bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
The Majles
Authors: Raisi Alireza 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
There has been a consolidation of the powers of Iranian hardliners within the ruling elite at the expense of gradually undermining Majles’s constitutional authority in legislation and oversight. That is, following the reformist Sixth Majles in 2004, the hardliners decided to curb the Majles’s role in policymaking and to ensure an upper hand for unelected elements within the Islamic Republic. Not only did this process undermine the power of Iran’s parliament, but it also fundamentally recast the pattern of political participation and citizen–politician linkages in Iran. The lack of influence triggered a sharp decline in the 2020 parliamentary electoral turnout. It also limited the role of the parliament in the policy process and in addressing the programmatic demands of the citizens. In such an environment, the Majles has assumed itself a parochial role in addressing the particularistic needs of the citizenry.
Soviet Russia in the Pacific
Authors: Ziegler Charles E. 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
This chapter examines the Soviet government’s efforts to spread the ideology of communist revolution in Asia, and then to establish the USSR as a more conventional Pacific great power. The discussion traces events in the immediate post-revolutionary period, when a Far Eastern Republic was established and Japan invaded Russian territory; the period following World War II when Joseph Stalin attempted but failed to realize fully his ambitions for Soviet expansion into China, Japan, and Korea; tensions with China and the Far East military buildup under Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev; concluding with Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms of the late 1980s. Soviet influence in the Asia Pacific was constrained by geopolitical realities, political institutions, economic practices, and foreign policy norms, many of which can be traced back to pre-revolutionary times. Key limiting factors included the Kremlin’s preoccupation with military power, a perception of the Russian Far East as a distant and vulnerable frontier, the autarkic and flawed economic model of central planning, Soviet inability to find a niche within the Asian economic miracle, and the traditional Russian position as a land power centered on the Eurasian continent.
Imagining the Pacific and the Russian Far East
Authors: Ziegler Charles E. 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
This chapter explores central and regional constructions of Eurasia and the Russian Far East in Russian national identity as a frontier territory that forms a nexus with the Chinese, Japanese, and American Others along the Pacific littoral. Russia’s Far East and Siberia have been an integral part of Russian identity. These remote regions give Moscow claim to great power status on the Eurasian continent, but Russia’s Far East and East Asia are geographically and conceptually distant from the European center of Russia. Russia’s east is imagined as a frontier territory, with great wealth and potential, yet sparsely populated and vulnerable. As relations with Europe deteriorated in the 2010s and 2020s, new versions of Eurasianism emerged to assert a unique role for Russia as an exceptional country, as a bridge between Europe and Asia. The Putin administration has promoted the idea of Russia as central to Greater Eurasia, not only in geopolitical and geoeconomic terms, but also through a civilizational prism that reflects attitudes developed over decades.
Text in Context
Authors: Stoltz Dustin S. , Taylor Marshall A. 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
Language is generous. It is a window into the mind, an echo of shared meaning, and a tool people use to remake the social world. Language, typically, enters social scientific examination in the form of text-either transcribed by the examiners or written by the examinees. Text allows us to map meanings across time, space, and people. In this chapter, we explore what language and text is and is not, bounding our object of inquiry.
Speaking with Homer
Authors: Van der Laan Sarah 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
Chapter 1 explores early humanist efforts to establish Homer as the head of a Renaissance epic tradition. Readings of Francesco Petrarch’s Africa and Trionfi and Angelo Poliziano’s Silvae reveal that from its earliest days, Renaissance epic establishes speech with Homer as the ultimate proof of a poet’s place in the epic tradition. Throughout Petrarch’s epic output, metaphors of deafness and muteness to Homer and his heroes contrast with the language of hearing and speech that describes Petrarch’s relationships with Latin poets and reveal the limitations of the humanist poetics of imitation that Petrarch himself did so much to develop. Petrarch’s strategies to overcome Homeric silence resonate through two centuries of Italian and neo-Latin poetry. They lay out the challenge of poetic reckonings with Homer and the Homeric tradition taken up by later poets—most spectacularly Angelo Poliziano. In his presentation of Odysseus as a hero of experience and his choice of an Odyssean ending, Poliziano anticipates developments in the later epic tradition. As Petrarch’s humanism gives way to Poliziano’s, Homer begins to emerge from Virgil’s shadow as a predecessor who cannot be subsumed in ‘the classical epic tradition’ but must be heard and reckoned with independently. These poems distinguish Homer from Virgil, looking to him for alternatives to Virgil’s authority, exemplarity, and ethics. They turn the humanist problem of recovering original sources into a poetic problem of performing authority. For Renaissance epic poets, the immense challenge of creating an authorizing conversation with Homer becomes itself a heroic enterprise.
Ariosto’s Fractured Odysseys
Authors: Van der Laan Sarah 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
This chapter reads the Orlando furioso against humanist teaching methods and reading practices to show that the Furioso’s ideals of achievable, sustainable heroism and humanism emerge from a dynamic interplay of Odyssean failure and successful revision. Ariosto’s characters attempt to emulate Odysseus’ heroic feats and traits by following the practices of Renaissance exemplarity. Reconstructing those practices from humanist reference works and the printed and manuscript marginalia of early editions, the chapter shows that the Furioso condemns them as essentially prismatic and thus ill-equipped to teach the interplay of qualities that constitutes Odyssean heroism. Where humanist surrogates for reading poetry fail, Ariosto argues, epic poetry and intertextual poetics succeed. By selecting various facets of Odysseus’ character and reassembling them into a finally successful Odyssean narrative, Ariosto constructs a partial, careful defence of human capability. He uses the classical hero of reason and prudence to ask what possibilities there may be for valour in a modern world, what kind of virtue the Odyssey can teach. Allowing this Odyssean model of epic closure to succeed where the Furioso’s Virgilian ending fails, Ariosto sets Odyssean prudence above Virgilian furor. By focusing these Odyssean imitations on marriage and the interaction of reason with desire, and by elevating the partial and prudent emulation of Odysseus above the full and furious imitation of Aeneas, Ariosto redefines heroic ethics and epic closure on Odyssean models of prudence, homecoming, and social reintegration.
Regulating Public and Private Interactions Through Procurement
Authors: Sanchez-Graells Albert 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
This chapter concentrates on procurement as a regulatory actor. It explores the role of procurement in mediating interactions between the public and private actors involved in the adoption of digital technologies by the public sector. The chapter starts by using agency theory to map the logic of the interactions between the public sector entities seeking to adopt the technology, the (private) economic operators seeking to provide it, and the procurement function as gatekeeper. In addition to the well-known ‘weak public buyer’ problem, this mapping evidences the difficulties of the ‘two-sided’ gatekeeping that procurement is expected to carry out to discipline not only the behaviour of the tech provider, but also that of the adopting public entity. This shows the heightened potential for tensions and governance challenges in the process of procuring un(der)regulated technologies, where procurement’s agency and gatekeeping roles are overlaid. The chapter concludes with a first sketch of a proposal to discharge procurement of this newest regulatory gatekeeping role through mandatory requirements and external oversight, which will be developed in more detail in Chapter 5.
The Technological Promise of Digital Governance
Authors: Sanchez-Graells Albert 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
Focusing on procurement digitalization as a site of unregulated public sector technological experimentation, this chapter takes a governance perspective to reflect on the process of horizon scanning and experimentation with digital technologies for the management of public procurement. It stresses how digitalization aspirations can drive policy agendas and make them vulnerable to hype, despite technological immaturity and in the face of evidence of the difficulty of rolling out public sector transformation programmes—for example, regarding the ongoing wave of transition to e-procurement. The chapter stresses how delivering on procurement’s goals of integrity, efficiency, and transparency requires facing challenges derived from the information intensity and complexity of procurement governance. Digital technologies promise to bring solutions to such informational burden and thus augment decision-makers’ ability to deal with that complexity and with related uncertainty. The allure of the potential benefits of deploying digital technologies generates ‘policy irresistibility’ that can capture decision-making by policymakers overly exposed to the promise of ‘tech fixes’ to persistent governance challenges. The chapter sets out how this can in turn result in excessive experimentation with digital technologies for procurement governance in the name of transformation.
Governing the Assessment and Taking of Risks in Digital Procurement Governance
Authors: Sanchez-Graells Albert 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
Managing the risks generated by public procurement digitalization requires deploying several risk assessment tools, or at least a tool capable of capturing risks of a very different nature and stemming from different sources. This chapter stresses how, concentrating on data- and technology-related issues only, this already requires assessment of a wide array of issues, such as data hazards, algorithmic harms, technological dependency, and cybersecurity threats. Taking the perspective of the emerging model of risk-based regulation, this chapter furthers the analysis of the specific (sub)model that is emerging in the European Union and the United Kingdom. Given that this model applies to the acquisition of digital technologies for all types of public sector activity—that is, it is not specific to procurement digitalization—the chapter evidences the shortcomings in the general regulatory approach to public sector digitalization that justify the creation of mechanisms of external oversight and mandatory requirements proposed in this book.
Disrupting Central Banking or Shadow Central Banking
Authors: Dell'Erba Marco 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
Private entities have recently attempted to invade the realm of central banking. This chapter identifies such activity as ‘shadow central banking’, and draws analogies to the previous emergence of ‘shadow banking’ more generally. The similarities between shadow banking and shadow central banking are clear when analysing the circumstances of their emergence, their pathologies, and the regulatory response. This chapter focuses on the evolving roles of central banks and private initiatives, as their activities have led to the rethinking of central banking activities and the form of money in modern capitalism. In doing this, it proposes that this disruption of traditional central banking activity stems from a new interpretation of the concept of money, one that defies the classic dichotomy of ‘central bank money’ versus ‘commercial bank money’. This chapter then analyses the main characteristics of shadow central banking and identifies specific commonalities not only with the shadow banking system, but also with historical systems that pre-existed the modern central banking framework. Finally, it considers the systemic risks, systemic conflicts of interest and opaque corporate governance mechanisms associated with shadow central banking and posits some policy considerations to address such risks.
Introduction
Authors: Reynolds Anna 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
The introduction begins with an unusual work by Thomas Urquhart in which he claims to have had his manuscripts plundered and used as waste paper by Parliamentarian soldiers during the English Civil War, before going on to himself compose a text on scraps of waste paper in a London printing house. Urquhart’s claims regarding the histories and fates of his writing materials are representative of the material and imaginative presence of waste paper in early modern England more broadly—the subject of Waste Paper in Early Modern England. The introduction goes on to overview existing scholarship on subjects related to waste paper; to outline the place of papermaking in the early modern imagination and its connection to that of waste paper; and to explain Waste Paper in Early Modern England’s indebtedness and contribution to scholarship on the phenomenology of reading, material culture, and the theorization of waste, commodities, things, and stuff.
Hard and Soft NPM in City Management
Authors: Lapsley Irvine 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
This chapter examines NPM in practice. It examines NPM as a colonising device which mobilises management practices as the dominant strain of thinking in public service organisations, in this case in the study setting of cities. The prevailing concept of NPM in the literature is conventionally depicted as a preoccupation with calculative practice and there are many city studies which take this perspective (for example, Lapsley, Miller, and Panozzo, 2010; Kornberger and Carter, 2010; and Ahrens and Ferry, 2015; McCrone, 2022). However, this study not only examines aspects of hard NPM (as expressed by specific calculative practices) but it also extends the discussion of NPM to examine soft NPM—the mimicry of private sector business practices but which goes beyond calculative practices to include softer forms of business techniques, such as branding from marketing (Bertilsson, Renstam, and Sullivan, 2022). Branding has been described as a business practice which is penetrating many aspects of everyday living (Kornberger, 2010). Also, much of the NPM literature emphasises the importance of accounting and calculative practice in everyday living, but this study reports on calculative practice as complex, with instrumental, ambivalent, and symbolic aspects.
Co-production—An Ethnographic Analysis of Local Services with Renewed ‘Traditional’ Methods
Authors: Kudo Hiroko 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
In recent years, the sustainability of public services has been discussed and studied by researchers as well as practitioners. This chapter, thus, explores public service tradition and examples of Japan (Avenell, 2010; Haddad, 2012) and analyses them in terms of sustainability through commons. One of the recent developments in public services is to co-produce with citizens (Kikuchi, 2010; Kawato et al., 2011), which was a historically and widely employed method (Haddad, 2012). The tradition of co-production in basic community services has been replaced by public services delivered by local governments (Jain, 2011, Matsuura, 2006) after the Second World War, alongside with the effort to ‘modernise’ and ‘westernise’ the country. Since then, local public services have increased significantly in terms of varieties as well as in expenditure. Serious natural disasters and crises have been managed with significant citizen participation, which has proved the possibility of sustainability in delivering public services. Citizens’ self-help has been reintroduced even for building and maintenance of the roads (see Yanai City, 1994; Mino City, 2017), typically provided by the public sector in the modern society, but traditionally by the local community (Sasaki and Sasaki 2006). Services provided through self-help and mutual aid are much more sustainable compared to those provided by the public sector. Thus, the introduction of co-production with the citizen is indeed a process of rediscovering the traditional way of providing services with civil society’s self-help and/or through traditional ‘commons’.
Reflecting on Management Change in the UK Public Sector
Authors: Hyndman Noel , Liguori Mariannunziata 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
Over almost three decades, central governments in many countries have engaged in reforms aimed at improving public-sector practices, with a main area of change involving accounting processes. Such changes (particularly with respect to financial accounting, budgeting and performance management) are often introduced with claims that they will support government, at any level, in becoming ‘modern’ and ‘business-like’. A major argument for their introduction is that these ‘new’ accounting tools will provide better information for decision making and control, and this is often linked to the assumed achievement of a more-effective, more-efficient, and more-accountable public sector. Focusing on the main accounting changes that have occurred in the UK public sector over the last 30 years, this chapter examines their effects and consequences. Using ideas rooted in the New Public Management literature, ideas emanating from institutional theory, and contemporary research, the chapter considers the impact of these accounting changes, and the reasons they are still popular after years of implementation and empirical evidence suggesting they do not always work as intended. While some evidence of radical change is found (where accounting systems and staff thinking have changed because of the new tools’ introduction), frequently, accounting modifications have resulted in a changed architecture of accounting, but limited use, and understanding, of this new, ‘better’, ‘modern’ information. This has led to some dysfunctional (often unintended) consequences. The time has perhaps arrived to ask: was it all worth it?
When Managers Take Over
Authors: Bolleyer Nicole 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
This chapter theorizes and examines to what extent central traits of the ‘professionalized voluntary organization’ allow for managers to take control over internal decision-making (i.e. to start operating as a group of decision-makers in its own right), thereby displacing organizational members and leaders alike. Vice versa, it examines whether ‘voluntary association features’ help contain such tendencies by incentivizing the maintenance of organizational accountability structures over the growing need for expertise and efficiency in decision-making. As with member control, the quantitative analysis suggests that the two templates shape CSOs in opposite ways: professionalization and bureaucratization as central features of the ‘professionalized voluntary organization’ increase the propensity for staff control over decisions. In contrast, organizations with multi-tier structures that rely heavily on volunteer staff (central association features) help contain it. Consequently, the findings suggest that CSO accountability to organizational actors can remain intact if CSOs’ voluntary capacity remains strong, despite the growing pressure towards more efficient and expertise-based decision-making.
Disaggregating the Transmission Belt and the Study of CSOs’ Democratic Contributions
Authors: Bolleyer Nicole 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
This chapter synthesizes the quantitative and qualitative findings to underline the usefulness of the two organizational templates ‘voluntary association’ and ‘professionalized voluntary association’ to specify and analyse organizational trade-offs that increasingly confront CSOs in individualizing societies that, in turn, shape CSOs’ democratic contributions. Embodying distinct behaviour logics, the characteristics central to each governance template—overall—generate contrasting repercussions on each of the dimensions used to assess these contributions (member activism, staff control, goal reorientation, and political engagement). At the same time, features central to each template have positive repercussions for some of the four dimensions and negative repercussions for the others. This highlights that neither CSOs resembling ‘voluntary associations’ nor those resembling ‘professionalized voluntary organizations’ are unambiguously superior in terms of their likely democratic contributions. This significantly qualifies the widespread scepticism towards the increasing professionalization, bureaucratization, and state funding of organized civil society in contemporary democracies.
Humanist Criticism
Authors: Mori Giuliano 
Published: February 2024

Abstract
Chapter 4 investigates the emergence of embryonic forms of critical historical scholarship in the fifteenth century, arguing that the legal knowledge shared by Quattrocento humanists channeled a critical attitude toward sources and a method of comparative assessment grounded in verisimilitude. Such a critical approach is displayed in the historical works by humanists who tended to equate historical truth and verisimilitude, such as Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni, Bartolomeo Facio, and Bernardo Giustinian. The integration of judicial methodologies into historical works was more problematic for Quattrocento antiquarians, who rejected the notion of verisimilitude. Yet, while radical antiquarians such as Pomponio Leto remained deaf to the issue of historical criticism, moderate antiquarians expended great efforts to verify traditional historical narratives. Lorenzo Valla realized that a critical method of assessment inspired by judicial inquisition was indispensable to the analysis of doubtful traditions such as those discussed in the Oration on the Donation of Constantine and the Epistle on the two Tarquins. However, Valla repeatedly states, because they revolve around verisimilar conjectures rather than factual necessity, works such as the Oration and the Epistle cannot be considered histories. They belong, instead, to the genre of judicial oratory—a genre that Valla forcefully distinguished from history proper.