bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Digital Humanities and Literary Realism
Authors: Skorinkin Daniil , Orekhov Boris
Published: January 2025

This chapter investigates literary prose of the realist era in Russia using digital humanities methods. It focuses on how computational analysis can enhance an understanding of descriptions of literary characters, geographical locations, and lexical composition in literary texts. Using a corpus of more than five hundred texts (forty-six million word occurrences), it eschews the focus on individual writers and puts Russian realism within the broader context of nineteenth-century Russian literature. The authors employed word embeddings and vector semantics to analyze character descriptions in realist literature. The results indicated that the “typical” aspects of literary characters often overshadowed their individuality, reflecting the realist focus on common human experiences. The study utilized geocoding techniques to map mentions of geographical locations within the texts. This analysis showed that realist literature turned from portraying historical (and largely mythical) settings of Muscovite Rus’, Poland, Ukraine, and the Baltics to the then-new capital Saint Petersburg, to western Europe, and to the “new” eastern and southern peripheries of the Russian Empire as it continued to expand. With the help of a contrastive corpus analysis approach the authors examined the general lexical composition of the texts. This analysis showed that realist prose diverges from its romantic predecessor in its higher degree of dialogism, focusing more attention on depictions of everyday life, and in more explicit portrayal of thought, conscience, and human experience. However, it also showed that the poetry of the realist era did not undergo the same transition and maintained much of the romantic aesthetics, remaining a refuge for more conservative genres.
Lived Traditions and the Pursuit of Happiness in Thailand
Authors: Scott Rachelle M.
Published: January 2025

This chapter uses a “lived religion” approach to examine discourses and practices aimed at the cultivation of happiness in contemporary Thai Buddhism. Happiness is not a conventional topic in Buddhist studies, especially given the importance of dukkha (suffering) in the Buddha’s teachings. When we approach the topic, however, from a “lived religion” perspective, we see that the pursuit of happiness is a rather common theme in the discourses and practices of many Buddhists. This chapter will explore how some Thai Buddhists pursue happiness through financial prosperity, personal and professional success, and a general sense of well-being. The essay examines three case studies: the pursuit of wealth in Thai spirit cults; the Dhammakāya movement’s valorization of wealth, success, and happiness; and the correlation of religious practice and general well-being in lay meditation communities, social media, publications, and religious tourism. These case studies will show how the “pursuit of happiness” occupies a place within the broader framework of Thai Buddhist practice.
Postcolonialism
Authors: Brennan Timothy
Published: January 2025

The term “postcolonialism” suggests a cohesive outlook as though it had a definite chronology and a clearly demarcated inside and outside. In fact, it has neither, and should not be confused with “postcolonial studies”—a broader, more non-denominational response to Eurocentrism. Postcolonialism, by contrast, presented itself as a unified theory of the postcolonial as such, drawing its inspirations from the more conservative strains of Continental European philosophy. To that degree, it was a selective tradition that disavowed its precursors in the interwar communist movements and the anticolonial liberation movements, whose intellectual resources were mainly left-Hegelian. The divisions within postcolonial studies, then, are evoked by the term, and they extend from political to teleological ones (is the goal to make modernity more widely accessible or to destroy it, for example?). These positions and counter-positions represent tensions between two kinds of constituencies: (1) an upwardly mobile diaspora of scholars allied with the liberal centers of the Anglo-American university; and (2) a non-denominational, multi-ethnic left interested in civic betterment, internationalism, and resistance to US foreign policy. These tensions are explored in an analysis of two contemporary schools of thought that bear on postcolonialism: “decoloniality” (which might more accurately be called “nativism” or “indigeneity”) and Actor Network Theory (or post-critique).
1945 Pan-African Congress
Authors: James Leslie
Published: January 2025

This chapter examines what made the 1945 PAC possible and what it signified. Rather than seek to define the conference as a symbol of either continuity or change, the chapter identifies aspects of both in order to reveal the multiple projects at play in the pan-African movement at this time. Scholarship on the conference and on pan-Africanism as ideology and movement has certainly identified the broad intellectual currents in operation, such as anticolonialism and labor rights. But these have tended to characterize the 1945 PAC as a move toward a more discrete politics. The 1945 PAC is, from this point of view, an intriguing and somewhat perplexing affair for pan-African and Global South political history. How could this meeting set out intellectual currents relevant to an inclusive transregional politics of unity and solidarity? The answer lies precisely in appreciating the varied anticolonial positions and the multiple visions for socioeconomic improvement. Approaching the 1945 PAC as an event driven by organizational momentum and intellectual debate, importantly, frees it from a distinct trajectory within a chain of organizational pan-African conferences and, instead, opens up examination of the ideas at play.
Circulation Narratives and Spy Literature
Authors: Haslanger Andrea
Published: January 2025

Tales told by speaking things and animals appear in great number from the 1760s on, offering their readers eyewitness accounts of the exploits of the things’ human owners. But the form of the so-called circulation narrative, also commonly called the it-narrative, emerges much earlier in the century, in texts that combine urban reportage with reflection on the changing conditions of economic exchange and on philosophical questions of materialism and metempsychosis. This chapter asserts that these early circulation narratives develop narrative modes of omniscience that are adopted not only by later it-narratives but also by novels. Though they do not erase the human—all of these texts are primarily interested in the exploits of human characters, in coffee-houses and drawing rooms, in carriages and shops, in alleyways and taverns—they employ the mobility and the unobtrusiveness of the coin or the pet or the anonymous observer to locate perception beyond the human.
Encounters with the East
Authors: Dimmock Matthew
Published: January 2025

This period begins with the first translation of the Qur’an into English, The Alcoran of Mahomet (1649), a political intervention in the aftermath of regicide as much as an advance in the theological understanding of Islam. In contrast, the period ends with the explosion in popularity of the ‘oriental tale’ following the translation of Antoine Galland’s Arabian Nights (1708), which introduced new narrative forms and new ways of thinking about an East defined by brutal despotism, eroticism, and magic. These two very different books offer a sense of the spectrum of prose writing concerning the East in this period, the new prose styles generated in the process of ‘translation’, and the imaginative and stylistic innovations that followed. They also show some of the preoccupations that recur: liberty and tyranny; sex and pornography; religious difference and discovery; and the nature of tale-telling.
Essays
Authors: Murphy Kathryn
Published: January 2025

The essay, a genre notoriously resistant to definition, seems to be particularly diffuse in the period 1640–1714. Over 1,500 books were printed in the period whose titles identified them as essays, on a bewildering variety of subjects, at varying length, and including some verse. This chapter will ask what work the generic term ‘essay’ does for such disparate projects, and why its implications of provisionality, experiment, and personal style were compatible with the aims of so many different styles of writing in the period. What may seem incorrigible plurality conceals some commonalities and developments which situate the essay in the wider context of developments in prose and learned culture. The chapter addresses these as three interlinked themes which characterize the development that can be seen across the period: experience and experiment; the deinstitutionalization of philosophy; and the essayistic persona.
Mock-Scientific Literature
Authors: Lynall Gregory
Published: January 2025

The seventeenth century heralded substantial developments not only in scientific knowledge but also in the literary technologies which communicated such new learning. The Royal Society in particular sought to persuade that written accounts could provide proof of matter of fact, investing prose with the authority to convey with accuracy new observations and experiments. For the Royal Society, and the ‘new science’ as a whole, these were nascent yet fragile times, when the discoveries, theories, and literary methods of scientific practitioners encountered intense scrutiny. Reading authors such as Butler, Cavendish, King, Swift, Addison, and Steele, the chapter will consider ‘mock-scientific’ writings which imitate parodically the form and content of emergent kinds of scientific literature, but it will also address prose texts which satirize scientific endeavour via other modes. It will also highlight the close rhetorical proximity of serious and satirical discourse against the new philosophy.
Political Debate
Authors: Knights Mark
Published: January 2025

This chapter ranges across genres in order to examine the relationship between partisanship and polemics. An introduction will examine what constituted political debate (suggesting that the terms ‘politics’ and ‘political’ became much more important in the 1640s) and how to approach it (stressing the importance of an interdisciplinary approach). The first section of the chapter sets out the nature of political divisions, why they generated debate, and the extent and context of those debates. The next section focuses on polemical literature as a forum in which debate occurred and as a weapon in the partisan struggles of the period. The following section will highlight the inventiveness of polemical literature: in terms of innovation of genre and format (including periodicals and prose dialogues), expression and style, and imagination. The final section will examine reactions to polemical exchanges, looking at the ways in which they were thought to destabilize truth and impartiality.
Political Speculations
Authors: Smith Nigel
Published: January 2025

The period 1640–1714 saw the publication and reception of some of the most important works of political theory in the entire history of political thought, instanced most famously in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651), described by some as the most important work of philosophy by any Englishman at any time. It would have a serious challenger in John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1689), the most influential work of political theory in the eighteenth century, and usually held to be the cornerstone of the English liberal tradition. At the same time the period is famous for a series of treatises that exploit in a variety of ways utopian tradition and articulate ideal worlds that reflect profoundly on contemporary issues. This chapter analyses not primarily political ideas but the way in which the English language is used on the levels of logic, rhetoric, grammar, syntax, and semantics to make the writings effective.
True Accounts
Authors: Gee Sophie
Published: January 2025

‘True Accounts’ were a species of popular, sensational prose tracts, abounding in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English print culture. Even as the category of ‘fiction’ was coming into being, True Accounts made a niche for themselves by claiming to expose the truth about outlandish or arcane subjects, seemingly more suited to fictions. As a genre, True Accounts prized the exceptional over the ordinary, the singular instance over the category or pattern. True Accounts are at odds with, yet also immersed in, the contradictions of representation in early prose fiction: each genre has a strained, ambivalent relation to the real. As a form rising to popular prominence in the wake of civil war and two revolutions, the True Account reminds us that truth has itself become a newly freighted term, at once contested yet also attainable with a confidence hitherto impossible.
Keys
Authors: McDowell Nicholas
Published: January 2025

The sense of ‘key’ as ‘something which enables the interpretation of an allegorical, cryptic, or otherwise obscure work’ enters English, according to the OED, with Francis Bacon’s Advancement of Learning in 1605; this sense also encompasses ‘a means of translating a foreign text’. The rudimentary keys to Rabelais that had circulated on the continent, which comprised little more than an index identifying the historical or real counterparts of fictional protagonists, were transformed by Peter Motteux’s commentary on his English translation into a complex allegorical superstructure that offered a politicized model for reading a modern literary ‘classic’ like Gargantua and Pantagruel. It is a model that writers like Swift and Pope were provoked not simply to mock, but also to incorporate into the very fabric of their comic fictions: the late Restoration genre of the ‘key’ was part of the complex of literary materials that went into the development of the eighteenth-century novel in English.
Antiquarian Writing
Authors: Roebuck Thomas
Published: January 2025

What is distinctive about antiquarian prose in the period 1640–1714? The revised version of William Camden’s Britannia, edited by the Oxford scholar, Edmund Gibson (1669–1748), and published in 1695, offers us a way to begin to answer this question. Gibson assembled a team of scholars to adapt and update William Camden’s earlier antiquarian masterpiece, his account of all the counties of Britain, published in its final Latin form in 1607, and then translated into English by Philemon Holland in 1610. This chapter will show that Gibson’s approach to the project exposes many of the tensions within antiquarian prose writing, between the undisciplined, unfinished, digressive, and fragmentary, and the forces of coherence, unity, and completion. Using Gibson as a starting point, this chapter will then explore how these tensions are played out across a number of different instances, from the translation of Old English prose to Robert Plot’s natural historical writings. The chapter concludes by revisiting the question of what the study of antiquarian prose can teach us about the fundamental question of the distinction between antiquarianism and history.
The New Arcadia
Authors: Das Nandini
Published: January 2025

Sidney’s revised version of the Arcadia was left unfinished at the time of his death. From the opening scene of the New Arcadia, where the pastoral world of Montemayor’s Diana is almost literally swept off the page by the changeable sea of Heliodoran romance, it is clear that the familiar fictional world of the Old Arcadia has turned into a much larger and far more complicated domain. Within it, the physical wanderings of the young heroes of the New Arcadia develop in tandem with the branching out and purposeful ‘wandering’ of the narrative itself. This chapter places Sidney’s revisions in the context of the Old Arcadia’s youthful confidence. At the same time, it examines the political and emotional chaos depicted in the New Arcadia in the context of England’s involvement in wider international geopolitics. In the process, it explores the ways in which Sidney’s new prose fiction brings a significantly more mature understanding to bear on the relationship between personal virtue, ethics, and politics, offering a markedly sharper, bleaker vision of the world it inhabits in the process.
Authorship and Literary Career
Authors: Cheney Patrick
Published: January 2025

This chapter argues that Sidney serves as a historic catalyst in the formation of English authorship underwriting a literary career. To frame this argument, the chapter first looks into what we mean by ‘authorship’ and ‘literary career’. The chapter then cites three pieces of supporting evidence: early printed editions; Sidney’s contemporary afterlife; and his practice, which provides unexamined detail about his authorship of four genres—those practised first by Surrey and subsequently by Spenser: pastoral, sonneteering, epic, and divine poetry. In forming a bridge between Surrey and Spenser, Sidney consolidates a historic invention: the English national poet. Since Sidney does not publish his works, he may not qualify as a ‘laureate’; but we need not classify Sidney as the most ‘laureate’ of the ‘amateurs’. That classification puts history backward. Perhaps it is time to give Sidney a central place in the advent of English authorship underwriting a literary career.
Sonnet
Authors: Kennedy William J.
Published: January 2025

Traces of Sidney’s wide-ranging reading of British and European sonnets populate his treatment of the form. From British predecessors in Tottel’s miscellany and works by Turberville, Gascoigne, and others, he derived rhetorical and stylistic features for Certain Sonnets and his sonnets in Old Arcadia. From the legacy of Philip II’s Spanish entourage in the Marian court, he derived thematic elements from sonnets by Garcilaso to depict the hapless lover of Astrophil and Stella. From travels to France, Italy, and the Holy Roman Empire, he derived narrative situations from sonnets by Tasso, Du Bellay, and Ronsard. Sidney’s achievements in turn generated a dialogue among his British successors such as Daniel, Lodge, Watson, Barnes, Nashe, Spenser, Shakespeare, Drayton, and his own kin Robert Sidney and Mary Wroth, igniting their imaginations to develop, experiment with, and expand the form.
Drama
Authors: Bates Catherine
Published: January 2025

Sidney was writing at a time when secular drama was undergoing a period of unprecedented development in Europe. Through his family connections, education, and travel, he was familiar with advances being made on the continent, especially in Italy, and determined to bring English drama up to the same standards. In the Old Arcadia he explores the classic distinction between the narrative mode (in which the poet speaks in his own voice) and the dramatic (in which he speaks in that of others). In The Defence of Poesy he takes this further, suggesting that as a ‘speaking picture’ poetry is inherently dramatic and the poet always speaking as another, even when apparently himself. In Astrophil and Stella Sidney perfects the art of feigning naturalism by fitting first-person colloquial speech into metrical lines. This was his greatest contribution to the subsequent development of Elizabethan drama.
Song
Authors: Alexander Gavin
Published: January 2025

Sidney describes poetry as ‘words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well enchanting skill of music’: that is, verse written to music that already exists, or verse where musical setting is planned, imagined, or just not ruled out. This distinction is explored across Sidney’s poetry and in relation to musical culture both in his lifetime and in the decades after his death. Sidney deploys and/or represents the power and utility of song in all his major works. In particular, the chapter examines how Sidney’s practice engages with contemporary international song styles, from elite humanist experiments to more popular forms; song as ‘enchantment’; song as the embodied practice of performing alone or with others, and of listening; what Sidney has to say about why we sing songs; and how the idea and practice of polyphony can help us read Sidney’s songs as sites of common ground.
Sentence
Authors: Lamb Jonathan P.
Published: January 2025

This chapter surveys Sidney’s masterful disposition of words at the level of the individual sentence. It situates Sidney’s prose and verse in the long history of the sentence to show his pivotal role in the transformation of English writing and shows Sidney’s immediate and innovative impact on the English Renaissance of the 1580s and 1590s. It showcases his favourite rhetorical devices (antimetabole, chiasmus, the comparison of contraries, etc.) and traces the origins of his signature sentence forms. It compares features characteristic of his prose (e.g., the endemic use of parentheses) and of his poetry (e.g., the use of caesura and enjambment), and considers the Sidneian sentence in the context of the Renaissance cult of the commonplace and sententia. It lightly indulges in quantitative stylistic comparisons, and overall suggests that Sidney’s unique position in the history of English as a bridge between pre-modern and modern view of language.
Style
Authors: Rosenfeld Colleen Ruth
Published: January 2025

This chapter reads Philip Sidney’s poetry and prose in the context of the Renaissance complex of style where Sidney stood as a model for vernacular imitation in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. With a particular focus on rhetorical handbooks, revision, and stylistic process, this chapter suggests that a catalogue of trees missing from the revised Arcadia illustrates the generative tension between the said and unsaid in Sidney’s style at the level of clause, line, and narrative. Ultimately, this essay argues for a method of reading Sidney’s style that values incompletion, continuation, and critical participation and where the ‘understanding’ of the reader actively shapes the form of the work of art.
Sidney and Europe
Authors: Stillman Robert E.
Published: January 2025

What is most important about Philip Sidney’s Europe can be best expressed by a paradox: Sidney needed his cosmopolitan education in Europe in order to think beyond it. The move beyond was as pragmatic as assailing Spanish tyranny by a global assault against Spanish trade, and as visionary as an Arcadian world in which tyranny could be disarmed by force of natural law. Moving chronologically from John Buxton and Charles Osborn to Beatrice Nicollier de Weck and Alan Stewart, this chapter traces a history of critical responses to Sidney’s European travels and their consequence for interpreting his poetry, politics, and piety. That history culminates in assessing the continuing importance of Roger Kuin’s magisterial edition of The Correspondence. The chapter privileges Sidney’s education by Hubert Languet—Philippe Duplessis-Mornay’s travelling Odysseus for the cause of Reformed culture—as the key figure for exploring his developing mentalité.
Sidney and Visual Culture
Authors: Stamatakis Chris
Published: January 2025

Sidney’s interest in visual representation—a central episteme throughout his writings—is attested by Nicholas Hilliard’s anecdote about Sidney’s fascination with visual scale and distortion; by the portraits made of Sidney; and by the handling of mimēsis in his Defence. In his literary works, painting and the visual imagination hold irresistible sway over his fictional personages. Throughout, this chapter contends, the verbal becomes visual for Sidney. Likening poesy to a ‘speaking picture’, Sidney dwells on the ingenuity of representation (going beyond rules, beyond limits of verisimilitude) required in ‘feigning notable images’: poesy paints a compelling image of an otherwise imperceptible idea, and forcefully (with energeia) leaves an impress on what Sidney calls the ‘eyes of the mind’. To assuage Platonic and Protestant anxieties about visual art, Sidney recuperates key painterly terms (‘counterfeiting’, ‘feigning’, ‘eikastikē’). And to compensate for the limits of verbal eloquence, Sidney exploits the visual eloquence of mise-en-page.
Sidney and Clothes
Authors: Bromley James M.
Published: January 2025

In The Defence of Poesy, Philip Sidney explains verse’s ornamental rather than essential relation to poetry through a sartorial analogy in which clothes alone do not make the man. In the wake of New Historicism and the ‘material turn’, early modern scholars have reappraised the period’s sartorial attitudes, finding that writers, including Sidney, represented apparel not as merely decorative but as constitutive and transformative of selves. These re-readings of raiment nevertheless rely upon the distinctions between subject and object and active and passive, that subtend the views of early modern materiality they sought to revise. Posthumanist theory permits us to examine how and to what end Sidney distributes agentic capacities between human and nonhuman matter when he represents clothing. Drawing on this theoretical framework, this chapter examines the queer eroticism and transgender subjectivities generated by the entanglements of characters and their clothes in the Old Arcadia.
Writing Sidney
Authors: Simonova Natasha
Published: January 2025

The unfinished nature of Sidney’s work as published after his death left the door open for a number of continuators and imitators. This was particularly true of the Arcadia, where the ‘composite’ 1593 edition created an obvious gap between the New Arcadia and the last two books added from the Old. This gap was filled by short ‘supplements’ written by William Alexander and James Johnstoun, while the story as a whole was continued in a Sixth Booke by Richard Belling, the English Arcadia by Gervase Markham, A Continuation of Philip Sydney’s Arcadia by Anna Weamys, and a manuscript Historie of Arcadia that adapted it to a post-Civil War context. This chapter examines how such continuations constructed a relationship with Sidney’s authorship and responded to his memory, as well as how the Arcadia continued to be written ‘with’ into the eighteenth century and beyond.
Two Pastoralls
Authors: Cheney Patrick
Published: January 2025

This chapter argues that Two Pastoralls gravitates towards the centre of the Sidney canon: rather than being a backwater-work, Two Pastoralls constructs a Sidneian model of the Renaissance as a period concept. Sidney’s use of friendship-poetry to suture classical pastoral to Reformation theology and Elizabethan politics serves as the foundation of this period project. To date, Sidney studies has not produced a single chapter on Two Pastoralls. To advance criticism, the chapter looks at provenance, the history of criticism, poetics, and the two poems, which feature Sidney’s friendship with Greville and Dyer as a form of authorial liberty. The chapter concludes by examining Sidney’s relation with Spenser in co-founding the ‘New Poetry’ during the English ‘Renaissance’. Uniquely, Two Pastoralls locates an individuating collectivity in a ‘Trinitie’ of ‘fellow Poets’. Two Pastoralls commands attention as a singular Sidneian poem autographing the literary, political, religious, and erotic energies of the ‘Renaissance’ itself.
Sidney and the Court
Authors: Celovsky Lisa
Published: January 2025

Legend imagines Sidney as an ideal courtier, but in life Sidney’s courtly gifts never fully delivered on his great expectations. While Sidney shared this experience of perpetual frustrations and disappointments with many minor members of Elizabeth’s court, what makes him unusual were his actual and literary responses to his situation. Once unseated as Leicester’s heir, Sidney turned to paternal military legacies as a primary avenue for his courtly ambitions, but he had to do so in a milieu where feudal martial service to a king had been displaced by rhetorically savvy counsel and seemingly ornamental service to a queen. For Sidney, athletics were a gateway between courts and camps. Chivalric combats, horsemanship, and other sports mediated these forms of courtly service and provided male courtiers with sites of negotiation and possibility. Athletics likewise provides Sidney with literary means to illuminate synergies and conflicts between courtly civility and violent wildness, and words and action, as he explores the courtier’s gender and socioeconomic status in works such as Astrophil and Stella, The Defence of Poesy, and the New Arcadia.
The Formation and Consolidation of the Dutch National Security State
Authors: de Graaf Beatrice
Published: January 2025

This chapter complements the hitherto dominant account of Dutch state formation in terms of the forging of a consociational and consensus democracy by exploring how the formation of the institutions, culture, and practices of a Dutch national security state took shape. It observes that the Netherlands has long not been as peaceful or stable as the dominant narrative has implied. Pace and stability had to be actively forged and then consolidated. This chapter therefore retraces the historical trajectory of the institutionalization of Dutch national security from the inception of the first nation state around 1800 up until the 1940s, when Dutch national security was subsumed in the international and collective security institutions and organizations of the Western military and economic alliances.
Professionalization and Personalization in Dutch Political Campaigning
Authors: Walter Annemarie , van Praag Philip
Published: January 2025

Political system characteristics shape the opportunity structure for political campaigning in the Netherlands. Traditionally, parties have considerable freedom in how they campaign. In times of electoral uncertainty and media logic, where media not only report but also actively influence campaigns, parties’ campaigns have become more offensive and professional. Free publicity, including in election debates and on talk shows, remains an important avenue for parties’ political campaigning. The purchase of political advertising on television and social media, the hire of external consultants, and the use of voter data for microtargeting have led to parties’ growing need for money. Parties’ lack of financial transparency, acceptance of foreign donations, and aggressive campaign practices—such as uncivil negative campaigning, demonization, and the spread of disinformation—and their lack of transparency on advertising strategies, including microtargeting, are challenging the integrity of the electoral process. Consequently, new legislation limiting campaign donations, banning foreign sponsorship, increasing transparency on campaign financing and spending, and introducing rules on digital campaigning, including microtargeting, is about to change parties’ opportunity structure. The question is how this will impact parties’ political campaigning.
The Evolution of Party Organizations in the Netherlands
Authors: Otjes Simon , de Jonge Léonie
Published: January 2025

Over recent decades, the study of political parties in the Netherlands has undergone a significant transformation. In the past, scholars employed thick and holistic typologies such as the cadre party and the mass party to characterize and describe what parties are. These typologies covered various aspects, including the party’s electorate, organizational structure, programmatic positioning, and campaign strategies. In recent years, however, there has been a shift in the approach of political scientists towards the use of more focused and analytical typologies to study what parties actually do. Specifically, the niche and mainstream party, as well as the challenger and dominant party, have become prominent typologies. These new typologies concentrate on specific aspects of parties and use them to explain parties’ behaviour. This chapter examines and elucidates this shift, using it as a lens to investigate the historical, current, and potential future organizational aspects of political parties in the Netherlands.
The Politics of Accountability in the Netherlands
Authors: Schillemans Thomas
Published: January 2025

This chapter provides an overview of accountability in Dutch politics and public administration. Accountability is understood as a relational mechanism linking power holders as account givers to power controllers as account holders. There are three overarching trends in public accountability in the Netherlands: (1) a rising number of account holders and account givers, following various sidewards and downwards shifts in governance; (2) an increase in and tightening of accountability standards in terms of legal requirements and financial management; (3) the use of accountability mechanisms in a more activist and critical way by many account-holding entities, from the European Parliament to local councils to voters. The proliferation of accountability in practice has spurred a burgeoning accountability scholarship, ranging from explaining accountability deficits to the consequences of accountability for performance, learning, and trust. Overall, the different studies conducted suggest there may be something of a Dutch accountability style, with power holders operating in broad accountability regimes with multiple account holders who interact relatively informally. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research.
The Politics of Crisis Management in the Netherlands
Authors: Boin Arjen , Kuipers Sanneke , Wolbers Jeroen
Published: January 2025

A sense of ‘polycrisis’ has gripped the Netherlands in recent years. But while the country has had its share of crises and disasters, there are no objective grounds for the perception of its being under siege from crises. There appears to be a wide gap between perceptions and objective facts about risks and crises. This chapter explores the recent history of crises in the Netherlands, taking into account the responses that these crises have prompted. The authors identify various trends, including ‘crisification’, politicization, centralization, and professionalization. In doing so, they cast an eye on Dutch crisis research, which has been a rich area of academic production over the years. They describe the shift from a technocratic angle to a more political perspective, and identify the most relevant research themes that have emerged. The chapter ends with a discussion of a future research agenda that could help practitioners fulfil their crisis management tasks.
The Dutch Agricultural Policymaking System
Authors: de Vries Jouke , Havinga Teun
Published: January 2025

The Dutch agricultural sector has historically been an important part of the economy, the country today being the second largest agricultural exporter in the world. The agricultural sector has traditionally had strong roots in policymaking, but in recent years it has been increasingly criticized for its harmful effects on water, land, and air quality. The shift from an efficient production paradigm to a sustainable one has produced friction between government and farmers, and significant political challenges. Moreover, an increasing number of actors with conflicting interests have entered the agricultural policy arena and historically powerful ones are losing their grip. Using analytical lenses such as neo-corporatism, the iron triangle, policy communities, issue networks, and policy brokerage, this chapter examines the policy dynamics and outlines the contemporary challenges.
Democratic Reform Policy in the Netherlands
Authors: Hendriks Frank , Jacobs Kristof , Michels Ank
Published: January 2025

This chapter discusses occurrences of and explanations for democratic reforms in the Netherlands, distinguishing between vote-centric and talk-centric reforms. Vote-centric reforms introducing new electoral procedures or referendum legislation are often discussed but rarely implemented. Explanatory studies point to the high hurdles for constitutional change in the Netherlands, in addition to vested interests of pivotal political parties in the established system. Talk-centric reforms boosting participatory, deliberative, and interactive governance are comparatively abundant, with new variants layered on top of previous variants, primarily but not exclusively at the local level. Explanatory studies emphasize the relative ease of implementation and reformulation of such reforms, combined with a considerable supply-side push in compact and active public governance networks. In a final section, this chapter demarcates questions for future research. In particular, the wider-ranging impact of democratic reform, both vote-centric and talk-centric, has not received enough systematic scholarly attention.
Engineering of a lysosomal-targeted GAA enzyme
Authors: Marze Nicholas , Tikh Ilya , Benard Susan , Cheng Yuxing , Yu Vincent , Cai Waijiao , Lavallie Edward , Lopez Erin , Wang Jing , Zamkovaya Tatyana , Somanathan Suryanarayan
Published: January 2025

Pompe disease is a tissue glycogen disorder caused by genetic insufficiency of the GAA enzyme. GAA enzyme replacement therapies for Pompe disease have been limited by poor lysosomal trafficking of the recombinant GAA molecule through the native mannose-6-phosphate-mediated pathway. Here, we describe the successful rational engineering of a chimeric GAA enzyme that utilizes the binding affinity of a modified IGF-II moiety to its native receptor to bypass the mannose-6-phosphate-mediated lysosomal trafficking pathway, conferring a significant increase in cellular uptake of the GAA enzyme. We also demonstrate the ablation of binding between our modified IGF-II tag and two off-target receptors: IGF-I receptor and insulin receptor, as well as preserved enzymatic activity of the chimeric GAA molecule.
Assessment of radioactivity in soil samples from Wolaita Sodo town, Ethiopia: implications for environmental and public health
Authors: Demewoz Nigus Maregu , Kassie Lingerew Nebere , Zeleke Hailu Geremew
Published: January 2025

This study assesses the activity concentrations of the radionuclides 238U, 232Th, and 40K in soil samples collected from Wolaita Sodo town, located in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples' (SNNP) Region, Ethiopia. A gamma-ray spectrometer equipped with a NaI(Tl) detector was used for the measurements. The concentrations of 238U, 232Th, and 40K varied from 3.25 ± 1.5 to 13.84 ± 2.2 Bq.kg−1, 0.4 ± 0.9 to 85.12 ± 3.4 Bq.kg−1, and 34.43 ± 2.7 to 748.07 ± 5.9 Bq.kg−1, respectively. The average activity concentrations were 7.83 ± 1.9 Bq.kg−1, 40.74 ± 2.7 Bq.kg−1, and 161.63 ± 3.9 Bq.kg−1 for 238U, 232Th, and 40K, respectively. The average radium equivalent activity was 192.25 Bq.kg−1, well below the recommended safety limit of 370 Bq.kg−1. The average gamma dose rate, and annual effective dose rate were 35.68 nGy.h−1, and 0.18 mSv.y−1, respectively. The internal and external indexes are below the recommended limit set by UNSCEAR and ICRP. However, the estimated excess lifetime cancer risk and indoor radon concentrations are slightly higher. Despite this, the overall radiological impact on the environment and public health in the study area remains negligible. This study provides valuable baseline data for radiation protection and informs urban and environmental policy in the region.
Impact of a community-based lifestyle intervention with initial sedentary reduction or physical activity increasing goals on self-reported health-related quality of life
Authors: Mitchell-Miland Chantele E , Miller Rachel G , Kriska Andrea M , Youk Ada O , Gary-Webb Tiffany L , Devaraj Susan M , Songer Thomas J , Arena Vincent C , King Wendy C , Rockette-Wagner Bonny
Published: January 2025

Background

In previous efforts, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) improved for individuals at high risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease after participation in community-based lifestyle interventions (LI) with a moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) movement goal.

Purpose

It is unknown whether HRQoL improves with LI when the primary movement goal is to reduce sedentary behavior. HRQoL changes were examined among adults with overweight and prediabetes and/or metabolic syndrome randomized to a 12-month Diabetes Prevention Program-based Group Lifestyle Balance (DPP-GLB) community LI work with goals of weight-loss and either increasing MVPA (DPP-GLB) or reducing sedentary time (GLB-SED).

Methods

Study participants (N = 269) completed the Euroqol 5 dimension 3 long (EQ5D-3L index and EuroQol Visual Analog Scale (EQVAS)—visual analog scale) at baseline, and 6 and 12 months. Paired t-tests were used to evaluate pre-to-post-intervention changes by arm.

Results

Mean EQVAS improvements for the GLB-SED arm at 6 and 12 months were +5.6 (SE = 1.3; P < .0001) and +4.6 (SE = 1.4; P = .0006), respectively. Similar mean EQVAS improvements were reported for the DPP-GLB arm; +5.9 (SE = 1.2; P < .0001) and +4.9 (SE = 1.2; P = .0001) at 6 and 12 months, respectively. Mean EQ5D index improvements were significant in the GLB-SED arm [6 months: +0.03 (SE = 0.01; P = .004); and 12 months: +0.04 (SE = 0.01; P = .006)], but not in the DPP-GLB arm.

Conclusions

Participation in community LI with a primary movement goal to reduce sedentary behavior improved HRQoL at least as well as traditional LI focused more on MVPA improvement, supporting an alternate intervention strategy for those who can’t or won’t engage in MVPA as the primary movement goal.
Using a Serious Game to Teach Central Line Care in Pediatric Critical Care Nursing
Authors: Yabrodi Mouhammad , Abulebda Kamal , Pearson Kellie J. , Spitzer Tracy , Nitu Mara E. , Rogerson Colin M. , Tavares Nathanael Thomas , Lutfi Riad
Published: January 2025

Background:

Central venous catheters (CVCs) are used in pediatric patients to deliver IV fluids, blood products, medications, and nutrients. Potential complications include central line infection, which carries a high risk of morbidity and mortality in this population. Pediatric critical care nurses play a crucial role in helping to reduce the risk of infection.

Purpose:

The aim of this study was to develop, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of a serious, simulated, gaming-based intervention to improve the skills and knowledge of RNs in the early stages of their career regarding central line insertion, care, and infection prevention.

Methods:

A single-arm, pre- and postinterventional pilot study was conducted at the Riley Hospital for Children at Indiana University Health, from July 2021 to July 2022. The study participants were bedside pediatric critical care nurses who were provided with education and skills training regarding CVC placement and maintenance through a so-called serious game—essentially, a video game with a purpose. A simulation session and multiple-choice knowledge test were used to assess skills and knowledge retention both before and after the intervention.

Results:

A total of 32 pediatric critical care nurses participated in the study; however, 1 nurse did not complete the follow-up assessment. The study revealed a statistically significant increase in the overall mean (SD) global performance score from 4.06 (2.11) before the intervention to 5.97 (1.80) afterward. Specific areas of performance also showed significant improvement: handwashing prior to the procedure (P = 0.04), covering the procedure site (P = 0.01), cleaning the site properly (P < 0.01), and ensuring central line placement before use (P < 0.01). However, there was no statistically significant difference in the nurses' performance on the multiple-choice knowledge test before and after the intervention.

Conclusion:

This study suggests that serious games have the potential to improve nursing education, particularly in complex procedures like central line insertion and maintenance. Our findings indicate that serious gaming is effective in engaging learners and enhancing their skills. More research is needed to evaluate the long-term impact of serious games on learning outcomes and patient care.
The effectiveness of sequential afatinib and furmonertinib in an advanced lung adenocarcinoma with rare compound EGFR mutation (L833V/H835L)
Authors: Pan Yanqing , Yan Lingxin , Gu Yongyao , Wang Shaoxi , Li Huiling , Yu Pengli , Chen Quanfang
Published: January 2025

Uncommon atypical mutations account for 10–15% of all epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) activating mutations in nonsmall-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Tumors harboring rare EGFR mutations show highly heterogeneous responses to EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). There is insufficient clinical evidence for uncommon types of EGFR mutations, especially those with compound EGFR mutations. In addition, for those with uncommon compound EGFR mutations, few studies have focused on acquired resistance mechanisms and subsequent treatment strategies after disease progression on EGFR-TKIs. Here, a 66-year-old smoking male was diagnosed with lung adenocarcinoma accompanied by pleural metastasis. A rare L833V/H835L compound mutation in exon 21 of EGFR was detected in tumor biopsy by next-generation sequencing. Afatinib was used as first-line therapy and showed favorable efficacy. The patient continued afatinib treatment for a duration of 24 months. A new T790M mutation was detected with a rebiopsy after progression on afatinib. Then the patient received cryoablation therapy and a third-generation EGFR-TKI, furmonertinib. Our case suggests that a comprehensive screening for EGFR mutations should be conducted before and during treatment in clinical practice, and afatinib and furmonertinib could be first- and second-line treatment options in NSCLC patients harboring EGFR L833V/H835L mutations.
Novel Pharmacologic Treatments of Female Sexual Dysfunction
Authors: How Andrew , Jowdy Christopher , Novatcheva Elli , Clayton Anita H.
Published: January 2025

This review evaluates pharmacologic treatments for female sexual dysfunction (FSD), focusing on hypoactive sexual desire disorder (HSDD). We provide clinically relevant applications for Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved medications (flibanserin and bremelanotide) and investigational therapies (Lorexys and testosterone combinations). Detailed study outcomes, safety profiles, and clinical strategies guide clinicians in appropriate diagnosis, patient selection, expectation setting, side effect management, and patient education, improving treatment outcomes and patient satisfaction.
TIGIT-expression on natural killer cell subsets is an early indicator of alleviating liver inflammation following bulevirtide treatment in chronic hepatitis D
Authors: Chen Po-Chun , Deterding Katja , Engelskircher Sophie Anna , Port Kerstin , Sandmann Lisa , Chakkadath Athira , Ristic Tijana , Wu Qingyu , Bremer Birgit , Kraft Anke R.M. , Cornberg Markus , Heim Albert , Kefalakes Helenie , Björkström Niklas K , Woller Norman , Wedemeyer Heiner
Published: January 2025

Background & aims:

Bulevirtide (BLV) is a novel and the only approved treatment option for patients with chronic hepatitis D (CHD). BLV alleviates liver inflammation already early during treatment when only minor HDV RNA changes are observed. We hypothesized that BLV-treatment may influence immune cells in CHD patients and performed a high-resolution analysis of natural killer (NK) cells before and during BLV-therapy.

Methods:

BLV-treated CHD patients (n=20) from a single-center cohort were longitudinally analyzed for clinical, molecular, and virological parameters. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were studied at baseline (BL), therapy weeks 3 (TW3) and 48 (TW48) by spectral flow cytometry. Healthy donors (HD), chronic hepatitis C (CHC) patients after direct-acting antivirals (DAA)-treatment and patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB) were used as controls.

Results:

Overall NK cell frequencies remained stable during BLV-treatment. However, biochemical responders (BR) showed distinct NK cell immunophenotypic features before and during therapy. TIGIT-expression increased on CD56dim and CD56bright NK cells during the course of BLV-treatment and inversely correlated with alanine aminotransferase (ALT) levels in CHD but not CHC or CHB patients. High frequencies of TIGIT- CD57+ CD56dim NK cells at BL and low levels during therapy were indicative of a biochemical response.

Conclusions:

We here suggest that lacking the expression of the immune checkpoint inhibitor TIGIT on NK cell subtypes may be a hallmark of liver inflammation in HDV infection. BLV-therapy is associated with a reappearance of TIGIT on these cells, which may be one mechanism of why liver enzymes rapidly improve during therapy.