bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Weaving Wellbeing into the Fabric of the Economy
Authors: Kim Julia C. , Richardson Julie A. , Tenzin Tsoki
Published: May 2023

Gross national happiness (GNH), as a living experiment in wellbeing economics, has its roots in Bhutan and is now influencing development thinking and practice worldwide. This chapter traces the history of GNH as it emerged from its birthplace in the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan and describes how its unique vision has been moving from intention into action. The authors discuss the GNH Index and how it offers a holistic measurement and policy framework that integrates psychological, physical, societal, and environmental wellbeing, then explore several unique aspects of GNH: prioritising wellbeing rather than economic growth as the purpose of the economy, addressing both the outer conditions (an enabling environment) and inner factors (values and mindsets) for a wellbeing economy, and articulating a form of leadership described as ‘leadership of the self’. The authors describe how GNH is influencing wellbeing initiatives at different levels of scale, including individual, organisational, national, and global. They argue that the goal of human flourishing is deeply connected to tackling the current crisis of sustainability. The chapter concludes with reflections on how lessons from Bhutan’s experience might help inform and navigate opportunities and challenges going forward, both for Bhutan and for an emerging network of economies of wellbeing worldwide.
America’s Crisis of Despair
Authors: Graham Carol
Published: May 2023

Despair in America prevents labour market recovery and jeopardises wellbeing, health, and longevity and even national security. This growing problem was substantially exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis. Despair in part results from the decline of the White working class and contributes to decreasing geographic mobility and even to far-right radicalisation. Yet other population groups also are suffering for different reasons. Policy is fragmented, with a focus on interdiction over root causes. Most local efforts to boost the wellbeing of vulnerable cohorts are siloed. There is no federal-level entity to provide the vulnerable with logistical support, nor to disseminate information to others seeking solutions. While federal agencies track mortality, no system tracks underlying causes. In contrast, many countries, such as the United Kingdom and New Zealand, track trends in wellbeing as part of national statistics. A coordinated federal effort in the United States is needed to address the crisis of despair as a first step to sustainable economic recovery.
Wellbeing and the Built Environment
Authors: Leite Margarette , Palleroni Sergio , Sestak Barbara
Published: May 2023

This chapter addresses the connection between human wellbeing and current practices in the designing of the built environment. Attempts to move toward a more human-centred design of the built environment linking the psychological, physical, societal, and environmental imperatives of wellbeing have come from a variety of social movements like social justice work and the sustainability movement, as well as from the realm of public health. The authors of this chapter use the Oregon-based Smart Academic Green Environment (SAGE) green modular classroom as a case study project that was predicated on goals of public interest design. This case study is followed by an evaluation of its merits based on more recent industry-wide definitions of wellbeing as they relate to built environments.
Exposing Pay
Authors: Bamberger Peter
Published: May 2023

Should employees be allowed to discuss their pay with other employees? Should managers explain the logic underlying organizational pay structures and decisions to their employees? Should companies disclose the mean or median rates of pay for particular positions, or perhaps even individual employees’ actual pay? Concerns over gender and racial disparities are increasingly driving organizations to liberalize restrictions on pay communication. But the forces driving such moves have, to date, been based more on conjecture than science. Accordingly, the aim of this book is to offer evidence-based insights into how pay communication policies and practices impact outcomes at individual, organizational, and societal levels. For example, at the individual level, the book examines the impact of pay transparency on task performance, helping and collaboration, and counterproductive work behavior. At the organizational level, it examines how pay transparency impacts employee turnover rates, pay dispersion, and reliance on idiosyncratic deals. Finally, from a society level, the book explores pay transparency’s impact on gender pay disparities. Summarizing findings from the recent surge in pay transparency research, this book aims to help employees, managers, and policymakers better understand how pay communication policies and practices may be leveraged to enhance organizational performance and address social inequality, while at the same time highlighting for them why and when such practices can generate potentially harmful, unintended consequences.
Empires of Reform
Authors: Suh Chris
Published: May 2023

Chapter 1 explains how the United States came to welcome Japan into the circle of great powers during the Russo-Japanese War. Japan’s inclusion was tentative. For its full inclusion, American policymakers insisted that Japan demonstrate its capacity to “reform” its neighbors, much in the way that the United States had done in the Caribbean after the Spanish-American War. To meet this challenge, Japan began showcasing its capacity for imperial reform in Korea. Koreans, however, protested that Japan’s wartime activities proved that Japan was engaging in colonial exploitation, and US imperialists in Washington, including Roosevelt, became aware of the problems caused by Japanese settlers in Korea. Nevertheless, US imperialists continued to support Japan’s rule of Korea, for they believed that the Japanese would eventually learn how to build a “progressive” empire through trial and error, just as Americans were doing in the Philippines with varying degrees of success and failure.
Between Empire and Exclusion
Authors: Suh Chris
Published: May 2023

Chapter 2 follows how the cordial US-Japan relations forged during the Russo-Japanese War became complicated by anti-Japanese immigration movements in California. The nativist movements were originally led by a working-class organization that demanded an extension of the existing Chinese exclusion to the Japanese. The Roosevelt administration resented this demand but eventually restricted Japanese labor migration by working with the Japanese Foreign Ministry to institute the Gentlemen’s Agreement, which saved Japan from a federal exclusion policy that unilaterally excluded the majority of Asians with the Immigration Act of 1917. Yet in California, anti-Japanese movements did not subside with the institution of the Gentlemen’s Agreement. A group of professional-class reformers successfully lobbied the state government to prevent Japanese immigrants from becoming landowners in 1913. They justified the law as an act to prevent the racial and labor conditions of Hawaiʽi and the American South from being replicated in the American West.
Uplifting the “Subject Races”
Authors: Suh Chris
Published: May 2023

Chapter 3 explains why, despite the anti-Japanese immigration movements in the United States, Americans maintained a cordial inter-imperial relationship with Japan in Korea. American policymakers, diplomats, and academics believed that Koreans were not capable of self-government and needed to be under Japan’s control. So did American missionaries and Woodrow Wilson, the “missionary president” who reshaped US foreign policy based on his faith. When Koreans attempted to reclaim their national independence by appealing to American missionaries and Wilson during the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, their strategy proved unsuccessful. In contrast to Europe, Asia did not witness the rise of new nation-states after World War I. While the United States continued to rule over Filipinos, Japan subdued the anticolonial movement in Korea and deployed stories of white-on-Black violence from the United States to discourage Koreans from looking up to the United States as their savior.
Empires of Exclusion
Authors: Suh Chris
Published: May 2023

Chapter 4 examines how, after World War I, a new California nativist lobby led by V. S. McClatchy secured Japanese exclusion by reframing the immigration debates within an inter-imperial context. Upon returning from his tour of Asia, McClatchy spread the fear that the Japanese could “colonize” the American West as they had done in places like Korea. His exclusionist lobby then convinced several key members of Congress to see Japan as an exclusionary empire, insisting that Japan was hypocritical to criticize the American desire for exclusion since Japan itself practiced immigration restriction at home, against laborers from Korea and China. Although Japan’s immigration restriction policy was fundamentally different from what the United States had instituted against various Asians, the existence of Japan’s restrictive immigration policy served as a convenient excuse for Congress to justify the abrogation of the Gentlemen’s Agreement and the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act in 1924.
What Is Wrong with the Commodification of Human Labor Power
Authors: Satz Debra
Published: May 2023

What is wrong with treating human labor power as a commodity? After noting several answers that have been given to this question, this chapter explores and elaborates on an idea first found in John Stuart Mill: that wage labor undermines some of the characteristics and capacities that political democracy depends on. Call this the argument from “democratic character.” When we allow the market to dictate the organization of work, significant sectors of the economy will degrade workers to little more than appendages to machines. A body of social science work now suggests that work with little room for discretion and complexity erodes human cognition and affect.
Introduction
Authors: Kang Xiaofei
Published: May 2023

Chapter 1 sets up the theoretical, methodological, and comparative frameworks for the discussion of religion, gender, and revolutionary propaganda in China. It explains how the CCP’s construction of a new culture overtly aimed to remove traditional beliefs and ritual order from rural life, yet it simultaneously co-opted the same cosmic discourse for its own political ends. The chapter then places this discussion in the historical context of wartime Communist headquarters of Yan’an, where the Party launched its first mass campaign against superstition in 1944–45. The campaign illustrates how Mao’s mass line principle compelled propaganda workers to engage with the rural culture in order to create new meanings from old knowledge.
A Different Place, a Different Direction
Authors: Kang Xiaofei
Published: May 2023

Chapter 7 shifts the focus from Yan’an to explore the Communist propaganda against superstition in the anti-Japanese warfront of north China. Literary studies have explored how the renowned “peasant writer,” Zhao Shuli, struck an uneasy balance between the Party’s ideological agendas and the agency of peasants in the Communist revolution. The chapter expands the scope of these studies by bringing into the conversation the Communist reconstruction of the “new woman” in relation to religion and superstition. The Communist government in north China rivaled with local sectarian religions to attract female participants. Zhao’s popular novel, The Marriage of Young Blacky, advocated anti-superstition messages in the name of women’s emancipation and free choice of marriage. The immense success of the novel, evinced by its many adaptations in local operas, rested in the author’s native knowledge of local religious culture. It had little to do with Mao’s directives or the anti-superstition campaign in Yan’an.
Saving the Ghosts, Saving the People
Authors: Kang Xiaofei
Published: May 2023

Chapter 8 studies the 1945 opera The White-Haired Girl as a major turning point for Communist propaganda. The chapter brings new insights to existing scholarship by engaging the opera’s gender politics in relation to Yan’an’s anti-superstition polemics in particular and the CCP discourses of religion and revolution in general. Departing from the anti-superstition theme, The White-Haired Girl invoked the cosmic redemption of female ghosts to illustrate class exploitations and national liberation. This narrative echoed the themes of female suffering and salvation in traditional religious literature to inspire a widespread “emotional community” for the revolution. The opera created a renewed ethical and cosmological rationale for Party leadership in building the New China and set the future direction for revolutionary art and literature. It marked the Party’s critical transition from moderate social reforms in the base areas to all-out war and revolution on a national scale.
Immigration Attitudes as a Racialized “Morality of Exclusion”
Authors: Matos Yalidy
Published: May 2023

Chapter 2 tackles the connection between whiteness, immigration, and morality and argues for the importance of predispositions as manifestations of whites’ moral compass. Predispositions, as byproducts of socialization, either perpetuate whites’ restrictive and punitive attitudes and beliefs about immigration or help attenuate these beliefs. Focusing on moral traditionalism, authoritarianism, racial resentment, egalitarianism, and partisanship, the chapter argues that whiteness mitigates the strength of whites’ predispositions. It goes through each predisposition at length and connects each to morality, to whites’ moral understanding of “right” and “wrong.” This chapter also takes the reader though the different levels of white identity that are addressed throughout the text and pinpoints the differences and the importance of understanding whiteness as something beyond an identity. Through descriptive examination of public opinion data, the evidence suggests that white racial identity is not as consequential to whites’ attitudes as other levels of identification, namely ingroup favoritism and white group consciousness.
Introduction
Authors: Simula Brandy L.
Published: May 2023

The Power of BDSM: Play, Communities, and Consent in the 21st Century features cutting-edge empirical research by scholars working from a wide range of disciplinary approaches and in diverse national contexts, along with personal reflections from community educators, activists, and practitioners. BDSM studies has grown exponentially in recent decades, expanding across disciplines, methodological approaches, and geographic areas. Once focused on understanding the “causes” of pathology or deviant sexuality, the field now explores myriad questions and topics in relation to BDSM. This chapter provides a concise overview of current work in BDSM, identifies emerging lines of research, and suggests areas of future direction for the field. The chapter also provides a concise glossary of BDSM terms, along with a brief overview of the major topics, themes, and questions explored throughout the volume.
Emotions, Power, and BDSM
Authors: Carlström Charlotta
Published: May 2023

The chapter examines ethnographic fieldwork within the realm of BDSM, with a focus on the ethnographer´s emotions, participation, and etic reflections. Based on years of researching Swedish BDSM communities, with diary and field notes, the author reflects upon different situations and events which, in various ways, have had personal effects and given rise to ethical reflections and dilemmas as well as strong emotions. The complex relationships between the field, its actors, and the ethnographer are important and salient for all of those who engage in such fieldwork. Ethnographic work requires a high level of personal commitment but also enables a voice to be given to stigmatized populations, prejudices to be revealed, and informants’ feelings, lives, situations, dilemmas, and ambitions to be nuanced, though it can sometimes be very exhausting emotionally for the ethnographer.
The End of Assignats
Authors: Pravilova Ekaterina
Published: May 2023

In post-Napoleonic Russia, several currencies—paper and metallic—were circulating in parallel and creating perplexing systems of measuring and counting. In an attempt to fix this confusing situation, the government in 1839 initiated a monetary reform that ended the era of assignats and introduced a new kind of paper currency: silver-based credit rubles. The author of the monetary reform, Egor Kankrin, translated the political principles of Nicholas I’s ideology of Official Nationality into the language of money. The tsar briefly considered an alternative model based on the system used by the Bank of Poland with its convertible złoty banknotes. However, the Polish alternative had no chance of being adopted in Russia. Moreover, the monetary reform in Russia opened the way for the financial russification of Poland through a gradual introduction of rubles. Although the reform based the ruble on silver, it conspicuously rejected the principles of state accountability for issuing paper money.
Paper Money in the Era of the “Great Reforms”
Authors: Pravilova Ekaterina
Published: May 2023

Although the Great Reforms of the 1860s rebooted the Russian credit system, leaving more space for private initiative, the political principles of the monetary economy remained untouched, and the de-governmentalization of money and the transformation of the State Bank into an autonomous institution were left out of the reform plan. Still, the ideological and cultural effect of the Great Reforms could not be undone. Russia entered the age of capitalism, and attitudes toward money and wealth changed dramatically. Russian society came to see the ruble through different political and social lenses, and the depreciation of Russian currency contrasted starkly with their elevated expectations of economic prosperity. In 1862–63, the government unsuccessfully tried to restore the ruble’s convertibility. After the failure of this attempt, the Ministry of Finance embarked on a program of gradual financial restoration, amassing gold in the State Bank. This process ended abruptly in 1877 when Russia entered another war with the Ottoman Empire.
War and the End of the Gold Ruble
Authors: Pravilova Ekaterina
Published: May 2023

This chapter examines the political constituents of Russia’s financial crisis during the First World War, such as the government’s conflicts with the State Duma over the gold reserve and the problems of mobilizing the population under the banner of financial patriotism. From an economic viewpoint, the Russian imperial government followed the standard script for managing war finance. To explain why the Russian ruble suffered from the war more than the currency of any other belligerent countries requires factoring in politics alongside purely economic reasons. The political crisis of the First World War revealed deep mutual distrust between the government and society. The issue of the ruble became even more politicized after the February Revolution of 1917, which brought down the tsarist government. The ruble became a trophy of a class war in which various actors—liberals and socialists, industrialists and bankers, workers and peasants—blamed each other for the ruble’s demise.
The Dangerous Life and Ideas of Diogenes the Cynic
Authors: Roubineau Jean-Manuel
Published: May 2023

Ancient philosophers are often contrasted with contemporary philosophers because they view philosophy not as a profession but as a way of life. None did so more uncompromisingly than Diogenes the Cynic, who chided even Socrates for occasionally wearing sandals and maintaining a small household. Diogenes’s espousal of extreme poverty, talent for exhibitionism, and propensity for offense were taken by some to be merely childish and grounded in a desire for fame, but by others as an ideal form of pure philosophical commitment. Beginning with his life as a banker’s son in Sinope, this book traces his exile and status as a foreigner in Athens and Corinth, his subsequent embrace of a life of poverty, and his development of a style of life that both he and others found comparable to a dog’s in its disregard for social norms and conventions. Much of Diogenes’s practical philosophy took the form of his own distinctive bodily practices, which were meant to reinforce Cynic freedom and self-sufficiency. By calling into question cultural conventions governing the body with respect to sexuality, athletics, clothing, hygiene, punishment, et cetera, his own doggish life championed unrestrained free speech (parrhēsia), equality between the sexes, and a cosmopolitan view of the possibilities of a world rid of the evils caused by the pursuit of wealth, fame, and power. Throughout various historical periods, Diogenes has offered a fascinating alternative to conventional lives and served as a brave exemplar of absolute devotion to human freedom and equality.
Introduction
Authors: Roubineau Jean-Manuel
Published: May 2023

Of all the ancient Greek philosophers, none lived in accordance with his beliefs in such an all-consuming fashion as Diogenes the Cynic. His every word, gesture, and action seem to have been calculated to call into question even the most mundane aspects of our daily lives. Diogenes’s own life, as the rich son of a banker who became a slave and then regained his freedom, raises a whole range of philosophical questions that have remained a source of inspiration down through the centuries for a great many remarkably inventive defamers and defenders.
Diogenes, Foreigner
Authors: Roubineau Jean-Manuel
Published: May 2023

After setting out the ancient sources for Diogenes’s life and thought, both textual and figural, this chapter traces his transformation from a banker’s son in the Black Sea town of Sinope to an itinerant philosopher living a life of permanent exile, detachment, and renunciation. Citizens in the two urban centers that he most frequented, Athens and Corinth, were well familiar with his uncompromising honesty and contempt for social convention, his espousal of extreme poverty, and his unrestrained freedom in speech and action. No doubt they were dumbfounded by a foreigner’s claim to be a citizen of the world and not a member of any particular community, since this made him vulnerable to random violence, enslavement, and contempt—all of which he experienced, but endured with indifference and mordant wit.
Diogenes on the Proper Use of the Body
Authors: Roubineau Jean-Manuel
Published: May 2023

For Diogenes, training the body was a crucial means for achieving the twin goals of self-sufficiency and freedom. In addition to insisting on the virtue of frugality, Diogenes led a life in accord with “nature.” Traditionally in Greek thought, men were placed between animals and the gods, and philosophers had held that human beings should aspire to divinity. Diogenes thought men ranked below both animals and gods and should aspire instead to the self-sufficiency, freedom, and lack of social cant and hypocrisy displayed by animals. Indeed, he and the Cynics became identified with the dog (kyōn) and with many of the complex roles played by dogs in human society. Diogenes called into question all aspects of the body governed by strong cultural conventions—sexuality, athletics, clothing, hygiene, punishment, et cetera—by his famously unfettered speech (parrhēsia) and dog-like way of life, using his own shameless bodily practices to illustrate Cynic ideals of freedom and self-sufficiency.
Diogenes, Mentor
Authors: Roubineau Jean-Manuel
Published: May 2023

Diogenes chided philosophers for the discrepancy between their teachings and their lives, and surely no one lived his beliefs in a more uncompromising manner than he did. Diogenes’s exhibitionism and his propensity for taking and giving offense are regarded by some as childish and motivated by a desire for fame, but by others as an ideal form of pure commitment. As a teacher, he eschewed the usual methods of instruction, though he is credited with many works of poetry and philosophy, perhaps none of greater consequence than his Republic. Its doctrines were deeply influential among early Stoics and still resonate in contemporary discussions of cosmopolitanism, feminist politics, free speech, et cetera. In antiquity, philosophers’ deaths were taken to be emblematic of their lives, and the various versions of Diogenes’s end reflect the continuing disputes about his conception of a good life.
Erasure
Authors: Sitz Anna M.
Published: May 2023

Chapter 5 rounds off the archaeological case studies with a detailed look at inscriptions that underwent erasure. While we often associate erased inscriptions with the Roman political habit of damnatio memoriae, the erasures presented here, which show the late antique removal of pagan material, functioned differently. Particular attention is paid to the methods of erasure and which parts, exactly, were removed. The chapter contextualizes these rasurae by examining the widespread trend among both pagans and Christians in this period to “unname” the gods, that is, make them anonymous. The erasures are also compared with the well-documented violence that was sometimes enacted on pagan statues. Ultimately, this chapter concludes that the selective, careful, and rare erasure of pagan inscriptions aimed not so much to disgrace the past, but to put some distance between it and the late antique present.
Introducing Henri Bergson
Authors: Allen Barry
Published: May 2023

Henri Bergson (1859–1941) was for a time the most famous philosopher in the world and one of the few to receive a Nobel Prize for his work. Among Anglophone philosophers, however, he is mostly forgotten, which is a loss, since Bergson was a great philosopher and understanding his ideas would enhance our philosophy with new problems and concepts. Living in Time explains, analyzes, defends, and enlarges upon a selection of philosophical arguments in Bergson’s work and does so in a way that I hope catches the interest of Anglophone readers. These include his theories of time as duration and panpsychic consciousness, as well as original ideas on perception, memory, and virtual existence. This Introduction presents a thematic description of the chapters and their argument.
Geopolitics and Interreligious Dialogue
Authors: Driessen Michael D.
Published: May 2023

This chapter maps out the rise of state-sponsored interreligious dialogue initiatives in the Middle East and reviews state-centric theories of interreligious dialogue. It articulates the security needs, power dynamics, foreign policy, and domestic concerns which have driven state interest in dialogue activities. It also analyzes the geopolitical competition underwriting the growth of dialogue initiatives in the Middle East, especially in relation to the use of Islam as an element of foreign and regional policy positioning. The chapter argues that the promotion of interreligious initiatives can be understood as part of the search by states for a national narrative which responds to the aspirations of the Arab Spring, and in such a way that allows the state to manage those aspirations. At the same time, this ideological investment raises important questions about why the ideas reflected in these interreligious dialogue initiatives appear to be so attractive in the first place.
Political Theory and Interreligious Dialogue
Authors: Driessen Michael D.
Published: May 2023

This chapter reviews theories of postsecularism and post-Islamism and builds a theoretical framework for interpreting the religious and social dynamics structuring the global growth of interreligious dialogue. Drawing on theories of postsecularism and post-Islamism, the chapter links the growth of interreligious dialogue initiatives in the Middle East to longer-running processes of religious and political transformation both in the region and across the globe. It also raises questions about the capacity of these transformed religious and political forces to mobilize social solidarity in favor of citizenship in the Middle East and elsewhere. In doing so, the chapter articulates how interreligious dialogue offers insight into broader debates in the contemporary study of religion and politics, including the relationship of religious forces to liberalism and democracy, the impact of immanent frameworks on religion’s social mobilizational capacity, and the challenges that religious pluralism poses to both religious and political authority.
Islam and Interreligious Dialogue
Authors: Driessen Michael D.
Published: May 2023

This chapter charts the development of theological positions within Islam in favor of interreligious dialogue and religious pluralism through a series of major interreligious declarations in the Middle East, including the Amman Message, A Common Word between Us and You, the Marrakesh Declaration, and the Human Fraternity document. The chapter also analyzes the network of religious authorities and scholars who have authored these declarations. As a religious project, the emerging ideas about pluralism and citizenship embedded in these documents model a distinct, religiously expressed approach to modernity. Thus, these declarations make the case that international cooperation on human rights, religious pluralism, and citizenship are strengthened through activities of dialogue. They also advocate for a strong role of religion in the public sphere and propose that religious renewal is necessary to rebuild social cohesion and political stability in the region.
The Focolare Community (Algeria)
Authors: Driessen Michael D.
Published: May 2023

This chapter presents the case study of the Focolare community in Algeria. Drawing on surveys and fieldwork conducted in Tlemcen, Oran, and Algiers, the chapter focuses on the history of the community in the country and the lived experience of youth participants in the organization’s dialogue activities. The case study considers the attractiveness of dialogue activity in contemporary Algerian society, focusing especially on the development of an interreligious spirituality within the Focolare community and the various meanings attached to it by community members. The chapter also explores how participation in dialogue activities has impacted individuals’ religious and social lives and shaped their political worldviews and actions.
The Frayed Social Fabric of Democracy
Authors: Issacharoff Samuel
Published: May 2023

This chapter explores the narratives on which democracy justified itself and argues that populism has grown more attractive to voters as those narratives unraveled in recent years. The first section of this chapter discusses the weakening claim of democratic supremacy in the economic domain, beginning with the rising economic expectations created by post-reconstruction Western Europe and the United States and their demise after the financial crisis, remarking on the concentration of populist anger in sites of acute economic dislocation in democracies and the decline in real income among the working and middle classes. The chapter then shifts to discussing social conditions, commenting on the relationship between the cultural estrangement caused by migration and demographic shifts and its effect on the sense of cohesion on which many democracies rest. The chapter concludes by noting the failure of established political channels to address these senses of isolation and insecurity, which are primary concerns of populist voters.
The Political Institutions of Democracy
Authors: Issacharoff Samuel
Published: May 2023

The decline of institutions in democracies, particularly parties, is part of why democracies are growing less able to deliver results and prevail on their narratives. First, this chapter accounts for the current weakness of parties, pointing both to internal factors, like legal reforms leaving governance outside of the control of party leaders and efforts to reform patronage; and external factors, like social media and growing access to external campaign funding. Next, this chapter argues that parties in democracies resemble firms delivering valued goods to the political market—including candidate selection, campaign financing, elucidating platforms, resolving collective action problems, and patronage. In Coasean terms, the incentives of politicians to “make or buy” have shifted as parties are less able to direct production from within, driving politicians to find alternate sources for the goods parties produce, bypassing parties’ moderating forces, and yielding more personalist campaigns.
Judicial Intercession
Authors: Issacharoff Samuel
Published: May 2023

The corruption by populism of core legal pillars of democracy, including electoral accountability, government processes, and self-enrichment, invites legal responses. This chapter argues that constitutional law and its enforcement through the judiciary, while no long-term solution to the erosion of limitations on power and electoral accountability, serves an important role of intercession. In the case of electoral accountability, this might mean the judiciary defending electoral accountability by voiding laws or constitutional amendments conflicting with basic structures of democratic government (as in India, Italy, or Colombia). For processes of governance, this might mean judicial interventions to prevent legislative power grabs or declarations of emergency powers, as in Taiwan and India; but legislative inaction may also occasion intervention. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the British Miller cases during Brexit, arguing that the British Supreme Court’s decisions were able to shift politics back from the executive into the more democratic Parliament.
Institutional Wreckage
Authors: Issacharoff Samuel
Published: May 2023

Democracy’s greatest threat comes not from obstacles to voting but from party control of election mechanisms, turning tabulating election results into opportunities for partisan mischief. In the United States in 2020, the system held up well. But the stability of these structures depends on long-haul bipartisan commitments to repeat engagements, anathema to the demands of populist immediacy. President Trump targeted obscure local agencies as vulnerabilities in the election certification process that could be manipulated through partisan appeals. This chapter examines the fragility of election structures dependent on bipartisan agreement to certain ground rules. Democracies depend on two features: (1) commitments to repeat play; and (2) institutional guardrails such that the majority will win according to pre-set rules, but not too much. Recent populist fervor threatens both. This chapter explores how close to the abyss the election system came in 2020, and how delicate the balance remains going forward.
Peaceful Settlement of Disputes in International Law
Authors: Powell Emilia Justyna , Wiegand Krista E.
Published: May 2023

This chapter comprehensively reviews rules, institutional features, efficiency, and relevance of various peaceful resolution methods: bilateral negotiations, nonbinding third-party methods (inquiry, good offices, mediation, and conciliation), and binding third-party methods (arbitration and adjudication). The chapter is largely descriptive and provides a foundation for the rest of the book. It devotes considerable attention to real-world, mostly contemporary territorial and maritime disputes. Mapping the specific features of each peaceful resolution method provides a detailed picture of the normative environment in which states pursue their strategies. In explaining the fundamental dynamics associated with the functioning of each method, the chapter draws on insights from international law and international relations scholarship.
A Theory of Strategic Selection
Authors: Powell Emilia Justyna , Wiegand Krista E.
Published: May 2023

Chapter 4 is devoted to the second stage of strategic selection, within-venue. In this stage of peaceful resolution, patterns of states’ behavior are quite distinct in that regardless of external factors, all disputing states strategize to optimize their experience within a particular peaceful resolution method and a specific venue. Consequently, disputants involved in active resolution attempts maximize their efforts to shape the procedures and frame their claims in an optimal way in the pursuit of victory. The discussion is deeply entrenched in qualitative examples of states’ strategic behavior in contemporary and past territorial and maritime contentions. Insights from in-depth interviews with interlocutors personally involved in peaceful resolution shed light on the specifics of the theory’s causal mechanism.
Research Design and Trends in Territorial and Maritime Disputes
Authors: Powell Emilia Justyna , Wiegand Krista E.
Published: May 2023

Chapter 5 presents the research design—a multimethod approach, which combines quantitative analysis of an original dataset of attempts at peaceful resolution in territorial disputes (1945–2015), primary documents, and a series of qualitative interviews, with a particular focus on the 2013–2016 Philippines v. China arbitration. The quantitative data, the Peaceful Resolution of Territorial Disputes (PRTD) dataset, provides observations of proposer state-level behavior in a cross-sectional time series format and gauges preferences of challenger and target states. It also devotes considerable attention to patterns of territorial dispute resolution since 1945, and discusses trends and frequencies of resolution attempts via specific peaceful resolution methods across the geographic regions of the world: Europe, the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia/Oceania. territorial dispute, peaceful settlement, Europe, Americas, Africa, Middle East, Asia, Oceania
Testing Choice-of-Venue Strategic Selection
Authors: Powell Emilia Justyna , Wiegand Krista E.
Published: May 2023

Chapter 6 focuses on the empirical analysis of the choice-of-venue strategic selection stage, which involves proposer states’ choices of the various peaceful resolution methods during territorial disputes. This chapter provides solid evidence, qualitative and quantitative, for the supposition that proposer states engage in strategic behavior when selecting the various methods. While attempting to settle their territorial or maritime contentions, proposer states make carefully preplanned, rational choices to seek optimal resolution outcomes. A variety of factors—mechanisms of strategic selection—influence the choice-of-venue stage of the resolution process. Controlling for a multitude of confounding factors, the analyses suggest that proposer states’ past experience with resolution methods (win-loss record) and international law’s position in the domestic legal system matter as these states strategically choose between available peaceful resolution methods. Expert interviews and real-world cases of territorial contentions shed light on patterns uncovered by quantitative analysis.
Introduction
Authors: Kelly Casey Ryan
Published: May 2023

This introduction discusses the central theoretical and contextual elements of the book, including concepts such as obscene enjoyment, convergence culture, spectatorship, jouissance, the death drive, surveillance, and rhetoric. It establishes the central argument of the book, which is that addressing race and gender inequality with the promise of scandalous hot mics and obscene private videos transforms antiracism and gender justice into disempowering forms of spectatorship that ultimately conceal the structural nature of whiteness, white supremacy, and patriarchy.
Introduction
Authors: Kamrava Mehran
Published: May 2023

Like most of the historical examples before it—as in France, Russia, and China—the success of the Iranian revolution in January 1979 was in short order followed by a reign of terror. By late 1980, the triumphant feel of early 1979 had turned into despair among most revolutionaries. A backdrop of heightened diplomatic tensions with the United States and its allies over the Hostage Crisis, a devastating war with Iraq, shortages of most basic goods and high prices, continued purges and pervasive suspicion, and daily harassments by overly zealous Revolutionary Guards who acted as morality police, all added to Iranians' pervasive sense of despair. Since then, cycles of triumph and despair have become recurring features of the Islamic Republic.
Crafting a New System
Authors: Kamrava Mehran
Published: May 2023

When Iran's spontaneous revolution succeeded, it brought to power a revolutionary coalition whose members began to violently compete among themselves at the same time as trying to craft a new state to their liking. This chapter chronicles the reasons for and the means through which one of these revolutionary groups, the clergy, was able to hegemonize the emerging postrevolutionary system. In the fateful early months and weeks after the overthrow of the monarchy and the success of the revolution, a number of developments converged to determine which one of the revolutionary groups would come out on top. These included, first and foremost, the direction and shape of events as they were unfolding on the ground, and, importantly, Khomeini's leadership. The Islamic Republic was far from a foregone conclusion. It came about and survived through a fortuitous combination of luck, willpower, clever insight, and coercion—a lot of coercion.
Iran in the World
Authors: Kamrava Mehran
Published: May 2023

Assumptions to the contrary, Iran has been a consistently realist actor in the international arena. This realism is rooted in the experiences of the hostage crisis and the Iran–Iran war and their continued legacy today on foreign policymaking, and in the country's evolving strategic environment. In Iran, deciphering the country's strategic objectives is at times harder because of the multiplicity of actors who claim to speak on the country's behalf, and the rhetorical maneuvering they engage in to strengthen their policy hands. That ideology and identity are readily deployed to strengthen strategic objectives when the two overlap only further masks the essential pragmatism that informs Iranian foreign policy.
Belonging and Exclusion
Authors: Kamrava Mehran
Published: May 2023

The Iranian state has had at best complicated and fraught interactions with four social groups, namely the country's different nationalities, religious minorities, women, and youth. In different ways, the state's relations with each of these groups has been problematic. It has sought to foster assimilation and uniformity among the nationalities, while at the same time acknowledging, and at times even celebrating, their diversity. It has had strong ideas about the proper social position of women and the cultural norms that ought to govern their lives, but also been unable to completely dictate gender roles or to even articulate a uniform vision of women's ideal social position. As for the youth, the state has been even less effective at devising policies that would effectively bring them into its orbit. Feelings of not belonging, of exclusion from the political process and from sought—after cultural norms, have turned out—migration into an epidemy.
Conclusion
Authors: Kamrava Mehran
Published: May 2023

The Islamic Republic is a hybrid political system whose authoritarian features and impulses far outweigh its responsiveness, accountability, and representative nature. It is a system with an all-powerful religious figure at the helm, and whose elected president and parliament have few powers. It is a system that has repeatedly shown itself to be unwilling to tolerate internal reforms, one that remains essentially nondemocratic. Despite the manifold changes it ushered in in Iran, the Islamic revolution did not fundamentally change the nature of state-society relations, and the state has remained deeply authoritarian. Iranian thinkers and writers frequently muse over the relationship between what it means to be "Islamic" and what it means to be "republican." Academic musings notwithstanding, it is Khamenei's interpretation of Islam that today rules over Iran. Iran went from the authoritarianism of the monarchy to the authoritarianism of the Islamic Republic.
Introduction to Nuclear Decisions
Authors: Koch Lisa Langdon
Published: May 2023

This chapter introduces the following puzzle. Approximately two dozen states have decided, at some point, to pursue the bomb. Yet throughout the nuclear age, the progress states have made toward that goal has been neither linear nor consistent. Why does the pursuit of nuclear weapons look so different across cases? How can we make sense of the range of paths to and away from the bomb? The answer: nuclear decisions. State leaders make political decisions to accelerate or reverse progress toward nuclear weapons. These decisions define each state’s course. Whether or not a state ultimately acquires nuclear weapons depends to a large extent on those nuclear decisions. This chapter introduces readers to two mechanisms that shape nuclear decision-making: domestic experts who influence leaders from within a state, and the structural and political characteristics of the international system that constrain or free states to pursue nuclear weapons development.
The Zelensky Effect
Authors: Onuch Olga , Hale Henry E.
Published: May 2023

How was Ukraine able to stand up and defend its independence against Russia's all-out invasion in 2022? One cannot understand these historic events without understanding Zelensky, the country and its people. What makes Zelensky most extraordinary in war is his very ordinariness as a Ukrainian, though he is "ordinary" in a way that not everyone could be, in part because of skills honed in a long career at the intersection of entertainment, media, and politics. The Zelensky Effect unpacks this paradox, exploring Ukraine's national history to show how its now-iconic president reflects the hopes and frustrations of the country's first 'independence generation.' Interweaving compelling episodes from Zelensky's life and career with data analysis and an informative history of independence-era Ukraine, it documents how Zelensky reflects and amplifies what social scientists call Ukraine's strong "civic" form of national identity. This is the inclusive sense of nationhood that led not only Zelensky but millions of Ukrainians to take huge personal risks to defeat the invading army. The book is structured around several critical junctures in Ukraine's and Zelensky's history, including Ukraine's appearance as an independent state in 1991, the Orange Revolution of 2004–5, the Euromaidan mass mobilization of 2013–14, the war with Russia after its 2014 annexation of Crimea, Zelensky's highly unusual 2019 election campaign, his presidency prior to 2022, and his rise to become the iconic wartime president he is today after Russia's February 24, 2022, assault. A concluding chapter examines prospects for a postwar Ukraine.
Conclusion
Authors: Leslie Jonathan G.
Published: May 2023

The book concludes by considering the consequences of Benjamin Netanyahu's creation of the Iran threat narrative. At the time of this book's writing, Netanyahu had been removed from power following the formation of a historic coalition consisting of multiple political parties intent on his ouster. The Iran narrative that he had created, promoted, and sustained, however, remained an integral part of Israeli political consciousness. Netanyahu's successor as prime minister, Naftali Bennett, continued to attack Iran in a manner reminiscent of his predecessor: rhetorically in major public addresses and physically through clandestine actions against Iran's nuclear program. The persistence of the Iran threat narrative is an example of what the historian Timothy Snyder calls the "politics of eternity," in which a mythicized past prevents consideration of a possible future. While the future is ultimately unknown, it is clear that Netanyahu's escalation of the Iran threat has had significant consequences for Israel, the Middle East, and the world.