. It is shown that the one extant play in which Erinyes almost literally hold centre stage is an exception to the rule in more ways than one. Aeschylus' play helps define the province and limitations of tragic Erinyes.
Irruption and Insight? The Intangible Burden of the Supernatural in Sophocles' Labdacid Plays and Electra
Authors: Sewell‐Rutter N. J.
Published: January 2008

This chapter considers some manifestations of inherited guilt, curses, and Erinyes in Sophocles, paying particular attention to his three Theban plays and his one Pelopid play, the Electra. Sophocles is treated separately because he is a special case in the relevant respects. Aeschylus and Euripides, for all their differences, seem in interesting ways to stand rather closer to one another than either does to Sophocles. It is argued that Sophocles does not share the Aeschylean preoccupation with doubly motivated action and its bearing on mortal decisions. At the same time, he is no less concerned than his two counterparts with familial dysfunction and with supernatural causation. It is simply that his concern with these concepts is handled differently
Bread and Politics: The Ideology of the Grain Supply in Athenian Rhetoric
Authors: Moreno Alfonso
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines Athenian literature, especially fourth‐century oratory, but also comedy, to show both how public speakers presented and audiences perceived their economy and grain supply. The different personnel connected with the grain supply, from grain‐dealers (sitopolai) and “retailers” (kapeloi) to politicians and kings, each had their own pattern of rhetorical presentation. By observing how these patterns intersect, it is argued that the direct involvement of Athenian politicians in trade, and particularly in the grain supply on which Athens delicately depended for its survival, always risked a direct clash with democratic ideology, and therefore required subtle forms of rhetorical manipulation and concealment. Once the purpose and forms of this concealment are detected, Athenian rhetoric serves to reinforce both the picture of elite land‐holding in the cleruchies presented in Chapter 3, as well as that of elite networking in the Pontic trade of the fourth century presented in Chapter 5.
Conclusion
Authors: Moreno Alfonso
Published: January 2008

The Conclusion argues that the origins of Athenian dependence on imported grain date to the reforms of Solon in the early sixth century. It was at this time that Athens discovered or adapted the cleruchy as a social and economic tool, that the Athenian elite became involved in leading the city's first imperialist adventures overseas, and that Attica began to specialize in the intensive cultivation of cash‐crops. The Athenian democracy led to the intensification of all of these trends, and to the creation of an ideological system, deployed in rhetoric, to mask the serious incongruities between popular and elite interests. A need for imported grain drove Athens at different times to depopulate neighboring Aegean landscapes in order to extract grain surpluses, or to enlist the help of foreign kings, acting as Athenian citizens and benefactors. A supply system of such ruthlessness, sophistication, and ambivalence lay at the heart of Athenian democracy.
Introduction
Authors: Lunn-Rockliffe Sophie
Published: January 2008

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of how Ambrosiaster's writings can be examined. An overview of the succeeding chapters is then presented.
2 Ambrosiaster's Background
Authors: Lunn-Rockliffe Sophie
Published: January 2008

This chapter explores the religious and secular background of Ambrosiaster. Ascertaining the nature of Ambrosiaster' s religious background is tricky, but establishing his likely secular background is easier. Having benefited from an education in the classics and forensic rhetoric, Ambrosiaster appears to have been involved in, or at least in a position to observe, aristocratic and official life in Rome. Although the bulk of evidence places Ambrosiaster's work as written in the city of Rome, historians have suggested that he spent time elsewhere, particularly Egypt, from his references to Egyptian customs. Although he was acquainted with classical texts, it was Christian works which exercised the more obtrusive intellectual and literary influence on his writing.
Advertisement
Authors: Cappelen Herman , Lepore Ernie
Published: January 2008

This chapter discusses reasons why the practice of quotation is of central significance to the philosophy of language and to philosophy more generally. It argues that quotation is an important but neglected philosophical topic. The chapter sketches seven topics that can be illuminated significantly by understanding quotation, and together constitute a strong prima facie case for its philosophical significance. These are: understanding metalinguistic discourse, opacity, the language-world connection, what is said, compositionality, the semantics-pragmatics divide; and indexicality, context sensitivity, and monsters.
Preliminaries: ‘Quotation’ and Varieties of Quotation
Authors: Cappelen Herman , Lepore Ernie
Published: January 2008

This chapter discusses ways to identify quotations through examples, and summarizes why this should be done in the next few subsections. It also introduces some terminology central to a later discussion. It distinguishes among four varieties of quotation: pure, direct, indirect, and mixed.
On the Nature of Quotable Items: Signs and Expressions
Authors: Cappelen Herman , Lepore Ernie
Published: January 2008

The chapter introduces an obvious (though surprisingly overlooked) distinction between signs and expressions and invoke this distinction and the Minimal Theory of Chapter 11 to underwrite an account of quotation expression individuation. It then exploits this account of quotation expression individuation in order to explain (away) the recalcitrant variability data from Chapter 7. The chapter explains why so many authors (and speakers) are misled into thinking a single quotation expression can be used to pick out distinct quotable items on different occasions.
God and Grace of Body
Authors: Brown David
Published: January 2008

This book explores the ways in which the symbolic associations of the body and what we do with it have helped shape religious experience and continue to do so. A Church narrowly focused on Christ's body wracked in pain needs to be reminded that the body, as beautiful and sexual, has also played a crucial role not only in other religions but also in the history of Christianity itself. Dance was one way in which the connection was expressed. The irony is not that such a connection has gone, but that it now exists almost wholly outside the Church. Much the same could be said about music more generally, and this book talks about the spiritual potential of not just classical music but also pop, jazz, musicals, and opera.
5 Genius, Giving the Rule to Art
Authors: Echevarria II Antulio J.
Published: January 2008

This chapter discusses Clausewitz's complementary concepts of friction and genius. Military theorists of the Enlightenment tended to avoid discussing genius, or considered it a special phenomenon above explanation. Clausewitz attempted to provide one of the first scientific analyses of genius.
4 The Primacy of Policy and the ‘Trinity’ in Clausewitz's Mature Thought
Authors: Bassford Christopher
Published: January 2008

This chapter discusses the place of Clausewitz's famous ‘trinity’ in his larger theoretical scheme, with an eye to universalizing Clausewitzian theory as the basis for comparative military-political studies. Through linguistic, cultural, and psychological lenses, it examines critically existing English translations of the relevant section of On War and provides suggestions for revisions. Specific issues covered include ‘trinity’ as a word-choice; the difficulty some scholars have demonstrated in accurately enumerating the elements of the trinity; the significance of varying translations of Clausewitz's term politik (e.g., policy, politics); and the character of war's ‘instrumentality’ in the realm of politics.
7 War as ‘Art’: Aesthetics and Politics in Clausewitz's Social Thinking
Authors: Vega José Fernández
Published: January 2008

The concept of ‘art’ in Clausewitz's theory of war is linked to the aesthetic thought of Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgement, of which Clausewitz had some knowledge — probably through his instructor in the war school, Kiesewetter. Beyond this historical point, the chapter also shows the productivity of ‘art’ and its fellow concept ‘judgement’ for the social understanding of war. Hannah Arendt's interpretation of Kant's third Critique is used as a guide to develop the idea of war as art in Clausewitz's theory.
12 Clausewitz and the Privatization of War
Authors: Münkler Herfried
Published: January 2008

The growth of the state in the early modern period was attributable to its monopolization of warfare. In what have been called ‘new wars’, that monopoly has been eroded, but for two different reasons. Powerful states have withdrawn from their monopoly of war through the employment of private military companies: they employ asymmetric methods out of choice. Failed states have permitted the privatization of war out of weakness, and non-state actors have adopted asymmetric methods for the same reason. Clausewitz's original definition of war, as an act of force to compel our enemy to do our will, still provides an effective means to understand war, enabling us to see terrorism as a strategy.
7 Morality
Authors: Foley Michael
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines moral sensitivity in American society. It argues that American public life is pervaded by a profusion of moral reference points and by a drive to justify attitudes and actions through recourse to moral criteria. It is this level of moral consciousness in political exchange and argumentation that distinguishes the United States from other western democracies and which gives the conduct of American politics its distinctive character. God as a ubiquitous reference point in American culture, religion and politics, religion and the moral foundations of democracy are discussed.
17 Present and Future Challenges
Authors: Foley Michael
Published: January 2008

This chapter discusses the contemporary challenges confronting the established conventions and dynamics associated with America's ideational arrangements. Topics covered include cultural fears, the international challenge, and the challenge of democracy.
5 Nationalism and the politics of identity
Authors: Hurrell Andrew
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines the idea of political nationalism. It argues that the resilience of nationalism is one of the core planks of the pluralist view of international relations. Nationalism shows few signs of receding as a major feature in Russia, China, and India. Moreover, although disguised by its own ideology of civic patriotism, the United States has long been a strongly nationalist society and, in the face of the external challenge from terrorism and a domestic political shift to the right, this element has become still more prominent. Yet, whilst reinforcing the apparent naturalness of living in a world of states, the idea and the practice of national self-determination has proved a major source of conflict and opened up a series of unresolved dilemmas. The seriousness of these problems has pushed international society in a generally solidarist direction and led to a range of strategies of mediation: attempts to acknowledge both the political power and moral claims of national self determination but in ways that minimize its damage to international society. The most important of these involve attempts to restrict the application of the principle, to unpack the link between nationalism, state sovereignty, and self-determination, and to manage cooperatively the conflicts that inevitably arise.
The ecological challenge
Authors: Hurrell Andrew
Published: January 2008

The ecological challenge is so important and so profound because of the way in which it calls into question both the practical viability and the moral adequacy of the pluralist conception of a state-based global order; and because of the way in which responding to the ecological challenge has pushed states towards new forms of international law and global governance. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first examines the nature and extent of the challenge posed. The second section sets the responses to the ecological challenge within the context of the changing constitutional structure of international society — the move towards a solidarist state system on the one hand and the emergence of increasing elements of transnational governance on the other. The third section draws out the way in which unequal power and value conflict have complicated the capturing of what would appear to be the obvious common interest in promoting environmental cooperation.
Empire reborn?
Authors: Hurrell Andrew
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines the relationship between empire and global political order. The discussion proceeds as follows. The first section unsettles some of the assumptions that are often made about empire, in particular about the inevitability of the end of empire; the redundancy and outmodedness of empire as a form of political order, and the consequent implication that the natural focus of international relations should be the relations amongst states or nation-states. The sheer extent of the power of the United States and the apparent obviousness of the view that we are living in a unipolar world have brought back the language of empire and have led many to see the United States as an imperial power. The second section considers how we should understand that power. It argues that notions of informal empire provide some analytical purchase, but neglect both the consistently important role of military power and coercion in the evolution of US foreign policy, and the importance of rules, norms, and institutions — what one might call the formal side of so-called informal empire. The third section examines five of the most commonly cited reasons for the demise of both empire and top-down hierarchical conceptions of international order more generally. Rather than comparing the extent and character of US power directly with that of other hegemonic states, it asks how these five factors may have changed in ways that would make a hegemonic order viable and potentially sustainable.
3 Long‐Run Trend in the Relative Price: Empirical Estimation for Individual Commodities
Authors: Razzaque Mohammad A. , Osafa‐Kwaako Philip , Grynberg Roman
Published: January 2008

This chapter details an empirical investigation to quantify the trend decline in relative prices of a number of individual commodities, and the impact of declining commodity prices on the balance of payments of LDCs, SVS, and HIPCs. The empirical evidence presented points to the presence of a statistically significant declining trend in the relative price of most individual commodities, the results highlighting the magnitude of the deterioration of the relative commodity prices during the recent past.
Causal Theories of Representation
Authors: Le Poidevin Robin
Published: January 2008

This chapter focuses on three questions: what is a representation? What determines what a representation is a representation of? What makes a representation a piece of knowledge? The answer to the first question gives central place to the notion of truth, and the answers to the second and third appeal to causation. The Causal Truth-Maker Principle is introduced, a principle that will play a prominent part in the following discussion.
Euripides' Escape-Tragedies
Authors: Wright Matthew
Published: January 2008

This book is a critical study of three late plays of Euripides. It offers a reading of the plays, which has important implications for the way in which we read Euripidean tragedy and tragedy in general. It re-evaluates the escape-tragedies (Helen, Iphigenia among the Taurians, and the fragmentary Andromeda) and argues that they are to be taken seriously as a major dramatic and intellectual achievement. The book also argues that the escape-tragedies were produced as a thematically connected trilogy in 412 BC. The book assesses the ways in which genre affects our understanding of the plays. It also examines the plays' treatment of central themes such as myth, geography, cultural identity, philosophy, and religion. These are not separate topics but are seen as being joined together to form an intricate nexus of ideas. The escape-tragedies emerge as being serious, dark, pessimistic plays which raise some disturbing questions about the human condition.
5 Christology
Authors: Ludlow Morwenna
Published: January 2008

Gregory of Nyssa treated the subjects of Christology, soteriology, eschatology, ethics, and spirituality (or mysticism) as one. From the foundational fact of Christ's incarnation arises his understanding of salvation; this salvation then has to be seen through the twin lenses of its consequences for our practical daily life — particularly our relations with our neighbours (ethics) and with God (spirituality) — and of its eschatological consequences. This chapter explores how Gregory's Christology has been seen as fitting into the history of Christian doctrine, which has a profound effect on how it is still read. It contends that with the exception of some Catholic theologians who have responded positively to the general idea of ‘an ontological unity of all humanity in Christ’, the attitude of systematic theologians to Gregory's Christology has been generally dismissive.
14 Reading Gregory on Sex, Gender, and Embodiment
Authors: Ludlow Morwenna
Published: January 2008

This chapter presents some reflections on feminist readings of Gregory. There is a move away from what one might call relatively straightforward or surface readings of Gregory — ones which, for example, take it for granted that Gregory's only motivation in On Virginity is to advocate the celibate monastic life, or assume that the state of the first creation was a historical one, temporally prior to a second creation in which men and women were endowed with sexual characteristics. Patristic scholars have undermined such readings as these and their findings have found their way into wider feminist comment on Gregory.
20 Conclusions
Authors: Ludlow Morwenna
Published: January 2008

This concluding chapter draws together some more general answers to the question of why Gregory has been interpreted in so many different ways, first looking at the question from the perspective of Gregory's readers and secondly by focussing on Gregory himself as a writer. It suggests that most accounts of Christian theology implicitly rely on one of three broad historiographical models. The first is the ‘static’ model, which views both theology and the Church as basically unchanging and thus also tends to see the development of doctrine in terms of the working-out of the logical implications of the first revelations of truths about God. The second is the ‘reformatory’ model, which shares with the static model a high evaluation of the original revelation of divine truth, but unlike it thinks that at some point the original revelation became degraded to such an extent that it was held by no Christian group in a satisfactory form. The thirds is the ‘ adaptive’ model — Christianity also changes across time, but not according to a pattern of original truth, fall, and reform.
6 The Only Game in Town
Authors: Enyedi Zsolt , Tóka Gábor
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines Hungarian party politics. Topics covered include the popular legitimacy, organizational strength, and the role of political parties in the government process. It is shown that the relative stability of the Hungarian party system sets it apart from other Eastern European countries. While in 1990 the two largest parties commanded just 46% of all list votes, the same figure was over 85% in 2006. The effective number of legislative parties changed from a moderate 3.7 in May 1990 to 2.9 in 1994, 3.4 in 1998, 2.2 in 2002, and 2.6 in 2006. This shift of the Hungarian parliament towards a two-party system has been underpinned by a polarized political space and by the majoritarian elements of the institutional framework. The political, cultural, media, and religious elite have always had a largely bipolar structure. Parties close to the 5% threshold have been repeatedly condemned by members of the elite for risking the defeat of ‘their side’.
The Ethics of Philodemus
Authors: Tsouna Voula
Published: January 2008

This book presents a study of the ethics of the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus, who taught Virgil, influenced Horace, and was praised by Cicero. His works have only recently become available to modern readers, through the decipherment of a papyrus carbonized by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. The book examines Philodemus' theoretical principles in ethics, his contributions to moral psychology, his method, his conception of therapy, and his therapeutic techniques. Part I begins with an outline of the fundamental principles of Philodemus' ethics in connection with the canonical views of the Epicurean school, and highlights his own original contributions. In addition to examining central features of Philodemus' hedonism, the book analyses central concepts in his moral psychology, notably: his conception of vices, which it compares with that of the virtues; his account of harmful or unacceptable emotions or passions; and his theory of corresponding acceptable emotions or ‘bites’. The book then turns to an investigation of Philodemus' conception of philosophy as medicine and of the philosopher as a kind of doctor for the soul. By surveying his methods of treatment, the book determines the place that they occupy in the therapeutics of the Hellenistic era. Part II uses the theoretical framework provided in Part I to analyse Philodemus' main ethical writings. The works considered focus on certain vices and harmful emotions, including flattery, arrogance, greed, anger, and fear of death, as well as traits related to the administration of property and wealth.
Frank Speech
Authors: Tsouna Voula
Published: January 2008

This chapter examines the practice of frank speech or candid criticism, the principal educational method of late Epicurean schools and a major tool of moral and psychological therapy. The chapter is divided into four sections, corresponding to the following topics: first, the nature, scope, kinds, and circumstances of application of parrhēsia; second, the characters of the students and their positive or negative reactions to parrhesiastic criticism; third, the dispositions of the teachers and the ways in which these dispositions affect the use of frank speech; and fourth, the confessional and corrective practices applied at every level of hierarchy of the Epicurean school, and especially among the sages. Philodemus' discussion of these topics presents both historical and theoretical interest. It gives a fairly detailed idea of life in an Epicurean school in Zeno's and Philodemus' times, the interchange between teachers and students, and the methods used for the assimilation of the Epicurean values and way of life. On Frank Speech also advances challenging views about central problems of philosophical psychology and the philosophy of education.
Flattery and the Desire to Please
Authors: Tsouna Voula
Published: January 2008

On Flattery is, in all probability, the opening treatise of Philodemus' composition On Vices and the Opposite Virtues and the People in whom they occur and the Situations in which they are found. Its subject is developed in two books, passages of which are found in several papyri. This chapter attempts to piece together the extant remains of On Flattery and provide a sense of what Philodemus' arguments might be. It appears that Philodemus' treatment of flattery is incisive and in places original, and emphasizes aspects of flattery not always found in the relevant literature. These include, for instance, the conceptual relations between flattery and cognate traits, the interactions between flatterers and their victims, and the reinterpretation of literary figures in the light of the hypothesis that they act as flatterers or as people susceptible to the flatterers' arts.
Introduction
Authors: McLeod Hugh
Published: January 2008

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the changes that occurred in the religions history of the Western world during the ‘long 1960s’, a period which lasted from 1958 to 1974. Four major themes are highlighted. First, from the 1950s to the 1970s there was an enormous increase in the range of beliefs and world-views accessible to the majority of the population. Second, there was a change in the way that people in most Western countries understood the religious identity of their own society. Third, there was a serious weakening of the process by which the great majority of children were socialized into membership of a Christian society and in particular were given a confessional identity and a basic knowledge of Christian beliefs and practices. Fourth, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, Catholics and Protestants moved closer together. But as the divisions between the Christian churches were narrowing, the divisions within each of the churches were deepening. The main objectives of the books are then described.
8 Sex, Gender, and the Family
Authors: McLeod Hugh
Published: January 2008

This chapter discusses the sexual revolution, gay liberation movement, ‘second wave feminism’, and changes in family life that had a significant impact on religion. The 1960s and early 1970s were a time of crisis for the churches in most Western countries. Of the changes in this period in the field of sex, gender, and the family, those that had an impact on the largest numbers of people were the increasing focus of life on the home and the nuclear family, the influence of the ‘companionate marriage’ ideal, and the declining importance of the neighbourhood and of customs enforced by pressure from neighbours and extended families. The Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements exercised a powerful influence, but on much smaller numbers of people, revolutionizing the thinking of those who joined, becoming for many of them a complete way of life, and often placing attachments to religion or the churches under severe strain.