This book explores Maurice Merleau-Ponty's provocative claim that "the unconscious is feeling itself," reframing the unconscious as a fundamentally relational phenomenon rather than a private repository of repressed content. Drawing on clinical insights from Francoise Dolto, Pierre Marty, Didier Anzieu, and Rene Kaes, Stefan Kristensen bridges psychoanalysis and phenomenology to show how bodily manifestations of unconscious processes shape selfhood and social bonds. The book traces the development of the self through speech and body, examines psychosomatic illnesses as symbolic interactions, and investigates the unconscious dynamics of power relations within groups. By articulating the interplay between corporeality, relationality, and symbolic structures, Kristensen offers a groundbreaking perspective on the unconscious as an intercorporeal linking force essential to the integrity of the self. This work will appeal to psychoanalysts, philosophers, and scholars of clinical psychology seeking to understand the political and ontological dimensions of unconscious life.

This book examines how various methods of digital communication have entered the domain of EU Civil Procedure, with a primary focus on the service of documents, electronic submissions, the taking of evidence, and videoconferencing. It offers a comprehensive overview of legal issues surrounding the use of digital technology in the aforementioned areas and draws insight from the national legal doctrines of 15 EU Member States and select candidate countries. On the one hand, the research employs the comparative legal method to draw conclusions on commonalities and differences, as well as prospects for future approximation of laws. On the other hand, the book addresses open issues at the EU (supranational) level. The research is rooted in the observation that a paradigm shift from traditional to digital means of communication between courts and other judicial partakers is currently taking place. This shift is manifested through a variety of technologies and affects a wide legal landscape. The EU is heralding the incorporation of these developments in its latest legislation on cross-border disputes. The research deals with analyzing both existing (digital and traditional) and prospective means of communication in national and cross-border disputes. The book identifies problems in the national and EU legal frameworks and provide potential solutions for tackling these problems in the current or assess prospects for future developments.

An incisive account of how equality transformed from an abstract ideal into a concrete social and political vision, thanks to seventeenth-century English dissidents like the Levellers and the political philosophers they inspired.

Today, political theorists and philosophers treat as axiomatic the claim that all persons are equal. Dig deeper, however, and what we mean by equality-and what it demands from us, politically and otherwise-is far from obvious. Does it mean that we are all the same, and so the same standards should apply indifferently to everyone? Or does it mean that we are all different in ways similarly deserving of respect? These questions, and many more, reflect the profound ambiguities and contradictions that have riddled the history of the idea of equality.

First Among Equals examines a radical turning point in that history. Since antiquity, influential legal and philosophical traditions have held that all humans are fundamentally equal. Yet these claims proved surprisingly at home in a world defined by social hierarchy, political exclusion, and enslavement. In seventeenth-century England, the meaning-and practical circumstances-of equality began to change. Political philosopher Teresa Bejan traces this transformation, revealing how equality finally became a concrete and actionable political ideal.

Crucially, Bejan shows that influential early modern theorists of equality-chief among them Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and the early feminist Mary Astell-were responding to the increasingly radical visions proffered by contemporary social movements like the Levellers, Diggers, and Quakers. Inspired by the Leveller leader John Lilburne, these movements insisted that equality must be a basis on which ordinary men and women could demand to stand shoulder to shoulder with elites. These early modern activists and philosophers can still enchant us today, Bejan argues, while also helping us to restore the power of equality as a political ideal.

This edited volume explores the evolution of public sector reforms in Nigeria since the return to democracy in 1999. Marked by decades of inefficiency, corruption, and underperformance, Nigeria's public sector has long required structural transformation. It critically examines the reform initiatives that emerged under President Obasanjo's administration and beyond, offering a comprehensive review of the strategies, outcomes, and lingering challenges across multiple administrations. With an emphasis on democratic governance and developmental state-building, the book contributors explore reform efforts in civil service restructuring, digital governance, anti-corruption, education, agriculture, pensions, security, housing, and power sector transformation. This volume also assesses policy tools like the Integrated Personnel and Payroll Information System (IPPIS), Federal Civil Service Strategy and Implementation Plan 2021-025 (FCSSIP25), and the role of innovation in service delivery. Special attention is given to sector-specific case studies and the use of empirical and econometric approaches to evaluate reform impacts.

It includes comparative perspectives from Ghana, South Africa, and Cote d'Ivoire. This volume not only enhances the sparse academic literature on Nigeria's public sector reforms but also provides practical insights for policymakers, scholars, and reform practitioners.

By situating Nigerian reforms within the broader context of democratic consolidation and governance reforms in Africa, this work underscores the public sector's pivotal role in delivering services, implementing policy, mobilizing revenue, and strengthening intergovernmental coordination. It will benefit scholars, students, policymakers, and development partners engaged in African governance, public administration, and institutional reforms.

An authoritative introduction to strategy-its enduring essentials, its inherent challenges, and the ways it will change in the twenty-first century

We live in a world in which America's previous dominance has disappeared, violent states seek to remake the global order, and war itself has taken new forms. The Strategist is the definitive guide to the use of military means to achieve political ends. In this incisive book, Eliot Cohen addresses the deceptively straightforward questions at the heart of strategy, the reasons why strategists often choose badly, and the ways in which strategy, inevitably imperfect, can be improved.

Who is the enemy? What are our means? What is the sequence in which we should act? Why do we believe we will succeed? These are some of the seemingly elementary questions all strategists must answer, and success or failure rests on choices that may also seem simple, such as selecting campaigns and deciding when to launch a war and when to stop it. Yet devising effective strategy, while achievable, is extremely difficult. Cohen draws on illuminating examples from history as well as his own experience as a strategic adviser to government to explain why. He demonstrates how to mitigate these limitations through habits of thought and qualities of character that enable a strategist to make the best possible decisions under conditions of profound uncertainty.

We wish to be done with war, but unfortunately war is not done with us. At a time of radical change in geopolitics and military technology, The Strategist sheds light on the perils before us, and ways to cope with them.

This book develops the concept of Asian Commons as a conceptual and methodological tool to engage with Asia, both in its incredible heterogeneity and its important historical resonance. The contributions in this edited volume engage in a rethinking of Asia in an inclusive and collective manner without privileging any region/nation. The Asia that emerges from the world of policy-making and academic discourse is composed of regional blocks: South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and East Asia are identified more for expediency than as imagined communities. In looking at Asia beyond these units, examining new and forgotten networks, the book foregrounds the lived experiences-and cultural productions emanating from these experiences-making visible the alternative pathways that nurture the notion of Asian Commons. The desire to create an Asian Commons comes from a collective history of anti-colonial struggles and shared vision for social and economic justice. As a working concept, Asian Commons is informed by the historical resources accumulated through Asia's varied but connected experience with decolonization. Mindful of the trap of exclusionary nationalism and false internationalism which flattens the differences between/within nations and peoples, Asian Commons would allow intellectual and political innovation that embraces both the heterogeneities and commonalities of Asia. In its re-examination of the current state of decoloniality, this book discusses alternative visions of Asian Commons. It is a key text for academics and students specialising in Asian cultural studies, with a particular emphasis on postcolonial perspectives, and for researchers focused on Asian history and contemporary issues, seeking a deeper understanding of the region's interconnectedness.

How Walt Whitman's philosophy of death prepares the soul for freedom and equality

Humans fantasize about immortality. Billionaires dabble in cryonics, politicians build monuments to themselves, and writers donate their papers to libraries. In Die Your Own Death, Jack Turner argues that the quest for immortality-literal or symbolic-is politically destructive. He does so through a meditation on the work of Walt Whitman. Whitman held that democracy prepares individuals to "die their own deaths"-free of fear, resentment, and illusion. In Whitman's "existential democracy," accepting death strengthens freedom and equality. And yet, Turner finds, Whitman only half succeeded in forging a democratic philosophy of death. As Whitman's thought evolved in response to changing ideas about nation, race, and empire, he encouraged citizens to seek immortality through racial imperialism-the expansion of white empire from North America to the Pacific Islands-as a monument to American greatness.

Turner explores the poetics of death in Leaves of Grass and its relationship to Whitman's democratic theory ("I exist as I am, that is enough"). Through a close analysis of Drum-Taps and Memoranda During the War, Turner shows that Whitman sought to redeem the mass slaughter of the Civil War by cloaking it in poetic and national glory. And in Whitman's greatest prose work, Democratic Vistas, Turner argues, Whitman envisioned an antidemocratic national immortalism that ignored Native sovereignty and Black equality. Turner exposes the dark side of Whitman's philosophy of death, but he also reveals how that philosophy can still be a resource in the ongoing struggle for freedom and equality.

This book provides a multifaceted investigation into the relationship between law, normativity, and the spatio-temporal coordinates in which legal phenomena emerge and transform. It offers a cross-disciplinary and philosophically grounded perspective that rethinks the categories of space and time as fundamental dimensions of the normative experience. Bringing together contributions from legal theory, philosophy, semiotics, comparative law, and cultural studies, the volume explores how law is affected by, and in turn affects, evolving conceptions of time and space and how the legal experience belongs to human history. This book investigates the ontological status of legal norms and the implications of their despatialisation or deterritorialisation in digital and transnational contexts. Several chapters address questions about the existence and longevity of legal norms, others examine the distinction between the spatial scope and the actual validity of norms in light of the effects of political change, cyber-activities, and global regulatory trends. The temporal dimension of legal responsibility is re-examined with regard to concepts such as negligence, intention, and agency.
Moreover, the book explores challenges of decision-making posed by algorithmic governance and behavioural regulation involving classical models of normativity based on rationality and chronological linearity. Furthermore, the volume draws on intellectual traditions from across the world (Western phenomenology, classical legal thought, non-Western cosmologies and ethical frameworks) for reconsidering the way normativity is shaped by paradigms of space and time related to peculiar dimensions (rhythm, ritual, kairos), which offer alternative temporalities encompassing legal practices and our understanding of some philosophical-legal categories. By integrating legal philosophy with intercultural and technological-ecological perspectives, this book opens new avenues for understanding law's dynamic entanglement with space and time.
This volume is intended for scholars and advanced students in legal philosophy, jurisprudence, legal semiotics, comparative law, and interdisciplinary legal studies interested in exploring emerging paradigms of normativity beyond traditional legal frameworks.

The chapters in this book offer an analysis of the country's constitutional identity from various perspectives. Constitutional identity has become a commonly used instrument in studying legal orders. This book understands such identity as an order's core or fundamental elements or values as the expression of its individuality.

The contributions, written by legal experts in their respective fields, provide insights into Dutch constitutional identity by drawing on important constitutional concepts and arrangements, as well as relevant themes. This covers a wide range of topics, among them "democracy based on the rule of law", "fundamental rights", "the courts and the constitution", "state and religion" and "law and digitalisation".

The chapters provide a broad field of in-depth perspectives to not only inform and stimulate academic debate about their specific topics, but also about the country's constitutional law as such. In addition to national and comparative constitutional law scholars, this collection will also be of value to lawyers and policymakers dealing with constitutional law and identity questions.

Gerhard van der Schyff is Associate Professor at Tilburg Law School, Department of Public Law and Governance in Tilburg, The Netherlands.

Chapters 2 and 12 are available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

In an era where ideas can shape industries and algorithms can launch billion-dollar ventures, academic researchers stand at the forefront of innovation, though often without the tools to protect and benefit from the commercialization of their work. This book is a long overdue and groundbreaking guide that bridges the gap between discovery and impact, offering scholars a strategic roadmap to navigate the complex world of IP in the information age.

It demystifies patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets while introducing emerging protection mechanisms tailored to academic research contexts. From provisional filings and startup formation to licensing strategies and global patent systems, each chapter delivers actionable insights grounded in real-world experience.

Whether you're a graduate student with a breakthrough algorithm, a faculty member launching a spinout, or a university administrator shaping innovation policy, this book empowers you to unlock the full value of your research. With clarity, depth, and practical wisdom, it transforms IP from a legal hurdle into a strategic asset, essential for academic success and societal impact.

This book aims to present case studies on planetary transformations and re-definitions, specifically in the sectors of cultural heritage destruction, conservation, and dissemination through media arts intended for cultural tourism services and enjoyment. The current crises in Ukraine and the Middle East have prompted a need for deeper reflection on various issues and risks, including economic, ecological, political, cultural, media, and tourism-related. The book will include methods such as questionnaires, interviews, direct observation through photos and videos, and the use of 'mobile methods' (Urry, 2007), such as locative media (cell phones, etc.). The book chapters are written to be comparable to future social and sociological situations. The book aims to inform various audiences, including researchers, teachers, students, citizens, tourists, and migrants, about the impact of the Ukraine war on their economic situation, inclusion, everyday life, democratic participation, citizenship, and understanding of information and knowledge.

Putting ancient Greek and East Asian philosophies into conversation, this book argues that learning a martial art can provide practitioners with a deeper understanding of the philosophical views that animate the cultures from which traditional martial arts have developed. In this respect, a martial art has more to offer than techniques for self-defense or exercises that promote power, strength, flexibility, and coordination. Martial arts training can develop more aspects of a person than the various skills related to handling specific attacks and a clearer feeling of how to deal generally with conflict. Against the view that martial arts promote fighting and vicious behavior, this book argues that training in the traditional martial arts builds character and leads to virtue. Martial arts training provides experiences which integrate mind and body provide a philosophically informed and sound way to cultivate virtue. Building on the author's three decades of Aikido practice, the book also includes exercises readers can use to integrate martial arts practice into philosophy courses.

Much of what happens inside America's prisons remains hidden from public view, and the food doled out to incarcerated people is no exception. In Captive Consumers, Chin Jou exposes a system of mistreatment and scandal surrounding prison food: across the country, those behind bars live with chronic hunger, eat foods contrary to their religious beliefs and medical needs, and develop foodborne illnesses at alarming rates. At the same time, corrections systems and prison food services weaponize nutritional claims to protect themselves from charges that the incarcerated are starving.
Using a wealth of sources from untapped historical records to prison newspapers, Jou excavates the voices of the incarcerated and shows that prison food dehumanizes the imprisoned, compounds racial and class inequalities, and induces more violence-ultimately making carceral institutions more dangerous. But this compelling book also illuminates how people behind bars have reasserted their identities, resourcefulness, and humanity through self-prepared food even as prison food services profit from lucrative, taxpayer-funded contracts that reward cost-cutting over care. If US corrections systems continue to perpetuate physical and psychological violence through food, Jou argues, Americans will suffer not just wasted tax dollars but the cost of bringing traumatized, ailing, and hungry formerly incarcerated people back into society.

Urbanization in the Middle East is entering a new phase of global importance. As climate change pressures intensify and environmental limits become more visible, cities built under conditions of heat, water scarcity, and rapid transformation have become increasingly critical to debates on urban sustainability and resilience. Urbanization Rethought: On Planning and Resilience in Saudi Arabia offers a critical examination of urban development in one of the world's fastest-transforming desert regions. Moving beyond planning models derived from temperate and resource-rich contexts, the book explores how aridity, extreme heat, water scarcity, and megaproject-led development reshape the governance and practice of urbanization. Drawing on conceptual analysis and empirical cases from across Saudi Arabian cities, the book examines key dimensions of contemporary urban transformation, including the urbanization-environment nexus, climate change adaptation, green infrastructure, megaproject planning, and the evolving role of urban governance in building resilience futures. Rather than treating planning as a purely technical exercise, the book positions it as a mediating practice between development ambition and ecological limits. The book presents Saudi Arabia as an analytically generative context, and contributes to broader debates on urban resilience, sustainable development, and planning in climate-stressed regions. The insights developed here transcend the Gulf region to cities worldwide confronting urbanization under conditions of environmental constraint and uncertainty. This book is of interest to scholars, planners, policymakers, and students working on urban planning, climate resilience, urbanization, and sustainable development.

An innovative study of medieval Chinese tombs that provides new insights into the history of Eurasian cultural contact and exchange

Silk Roads, Steppe Roads takes the reader on a journey to three sites in northwestern China and Mongolia to investigate medieval Chinese tombs containing evidence of Eastern Eurasian cultural contacts and exchanges. The construction, artifacts, and texts on paper and stone found at these tombs of the Sui (581-618) and early Tang (618-907) dynasties reveal glimpses of people, rituals, and objects that were in motion on the Silk and Steppe roads until being laid to rest over a millennium ago.

Jonathan Karam Skaff shows how the major transit hubs of the Silk and Steppe roads were particularly active sites of cultural contestation, experimentation, and mutual influence that had an impact on the historical development of China and Inner Asia. Challenging the idealized image of the Silk Road, he also examines travel permits and sales contracts that document the trade of enslaved people over the route.

Innovatively drawing on both textual and archaeological sources, Silk Roads, Steppe Roads shows how Eurasian peoples, despite believing their societies to be unique, spun overlapping and entangled webs of culture.

This book attempts to answer the most fundamental questions of BRI by applying economic methods: What is, what to do, and how to do. Whether in China or the international community, whether in academia or in decision-making circles, there is no consensus on these issues, even though BRI has been around for eight years. As a result, there are many misunderstandings and suspicions about BRI, which have become a major obstacle to its smooth development. As an academic study, this book is not a simple interpretation of the official Chinese BRI representation, but an analysis of it is based on a unified theoretical framework. In addition to tracing the evolution of BRI and the cognition of the international community, the focus of this book is to analyze the attributes, positioning, and governance structure of BRI, as well as to discuss the internal and external risks it faces and its future development direction. The author starts from the development orientation of BRI (different from the current rule orientation of global governance) and makes a normative definition of it. Emphasizing development orientation does not mean that BRI does not need rules, but to jointly formulate rules according to the needs of development. Therefore, one of the directions to promote the high-quality development of BRI is institutionalization.

The transformation of Asia demonstrated in its demographic transition, social progress, economic development, and technological innovation has been phenomenal. Dragon Innovation: Shenzhen is one of the first comprehensive analyses on the formation of China's technology hub, Shenzhen and the Greater Bay Area, in a multidimensional and multicultural society in the 21st century amid global trade war and great power competition. It examines how and why Shenzhen and the Greater Bay Area emerged as Asia's leading technology cluster from historical, cultural, political, institutional, business and social perspectives to present an innovation experience that differs from the widely known western innovation hubs. In-person interviews with Shenzhen local government officials, renowned Shenzhen business leaders including Huawei's Ren Zhengfei, Tencent's Pony Ma Huateng, and the chief scientists at major technology & AI companies as well as EV companies including BYD make this book authentic and outstanding. Interviews with tech investors, academics, salespeople, grassroots entrepreneurs and migrant professionals make this book rich, vivid and informative. This book will interest scholars, policymakers, development practitioners, technologists, transnational entrepreneurs and global investors.

This book examines the potential for economic development and structural change in Africa through industrial policy. Combining a long-term historical analysis of structural transformation and development policy reviews, it offers a multidisciplinary examination of the catalysts and constraints impacting industrial development. By exploring the evolution and practice of industrial policy, the ongoing structural challenges, including a fragmented political economy, underinvestment, and limited productive capacities, are examined in relation to countries across Africa.

This book presents industrial transformation as the most effective way to leverage Africa's demographic advantages and drive sustainable economic development. It will be relevant to students, researchers, and policymakers interested in development economics, economic policy, the African political economy, and industrial development.

Digital platforms have garnered both apprehension and admiration for their disruptive influence on social systems, structures, and everyday lives. However, research insights on digital platforms and ecosystems, both in theory and practice, largely emerge from the Global North. Pivoting this focus to the Global South, An Introduction to Platform Economy in India explores the operational socio-technical framework of India's growing platform economy at the confluence of numerous platform ecosystems developed both globally and nationally.

Employing an economic sociology perspective, the authors examine the pivotal roles of individuals and collectives, alongside their embedded socio-economic and technical arrangements, to show the multifaceted dimensions of the rapid proliferation of platforms, burgeoning platform memberships, and the ensuing multidimensional social exchanges in India. The chapters respond to growing interest in India's platform economies by showing how the country figures prominently in visions of platform futures, whether as an emerging market, a critical node in global supply chains, or a catalyst for technological innovation.

Promising to be a timely intervention grounded in economic sociological analysis, this introductory text bridges the existing gap in the production of such scholarly literature from the Global South. By shedding light on the intricacies of platform dynamics, adoption, usage, and their impact on the social and economic lives of people in India, readers gain valuable insights that inform our understanding of the broader global dynamics of platform economies.

How people with illness and disability in China take to city streets to publicize their suffering and seek help

On the streets of every major city in China, people perform stories of poverty, illness, and disability, singing or sitting with written signs to solicit public charity. In Scenes of Affliction, cultural and medical anthropologist Trang X. Ta draws on ethnographic research and media coverage, primarily in Beijing and Guangzhou, to explore how individuals and families-many of them migrants from poor rural villages-publicize their medical plights to seek not only aid but also recognition of their moral worth and human dignity. Their testimonies of adversity and destitution represent a counternarrative to state propaganda about widespread economic prosperity and social progress.

By migrating to cities to seek medical care and public assistance, sufferers are asserting their right to life and a livelihood in the new China. But their continual solicitation and portrayal of need become a form of tragic injury, turning them into entrepreneurs of their own misery. Regarded as vagrants and even criminals, these supplicants constitute a working community engaged in performative labor. As savvy observers of human behavior with a streetwise understanding of the urban infrastructure, they use their bodies, voices, and stories as moral capital to earn a living in spaces hostile to their existence.

With its focus on urban spectacle, registers of moral value, and moments of both despair and resilience, Scenes of Affliction makes an original contribution to the comparative study of vulnerable populations engaged in unacknowledged care and labor.

An eye-opening story of the people who make the census, the United States' largest and most consequential dataset, and the growing threats to their crucial work.

By many measures, the US census is the government's largest non-wartime operation, and one of the world's oldest and biggest data-making endeavors. The 2020 census required more than a decade of planning and technical work-not to mention managing nearly a quarter of a million temporary workers simultaneously-to collect data about the American public. That data was then processed to count each of 331,449,281 residents once-and only once-and in the right place. The operation is also one of the country's most consequential. Census data determine how political power and federal funding are allocated. Census data make politics, and consequently, politics make census data. In this urgent book, danah boyd explores what it took for the Census Bureau to make the 2020 census, amidst a global pandemic and natural disasters, and while navigating political forces that constrained the budget, micro-managed the schedule, and attacked statisticians' methods.

With rare insider access to the Census Bureau, boyd observed and interviewed hundreds of government civil servants who made the 2020 census. By documenting the perspectives of government workers, Data Are Made, Not Found provides a rare glimpse into what it takes to make democracy's data. Each chapter reveals a different challenge-ranging from the last-minute fights about a citizenship question to the not-so-helpful help of well-intended stakeholders to avoid undercounts-and shows how civil servants responded to each problem, controversy, and hurdle. Boyd shows how many of the challenges that the Census Bureau faced in 2020 resulted from decades of political operatives, data users, and various stakeholders playing what boyd calls "Jenga politics," weakening the administrative state for short-term political gains by removing support and adding more requirements.

Civil servants saved the 2020 census, but future censuses-and other data-making efforts related to elections, health, and the economy-are precarious. Boyd's message is clear and compelling: protecting democracy means protecting the people and institutions that produce this data.

The current conflict between Russia and Ukraine has changed several views on the practical conduct of military conflict, combat doctrines, the use of military means, logistics, and communication. Not only regarding war on the ground, but also cyberwar, hacks, and attacks on networks are coming to the forefront of military activity.

The chapters in this volume stand at the intersection of the social, geopolitical, economic, and military fields. For too long, these subjects have been treated differently, even though they overlap for various reasons. Public expenditures are the foundation for all strategic planning decisions and political objectives. Economic foreign investment, on the other hand, must be viewed in the larger context of how these decisions impact the strategic regional environment.

Books in this series compile quantitative and qualitative studies in finance, insurance, and risk management. Subjects of interest may include banking, accounting, auditing, compliance, sustainability, behaviour management, and business economics.

This edited volume explores the prospects for entrepreneurship and digital transformation across the Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf (Red Sea) economies. Through in-depth scholarly discussions, it highlights the significance of these twin forces in shaping economic and social development within a region that occupies a critical position in global trade and international interdependence.

Chapter contributions to this volume investigate diverse themes relevant to digital and entrepreneurial ecosystems in the PGAG (Persian Gulf and Arabian Gulf) region. Topics include: consumer adoption of contactless payments; government initiatives supporting digital readiness; the role of emerging technologies in entrepreneurship education; challenges in digital entrepreneurship; comparative analyses of artificial intelligence practices; the impact of digital transformation on youth entrepreneurship; bibliometric insights into digital sports marketing; and sociological analyses of social exploitation and agency.

Together, these chapters offer a comprehensive and interdisciplinary understanding of how entrepreneurship and digital transformation can advance regional development, economic resilience, and global partnership. As such it will be of particular interest to students and scholars in the fields of entrepreneurship, innovation, development economics, Middle Eastern politics, and political economy, as well as practitioners and policymakers interested in strengthening entrepreneurial systems, advancing economic diversification, and promoting social inclusion in an era of rapid technological change.

This book tackles a critical question. Why has the world struggled so much to coordinate policy to address climate change, despite political and scientific consensus? Despite landmark agreements and expanding knowledge, emissions have fallen unevenly and progress has repeatedly stalled or reversed.

Democracy or Carbon Oligarchy? explains that failure by focusing on domestic politics: how institutions distribute power, how interest groups exploit "access points," and why countries with similar wealth and technology diverge. Moving beyond arguments about mere political will, it situates energy and climate outcomes within the institutional architectures of industrialized oil super-producers: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Norway. Shum advances a neopluralist theory of climate politics, arguing that policy is shaped by the strategic capture of institutional venues by carbon-intensive interests. He shows how separation of powers, federalism, party systems, and electoral rules configure opportunities for a de facto carbon oligarchy. By mapping where binding decisions are made and who can reach them, the book offers a generalizable framework for diagnosing blockages, explaining cross-national variation, and identifying leverage points for sustaining ambitious climate policy over time.

How the geopolitical behavior of states is closely related to the nature of their political systems

Today's world is characterized by an unstable coexistence of empires, nation-states, and democracies. In this book, Gerard Roland examines these three fundamentally different institutional systems and considers whether the international behavior of nations is influenced by the nature of their political regimes. He explains that until the nineteenth century, international relations were driven by rivalries among competing empires; as empires started to disintegrate, they were replaced by nation-states, some of which became democracies. The nation-state project supported by today's extreme right promotes ethnic homogeneity within a country's borders, while democracies are based on universal values of citizenship. Interactions between countries with such essentially different political systems, Roland shows, are seldom harmonious and likely to evolve into cultural clashes and military conflict.

Drawing on his expertise in political and comparative economics, Roland analyzes why and how countries' geopolitical behavior-their actions and attitudes regarding war, peace, expansionism, and trade-is closely linked to their political systems. In the long run, he argues, the ethnically homogenous nation-state is doomed because of the strong economic inefficiencies entailed by economic nationalism and the lack of openness to immigration, trade, and foreign direct investment. A better path for the future of the international order, Roland suggests, would be a world of small democracies building supranational institutions on the basis of commonly accepted rules.

The Last Purge explores the political ramifications of what is now known as the Cotton Affair, the largest and final purge in the post-Stalin Soviet Union. A significant yet underexamined episode of Uzbekistan's contemporary history, the Cotton Affair was a drawn-out judicial and political imbroglio that grew out of falsified cotton production data and corruption. Under cotton king Sharaf Rashidov, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, the country more than doubled its production of cotton, the nation's principal cash crop. When the USSR's tenth five-year plan demanded an annual production of six million tons of raw cotton, however, production became a matter of political survival for the Uzbek ruling elite. To cope, they began hiding inefficiencies through bribes and falsifying cotton production data. Moscow's eventual crackdown in the 1980s implicated 58,000 officials - 20,000 of whom faced criminal prosecution - and overwhelmed Uzbekistan's institutions.

Cucciolla sets the Cotton Affair at the center of Uzbekistan's transition from Soviet republic to independent state. Through the use of untapped Russian and Uzbek sources, he traces how the Cotton Affair became a sensitive identity issue of revenge and resistance against former rulers that served to legitimize the new Uzbek president's regime and define his relations with local power networks. In recovering the often sordid details of this critical event in the USSR's political history, Cucciolla offers fresh insights into the contradictions as well as consequences of perestroika and the disintegration of the Soviet Union from the perspective of its periphery.

This case study book provides a comprehensive exploration of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives and marketing practices across key global industries. Through detailed case studies from various sectors and regions, it highlights how companies align sustainability with strategic marketing. Readers will discover how industries, from technology to agriculture, implement ESG principles to meet evolving market demands, regulatory requirements, and societal expectations. Each chapter offers an in-depth examination of specific industry case studies, showcasing successful strategies, challenges, and the tangible impacts of integrating ESG into business models. This book is an essential resource for business leaders, marketers, sustainability professionals, and students. It offers valuable insights into the global intersection of responsible business practices and market positioning, providing a roadmap for companies aiming to drive positive change while meeting stakeholder expectations.