bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Anglicisation
Authors: Ohlmeyer Jane
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines anglicisation—or ‘civility’ as contemporaries would have termed it—in Ireland as an instrument of English imperialism. In Sections I, II, and III anglicisation as process is explored from three interconnected perspectives: first, the cultural and religious; second, the political and legal; and, third, the landed and economic. Resistance to anglicisation—ranging from revolts and rebellions to agrarian, political, and intellectual protest, to a continued commitment to Catholicism—is a thread running across the three sections. Anglicisation—and the cultural, linguistic, legal, and economic imperatives associated with it—also characterised English and later British imperialism in their other colonies in the Atlantic, Asia, and Africa, and remained a feature of life in Ireland despite efforts by cultural nationalists, including Douglas Hyde, to ‘de-anglicise’ Ireland.
A Menagerie of Plant Strategy Models
Authors: Laughlin Daniel C.
Published: August 2023

Categorical life forms only partially explain species distributions along climatic gradients. Plant strategy models that emphasize demographic life history traits were designed to explain temporal vegetation dynamics in response to disturbance. Plant strategy models that emphasize morphological, physiological, and phenotypic traits (i.e., functional traits) were developed to explain responses to gradients in resource availability. Tilman’s model assumes that the soil nutrient-to-light ratio is sufficient to explain variation in light and soil resource availability. Grime’s CSR model is the most widely recognized and cited plant strategy model. The CSR model assumes that habitat productivity and duration are the primary agents of selection and that three main strategies evolved in response to them: competitors, stress-tolerators, and ruderals. He declared that no plant could adapt to high stress and high disturbance simultaneously. Grubb and Craine each expanded the stress-tolerant strategy into additional groups. Westoby proposed a leaf-height-seed model where strategies can be quantified by the location of a species in a trait space defined by specific leaf area, height at maturity, and seed mass. Some ecologists emphasize demographic differences among species and others emphasize functional differences. The goal of this book is to synthesize these perspectives by articulating a demographic approach to functional ecology.
Life History Theory Applied to Plants
Authors: Laughlin Daniel C.
Published: August 2023

Life history theory assumes that natural selection optimizes fitness and that trade-offs among fitness components constrain the possible combinations of life history traits. Types II and III survivorship curves are the most common curves in plants, indicating that rates of survival and reproduction do not inevitably decline with age in plants. The advantage of one life history strategy over the other depends on the ratio of mature to juvenile survival. Iteroparous perennials will be favored when juvenile survival is low or unpredictable, whereas semelparous annuals will be favored when juvenile survival is high and when adult survival is low. For perennial plants, little data exists on reproductive schedules, but they appear to be quite variable across species. There is some doubt among ecologists that senescence occurs in iteroparous species. In a recent review, the majority of studies that tracked ages and demographic rates in herbaceous perennial plants found no evidence for age effects on mortality or fecundity, and researchers have speculated that this is due to the modular nature of plants. Some ecologists are satisfied with a purely life history perspective on plant strategies, but life history traits alone are not sufficient for understanding plant adaptations to environmental conditions.
Plant Strategies Along Resource, Disturbance, and Temperature Gradients
Authors: Laughlin Daniel C.
Published: August 2023

The classic fitness function of a trait is a unimodal curve, where there is a single trait value that optimizes fitness in a given environment and traits to either side of the peak confer weaker fitness benefits. However, multiple combinations of trait values can simultaneously optimize fitness in a given environment, and this changes the unimodal fitness function into a multimodal fitness function. Rapid acquisition of resources is critical for maintaining the high growth rates that are required to compete in a resource-rich environment. The difference between water and nutrient limitation is that water must be lost from the plant to photosynthesize, whereas nutrients can be reused and recycled. The vegetation canopy in productive environments will close given sufficient time after a disturbance, and canopy closure leads to light limitation. High-resource conditions following a disturbance will select for species with fast pace of life, low degrees of iteroparity, and short lifespans. Plants would be far more efficient in the absence of herbivores, but the benefits of defending themselves against being eaten are greater than the costs. There are two general mechanisms of persistence in crown fire regimes: resprouting from dormant meristems or seedling recruitment. In surface fire regimes, fire escapers grow tall and protect their lateral meristems with thick bark. Photosynthetic pathways and woody plant leaf habit are strong categorical determinants of distributions along minimum temperature gradients.
Empirical Approaches to Infer Fitness from Traits
Authors: Laughlin Daniel C.
Published: August 2023

The fitness of a single species varies along environmental gradients. The fitness of multiple species along environmental gradients can be modeled as a non-linear interaction between their traits and the environment. Changes in demographic rates will determine whether species ranges shift in response to climate change. Observational approaches to modeling fitness can leverage long-term monitoring datasets and population models. Intrinsic and invasion growth rates can be computed after accounting for conspecific and heterospecific neighborhood densities, although these methods differ from those in modern coexistence theory. Observations of failed introductions into unsuitable habitats are just as important as observations of stable and growing populations. Observational demographic datasets often lack measurements of population declines outside their natural range of environmental conditions precisely because the species cannot live in those conditions. Experiments are useful to identify the environments in which populations decline by forcing the filtering process to occur, although large observational datasets may have enough variation in them to still be useful. Common gardens beyond species ranges are the gold standard because they provide experimental control over environmental conditions and competitive interactions. Integrative measures of fitness are superior to single demographic rates at detecting reductions in performance beyond species ranges.
Self-Consciousness, Cognition, and the Taking Condition
Authors: Schafer Karl
Published: August 2023

This chapter develops Kant’s understanding of the connections between rationality and self-consciousness, focusing on the manner in which our rational powers are capacities for cognition (Erkenntnis). The chapter gives a detailed reading of what cognition for Kant involves, taking care to distinguish it from the conception of knowledge that has dominated the contemporary epistemological debate. Then it turns to the connections between this notion and the idea that rational powers are essentially self-conscious. There we will see that it follows from Kant’s conception of cognition that acts of cognition always involves a kind of (often implicit) consciousness of their own standards of correctness. Thus, any faculty for cognition is also a capacity for a consciousness of the standards that apply to that form of cognition. This provides one important way of understanding why Kant takes rational or cognitive powers to be self-conscious—one which establishes interesting connections between Kant’s philosophy and the recent debate about whether inference is governed by a “taking condition”.
The Autonomy of Reason and the Capacity for Autonomy
Authors: Schafer Karl
Published: August 2023

This chapter turns to the idea of reason as the capacity for a sort of genuinely autonomous activity or self-organization. In doing so, it develops the claims of the last three chapters by arguing that the idea of reason as autonomous ultimately expresses the same fundamental conception of reason as the idea of reason as the capacity for comprehension or cognition from principles. The chapter attempts to show that comprehension and autonomy are simply two (equally important) ways of capturing what is valuable about the distinctive activity of reason as Kant understands it. As we will see, each of these ways of thinking about reason’s activity is useful for certain purposes, but both are required if we are to fully understand Kant’s conception of reason and its unity. In other words, for Kant, the unity of theoretical and practical reason can only be fully understood if we understand the unity of comprehension and autonomy.
Cutting Deals (the Coase Theorem)
Authors: Sussman Oren
Published: August 2023

The problem of two players, trying to resolve a conflict of interests, to their mutual benefit, may be one of economics, simplest problems. It also raises some of the most fundamental questions that economists ask: can the players, on their own, devise an economically efficient resolution, or do they require the assistance of other parties? The chapter introduces the famous Coase Theorem, which argues that no assistance is required if the bargaining is free of frictions. The chapter tries to understand what such frictions may be. Much of the chapter is dedicated to introducing some basic concepts of Game Theory, an important analytical framework in economics. A precise definition of economic efficiency, in the Pareto sense, is provided.
Market Failures
Authors: Sussman Oren
Published: August 2023

The chapter explores deviations from the perfect-competition model in the form of oligopoly and missing markets (externalities, public goods) and the circumstances under which such deviations could lead to a loss of economic efficiency. It discusses the difficulties of identifying such circumstances in practice, an issue of great significance to economic regulation. The public-good nature of information is a likely source of frictions in financial markets. Institutions that do not appear in the idealized order of perfect competition may be devices innovated by market players in order to overcome trading frictions; standard debt contracts and banking institutions are examples. The chapter also demonstrates that market liquidity has public-good properties.
Introduction
Authors: Cooper Andrew
Published: August 2023

This study has two major aims. The first is to reconstruct Kant’s writings and lectures on classification within the methodological debates unfolding in the eighteenth century concerning the extension of Newtonian science from mathematical physics to the generation of material things. The second is to present a new interpretation of the place of natural history in Kant’s theory of science, and to show how this interpretation can enhance our understanding of reason’s regulative use in his critical philosophy. To achieve these goals, the study will unfold in three parts: (1) the transformation of natural history, (2) Kant’s physical system of nature, and (3) critical philosophy and scientific method.
ChartingTerra Incognita
Authors: Cooper Andrew
Published: August 2023

This chapter argues that the epistemological and metaphysical changes required to establish a developmental conception of nature as an acceptable programme of research occurred through the extension of Newtonian science to events and processes that are not strictly amenable to mathematical demonstration. It begins with Newton’s ambiguous legacy, which left several unanswered questions regarding the metaphysical implications of the mathematical conception of force presented in Principia. It then identifies three interpretations of Newtonian science, each advancing a distinct framework for extending Newton’s method to plant and animal physiology: Stephen Hales’ mechanical Newtonianism, which applies attraction and repulsion to the movement of fluids throughout the plant conceived of a hydraulic machine; Georges Buffon’s materialist Newtonianism, which attempts to explain the generative process on the assumption of organic forces resident in matter itself; and Albrecht von Haller’s analogical Newtonianism, which opens a science of animal movement that retains Newton’s refusal to speculate about hidden causes.
Seeking Order in Nature
Authors: Cooper Andrew
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines Kant’s critical philosophy against the backdrop of methodological questions concerning the use of hypotheses in natural history. It proposes a normative interpretation of reason’s regulative use, according to which the empirical use of reason’s ideas is both legitimate, for ideas merely prescribe the relations between appearances and their conditions, and necessary, for they indicate the context of intelligibility in which the understanding can have a coherent use. On this interpretation, natural history is scientific to the extent that it presents a physical-mechanical (and thus explanatory) system. While Kant denies natural history the statues of a proper science, this restriction directs us to evaluate the strength of our reasons for assenting to hypotheses.
The Method of Natural History
Authors: Cooper Andrew
Published: August 2023

Kant’s presentation of the antinomy of reflecting judgement can be seen as a culminating moment in his work on natural history. While commentators often deny that there can be a genuine antinomy of reflecting judgement, this chapter argues that when viewed as a conflict between two maxims that arise when natural historians attempt to classify natural products according to material generation, there is an antinomy of reflecting judgement, and, moreover, that it requires a different kind of resolution to the Antinomies of the first Critique. The thrust of Kant’s resolution is to show that if we consider the conflict as one that arises due to the peculiar character of discursive cognition, we can develop a logically consistent method for natural history that retains the conflict between the two maxims.
Conclusion
Authors: Cooper Andrew
Published: August 2023

The Conclusion recapitulates the study’s major claims. Kant’s a priori conception of proper science was not a foil to biology, and neither was his account of natural purposiveness a proto-Darwinian theory of morphological change. Rather, Kant’s account of natural science features within a series of attempts made by natural philosophers to anchor the historical examination of natural products in a defensible metaphysics of nature. These attempts continued to face theoretical problems, for they were unable to reconcile Newton’s mathematical account of force with either a physical-mechanical conception of the natural system or the material generation of living things. Kant’s critical philosophy alters the field, for by anchoring natural science in the structure of rational thought it removes the reconstruction of past events from the domain of cognition and places it instead in an intersubjective sphere of historical knowledge.
Armchair Knowledge
Authors: Moore A. W.
Published: August 2023

This essay considers a puzzle associated with ‘armchair knowledge’, that is to say, knowledge that is not warranted by experience. The puzzle is that each of the following claims seems true although they also seem mutually incompatible: there is armchair knowledge; some armchair knowledge, if such there be, concerns what is beyond the subject; and armchair knowledge does not involve any appeal to any particular encounter with anything beyond the subject. The Kantian solution to this puzzle, namely transcendental idealism, is a view whereby some of what the subject has knowledge of has a form that depends on the subject. After discussion of the scope and limits of this solution, it is argued both that it is the only available solution when the armchair knowledge in question is synthetic and that it is incoherent, from which it is concluded that there is no such thing as synthetic armchair knowledge. But this is all on the assumption that the armchair knowledge in question is knowledge of what is necessary. In the final section of the essay consideration is given to other solutions to the puzzle that may be available if the knowledge in question is knowledge of what is contingent.
A Kantian View of Moral Luck
Authors: Moore A. W.
Published: August 2023

Kant’s moral vision appears to be resolutely opposed to the very possibility of moral luck. But it is argued that, if we distinguish between good moral luck, whereby an agent deserves moral praise for something that is not in their control, and bad moral luck, whereby an agent deserves moral blame for something that is not in their control, then it would be at least Kantian, if not a commitment of Kant’s own, to accept the possibility of bad moral luck. Indeed, it is argued that, on a suitably Kantian view, bad moral luck is what evil consists in, an evil agent being an agent who culpably loses control. This signals an important asymmetry, since an agent who does not lose control, and who thereby exercises their freedom, is not a beneficiary of good moral luck: their virtue consists precisely in their being in control of what they are doing. These ideas are explored through a series of comparisons and contrasts, notably with the views of Plato and Aristotle and with the traditional Christian doctrine of grace whereby there is a kind of good moral luck in the form of justification through the death of Christ.
On the Right Track
Authors: Moore A. W.
Published: August 2023

This essay first appeared as a critical notice of Crispin Wright’s Rails to Infinity. Its main focus is one of the main foci of Wright’s book: how self-consciousness about a ‘grammar’ of ours, to use Wittgenstein’s term, can lead to various sorts of scepticism about the acceptability of that grammar. This idea is considered principally in connection with mathematics. It is argued, in line with both Wright and Wittgenstein, that we can resist such scepticism provided that we also resist asking certain constitutive questions in connection with the grammar, which in turn involves acquiescing in the idea that we could not so much as operate with the grammar were it not for certain facts of (human) nature. The final section of the essay takes issue with Wright’s treatment of Wittgenstein’s argument against the possibility of a private language.
The Middle English Book
Authors: Johnston Michael
Published: August 2023

The Middle English Book addresses a series of quite basic—but largely, as yet, unanswered—questions about the copying and circulation of literature in late medieval England: How do we make sense of the variety of manuscripts surviving from this period? Who copied and disseminated these diverse manuscripts? Who read the literary texts that they transmit? And what was the relationship between those copying literature and those reading it? To answer these questions, this book examines 202 literary manuscripts from the period 1350–1500 (that is, every surviving and substantially complete pre-1500 copy of The Prick of Conscience, William Langland’s Piers Plowman, and John Lydgate’s ‘Dietary’ and ‘Stans puer ad mensam’). First, this study suggests that most surviving manuscripts fall into four categories, depending on the proximity and relationship of that manuscript’s scribes and readers. But beyond proposing these new categories, this book also looks at the history of writing practices, demonstrating the ubiquity of bureaucracies within late medieval England. As a result of this examination, The Middle English Book argues that literary production was a decentred affair, one taking place within these numerous modest, yet complex, institutions that supported writing. But it also argues that, because literary production arose in such scattered bureaucracies, manuscripts were local products, produced within the cultural and economic milieu of their users. Manuscripts thus form a fundamentally different sort of cultural artefact than the printed books with which we are familiar—a form of centralized, urbanized, and commercialized textual production that was just over the historical horizon in late medieval England.
Introduction
Authors: Johnston Michael
Published: August 2023

The Introduction argues that manuscript studies needs to encompass larger corpora in order for our arguments to have purchase on large questions of literary culture. To this end, the Introduction details the book’s methodology of studying the entire surviving corpus of four Middle English texts: The Prick of Conscience, Piers Plowman, and John Lydgate’s ‘Dietary’ and ‘Stans puer ad mensam’. This corpus encompasses 202 manuscripts. The Introduction also outlines the book’s research methodology, which ranges across codicology, dialectology, palaeography, and provenance. The Introduction then offers a detailed discussion of codicological terminology to follow, with a particular focus on ‘booklet theory’, as well as a detailed defence of using the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English to place and localize manuscript production.
The Streamlined Book
Authors: Johnston Michael
Published: August 2023

Chapter 3 examines what I term Streamlined Books—those manuscripts produced in a straightforward manner, likely in response to a single commission. These manuscripts tend to be aesthetically unprepossessing, and they seem to have been produced in one go. Books made in this way could be either extrinsic or intrinsic—made, that is, either remote from, or close to, those commissioning them. Evidence for extrinsic production of such books can be found in those books copied by prolific scribes, for such scribes were likely working in urban centres with an active scribal copying industry, to which owners would have sent for the production of their books. Other Streamlined Books have evidence that they were made in proximity to their owners, from scribes who worked nearby.
The Evolving Book
Authors: Johnston Michael
Published: August 2023

Chapter 4 examines those manuscripts whose design evolved as production proceeded, and thus for which one assumes a close connection between producers and users. Codicological evidence for such books is found in variety across their scribal stints, quire length, materials, and general quality of execution. Such variety is due, it is argued, to such books being produced in less concentrated milieus, with producers likely working near the homes of users. Such books also often have a comparatively wide range of contents, and thus this chapter examines books focused on household knowledge, medical knowledge, literary texts, and religion.
The Proliferation of Scribes, II
Authors: Johnston Michael
Published: August 2023

Chapter 7 offers an ethnography of writing for late medieval England. This chapter surveys the numerous institutions that, by the second half of the thirteenth century, had come to rely upon the production of documents for their daily functioning. The following bureaucracies are examined: bishops’ chanceries, cathedrals, parishes, city governments, and rural households. Each of these institutions employed men from their immediate vicinity to copy documents. Such cadres of local copyists, it is argued, offer the best explanation for how the manuscripts discussed in the preceding chapters came to be.
From Gutenberg and Caxton to Jeff Bezos
Authors: Johnston Michael
Published: August 2023

The coda concludes this study by looking beyond the advent of the printing press, considering the book dissemination practices of Amazon. In the Conclusion, I argued that the printing press brought book production out of the cultural ambit of readers, centralizing it in the printing shop. In this coda, I suggest that such centralization has now reached an extreme form with Amazon, for when purchasing books through Amazon, one has even less contact with the world of production than one had with the printing press. Now, with Amazon, books arrive at your door, putting a rather extreme distance between us today, as readers, and those producing our books.
Mathematical Physics with Differential Equations
Authors: Yang Yisong
Published: August 2023

This book presents a broad range of fundamental topics in theoretical and mathematical physics based on the viewpoint of differential equations. The subject areas covered include classical and quantum many-body problems, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, magnetic monopoles, special relativity, gauge field theories, general relativity, superconductivity, vortices and other topological solitons, and canonical quantization of fields, for which, knowledge and use of linear and nonlinear differential equations are essential for comprehension. With insight of differential equations, the book features itself in several aspects. Firstly, the presentation of the content follows a mathematically thorough and transparent style which serves to provide a handy and direct access to approach each of the subjects discussed. Secondly, it renders a fairly wide selection of themes which may further be tailored to suit individual preferences of a reader. Thirdly, it supplies a balanced pool of topics for seminars. Fourthly, it offers guidance and stimulation to the related contemporary research frontiers and literature. Much emphasis is given to the mathematical and physical content, implication, structures, and challenges of the governing differential equations of the theories encountered and developed, thus offering an appreciation of the interplay of mathematics and theoretical physics from the viewpoint of differential equations. On the other hand, advanced methods and techniques of modern nonlinear functional analysis are kept minimal. The book is comprised of fifteen topic chapters and an appendices chapter. Each chapter is supplemented with a collection of exercises of varied depths.
Schrödinger equation and quantum mechanics
Authors: Yang Yisong
Published: August 2023

The essence of quantum mechanics is the Schrödinger equation. Thus, the path to quantum mechanics lies in an understanding of the birth of the Schrödinger equation. This chapter derives the Schrodinger equation based on the photoelectric effect, which has found a wide range of applications in today’s electronics. It then discusses the Schrodinger equation’s statistical interpretations and applications. It goes on to present the quantum many-body problem, which is of contemporary research interest, as well as its many applications. Next it investigates the Hartree-Fock method and the Thomas-Fermi approach, as well as provides a discussion of the Rydberg formula. Finally, the chapter looks at and unpacks the density functional theory.
Maxwell equations, Dirac monopole, and gauge fields
Authors: Yang Yisong
Published: August 2023

Chapter 3 covers the Maxwell equations, the Dirac monopole, and gauge fields. It discusses the Maxwell equations and their relation to electromagnetic duality It next presents the Dirac monopole and derives the charge quantization formula of Dirac by looking at the charged particle in an electromagnetic field. It moves on to discuss the removal of Dirac strings and charge quantization, followed by a consideration of the Schwinger dyon and the extended charge quantization formula. Finally, the chapter looks at the Aharonov-Bohm effect, specifically considering its mathematical features, formalism and governing equations, interference of waves, and aspects of a magnetic field contained in a tube.
Special relativity
Authors: Yang Yisong
Published: August 2023

This chapter presents a short introduction to the theory of special relativity. It begins with a discussion of spacetime, coordinates, events, and inertial frames, and then considers line element, length contraction, time dilation, and other distinct notions in special relativity. It then studies relativistic mechanics. It looks at spacetime properties under a change of inertial frame and unfolds many outstanding facets of special relativity. Specifically, it looks at Minkowski spacetime. It then presents a discussion of relativistic mechanics and derives the celebrated energy-momentum formula of Einstein. As an excursion, it describes the relativistic Doppler effect and compare it with the classical one.
Dirac equations
Authors: Yang Yisong
Published: August 2023

This chapter presents a brief introduction to the Dirac equation. This equation lays the foundation for quantum electrodynamics, which describes interaction of electrons and electromagnetic fields at quantum field theory level. The chapter begins with a derivation of the Dirac equation in terms of the Pauli matrices and Dirac spinors, which is followed by a discussion of some of its direct consequences. It next presents a few special solutions of the equation. It then introduces the Dirac equation coupled with gauge field and establishes the Zeeman effect. It will also discuss some nonlinear Dirac equations including the Thirring model, Soler model, and Gross-Neveu model.
Magnetic vortices in Abelian Higgs theory
Authors: Yang Yisong
Published: August 2023

This chapter begins by introducing a range of interesting characterizations of the static Abelian Higgs theory, including a virial identity in general dimensions and flux quantization in two dimensions. It next considers vortex-lines in two dimensions and their soliton-like behavior. It then states some existence results regarding radially symmetric solutions of the vortex equations. The chapter ends with a discussion on the importance of the vortex-lines to the linear confinement mechanism of a pair of monopole and anti-monopole placed in a type-II superconductor and points out some possible implications for an understanding of the puzzle of quark confinement-something under current pursuit by theoretical physicists.
Non-Abelian gauge field equations
Authors: Yang Yisong
Published: August 2023

Chapter 9 opens by presenting a study of the gauge field theory with a general non-Abelian gauge group, also known as the Yang-Mills theory. It begins with a general formulation and then discusses the Georgi-Glashow model. Next it presents the ’t Hooft-Polyakov monopole and the Julia-Zee dyon arising in the Georgi-Glashow model, and afterwards focuses on the exact solutions in the BPS limit. It complements this study with an introduction to the classical Bogomolŉyi-Prasad-Sommerfield solutions. Finally, it presents the Weinberg-Salam equations that describe the unified field theory of electromagnetic and weak interaction.
Einstein equations and related topics
Authors: Yang Yisong
Published: August 2023

This chapter introduces the Einstein equations of general relativity and some of their direct consequences. It begins with a brief discussion on Riemannian geometry, a calculation of the metric energy-momentum tensor, and a derivation of the Einstein equations for gravitation. It then elaborates on some cosmological consequences of the Einstein equations and presents Schwarzschild’s black-hole solution and Reissner and Nordström’s charged black-hole solution. It then covers gravitational mass and the Penrose bounds and considers gravitational waves in weak gravity limit. Finally, it discusses the cosmological expansion of an isotropic and homogeneous universe propelled by a scalar-wave matter known as quintessence.
Born–Infeld theory of electromagnetism
Authors: Yang Yisong
Published: August 2023

The chapter begins with a discussion of the two classical formalisms of Born and Infeld of nonlinear electrodynamics, which were aimed historically to resolve the energy divergence problem of an electric point charge as a model for the electron. The chapter then extends the theory as it investigates a broad range of problems which include a mechanism to exclude monopoles, relegation and regularization of curvature singularities of black holes, and a k-essence realization of the equation of state for a perfect fluid model of the universe. A few related nonlinear partial differential equation problems are also considered along the lines.
Soldiers of Democracy?
Authors: Grewal Sharan
Published: August 2023

Why do some militaries support and others thwart democratic transitions? After the Arab Spring revolutions, why did Egypt’s military stage a coup to end the transition, while Tunisia’s did not? On the other hand, why did Tunisia’s military later facilitate the elected president’s dismantling of democracy? This book argues that a military’s behavior under democracy is shaped by how it had been treated under autocracy. Autocrats who had empowered their militaries, securing their loyalty through a share of power and wealth, create militaries who fear that democratization will encroach upon their privileges. Empowered militaries are thus more likely to repress pro-democracy uprisings, and if that fails, to stage coups against new democracies. Where autocrats instead marginalized their militaries, democratization is considerably easier. Yet, marginalized militaries still carry risks of their own, being less able to prevent a descent into civil war, and more easily co-opted into incumbent takeovers. In short, the dictator’s choice to either empower or marginalize the military creates legacies that shape both the likelihood of democratization and the forms by which it breaks down. This book illustrates this theory through detailed case studies of Egypt and Tunisia, drawing on over 140 interviews with civilian and military leaders and three surveys of military personnel. It also probes the generalizability of the theory through a cross-national analysis of all countries between 1946 and 2010. Overall, the book brings civil–military relations front and center to the study of democratic transition and consolidation.
Introduction
Authors: Grewal Sharan
Published: August 2023

This chapter introduces the book, presenting the core puzzle. What leads militaries to either support or thwart democratic transitions? It summarizes the theoretical argument of the book, showing that how militaries were treated under autocracy shapes their behavior towards democracy, including whether they repress pro-democracy uprisings, stage coups against new democracies, facilitate incumbent takeovers, or fall to civil wars. The chapter then illustrates the theory through the key pieces of evidence from the Arab Spring revolutions and transitions in Egypt and Tunisia. Finally, the chapter surveys the existing literature on democratization, noting the relative absence of the military, and highlighting the ways in which the book fills this gap.
Case Selection: Egypt and Tunisia
Authors: Grewal Sharan
Published: August 2023

After the Arab Spring revolutions, why did Egypt’s transition collapse in a military coup, while Tunisia’s did not? This chapter outlines and critiques the most prominent theories, including mass-based arguments about Tunisians being (1) more developed, (2) more culturally tolerant, or (3) more committed to democracy than Egyptians, and elite-based theories that emphasize Tunisia’s (4) more moderate Islamists, (5) more compromising secularists, or (6) stronger civil society. Addressing each in turn, this chapter instead argues that the military was the primary cause of their diverging transitions. The chapter also contests and qualifies two initial military theories, that Tunisia’s military was simply too small or too professional to carry out a coup.
Egypt: Empowering the Military
Authors: Grewal Sharan
Published: August 2023

This chapter explores how Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat, and Hosni Mubarak controlled the military, emphasizing both the strategies chosen and their origins. It argues that Nasser pursued two strategies: sharing power with the military, and stacking the military with like-minded, secular officers. These empowerment strategies were designed to remove the military’s will to stage a coup, even if it maintained the capacity to do so. These strategies then proved relatively path-dependent despite changes in leadership, political assassination, and even defeat in war. The chapter thus sets the scene for subsequent chapters to show how these coup-proofing strategies in turn shaped the military’s behavior in 2011 and 2013.
Tunisia: Marginalizing the Military
Authors: Grewal Sharan
Published: August 2023

This chapter examines the strategies pursued by Tunisian Presidents Habib Bourguiba and Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to control the military. It argues that both neglected the military materially, and kept it far from political power. Since this marginalization of the military might provide grievance for a coup, both Bourguiba and Ben Ali also pursued two coup-proofing tactics: counterbalancing the military with internal security forces, and privileging loyalist officers from the more developed coastal regions to monopolize the top ranks. In addition, the military’s marginalization from politics also contributed to a third factor inhibiting a coup: the development of a professional, apolitical ethos. Beyond outlining these strategies, this chapter also provides a new take on their origins, as well as their path-dependent effects allowing them to weather the transition from Bourguiba to Ben Ali.
Tunisia: Facilitating the Takeover
Authors: Grewal Sharan
Published: August 2023

This chapter explores why Tunisia’s military facilitated President Kais Saied’s incumbent takeover in 2021. It argues the military’s behavior stemmed from the same three reasons why the military did not stage a coup in 2013. First, its apolitical professionalism led it to subserviently obey Saied’s orders without question, viewing a refusal as too political. Second, its out-group composition aligned with Saied’s self-coup, having come to embrace his populist vision. Third, its marginalization under autocracy allowed it to be more easily co-opted by Saied, who advanced the military’s material and political interests even further. The case of Tunisia thus illustrates that while the military’s marginalization under autocracy can facilitate democratization, it may also make incumbent takeovers more likely.
Building a global brand
Authors: Franko Katja , Goyes David R.
Published: August 2023

Victims’ invisibility and inability to make their stories heard stand in stark contrast to the worldwide notoriety that the entertainment industry has conferred on the perpetrators of violence. We begin by narrating the rise of narco-shows and examining how they balance the objectives of entertainment, factual accuracy, and portrayal of victims of drug violence. Drawing on exclusive interviews with informants involved in Colombian and global productions, we provide details about how entertainment companies have monopolized the right to recount Medellín’s history during the past two decades. Initially, the narco-shows were produced in Colombia. Because of its domestic commercial success, the genre soon went global, and is now dominated by U.S. actors, most notably on Netflix, with a pronounced focus on providing profitable entertainment and expanding the company’s global reach. Through commercial appropriation, Medellín’s tragic story has become a source of entertainment, with the perpetrators of narco-violence becoming global celebrities. Drawing on interviews with those involved in creating and producing the shows, the chapter demonstrates how processes of memory creation, which ideally should lead to a communitarian acknowledgement of social trauma, are adapted to attract greatest global viewership. In the process, the story of Medellín’s violence has been effectively turned into the story of Pablo Escobar. In the final part of the chapter, we argue that the corporate co-option of local memories of violence also reduces global sensitivity to violence and suffering in Colombia and leads to re-victimization of those who experienced that violence first-hand.
Global hierarchies of victimhood
Authors: Franko Katja , Goyes David R.
Published: August 2023

In this chapter we present the central theoretical insight of the book—that, globally, lives of some victims are deemed more valuable than the lives of others, which in turn determines the nature of their legal and symbolic recognition and the extent of commercial exploitability of their suffering. This chapter examines Colombia’s Victims’ Law (2011), which does not recognize victims of drug violence, excluding them from the processes of transitional justice in the country. Despite the fact that not only in Colombia, but also in several Latin American countries, deaths caused by cartel violence easily meet criteria of civil war, this is generally not acknowledged in scholarly literature on transitional justice. The chapter argues that the binary distinction between war and crime fails to address the needs of victims of mass drug violence and creates a hierarchy among victims. This has important symbolic, legal, and material implications for those who find themselves in the less favoured category. Victims of drug related violence struggle to access justice and to make their voices heard in public discourses about violence. We argue that the current understanding of mass drug violence as a ‘conventional crime’ represents a Northern perspective on violence, which can be counterproductive when used uncritically in Southern contexts.
The Application of the Regulatory Landscape (I)—Consolidated Systems
Authors: Davis Ronald , Madaus Stephan , Marcucci Monica , Mevorach Irit , Mokal Riz , Romaine Barbara , Sarra Janis , Tirado Ignacio
Published: August 2023

This chapter provides a high-level overview of the factual and legal situation of representative banking sectors from across the world in consolidated systems. There are no two systems exactly alike. Banking sectors, and the legal and institutional frameworks dealing with them, are the result of a combination of market design, private sector participation, economic and social development, and each government’s political approach to a reality (banking activity and failure) that has a massive impact in the country’s economy and society. Some of the models chosen (eg the United States, Canada) have been deemed best practice in this area of legal reform, and hence their institutions have influenced the laws and institutions of other jurisdictions; some other models represent relevant regional markets (eg Japan) or represent a regionally integrated solution (eg the European Union), which may constitute a model for future processes of regional integration. For each of the systems described, the chapter includes a factual description of the banking sector, an abridged portrait of the institutional frameworks concerned with the supervision of the banking sector, a high-level account of the resolution and liquidation systems of its failed banks, and a picture of the cross-border side of each of the banking sectors and their legal and institutional frameworks.
‘From Beginning to Beginning’
Authors: Louth Andrew
Published: August 2023

This paper makes a contribution to the study of Gregory of Nyssa’s vision of the Christian ascent, by offering a close reading of a fascinating passage in his eighth homily on the Song of Songs, where he speaks of the one ascending ‘taking a beginning from a beginning’, in the course of which various popular simplifications of Gregory’s teaching as ‘continuous spiritual progress’ with no end, epectasis, as Jean Daniélou called it, are questioned. The article also suggests that Gregory’s famous oxymorons, such as ‘sober drunkenness’, ‘luminous darkness’, ‘watchful sleep’, ‘learned ignorance’, ‘stationary movement’, are to be taken with radical seriousness.
The Reception of Dionysius up to Maximus the Confessor
Authors: Louth Andrew
Published: August 2023

The final demonstration that Dionysios was indebted in his thought and language to Neoplatonism of a Prokline affinity has led to a quandary for modern interpreters, and this has affected attempts to understand his influence, often reduced to bewitchment by his pseudo-apostolic authority. Initially, at least in the Mediterranean world, his influence was slow. Even though within a few decades of his becoming known, a critical edition, with variants, was made by John of Skythopolis, his influence seems to have been limited to Christology, on which he was cited by both Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians. His influence was more ample among the Syrians. Among the Greeks, Dionysios gradually came to be seen as clarifying the matrix of Byzantine theology as inherited from the Cappadocians with its strong emphasis on the liturgy as the locus of theology, and his distinction between apophatic and kataphatic theology providing conceptual tools for accommodating mystery.
The Lord’s Prayer as Mystagogy from Origen to Maximos
Authors: Louth Andrew
Published: August 2023

This essay traces the development of the place of the Lord’s Prayer in the initiation rites of the Church through three historical phases: first, the period of persecution, presented by Origen; second, the period of the expansion of the Church from the peace of the Church, presented by Gregory of Nyssa; third, a shift in focus to the monastic life, including devout lay Christians, represented by Maximos. For Origen initiation is preparation for possible martyrdom. For Gregory of Nyssa there is a marked concern for the influx into the Church of near-nominal Christians, manifest in his emphasis on the ethical and social demands of the Gospel. Maximos presents the Our Father as an epitome of the committed Christian life: participation in the divine life through kenosis of the Incarnate Word, apprehended by us through our kenosis in ascetical practice, leading us to an apophatic vision of the mystery of the Trinity.
Aquinas and Orthodoxy
Authors: Louth Andrew
Published: August 2023

To compare Orthodox theology and Aquinas is to embark on much-trodden territory, for in the last century Orthodox and Catholics too readily saw their differences as epitomized as Orthodox hesychasm versus Catholic Thomism. Certain observations tell against this. St Thomas himself was interested in and indebted to ‘Eastern Orthodox’ sources: he knew and loved the Greek Fathers (in Latin translation)—St John Chrysostom was a favourite; he made much use of Dionysios the Areopagite; and inherited the central place the Damascene’s On the Orthodox Faith had acquired in Western scholasticism. Further affinity lies in Aquinas’ initial monastic formation. In the hesychast controversy proper Aquinas played no role, but in the later stages of the hesychast controversy in the latter part of the fourteenth century (when Aquinas’ star was low in the West), he was appealed to by both sides. His influence on later Orthodox theology, while not negligible, was erratic.
The Hermeneutical Question Approached through the Fathers
Authors: Louth Andrew
Published: August 2023

In this essay in Anglican theology, it is argued, first, that traditional (classical) Anglican theology took as its model patristic theology, conceived of as ecclesial, not the pursuit of an individual. Although foundational, the Scriptures are not thought of as premisses from which theology is deduced. Modern theology, in contrast, uses the so-called historical critical method, to elicit the original intention of the scriptural writers and from this to derive a sure foundation for theology. The Fathers are consequently seen as irrelevant because they read the Scriptures from within the Church, and interpreted it by recourse to allegory. This essay seeks to justify the patristic approach to Scripture, characterizing it as ‘contemplative’, that is, seeking to behold and hear, not a message, but a person, namely Christ. Allegory is a way of seeking to be open to the mystery revealed by a prayerful reading of the Scriptures.