Most leading global militaries, led by the United States, embrace military assistance as an essential tool for achieving their high-priority strategic objectives; yet, in spite of its prominence, military assistance activities are poorly informed by coherent strategy, nor are they rooted in underlying theoretical frameworks that help strategists understand and exploit causal mechanisms that can produce desired behaviors and outcomes. As a result, military assistance has struggled to consistently deliver positive, enduring results - and in some cases has proven strategically catastrophic. This book fills a gap in both academic literature and real-world practice: it identifies and elucidates several theoretical foundations of military assistance and offers four distinct strategic frameworks for designing military assistance initiatives. In so doing, the book will offer academics tools to better understand and evaluate military assistance and will offer practitioners a playbook for designing more effective military assistance interventions to address high-stakes global security dilemmas. Finally, it will propose an ethical framework for defense cooperation, offering much-needed guidance in an area fraught with moral risk.

This book provides a critical analysis of the "ambition for truth" in criminal proceedings, highlighting how this perspective continues to shape current practices and may, in some cases, contribute to the objectification of defendants and the infringement of human rights. Furthermore, it contends that evidential inquisitorialism, evidentiary positivism, and evidentiary rationalism are distinct epistemologies united by an underlying authoritarian political agenda: the pursuit of truth.

This study examines the reinvention of inquisitorial procedures by modern epistemology and their subsequent integration into Latin American legal systems, where they significantly contribute to widespread incarceration and selective prosecution, reinforcing established racial and class hierarchies. The analysis advocates for procedural frameworks that preserve the presumption of innocence, while highlighting ongoing concerns about the prevalence of inquisitorial practices within contemporary criminal justice. The book references both contemporary and classical scholarship in criminal procedure?including works by James Goldschmidt, Franco Cordero, Franchesco Carnellutti, and Pedro Aragoneses Alonso?as well as critical socio-legal scholars from Brazil such as Aury Lopes Junior and Jacinto Nelson de Miranda Coutinho, along with prominent voices in Latin American criminology (Eugenio Raul Zaffaroni) and sociology (Roberto Kant de Lima and Michel Misse).

Furthermore, it interrogates the epistemological and ontological dimensions of truth within criminal procedure through the theoretical frameworks of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Paul Ricoeur and many others. The study seeks to develop a concept of truth specifically tailored to criminal procedure, with the objective of constraining punitive authority and safeguarding against judicial practices that may infringe upon human rights.

Using big data resources and data mining methods, as well as econometric models and etc., this book provides several advanced assessment methods and empirical analysis of the economic impact of environmental disasters in China, and studied China’s sustainability development policy avoiding disasters. This book uses cutting-edge methods, such as generalized difference in difference, inoperational input-output models, improved computable general equilibrium and others to calculate the economic influence of environmental disasters. It evaluates the redistribution of air pollution emissions in China by using improved data envelopment analysis. In short, it provides the ideas, methods and cases of the sustainability development road to avoiding disaster.

South Asia has been experiencing a rapid digital transformation with huge impacts across its economic, governance, and social arenas. With the fast-paced technological evolution, various government initiatives, and emerging economic requirements, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and other South Asian countries are unprecedently shifting to digitalization following the developed nations worldwide. Yet, while this transformation creates many opportunities, it also presents challenges and threats, including concerns about regulation, gaps in digital inclusion, governance efficiency, cybersecurity risks, and the sustainability of digitalization.

This book explores and analyzes how digital transformation is shaping South Asia’s economic resilience, governance models, sustainability efforts, and economic equity. By presenting and analyzing case policy frameworks, and empirical studies, the volume will build a solid understanding of digital governance, financial inclusion, AI integration, cybersecurity challenges, and sustainable innovations across the region. By exploring governance innovation, financial risks, AI applications, and sustainability challenges, this volume will serve as a resource and guidebook for policymakers and researchers interested in navigating this region and other regions’ digital future worldwide.

This book offers a historical review of globalization, an in-depth analysis of its current crises, along with predictions and practical prescriptions for its future development. Drawing on comparative studies of political and financial systems, economic models, intellectual cultures and ideologies, scientific and technological development, and crises management (pandemic, environment, etc.,), it argues that it's necessary to build a new form of globalization which is more conducive to global peace and prosperity. Also this book discusses how the Covid-19 pandemic is a watershed event that will have a significant impact on the future course of globalization. The strict lockdown policies implemented across the world highlight the threat that pandemics can pose to globalization, and have amplified the voices advocating Sino-American decoupling. However, the author is confident that it will lead to an alternative form of globalization instead by highlighting the need for greater international cooperation when facing health crises on a global scale.

This textbook introduces the Self-Leadership Stance (SLS), a practical framework built on five daily actions (start with yourself, be curious, access resources, cultivate discipline, and show compassion) that students carry from chapter to chapter and into their daily lives. Organized as a journey in three parts, the book moves from leading yourself (self-awareness, emotional intelligence, wellness, integrity, motivation, and resilience) to leading with others (communication, relationship building, conflict resolution, and time management) to leading in the world (global leadership, personal vision and mission, and designing a self-leadership development plan).

Each chapter pairs current research with tools students can use immediately: self-assessments, reflective journaling exercises, case studies, life and workplace application activities, peer-coaching prompts, and discussion questions. Short introduction videos accompany every chapter. The final chapter guides students through building a personalized development plan that ties together everything they have learned.

Written in a conversational, mentor-like style grounded in real-world experience, this textbook helps students build a strong foundation in leadership development, starting with the one person they fully control.

This open access book offers the first thorough analysis of the role of civil defense in NATO security discourse and development over the years, pinpointing critical junctures and historical events. Its novel contribution is the analysis of NATO's adoption and implementation of resilience as policy, a strategic concept, and later as a new body, the resilience committee. It explores how resilience shapes the role of civil defense and becomes a natural part of national defense and international security, and provides new insights into the knowledge of this contested concept and its adaptability once it enters a security discourse.

In terms of policy implications, one of the book's key contributions is its careful examination of the intricate roles ascribed by civil administration, civil society, market actors, and the broader populace. By explicitly addressing the social and political dynamics that have shaped NATO both historically and in the present day, it aims to ignite vital conversations around the implications of military alliances on democracy, accountability, and their influence over the internal political affairs of member states. This sheds light on the interconnectedness of these elements and encourages readers to critically reflect on the power structures at play and their far-reaching effects.

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This interdisciplinary volume introduces Entrepreneurial Life Design (ELD) as a transformative framework for navigating personal and professional transitions in an era of uncertainty. Drawing from entrepreneurship education, human-centered design, and career development, the book offers theoretical foundations, empirical insights, and practical tools to foster purpose, resilience, and adaptability. Contributions from leading scholars and practitioners explore ELD's application across educational, organizational, and societal contexts, with case studies and program models that support learners, professionals, and changemakers. By integrating research-based strategies with real-world relevance, this volume empowers individuals and institutions to design sustainable, value-driven futures. It is an essential resource for educators, coaches, researchers, and anyone seeking clarity and agency in shaping their life and career paths.

This book provides a critical and timely examination of anthropogenic disruptions to the natural functioning of Earth systems while evaluating the extent to which such climatic perturbations affect the sustainability of BRICS+ nations in the Anthropocene and Capitalocene. Responding to the multiple challenges confronting Planet Earth in this critical geological and historical age, the book first demonstrates the advent of a new political economy and governance order, triggered by the BRICS movement. It rigorously explores the far-reaching consequences of environmental crises on global peace, security, economic stability, and sustainable development, substantiating the increasingly strategic role of BRICS+ nations as a rising global economic force determined to shape sustainable futures in the Anthropocene and Capitalocene.

The book further bears out how compounded policy theories are paradoxically impacting BRICS+ nations (intra-BRICS+ nations’ contractions and the bloc’s opportunities) in advancing a more multipolar world order?an agenda fostered by the bloc that is so significant today that it is impossible to ignore or rebuff. Finally, the book offers a comprehensive framework for multilateral cooperation among economic alliances and institutions and among BRICS+ nations, within which the world can thrive despite the growing anthropogenic atmospheric transformations that affect the well-being of Planet Earth.

This book conducts an in-depth exploration of the dissemination of Chinese characters in East Asia and the formation and development of Chinese character-based writing systems, emphasizing the unique contributions of various ethnic groups within the Chinese character cultural sphere to the evolution of Chinese characters. Based on historical research and cross-cultural comparison, this book offers a comprehensive and insightful perspective, revealing the developmental laws and cultural attributes of Chinese character-based writing systems in East Asia. It pioneers a new research field in Chinese character studies and possesses positive reference value for understanding the evolution of the Chinese character system from a more macroscopic perspective.

While global urban discourse remains dominated by the spectacular, high-rise gentrification of central city areas, this book aims to deepen our understanding of the quiet, mundane redevelopments that transform the inner-city neighborhoods of the Global East. Exploring this "shadow of gentrification," it provides a rich empirical analysis of Osaka, Japan?a primary example of emerging neoliberalism playing out across an inner-city shaped by the developmental state. Despite departing from conventional gentrification, the analysis focuses on social change and capital reinvestment. Through evidence from extensive field research and interviews, it traces three distinct trajectories of neighborhood change: retro renovation driven by small businesses in Nakazaki; art-led renovation facilitated by a local landlord in Kitakagaya; and welfare-led renovation triggered by livelihood protection amendments in Northwest Nishinari. The analysis reveals a nascent “precarious city,” in which the working class is replaced by populations marked by precarity and fragmentation, standing outside the societal project of the developmental state. Ultimately, this book argues for embracing the trajectories of neighborhood change in the Global East, while treating gentrification as a conceptual vanishing point to guide analyses that sometimes lead into the spotlight, and sometimes into the shadow of gentrification.

Home Team Away calls for a rethinking of sport fandom that is divorced from an attachment to location. As the first comprehensive account of the European football fandom in China, this book explores how the Chinese middle class subjectivity is formed through the cross-cultural, digital consumption of the Big Five leagues. Yuan Gong captures the embodied experiences of fans and fan clubs, fan discourses and activities unfolding on digital platforms on Weibo, Weixin, and Hupu, combining fieldwork in Shanghai and virtual ethnography. Gong argues that Chinese fans’ decisions to follow and engage with European football result from their material conditions, ideological contestation, and technology appropriation as a new demographic bloc arising during China’s transition to authoritarian digital capitalism. By engaging with their home teams away, the Chinese middle class fans perform as citizens with a global vision despite the resurgence of the nationalist and anti-Western sentiments.

This book on peace and justice for all is part of a path-breaking initiative by Springer Nature heralding a new publication format compiling auto-summaries of literature. State-of-the-art computer algorithms were applied to select relevant sources from original articles published by Springer Nature. The selection was then rearranged in a topical order, and short summaries of the selected articles were provided. The result is the auto-summarization of current texts, organized by means of a similarity-based clustering routine in coherent chapters and sections.

The book collects material from about 150 original research articles published from 2018 to 2022. Every chapter comes with an introduction by the human expert that connects the dots of content chosen for that chapter and attempts to fill gap areas. In addition to more conventional topics such as crimes against women, children, and marginalized communities, human trafficking, criminal justice, activist suppression, access to social justice, institutions, and so on, the book contains discussions on relatively newer areas such as environmental and ecological justice. The book serves as a useful resource for anyone who wants to gain a quick overview of the topic, especially current developments in the field. Due to interdisciplinary nature of the content, the content is of importance to readers from a wide array of humanitarian research.

Note: The auto-summaries have been generated by a recursive clustering algorithm via the Dimensions Auto-summarizer by Digital Science handled by Subject Matter Experts and the editors of this book. The editors of this book selected which SN content should be auto-summarized and decided its order of appearance. Please be aware that these are extractive auto-summaries, which consist of original sentences, but are not representative of its original paper, since we do not show the full length of the publication. Please note that only published SN content is represented here, and that machine-generated books are still at an experimental stage.

This book presents an up-to-date Persian edition and English translation of Ma'athiru'l-umara, a biographical dictionary of the officers of the Mughal Empire from Babur's reign at the beginning of the sixteenth century until almost the end of the eighteenth century compiled by Shahnawaz Khan Aurangabadi and completed by his son Abdul-Hayy. Insofar as possible the sources from which the authors derived their information have been identified, and explanatory notes are given for technical terms in Persian and native Indian terminology. Almost all places mentioned in the text have been identified. It is an essential reference work for scholars of Indo-Persian studies and Indian history.

How can a small democracy resist the influence of a powerful authoritarian neighbor? Taiwan is frequently praised for its successful economic development and peaceful transition to democracy, serving as a model for other developing countries. However, it faces substantial challenges, both from internal political divisions and external geopolitical pressures. Taiwan's political landscape is shaped by several significant cleavages: national identity and ethnic disparities, economic inequality and class conflict, and generational and cultural differences. The greatest challenge to Taiwan's democracy comes from the influence of China, which has exploited these cleavages through economic leverage, propaganda, and political interference.

Under the heavy influence of Beijing's sharp power, Taiwan's democracy often faces threats of regression. Whenever China escalates its tactics, Taiwan's civil society has mobilized in response, playing a crucial role in resisting Beijing's strategies and defending democratic institutions. Thung-Hong Lin examines case studies - such as the 2014 Sunflower Movement, the 2019 support for the Hong Kong protests, and recent social movements in 2024 - to demonstrate how Taiwan's vibrant civil society is a key source of democratic resilience. This book also situates Taiwan's struggle within the broader context of US-China relations, showing how global geopolitics over the past half-century has shaped the island's destiny.

This book seeks to untangle the slippery notions of wellbeing constructs of the Trans-Tasman Pacific Islander community and presents case studies from diverse disciplines that grapple with Pacific wellbeing. Subjective and objective realms of Pacific wellbeing are woven together through Indigenous-led research approaches. The edited book redefines and illustrates notions of wellbeing as it relates to Pacific people living in Australia and New Zealand?the Trans-Tasman diaspora?through values-driven and strengths-based transdisciplinary research to inform applications in real-world contexts. The book presents broad and focused insights of the multi-faceted understandings of Pacific wellbeing compiled and authored by leading Pacific Islander researchers in the fields of Pacific communities, health, education, psychology, housing, economic mobility, and identity politics. Book chapters are presented with didactic sections about research methodologies and research recommendations contributing accessible tools for policy-making and to support future research about Pacific wellbeing.

City Opaque is a book about how cities are produced?not just with plans, money, concrete and cranes, but through grey spaces that operate through erasure, ambiguity, and the overproduction of contradictory laws and regulations. Set in Ho Chi Minh City, widely known as Saigon, Hun Kim follows developers, state officials, investors, and residents as they navigate one of the fastest-growing urban economies in the world. Through years of close observation and lived encounters ? from rooftop bars overlooking glittering construction sites to neighborhoods quietly erased by disappearing planning maps ? he reveals a city shaped as much by what is hidden, revised, or forgotten as by what is planned and recorded.

Rather than treating corruption, legal ambiguity, and disorder as failures of development, this book shows how opacity itself is a form of governmental reason and a strategy for producing space in the city. Laws multiply but rarely clarify. Archives disappear. Plans are rewritten after the fact. These practices are born out of rationalities that enable land to be reassigned, capital to move, and futures to be reimagined ? often at great cost to some residents, but with enormous payoff for others. Moving beyond familiar stories of "corruption" or "failed governance," City Opaque offers a new way of understanding urban development in Southeast Asia and beyond.

The volume aims to introduce Baul to the global audience by delving deep into their songs and performances. It offers a fresh perspective on the Bauls, showing how, through their unique lifestyle and strategies, they are capable of foregrounding their cultural habitus, accentuating the sahajiya principle, dismantling scriptural religion and the monopoly of colonial Bengali intellectuals, and forging an affinity with land and nature in an age of religious intolerance, global economy, and jingoism. The volume features a range of compelling chapters analysed from various critical perspectives. Postcolonialism, Religious syncretism, Resistance, Ethical Sociality, Cultural pastiche are the key traits of the volume. This comprehensive volume is unparalleled in its breadth of coverage on the Baul tradition, offering a unique perspective that has not been explored hitherto. It promises to deepen our understanding of the Baul culture from multiple critical angles, providing a significant contribution to South Asian cultural and spiritual studies. Scholars and students in fields such as Postcolonial Studies, South Asian Studies, Religious Studies, Cultural Studies, and Philosophy will find this volume particularly valuable for its scholarly insights and nuanced exploration of an esoteric tradition that holds a distinct place within the broader tapestry of South Asian spirituality and culture.

This book offers a rigorous and historically grounded analysis of Black women's political thought, activism, and institutional engagement across six decades. This book begins with 1965-a pivotal year in which the Voting Rights Act fundamentally transformed political participation for African Americans and, notably, the year Kamala Harris was born. This temporal convergence serves as the book's organizing framework, illustrating how the expansion of voting rights and the evolution of Black feminist politics created the conditions that made Harris's Vice Presidency possible. Drawing on political science, history, gender studies, and Black feminist theory, the chapters trace major developments in U.S. political life from 1965 to 2025. Topics include the interventions of Michelle Wallace, Ntozake Shange, and Alice Walker, as well as the implications of the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings for understanding gendered political vulnerability. The analysis also engages the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, showing how contemporary movements-including Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and the resistance to book bans-extend a longer tradition of Black feminist political critique. The text foregrounds key analytical concepts such as linked fate and Black feminist epistemology, making it an essential resource for scholars and students of American politics, African American studies, and feminist theory. By situating Kamala Harris's Vice Presidency within a broader historical trajectory, the book demonstrates that Black feminist political behavior is indispensable to understanding the development of modern U.S. democracy.

With each edition of Black Feminist Politics, Duchess Harris solidifies its position as an essential and enduring text that affirms the vital importance of using a Black Feminist analysis to interpret US politics, society, and culture.

Crystal M. Moten, author of Continually Working: Black Women, Community Intellectualism and Economic Justice in Postwar Milwaukee

Arms control is eroding amid a rapidly changing and increasingly uncertain security environment. In addition to a spate of treaty withdrawals and demises that have occurred since 2002, major powers are militarizing space, and private actors are developing technologies at lightning speed. Thus, there is an urgent need for arms control agreements that incorporate multiple actors and weapons to mitigate uncertainty; yet, conditions of increasing uncertainty make reaching such agreements extremely challenging, if nearly impossible. This is what Amy J. Nelson calls the arms control paradox.

Drawing on years of research and policy experience, Nelson explores why traditional arms control strategies often fall short in today's security environment. Most past agreements were built on assumptions of transparency, reciprocity, and predictability that no longer hold in a multipolar world shaped by advanced technologies and strategic opacity. By focusing narrowly on eliminating known dangers through rigid verification and technical controls, arms control has inadvertently neglected uncertainty management-the ability to acclimate to the unknown. This book proposes an adaptive approach: one that focuses on managing ambiguity rather than eliminating it and reflects how real-world decisions unfold under pressure. The Arms Control Paradox provides valuable insights and policy-relevant guidelines for twenty-first-century arms control.

The algorithmic Leviathan has arrived. Artificial intelligence (AI) is already transforming how governments operate, make decisions, and serve citizens, and there is no turning back. The question is no longer whether AI will reshape public administration, but whether that transformation will produce effective governance or institutional failure.

Recent federal automation initiatives and AI governance reforms lacked meaningful oversight, transparency, and accountability, most notably in the failed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The result was chaos rather than modernization. Meanwhile, nations such as Singapore, South Korea, Japan, Estonia, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark demonstrate that a different path is possible, one grounded in what this book refers to as hybrid intelligence.

Hybrid intelligence offers a dynamic framework for AI governance that maintains accountability, transparency, and ethical safeguards while enabling the proper integration of algorithmic capabilities into public administration. Instead of choosing between unchecked automation and resistance to technological change, hybrid intelligence structures human judgment and machine processing as complementary forces, preventing societal harms while capturing the benefits AI can deliver.

Drawing on evidence from federal initiatives, state legislatures, and municipal implementations across more than fifty countries, this book reveals why some AI deployments succeed while others fail catastrophically, and what separates them. Offering practical guidance for policymakers, administrators, educators, and technology leaders, it charts a responsible course for effective governance in an algorithmic age.