bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Self-employment and labour market dynamics of men and women in El Salvador and Nicaragua
Authors: Alaniz Enrique , Espino Alma , Gindling T. H.
Published: April 2023

In this chapter, the authors study the labour market dynamics of men and women in El Salvador and Nicaragua, focusing on the factors that help men and women move into an advantageous labour market state from an unfavourable state and whether these factors differ between men and women, specifically examining the influence of specific characteristics and personal characteristics in this process. They consider ‘advantageous’ states to be formal wage-employees and self-employed workers with a decent income or a successful and growing firm. Among the findings are that education and access to public services, such as utilities, promote transitions into advantageous states.
The dynamics of off-farm self-employment in the West African Sahel
Authors: Fidèle Sènakpon , Dedehouanou Ange , Alia Didier Yélognissè
Published: April 2023

This study uses detailed household-level data to analyse off-farm self-employment dynamics in Mali and Niger. It adds to the literature that acknowledges the existence of heterogeneities in informal work and the body of evidence on informal self-employment in fragile and conflict-affected countries. It finds that self-employed workers are more represented in the lower-tier informal work status, with a particularly high percentage in Niger and among female, rural, youth, and old adult workers in both countries. The study also finds that monthly average earnings from self-employment are lowest among lower-tier informal workers, who also have a low probability of transitioning out of this status. However, household-related factors such as asset and livestock holdings and non-labour income may play an important role in helping these vulnerable groups of workers move up the self-employment ladder, especially in the event of shocks.
Informal–formal transitions in work status in sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Danquah Michael , Schotte Simone , Sen Kunal
Published: April 2023

Informal forms of economic activity is the norm in many sub-Saharan African countries. Most businesses are informal in the way they operate, and major and essential economic activities are dominated by informal businesses. An important question in this regard concerns the extent to which informality itself is a persistent state. Using panel data from Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda, this chapter examines the likelihood of workers moving from lower-tier to upper-tier informal work and to formal work (and vice versa), as well as the earning implications of such transition. Our results reveal that informal workers in the lower tier, particularly workers in lower-tier self-employment tend to remain locked in this tier of informality. We find a significant earnings gain for workers who make the transition from lower-tier to upper-tier employment. Policymakers would therefore need to devise specific policies that seek to enhance the productivity of lower-tier informal works.
Bugs and bivalves
Authors: Milburn Josh
Published: April 2023

Only sentient animals have rights. This chapter distinguishes four senses of ‘sentience’, arguing that beings with valanced phenomenal experience (‘narrow sentience’) have rights. We can include non-sentient beings in our food system, but what of those who might be sentient? How do we translate the moral rights these animals may have into legal rights? The chapter argues that we should treat ‘Probably Sentient’ beings as if they are sentient, and treat ‘Probably Not Sentient’ beings as if they are not. Meanwhile, we should treat ‘Plausibly Sentient’ beings as if they have one right: the right not to have (what our best estimates suggest would be) suffering inflicted upon them. This rules some invertebrates (e.g. decapod crustaceans) out of our food system. But some (e.g. oysters and jellyfish) will find a place readily, and others (e.g. insects) will find a place with caution.
Plant-based meat
Authors: Milburn Josh
Published: April 2023

The term plant-based meat sounds paradoxical, but on some metaphysics of meat, plant-based meat is meat. Regardless, its place in the food system of the zoopolis is worth exploring. Plant-based meat seems relatively innocuous, but this chapter reviews and responds to two sets of challenges. First, plant-based meat might be disrespectful to animals. It may send mixed messages about permissibility; represent animals as a resource; reinforce problematic visions of meat’s place in society; say something negative about the character of those who eat it; or involve symbolic disrespect. Second, plant-based meat might be bad food, because it is meat; because it is processed; or because it is unnatural. The chapter concludes that, although plant-based meat will not always be the healthiest or most environmentally friendly food, it has a place in the food system of the zoopolis.
A positive case for cultivated meat
Authors: Milburn Josh
Published: April 2023

We need a positive vision of the place of animals in the production of cultivated meat. Drawing on critiques of cultivated meat, this chapter identifies three virtues that, ideally, a cultivated meat industry could realize: respect for animals; diffusion of power; and respect for meat’s assorted values. Cultivated meat needs ‘donor’ animals as the source of cells. Two existing models of the place of donor animals are ‘pig in the backyard’ and ‘mail-order cells’. Both could find a place in the zoopolis, but fail to live up to the virtues identified. The chapter offers a third, complementary, model: ‘donor’ animals could live on farms, where they would have workers’ rights. The chapter closes by considering a range of objections: Could we farm animals for corpses? How generalizable is the model? Would retaining farms be a bad thing? How many animals would the industry need? Is this a pipe dream?
Creating and sustaining just food systems
Authors: Milburn Josh
Published: April 2023

What does it mean for liberal states to permit and endorse non-vegan food systems, and what do the arguments of this book mean for people today? Although states ‘permitting’ food production methods is relatively straightforward, states ‘supporting’ them is not. The book does not commit to a particular ‘flavour’ of liberalism, so the chapter canvasses a range of liberal approaches, exploring the tools they contain for supporting non-vegan food systems. This includes minarchist liberalism, perfectionist liberalism, social-democratic liberalism, and public-reason liberalism. The chapter briefly considers non-liberal states, too. Although the book is not concerned primarily with non-ideal theory, the chapter points towards the non-ideal complement to the book’s ideal theorizing. First, it reflects on what the ideal theorizing may mean for individual diets today. Second, it reflects on what it may mean for states transitioning from unjust to just structures. Third, it reflects on what it may mean for activist organizations.
Gaining Fluency
Authors: Zhu Mu
Published: April 2023

This chapter helps students to become more fluent at the language of probability by developing the important skill for dealing with multiple random quantities. Topics include: joint, marginal, and conditional distributions; functions of random variables, and compound distributions. To focus on main ideas, only two specific multivariate distributions are mentioned: multinomial, and multivariate normal. A separate appendix is devoted to the special function of summing independent random variables, due to how often such functions are encountered.
Frequentist Approach
Authors: Zhu Mu
Published: April 2023

This chapter focuses on the frequentist approach to “saying something about” the model parameters—specifically, how to estimate their values and why some ways of estimating them may be better than others. Topics include: maximum likelihood; mean squared error; Newton’s method; EM algorithm. A separate appendix is devoted to finite mixture models, as a way of combining many simple probability models together in order to describe more complicated data generating processes, and for which the EM algorithm is naturally applicable.
Bayesian Approach
Authors: Zhu Mu
Published: April 2023

This chapter focuses on the Bayesian approach to “saying something about” the model parameters—specifically, how to find their posterior distribution. Topics include: conjugate prior; empirical Bayes; hierarchical Bayes; Gibbs sampler. A separate appendix is devoted to the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm, of which the Gibbs sampler is a special case, and a brief theoretical explanation of why these algorithms work.
Interval Estimation
Authors: Zhu Mu
Published: April 2023

This chapter begins by pointing out that, while we don’t usually care much about model parameters that don’t have intrinsic scientific meaning, it is often important for us to quantify how much uncertainty we have about those that do. This leads to the more intricate inferential task of interval estimation. Students will learn about how Bayesian credible intervals and frequentist confidence intervals can be constructed in principle, why the latter is often hard, and the historic significance of the Student’s t-distribution. Two methods, based respectively on the likelihood ratio and the bootstrap, are then introduced.
Black Irish Women and Esusu
Authors: Joseph Ebun , Ebenade Kesiena Mercy
Published: April 2023

This chapter examines the use of rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) by Nigerian Irish women in the Irish economy and society. It builds on previous research on how Black workers in the diaspora (re)negotiate their career/economic pursuits to what has been described as areas of least resistance and greater acceptance. This chapter commences by discussing how Esusu operates in Dublin, Ireland. Next, we discuss how racialized and gendered experiences shape the economic lives of Black African migrant women. We discuss the intersectional exclusions affecting Black women who are just affected by multiple axis of oppression and many identities which complicates life, being Black and female in a racial capitalist economy. We examine the economic integration issues or its lack thereof which compels migrant families to seek alternative means such as ROSCAs that operates on their own terms. We also analyze the reasons Nigerian Irish women use Esusu despite access to modern commercial banks and a multitude of formalized credit systems. The empirical evidence in this study is collected through the narratives of ten women of Nigerian descent who have engaged in Esusu within an Irish context in Ireland. We ground the study in the African concept of Ubuntu to shift attention away from gender inequality to the concept of Being as “being-together” through which a new language of economic diversity is introduced.
The Black Social and Solidarity Economy as a Site of Politicized Action
Authors: Austin Sharon D. Wright
Published: April 2023

Each chapter has discussed the way in which the Black social economy and the Black radical tradition combine together to make up the solidarity economy. Both men and women in the African diaspora have developed cooperatives to empower their respective communities. Women of color continue to be disadvantaged by an intersection of a subordination on the basis of their class, race, and gender. As a result, many reside in impoverished communities and are discriminated by financial institutions. As a result, they have mobilized the women and men in their communities so that they can raise their own funds, open their own businesses, and thus rebel against the racist patriarchal societies in which they live. This chapter provides a summary of the major findings of previous chapters and the contribution of each to the literature on group solidarity and cooperation.
The Neoliberal Welfare State
Authors: Knight Amber , Miller Joshua
Published: April 2023

This chapter analyses financial barriers to reproductive autonomy by highlighting the unduly burdensome financial costs of raising a child with Down syndrome. Depending on the intensity of care required, many parents are unable to maintain paid employment. In addition to lost wages, families of children with Down syndrome also face out-of-pocket expenses associated with medical care and other services not covered by insurance providers. We argue that America’s social failure to provide reliable financial assistance to parents who care for disabled children may pressure many pregnant women to seek termination to avoid the risk of poverty. Joining Maxine Eichner’s call for a “supportive state,” we critique the neoliberal state’s privatization of care and subsequent lack of adequate supports and services for people with disabilities. Ultimately, we propose changing America’s current long-term care system for home- and community-based services from a means-tested public assistance program to a universal social insurance program.
Ableist and Sexist Social Norms
Authors: Knight Amber , Miller Joshua
Published: April 2023

This chapter examines how oppressive cultural norms limit women’s reproductive choices. Building from feminist scholarship on motherhood and care, including Eva Kittay’s reflections on raising a child with a disability, we examine how cultural expectations surrounding motherhood and the sexual division of labor can affect prospective mothers’ reproductive autonomy following a positive Down syndrome diagnosis. We also question how dominant cultural ideals about “normal” and/or “perfect” babies, ableist attitudes, and idealized notions of kinship also influence prospective parents’ reproductive options. Acknowledging the limits of governmental reform in the United States, this chapter calls for several cultural changes—to language, media representations, friendship norms, gender socialization patterns, and kinship arrangements—that can bring about a more accepting and welcoming culture toward people with Down syndrome and their family members. We argue that these cultural changes can open new imaginative horizons for women as they face difficult decisions about how to move forward with their pregnancies.
The OBR and the Politics of Technocratic Fiscal Governance
Authors: Clift Ben
Published: April 2023

This chapter considers the politics of economic ideas entailed by technocratic fiscal governance, and explores the tensions between technocratic governance and populist politics. This provides the backdrop to an in-depth review of the establishment, operations, and role of the Office for Budget Responsibility—placing the UK’s fiscal council in comparative context. Created in 2010 at the beginning of Britain’s Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition government, the OBR was designed to uphold fiscal sustainability and oversee UK fiscal governance, including the government’s observance of fiscal rules. The OBR upholds high standards of transparency, and distances itself from the political fray through the veneer of independent expertise, supported by arcane economic forecasting techniques. Nevertheless, the chapter reveals how the organization is deeply and inevitably political. Judgement, interpretation, discretion, and competing constructions of economic reason are all political ingredients feeding into the OBR’s fiscal evaluation and commentary. Technocratic fiscal governance, in practice, involves both rules and discretion. This inherently discretionary politics of independent fiscal oversight informs how the OBR selects among available economic methods, techniques, and assumptions; conducts its forecasts; and develops its narrative of the UK economy—which is an important political artefact. The OBR’s fiscal governance is thus socially constructed and politically contingent, suggesting more broadly that the apolitical goal of technocratic economic governance can never fully be attained.
Narrating the Economy
Authors: Clift Ben
Published: April 2023

This chapter explores the politics of economic expertise, considering assumptions made about (in)stability, equilibrium, and crisis within capitalism, and the difficulties successive crises posed for those forecasting the British economy’s twenty-first-century trajectory. It drills down into the Office for Budget Responsibility’s understanding of the UK economy and the drivers shaping its evolution under conditions of pervasive uncertainty, homing in on the OBR’s construction of UK growth assessments. To make sense of the economy, the OBR uses the past as a guide to the future, its growth forecasting entailing particular constructions of economic reason, and understandings of capitalism. Charting how thinking about growth forecasting has evolved since the Global Financial Crisis, the chapter investigates crisis-defining and crisis legacy–defining economic ideas, and explores their impact on how the economy is narrated. It focuses on a series of OBR growth downgrades since 2010, and considers how the financial crisis caused forecasters to question the dominant assumptions underlying their long-standing economic models. Rethinking Britain’s economic growth trajectory involved the OBR in the politics of economic method, its altered view on the equilibrium rate of unemployment having implications for the politics of austerity, for example. The OBR’s evolving economic narrative, increasingly alert to secular stagnation dynamics, indicates the policy salience of the OBR’s social construction of fiscal rectitude. The chapter demonstrates the astonishing degree of intuition, judgement, and guesswork that informs growth forecasting, and the significant policy ramifications of evolving OBR thinking. This challenges the view of independent fiscal oversight as a purely technical undertaking.
Cyril’s Legacy
Authors: Menze Volker L.
Published: April 2023

This chapter analyses Cyril’s role as a corrupt church politician after the Council of Ephesus in 431. After the Council proved to be a failure, the emperor wanted the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria, John and Cyril, who had condemned each other, to re-establish communion. As Cyril was unwilling to retract his most controversial theological pamphlet, the Twelve Chapters, he paid the largest bribe known from antiquity: courtiers were showered with gold and gifts so that they would not support the demands of Cyril’s opponents. In the end, Cyril was successful and his Twelve Chapters became a cornerstone of ‘Orthodoxy’ while Cyril himself is venerated as a saint in most Christian tradition. At the same time, Cyril’s bribe depleted the funds of the Church of Alexandria and Cyril’s mismanagement of Alexandria’s resources presented a considerable burden for his successor Dioscorus.
The Uneasy Relationship between Human Rights and Public Health
Authors: Tasioulas John
Published: April 2023

An essential but neglected dimension of preparedness for a health crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, is a clear and defensible account of the values that should guide the formulation of health policy. This chapter argues that much of the prevailing human rights discourse exhibits misconceptions, both with regard to scope and content of human rights and with their regard to their relations to values such as common goods and democracy. Such confusions hampered effective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The chapter offers some suggestions as to how these misconceptions can be overcome, focusing on the important distinction between interests and rights, the integration of human rights and common goods, and the ways in which democratic participation offers ways of meeting the challenges of pandemics without the undue sacrifice of human rights.
The Risks of Prohibition during Pandemics
Authors: Flanigan Jessica
Published: April 2023

This chapter argues that public officials should usually refrain from imposing penalties on people who engage in risky behaviour during pandemics. It first makes the case that prohibitive public health policies, such as mandates and lockdowns, are often unfairly enforced, either because these policies interfere with people who are not liable to be interfered with or because they are excessively burdensome. Second, the chapter argues that these policies can also be counterproductive to the goal of promoting public health and wellbeing. Third, it claims that public officials also lack the standing to enforce prohibitive public health policies to the extent that they are also enforcing policies that prolong or exacerbate a pandemic. Fourth, it discusses circumstances where a prohibitive approach might be justified. To close, the chapter discusses the broader implications of these arguments for other ethical questions related to public health policy.
COVID-19: An Unequal and Disequalizing Pandemic
Authors: Subramanian S.
Published: April 2023

While global consciousness of the COVID-19 pandemic is justly massive, there are other communicable diseases, largely prevalent in the poorer countries of the world, with mortality measures that are at least as large as for COVID-19 but have not merited comparable attention. Such diseases are typically not transmissible across national boundaries the way COVID-19 is. This, for the coronavirus epidemic, would make stringent disease-containment measures such as lockdown attractive for the richer countries of the world—they can afford it better in their own countries—while the poorer countries, which can ill afford it, would nevertheless be obliged to comply. Within a country, too, the impact of the pandemic and the policy response to it must be expected to be harsher on the poor than on the affluent. Inequality, it is contended in this chapter, is thus a prime feature of both the international and intranational burdens of countering COVID-19.
Pondering the Next Pandemic
Authors: Lipshitz Nethanel , Kahn Jeffrey P. , Faden Ruth
Published: April 2023

The contributions in this volume discuss some of the fundamental debates that emerged during the pandemic. The aim of the authors of this chapter is to reflect on some of these contributions, offer their own perspective on several debates they engage in, and identify areas that will benefit from further attention by both scholars and policymakers. This chapter focuses on two broad issues: personal liberty and global justice. Regarding the former, it takes a more sympathetic view of liberty-restricting measures than some of the other contributors do. It also evaluates the proposal of using selective liberty-restricting measures and encourages a distinction between different kinds of freedom when balancing liberty protection and harm reduction. Regarding global justice, the chapter proposes a human-rights framework as a possible alternative or supplement to a duty-of-easy-rescue framework. It ends by mentioning some areas not much discussed in the current volume which should engage future theoretical thinking about pandemics ethics: the challenge to democracy posed by public health crises, public health governance, and the interests of children.
Conclusion
Authors: Ndulu Benno , Stuart Elizabeth , Dercon Stefan , Knaack Peter
Published: April 2023

This chapter concludes the book. The conclusion’s primary argument is that even when you think you have been politically smart—and the Oxford team designed the Digital Economy Kit with realpolitik at its heart—you probably have not been smart enough. Sensible people can disagree as to the initial outcomes of the Kit: an optimist would point to achievements. A pessimist would say that change was already coming and the Kit only nudged at the margins, if at all, and that any coalitions for change are not likely to last. Both can be correct, but this chapter comes down on the side that for all the challenges it met, the Kit was worthwhile for the countries, and its design and roll out offers wider lessons for outsiders seeking a sensible role in helping developing countries with change, be it in the digital area or in other aspects of their economies and societies.
Introduction
Authors: Ross Shaun
Published: April 2023

This introduction charts the history of eucharistic theology to explain why, in a tradition that extends from Chaucer to Milton, English poets turned to the sacrament as a way of understanding poetic sign-making. It unpacks how the intense debates that surrounded the eucharist in late medieval and early modern Europe relate closely to a range of poetic concerns: how signs relate to what they signify, how words mediate the agency of author and reader, and how poetry embodies meaning. This opening section also challenges a recurring narrative that has read poetic investment in the eucharist as resulting from the Protestant rejection of transubstantiation. Critiquing this secularizing teleology, it provides a richer account of ‘presence’ as a concept within eucharistic theology and explains how the poetic turn to the eucharist reflects a counter-impulse to the processes of ‘excarnation’ that prevailed within late medieval and early modern religious reform movements.
Southwell’s Mass
Authors: Ross Shaun
Published: April 2023

This chapter considers the work of the Jesuit poet and martyr Robert Southwell, arguing that his understanding of the eucharist informs his poetry and explains its significant influence on later English devotional poetry. It describes how he inaugurated a tradition of figuring the ‘consecration’ of poetry for religious use as a eucharistic transformation, and shows how his work had a pastoral function for his Recusant readership, acting as a temporary substitute for the transubstantiated host. Through close readings of his shorter lyrics, prose, and the long poem, St. Peter’s Complaint, this chapter unpacks how Southwell’s pastoral goals undergird a sacramental understanding of subjectivity that blurs the distinction between believer and Christ. This account of subjectivity, the chapter concludes, significantly influenced subsequent devotional poets such as George Herbert, and so challenges the idea that early modern poetic attention to the eucharist was a uniquely Protestant phenomenon.
The Revolution
Authors: Bew Paul
Published: April 2023

The land question became more important in Irish and indeed Anglo-Irish politics as an economic downturn beckoned. Parnell adopted a radical position in which Dillon, reluctantly at first, followed him. In America to gather funds for the Land League movement both radicalized. Parnell made gains in the general election of April 1880 and the Land League moved out of its original small farmer basis in the west to become a truly national movement. In the summer of 1880 Parnell met Katharine O’Shea; Dillon immediately detected a restraining influence on Parnell. Dillon’s language became more extreme; Parnell was increasingly uneasy on that score. His politics remained hybrid: superficially full-blooded radicalism but always with a visible undertow of conservatism and pragmatism now quite absent in Dillon. The gap between the two men widened and, in fact, remained significant until Parnell’s death.
Conclusion
Authors: Bew Paul
Published: April 2023

Dillon started life with a Spanish ‘image’: this never completely left him, but it was in later years replaced to a degree by a more Italian one, as admirers sought to cast him in the mould of the Italian patriot Mazzini. He was sharply disillusioned by the actual fruits of Irish independence and made no effort to conceal his disillusion. Dillon felt simply that nothing good could come from Sinn Fein. Opponents criticized him either for not being conciliatory enough towards Protestants and unionists in his early life or for being too hostile to Sinn Fein in his final years.
Sing Rage
Authors: Mihut Cristian F.
Published: April 2023

Chapter 6 addresses the following question: Can we recommend curative forgivingness to people living under oppression? At first blush, virtuous anger seems overall a more fitting response to wrongdoers whose actions express and perpetuate systemic evil. The chapter surveys and clarifies several ways in which anger can be taken to be virtuous. It then articulates a model of practical selfhood—the dialogical/dramatic model—that aims to accommodate both forgivingness and the virtue of anger for individuals living in non-ideal circumstances. It illustrates how the dialogical/dramatic model responds to a serious worry about anger-entrenchment. It suggests a theological meta-narrative that makes sense simultaneously of the virtues of anger and forgivingness. The picture that emerges is this: the virtuousness of anger cannot be assessed piecemeal, in separation from larger psychological forces active in one’s agency. These in turn depend on the larger meta-narratives, and one of the stories available to those oppressed expresses God’s own responses to systemic injustices. The chapter and the book end by suggesting not only that curative forgivingness is compatible with virtuous anger, but that they can be brought closer together through the concept of normative hope in persons.
Humanist Moral Fusion: Terence and the Prodigal Son
Authors: Little Katherine C.
Published: April 2023

Humanist authors, including, famously, Erasmus of Rotterdam, confidently insisted that classical texts were useful for Christian readers, for shaping them in good and bad behavior. Despite humanist confidence in moral usefulness, the Renaissance encounter with pagan, classical texts was at times marked by ambivalence, an uneasy awareness of the gap between classical and Christian. Such ambivalence shapes the influential humanist play Acolastus (1529), a Latin play that fuses the biblical parable of the prodigal son and its message of repentance with Terentian comedy. Even as Acolastus embraces Roman comedy, the play generates a particularly Christian sense of loss. This sense of loss haunts the classical imitation that the play ostensibly promotes.
Contract Before the Enlightenment
Authors: Bogle Stephen
Published: April 2023

This study explains the development and reception of Viscount Stair’s innovative contractual ideas. By considering his philosophical and theological impulses this examination sheds new light upon what shaped his legal thought and shows the imprint of Aristotelianism, Grotius, and Calvin upon legal thought in Scotland. It explains how Stair broke new ground within the Roman law tradition by assimilating it with Protestant natural law. Importantly, this investigation demonstrates how Stair’s Calvinist alteration of Grotius’ natural law theory resulted in a unique viewpoint in comparison to his contemporaries: bare agreements and promises are binding; the human will is the central trigger for creation of contractual obligations; man has a God-given freedom by which to create contractual obligations that he should use to bring glory to God; and that the rules of contract should be informed by the needs of commerce as much as equity. It concludes by arguing that once the Calvinist theistic premises of Stair’s contractual thought are dropped his approach bears the hallmarks of the natural law jurisprudence adopted by many of the leading moral philosophers of eighteenth-century Scotland.
Introduction
Authors: Bogle Stephen
Published: April 2023

Who is Stair? Why explore his contractual thought? Why does he matter to those beyond Scotland? How does his legal thought relate to the intellectual context of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe? These are some of the questions this introductory chapter starts to answer. It begins by offering an overview of Stair’s public life as well as his published work, emphasizing why an analysis of legal texts alone cannot adequately explain the unique path which Stair took within the Institutions of the Laws of Scotland. This introduction explains that by examining the philosophical, political, and theological influences of Stair we can start to explain some of the distinctive features of Scots contractual thought and see how Calvinism, Aristotelianism, and Grotian natural law has left its imprint on the law of Scotland.
Roman Law as a Source of Contract Law
Authors: Bogle Stephen
Published: April 2023

How did Stair use Roman law? In the mid-seventeenth century it was the most comprehensive, structured, and respected source of legal thought in Scotland, and indeed, Europe more generally. Yet in offering an account of the law contract in Scotland, Stair innovated within the Roman law juristic tradition. This chapter sets out Stair’s two objectives—offer a summary of the laws and customs of Scotland and demonstrate the universal justice embodied within the laws of Scotland—and explains how they shaped, in part, his handling of Roman law as a source. Crucially, it explains Stair’s preference for reason over tradition and first principles over antiquity. In offering an account of Stair’s approach to Roman law, this chapter touches upon much larger political, legal, and philosophical debates of mid-seventeenth-century Scotland.
Standing by the Faith of Pactions and Promises
Authors: Bogle Stephen
Published: April 2023

The enforcement of nuda pacta is, prima facie, a departure from the traditional approach of Roman law and is redolent of canon law’s approach to contracting. Therefore, in terms of legal history, Stair’s statement that nuda pacta are enforceable in the Court of Session, namely a secular court, is a significant break from centuries of legal practice and is representative of a shift in legal thought. More generally, the recognition of the enforceability of a nudum pactum within a secular court is a significant development of contractual thought within European legal history which signals the emergence of modern notions of contract, including the secularization of contracting and the unification of different systems of law otherwise applicable to contracting behaviour. It also undermines the authority of the learned law of Roman law found in the Digest and commentaries upon the Corpus iuris civilis, which appeared to say otherwise. Arguably, by the time Stair said nuda pacta were enforceable within a Scots secular court, it was already being practised in various jurisdictions and geographical locations across Europe. The aim of this chapter is to explain Stair’s role and motivations as the first jurist in Scotland to proudly proclaim that nuda pacta were now enforceable in Scotland.
Freedom, Liberty, and Conscience
Authors: Bogle Stephen
Published: April 2023

This chapter shows how Stair’s conception of liberty and freedom used in the Institutions of the Law of Scotland can be informed by his theological treatise, Divine Perfections. What emerges is that Stair held a theologically rich conception of liberty, which meant that when prescribed obligations of divine law were exhausted, man had a discretion to decide how he would bring glory to God. But this was not freedom in a negative Hobbesian or a secular Pufendorfian sense: it was uttered within the context of seventeenth-century Scotland, where the notion of bringing glory to God was central to the social, institutional, and personal organization of an individual’s life. Indeed, when Stair is read within the appropriate context, it appears that for him there was a range of permissible actions which man could do with his liberty, and which could bring glory to God; but this was not licence or immunity to do whatever you wanted to do. That is, once Stair’s approach to liberty is understood within the context of the seventeenth century and his own theological writing, for Stair, man is only truly free when he acts in accordance with what God has willed, which was known to man through the Moral Law, which was written on his heart, and through his dialogue with his conscience, reason, and Scripture.
Processes and Records at the End of the Fifteenth Century
Authors: McGlynn Margaret
Published: April 2023

Doctrine provided lawyers with an intellectual toolbox, but they also needed to be familiar with a procedural toolbox, since the common law relied on process to ensure order. Chapter 3 complements the story of doctrinal development in chapters 1 and 2 with an outline of how the criminal justice processes around felony worked in the late fifteenth century in practice, from the discovery of the body in a homicide through to verdict and sentencing. It also examines the activities of ecclesiastical officers in the common law courts, the ecclesiastical processes and records around benefit of clergy and purgation, and the rituals of abjuration in the years around 1500.
Sanctuary and Benefit of Clergy 1529–1536
Authors: McGlynn Margaret
Published: April 2023

While the Reformation parliament clearly earned its adjective, this busiest of early Tudor parliaments had other concerns besides religious change, including law and order. Between 1529 and about 1536 the trajectory visible from late in the reign of Henry VII continued, and in the statutes of that parliament and the activities of the courts we can see three developments which both continued previous practices and built upon them in new ways. This chapter will start by examining the changes to sanctuary and benefit of clergy individually, but will highlight the ways in which they were increasingly intertwined, both in practice and in policy.
Sanctuary and Benefit of Clergy after 1537
Authors: McGlynn Margaret
Published: April 2023

While criminal justice reform rode the wave of religious reform successfully through the early 1530s, it crashed painfully in the last years of the decade. Over the previous four decades the justices had developed a new model of criminal confinement, sometimes in the face of ecclesiastical opposition, which confidently, if unthinkingly, assumed that the resources of the institutional Church would be available to fund and manage it. In the 1530s the opposition disappeared, but so did the resources. Without any compensating secular resources devoted to the problem—for that was never an option—the common lawyers increasingly found themselves responding on the fly to religious changes which undermined criminal justice practices in ways that were often not intended or foreseen. They were forced not only to improvise, but to improvise quickly. If the story of the five decades from 1490 to c. 1536 is of the creation of a secular system of criminal confinement housed, funded, and managed by the ecclesiastical authorities, the story of the two decades from 1537 to c. 1553 is of the swift collapse of that system as religious changes removed the institutional foundations on which it had been built.
Modes of Perpetuating Advantage
Authors: Goodin Robert E.
Published: April 2023

This chapter is devoted to analytic preliminaries. Its task is to distinguish the four fundamental modes of perpetuating advantage. One is by simply retaining it, holding on to what you have. A second is by expanding it, securing further advantage being a way of also retaining advantages that you already have. A third is by replicating advantage, creating for yourself a new advantage just like the one you originally had. A fourth is by recreating advantage, different in kind than you previously had but just as advantageous. These are four patterns of perpetuated advantage. The task of subsequent chapters is to explicate the more specific mechanisms that produce those patterns.
Language, Coding Categories, and Interpretive Schema Confer Advantage
Authors: Goodin Robert E.
Published: April 2023

Languages pose a classic coordination problem: everyone wants to speak the same language as those with whom they want to communicate, in order to be understood. But while everyone wants to coordinate on the same language, the choice of which it is to be can differentially advantage some (e.g., native speakers) over others. The choice of language can thus confer advantages on some over others because they accrue more status from the language they speak, they are more fluent in it, and more facile in manipulating it. Similar dynamics are at work in the choice of concepts and coding categories. it is convenient (sometimes essential) for everyone to use the same ones, but the choice of which to use can advantage some people over others, and persistently so as the same concepts and categories are used recurringly time and again. The same dynamics are at work in the choice of interpretative schema (ideologies and their explanatory cognates).
Coordination and Organization Confer Advantage
Authors: Goodin Robert E.
Published: April 2023

This chapter extends Chapter 5’s categorization of ‘coordination problems’ in relation to languages. In addition to ‘pure coordination games’ (where benefits are equal for all parties) and ‘unequal coordination games’ (where different coordinated outcomes are better for some than others), there are also imperatives to coordinate in ‘assurance game’ (‘Stag hunt’) and ‘Prisoners’ Dilemma’ situations. Such coordination can be accomplished by various mechanisms: formal mutual agreements; shared norms or conventions; mutual adjustment (each responding to the other’s moves); or mutual alignment (each doing what they think is best from the point of view of the collective). Organizations are the institutional embodiment of such coordination, although even in the most institutionalized organization much of the coordination is of a more informal sort. Organization and ongoing schemes of coordination more generally inevitably embody distributional biases that advantage some over others, and recurringly so insofar as the same structures persist over time. This chapter concludes the book’s discussion of specific mechanisms for perpetuating injustice.
External Opportunities
Authors: Goodin Robert E.
Published: April 2023

This is the first of two chapters exploring the fundamental ‘drivers’ underlying the specific mechanisms of structural injustice already elaborated. Its focus is upon ‘scale effects’ and the way in which the opportunities they afford give rise to many of the mechanisms for perpetuating advantaged previously discussed. Scale effects arise at various points. One is in production: the stuff of monopolies and mergers. A second is in consumption: with some goods, the more you consume, the more you have to consume (practising the piano is arguably like that, as is trusting one another). A third sort of scale effect arises in connection with valuation: network externalities are like that (the bigger the network, the more valuable it is to be part of it) but there are various other cases where ‘bigger is better’ (e.g., it is better to open an account in a bank with more customers). Scale effects of any of those sorts perpetuate advantage. Insofar as bigger is better and better attracts more people, the bigger thing gets still bigger—and better for those already advantaged in being part of something that big.
Ideal and Non-Ideal Theory
Authors: McKenna Robin
Published: April 2023

This chapter argues that epistemology needs to have a debate about idealization. Moreover, it argues that the existing debate between traditional and social epistemology is not a good surrogate for such a debate. The chapter also sketches the contours of the debate by identifying the epistemological analogues of positions that have been taken on the role of idealization in political philosophy by John Rawls and Charles Mills, among others. The result is a way of distinguishing between ideal and non-ideal epistemology that is based on the way that Mills has distinguished between ideal and non-ideal theory in political philosophy. Along the way, the chapter clarifies what is and is not at issue in the debate between ideal and non-ideal epistemology and addresses some objections to the book as a whole.
The Obligation to Engage
Authors: McKenna Robin
Published: April 2023

This chapter argues against the view, defended by John Stuart Mill, that we have an obligation to engage with challenges to our beliefs. On the Millian picture, engaging with challenges will bring epistemic benefits. The chapter draws on insights from Kristie Dotson about epistemic exclusion and oppression to argue that engagement will only have these benefits if inquirers satisfy their obligations to each other. But inquirers often fail to satisfy their obligations to members of marginalized groups, who are regularly excluded from systems of knowledge production and dissemination. The chapter finishes by sketching a new, non-ideal picture of our obligations as inquirers. On this picture, the extent of our obligations depends on whether we can expect other inquirers to satisfy their obligations to us. If I can’t expect you to satisfy your obligations towards me, it may be that I have no obligation to engage with you or what you have to say.
Scepticism Motivated
Authors: McKenna Robin
Published: April 2023

This chapter uses empirical work on motivated reasoning to argue that many of our beliefs about political issues, and scientific issues that have become politically contentious like global warming, are unjustified. This is a distinctive form of scepticism that is motivated by the recognition of human cognitive limitations. The chapter uses the fact that scepticism is a live issue within non-ideal epistemology to underscore several points. The debate between ideal and non-ideal epistemology is not a debate about whether our epistemic norms and ideals should be demanding, and the non-ideal epistemologist’s criticism of ideal epistemology is not that it is overly demanding. The criticism is that ideal epistemology sometimes traffics in norms and ideals that we would do better not to try and follow or attain.
Section introduction: principles of vaccine economics
Authors: Bishai David , Mayora Chrispus
Published: April 2023

This section provides an overview of the specificities of vaccines as a complex medical product. Vaccines are some of the most complex molecules ever invented and the social systems that deploy, monitor, and finance them are equally complex. Readers will be exposed to the peculiarities of vaccine economics, which arise from the peculiarities of vaccines. The fundamental elements of economics such as price, demand, and supply will take on a new meaning in the world of vaccines, which are often “free” to most consumers. On the supply side, this section will present how costs of vaccines are determined, highlighting the cost differences between newer vaccines where companies must recover their substantial outlay required for discovery and traditional older vaccines whose production costs resemble undifferentiated commodities produced in competitive markets. The demand side of vaccine economics will also be discussed, with the challenges in accessing vaccines and the rise of vaccine hesitancy.
Introduction to global vaccine systems
Authors: de Broucker Gatien
Published: April 2023

Vaccines are a sophisticated and highly regulated product. Their level of sophistication, which dictates their cost and global distribution, lies in the biotechnology used and the complex delivery system in place to ensure their effectiveness in the real world. Private companies and academic institutions lead the research effort to develop and test in clinical trials new vaccine formulations that will prove both effective and safe for the consumer. Those vaccine types include the presentation of the antigen itself, from live-attenuated virus to a fragment of messenger-RNA—each with a different cost for development and production. While pharmaceutical and manufacturers supply vaccines, international agencies and governments will select them and organize their distribution. Governments set standards on how vaccines are made available to the consumer using an immunization schedule and an immunization program (e.g., routine immunization vs. supplemental immunization activities. Extensive public regulation is commonly used to ensure vaccines have their optimal effectiveness both for the individual they protect and people who benefit from secondary protection via herd immunity.