This book offers a framework for adult civic learning, positioning democracy not merely as a form of government, but as an overarching way of living together, where citizens understand and support essential principles of democracy. These principles are often in conflict with one another, meaning that citizens must negotiate the tensions that arise between them. Highlighting the principles of Autonomy and Solidarity, and Rationality and Pluralism, the authors explore the importance and dangers of each of them for democracy. This framework for adult civic learning explores the implications of these competing principles for civic life, and therefore civic learning and adult education practice. The book will serve as a valuable resource for educators, policymakers and individuals who are interested in promoting adult civic learning and ensuring the growth and vitality of democracy.

This book offers a guide to tree preservation mechanisms for policy makers and researchers concerned with preserving canopy or boosting green infrastructure on private urban land in Australia. It discusses the available mechanisms in Australia (both direct and indirect) and refers to relevant literature on each mechanism, including research on the effectiveness of each mechanism, as well as addressing applicable case law.

Although written from a predominantly legal perspective, this book is designed to assist non-lawyers to better understand the available tree protection mechanisms and how they work (or not) to achieve increased canopy cover, green space or other urban forest improvements on private land.

This open access book examines the first modern diplomatic contact between Europe and East Asia: the 1517 Portuguese embassy to China. The experience did not end well, for in 1521, the Ming Court decided to cut off relations, and a battle broke out between the Guangdong and Portuguese fleets. This work seeks to explain why this happened. Making extensive use of both Chinese and Western archival sources, it proposes a new interpretation-one that breaks with the traditional "clash of civilizations" viewpoint and focuses instead on the diversity of actors and the complex relationships between them.

Drawing on unmined archives and original interviews, Rebecca Lubot tells the story of how US lawmakers grappled with issues over presidential succession and inability and vice-presidential vacancy and ultimately ratified the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. She argues that nuclear anxiety played a crucial role in the development of the amendment and its aftereffects, showing how politics and culture reflected this anxiety, and multiple administrations intensified it. She also offers solutions to the amendment's gaps. As the threat of accident, miscalculation, or madness looms, never has a book on the intersection of presidential continuity and the nuclear age been more necessary.

The most extraordinary family you've never heard of.

Why are citizens increasingly dissatisfied with democracy, and what does this mean for the future of democratic governance? This book investigates the causes and consequences of democratic dissatisfaction throughout different Western and non-Western countries. By examining a wide range of cases it explores how factors such as polarization, populism, and the erosion of trust in democratic institutions are driving this discontent-and how these forces differ across various political contexts.

Offering a mixture of case studies, comparative analyses, and large N statistical analyses, the book explores the drivers of democratic dissatisfaction across different countries and examines the consequences for political participation, electoral outcomes, and institutional legitimacy. It provides a global analysis of how citizens' trust in democracy shapes its stability.

Covering all major regions of the world, this book uncovers the troubling trends of declining democratic quality and examines the potential long-term risks for global democratic stability. An essential reading for scholars, policymakers, and anyone concerned about the future of democracy, this book offers a comprehensive framework for understanding the challenges of modern democratic governance.

This textbook opens with a simple question: what does it mean for a machine to think? Bridging philosophy, cognitive science, cybernetics, and machine learning, it connects contemporary advancements in artificial intelligence with foundational debates about mind, perception, and truth. By examining the capabilities and limitations of AI systems - including the phenomenon of AI hallucinations - it interrogates whether machines can truly 'understand' or if their intelligence is ultimately an illusion. This interdisciplinary textbook offers a timely exploration of the evolving relationship between humans and intelligent systems, shedding light on how AI challenges and reframes our understanding of cognition, knowledge, and the nature of intelligence itself and contains helpful key concept lists and summaries making it of great use to graduate students and professionals.

South Asia is the most densely populated region in Asia, while Asia is the most populous region globally. These regions are at the forefront of the climate disaster. Rising sea levels, changing coastlines, increasing frequency of extreme weather events, and increased temperatures are among the most catastrophic events generated by climate change. All these factors threaten the regional and global community and present challenges to the policy framework. Specifically, vulnerable and marginalized populations are significantly impacted by these disasters. As these regions confront the complex effects of climate change, a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and sustainable approach is essential. This book offers an extensive examination of disasters, climate change, and sustainability issues with special reference to South Asia.

This edited volume offers new insightful knowledge to support policymakers and researchers to create a resilient future in South Asia, in the face of disasters, climate change, and sustainable development challenges. The book begins by delineating theoretical approaches for reducing climate change-induced disasters from a South Asian perspective. The subsequent chapters analyze many phenomena, including heat waves, riverbank erosion, climate-induced migration, policy challenges related to climate change, and the relationship between them. Providing a survey of the contemporary challenges and strategies for disaster response and climate change mitigation in the South Asian context, this volume offers a comprehensive resource for a diverse audience of academics, development practitioners, legislators and policymakers interested in disaster management, climate change, and sustainability studies in South Asia and beyond.

After October 7, 2023, the fallout of the war in Gaza has gone beyond Israel and Palestine. In the Balkans - a region grappling with the complex convergence of post-socialist and postcolonial legacies - many began reliving their past experiences of war and genocidal violence through the plight of Palestinians. This book explores the diverse postulates of transnational solidarity that have (re)emerged in the Balkans in support of Palestine or forged new burgeoning political alliances with Israel. It precisely delves into the weaponization of collective memory and history to fight "old enemies" or readjust the geopolitical predicament of the whole region toward key Euro-Atlantic partners and allies.

This book centres on the principle of abuse of law in the EU legal order. It deals with this subject from both a practical and theoretical perspective, as it provides a thorough assessment of the relevant case law of the Court of Justice as well as an in-depth analysis of the theoretical foundations of this principle.

The monograph looks to provide a general, comprehensive examination of the topic in order to systematise it in a coherent framework. By doing so, it intends to fill a gap in the current literature.

The book argues that abuse of Union law is a general principle of EU law with special features, which carries out two main functions: on the one hand, it ensures that EU rights are exercised in a manner that is consistent with the purpose for which they have been granted; on the other hand, it has a second and more fundamental function. For it is aimed at guaranteeing the systemic coherence of the system, ultimately serving the universal notions of justice and fairness, contributing to the further development and progress of EU law over time.

The monograph should prove beneficial primarily to those who conduct fundamental research in EU law but also to practitioners, given that the practical applications of this principle have significantly increased in recent years.

Luca Pantaleo is an Associate Professor of EU Law in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Cagliari in Italy.

This book is a collection of academic and practical articles focusing on various dimensions of maritime security, policy, and strategy. It explores subjects such as submarine proliferation, bioregional planning, and contemporary maritime challenges, with a particular focus on strategic and operational concerns in the Indo-Pacific and Asia-Pacific region.

Readers interested in maritime strategy and security will find discussions on archipelagic state roles, the complexities of maintaining good order at sea, and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) issues particularly engaging. Topics like submarine proliferation and maritime terrorism are emphasized for their impact on regional security dynamics and strategic considerations, making the book relevant for military professionals, policymakers, and academics alike.

The book employs a didactic approach with well-organized essays, case studies, and historical analyses. Articles are supported by references to significant security incidents and policy analyses, complemented by tables and data from real-world case studies. This structured approach aids readers in connecting theoretical insights with practical applications within the maritime sector.

Readers will gain a profound understanding of maritime affairs from an experienced practitioner's perspective, enriched by the author's academic research and operational expertise. This book is a valuable resource for advancing knowledge in maritime strategy, security, and governance and promotes critical thinking on the modernization and development of naval forces globally.

This open access book offers an innovative exploration of the concept of autonomy, extending beyond the traditional individualistic perspectives to encompass a richer, more interdependent understanding of autonomy in various domains. The authors delve into the multifaceted nature of autonomy, traversing theoretical, biological, psychological, and technological landscapes to present a comprehensive and cohesive picture. The main topics, including enactivism, biological autonomy, the psychological self in its environment, and the interplay of technology, ecology, and politics, are not only timely but also crucial for understanding the challenges and opportunities of autonomy in our increasingly complex world.

An entertaining introduction to ancient Chinese thinkers-and what they can teach us about today's most pressing political questions in China and beyond

China's most original, diverse, and fascinating political debates took place more than two millennia ago, but they have profoundly shaped Chinese political thinking and practice ever since and, remarkably, their influence on the country's leaders is only growing today. Yet these timeless debates-which are very likely to influence the answers to such questions as whether China should use military force to take control of Taiwan-are still far too little understood in the West. In this enlightening and entertaining book, Daniel Bell, a leading expert on Chinese political thought, takes the greatest thinkers from China's past-Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, Shang Yang, Han Feizi, Zhuangzi, and Mozi-and puts them in dialogue with each other in modern settings. The result is a creative and engaging introduction to ancient Chinese political thought that reveals its relevance to the future of China and the rest of the world.

Before China's unification in 221 BCE, the brilliant political thinkers who founded Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, and Mohism roamed from state to state, argued with each other, and tried to persuade rulers to follow their ideas. Bell draws on their debates-about such perennial issues as war, corruption, government involvement in family life, and whether the state should subsidize culture-to create vivid imaginative dialogues about important contemporary social and political controversies.

China's political thinking is rooted in its past. Understanding what ancient Chinese political thought can teach us about today's critical debates is essential to understanding the future of China and the world.

This textbook presents the phenomenological method(s) not only theoretically, but also in their current intra- and interdisciplinary applications. "Back to the things themselves as they are given in experience" - this is the motto of phenomenology starting from Edmund Husserl. For this we have to question the self-evident and bracket all presuppositions. But how can we do this? How do we arrive at an unprejudiced description? How can the general be determined in the concrete? And how can we inquire into the conditions of experience? This will be explained with reference to historical texts and illustrated using contemporary examples.

The present text is an updated and re-worked version of "Phaenomenologie. Eine Einfuehrung" (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, J.B. Metzler 2022). The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence. A subsequent manual revision was done primarily in terms of content.

This book?assesses the significance of Michael Oakeshott's political philosophy and his relationship to liberalism, both in theory and in practice.?The essays coverage a range of different topics, including? Oakeshott in relation to other thinkers like Hobbes, Strauss, Houellebecq, Berlin, and Aristotle; Oakeshott's thought in the context of countries like China and Poland; Oakeshott's thought on legal theory and policies relating to technology; and Oakeshott's liberal theory on its own. In the thirty-five years since Oakeshott died, interest in his work continues to grow. How Oakeshott's thought illuminates issues that have persisted since his time and have taken on new dimensions is an important investigation in the history of political thought.

This book explores how public opinion toward the European Union has evolved during the age of polycrises. It shows that not all crises are perceived in the same way, nor do they generate uniform political responses. By distinguishing between process-oriented threats, event-driven crises, and recurrent threat-to-crisis issues, the book offers an original framework to analyse the impact of global challenges. Situating Italy within a comparative framework alongside France, Germany, Poland, Spain, and Sweden, the volume reveals how specific types of crises foster greater support, while others exacerbate disaffection or ambivalence. Despite signs of rising Euroscepticism in many European countries in recent years, the book argues that recent global threats and crises have helped to redefine the role of the EU in its relationship with national governments, leading to a shift in public opinion that mitigates criticism against it. The book will appeal to all those interested in European politics, political communication, and European studies.

Tracing the genealogy of conspiracy theory, from Machiavelli through the "paranoid style" to QAnon

Truthers, birthers, flat-Earthers, the deep state, crisis actors, chemtrails, the Epstein files, Pizzagate, the Plandemic-it seems as though there's a conspiracy theory for every situation. But what exactly is a conspiracy theory? And why is the term used to describe beliefs that are so very unlike theories (at least in the scientific sense of the word)? In this erudite and original book, Andrew McKenzie-McHarg answers these questions not by formulating a definition but by tracing a genealogy. He uncovers two crucial strands of contemporary conspiracy theorizing on the threshold of modernity: on the one hand, political analysis as realized by Niccolo Machiavelli in such works as The Prince and, on the other, apocalyptic prophecy as channeled by the charismatic preacher Girolamo Savonarola.

The French Revolution, the antisemitic hoax known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the Nuremberg Trials number among the subsequent episodes that progressively entangled these strands before finally knotting them into the twentieth-century concept of conspiracy theory. Alternative labels were also offered, most strikingly by the historian Richard Hofstadter, whose engagement with American right-wing politics in the 1950s and 1960s inspired his notion of the paranoid style. As McKenzie-McHarg shows, Hofstadter's coinage, with its psychological bent, contributed to personalizing our understanding of conspiracy theory, thus yielding a specific type of person that, for better or worse, has become all too familiar to us today: the conspiracy theorist.

Proceeding from The Prince through The Protocols to the paranoid style and then beyond to QAnon, The Hidden History of Conspiracy Theory sheds new light on a complex and troubling phenomenon.

In a cross-regional approach, Vassilis Petsinis generates new insights about how developments of groundbreaking significance in regional and global politics (here, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine since 24 February 2022) can exert powerful ramifications on the domestic politics of other states and societies. Inside the geopolitical context of Central and Eastern Europe, this monograph examines this 'external impact' on selected empirical cases from Northeastern (Estonia and Latvia in the Baltic States) and Southeastern Europe (Croatia and Serbia) through the spectrum of idiosyncratic and fluctuating intersections among ethno-nationalist, nativist, Eurosceptic, and 'other' trends (e.g. Occidentalism inside the political and sociocultural context of Serbia) at the level of domestic politics. This is a highly relevant contribution inside an increasingly unpredictable international system where the responses of major actors (Russia, China, and the US) to armed conflicts, or other global crises, can vary from peculiar alignments all the way to alarming friction.

This book helps to conceptualize the doctrine of forcible protection of nationals abroad and illustrates the key elements of state practice. States' interest in protecting their nationals abroad is timeless; nationality and allegiance are constitutive elements of sovereignty and in some cases, take precedence over territoriality. Yet the forcible protection of nationals abroad has long been debated and attracted the attention of international legal theory. Currently, it is particularly in the spotlight due to Russia's invocation of the doctrine in the armed conflict against Ukraine. However, protection of nationals abroad is a concept which is expected to fuel international debate in the years to come, primarily because of globalization and the growing trend of more and more people living outside their country of birth.

Chapters 1 and 2 delve into the doctrine of protecting nationals abroad. More specifically, Chapter 1 examines how the doctrine was formulated and applied in the pre-Charter era and explores whether there was a customary rule permitting the use of force to protect a state's nationals abroad, while Chapter 2 offers an overview of the doctrinal debate which followed the United Nations Charter and the prohibition of the use of force. In turn, Chapters 3 and 4 take a closer look at state practice from 1945 onwards. Chapter 3 outlines the major features of states' practices and their justifications for using force for the sake of their nationals. Chapter 4 assesses the Russian discourse on the protection of nationals abroad, specifically with regard to the armed conflict with Georgia, the rhetoric preceding the annexation of Crimea, and the military invasion of Ukraine. Lastly, Chapter 5 explains how the protection of nationals abroad could be made more human-centric and go beyond jus ad bellum. This chapter re-interprets the concept of "nationals" and sheds light on the terms "expatriates," "naturalized foreigners" and "diaspora," suggesting that there is a gap between diplomatic and forcible protection, one not reflected in international law regulation and which needs to be addressed.

Building on advancements in research on public policy, interest groups, and governance, this book addresses the translation of drivers and hurdles of change into concrete policy change and transformation. It follows the question how we can understand and explain the complex links between different explanatory factors - institutional, actor centred, and politics-of-change - that convey the possibilities for change into actual change. The results highlight that policy change is not an automatic process where the loudest voices prevail or where political attention forces change. Rather, the understanding of policy change requires a combination of emphasizing politics-of-change as a focus on the concrete political processes and agency, a multi-perspective analytical view on the mechanisms of change, and empirical in-depth analysis of the activities of policy actors across episodes of political stability. Acknowledging the practical relevance, it actively fosters the transfer of knowledge between academia and society on practical issues of doing, failing, and realizing policy change in a transforming society.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of different logics from a metainferential standpoint. It starts with a metainferential presentation of Classical Logic, and then moves onto other systems where one or more structural metainferences fail. These logics maybe considered non-classical in a robust sense, since they allow to build theories which are non-transitive, non-reflexive, non-monotonic and non-contractive. In some other sense, though, they also preserve many desirable features of classical logics, and thus may have an advantage over other non-classical alternatives. The authors show how these logics can be characterized both model and proof-theoretically. Besides some standard inferential properties, emphasis is placed on metainferential theorems, some of them quite standard, such as Cut-elimination, and other more idiosyncratic, such as metainferential Soundness and Completeness. It ends with a philosophical chapter which intends to illustrate some of these logics' applications, mainly regarding non-classical treatments of paradoxes. Each chapter comes with exercises which help fix the central concepts, learn to use some of the formal tools, and problematize the philosophical issues at stake. This book is aimed to anyone interested in the question of reasoning, argumentation and theory-building in the presence of contradictions, paradoxes and other puzzles.

The first major account of this transformative period in the history of Great Britain

Between 1990 and 2020, the United Kingdom experienced tension between unparalleled social change and a pragmatic political culture which sought continuity, compromise and gradualism. Thatcher's legacy was slowly digested, Blair's 'New Labour' thoroughly scrutinized and the decision was made after forty-seven years to leave the European Union. The UK's long-established major institutions-monarchy, parliament and the union between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland-were sorely tested. Yesterday provides the first fully documented history of this pivotal time in Great Britain.

Was the UK in decline? Brian Harrison points to Britain's unsuccessful adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and its relative economic decline, underfunded hospitals, sink schools, over-filled prisons and terrorism of both Irish and Islamic varieties. Yet there were successes. Harrison shows how the UK's participatory institutions outmanoeuvred terrorism and precariously surmounted regional, intergenerational, ethnic and social-class tensions. This vibrant, creative society saw major improvements in time, place and recruitment for work, as well as growth and innovation in conservation, digitization, tourism, consumerism, sport and the arts. Some changes were revolutionary: in family life and relations between the generations, and in the ever-changing electronic media. And if religious observance was in decline, immigrants were introducing new faiths and even a revived religious fervour while attitudes to health and death were changing fast.

A panoramic and wide-ranging analysis by a scholar at the height of his powers, Yesterday paints an evocative, richly textured portrait of a people who were shedding their complacency and insularity and bracing themselves to face a very different but promising future.

This edited collection is composed of four uniquely authored chapters, each of which examines collective identity in early modern East Asia through biography and historical accounts. In addition, an introductory chapter lays out the overall principles and concerns of biography in Early Modern East Asia.

The book covers five civilizations (China, Japan, Ryukyu Kingdom, and Vietnam) while also touching on relations among these civilizations. This volume considers how biographies or life stories can help us better understand these civilizations. Each contributor explores shared concerns about biography, writing, group and individual identity, and the implications of these on the overall genre of biography in East Asia in the early modern period.

This is the first book to cover the evolution and scope of Aldous Huxley's socio-political ideas in a concise and highly accessible manner, both for political theorists and interested students from various disciplines. From his social journalism in the early 1930s, through his notoriously famous novel Brave New World, his involvement with the Peace Pledge Union in the mid-30s, his pivotal socio-anthropological study Ends and Means in 1937, his post-war essays, the black dystopia Ape and Essence, his involvement with Eastern philosophy and Krishnamurti, his lecture circuits in the 1950s (Santa Barbara, MIT, etc.) to his final novel, Island (1962), the counter-piece to Brave New World, the author explores how Huxley investigates the benefits and risks of democracy, anarchism, decentralisation, forms of authoritarianism, human engineering (education), the ideological pitfalls of the grand narratives of the early 20th century, as well as the anthropological dimensions underpinning social ideals and their means of realisation.

A sweeping history of the struggle to hold states to account for their gravest crimes

The Criminal State offers a gripping account of how law has confronted the most radical forms of state violence. Beautifully written, broad in scope, and bracingly original, it weaves history with political thought to trace the shifting legal response to state aggression and atrocities, from Leopold's rule over the Congo to Putin's war in Ukraine.

At its heart is Lawrence Douglas's fresh interpretation of the law's reckoning with Nazi aggression and atrocity. He shows how the Nuremberg trials challenged centuries of thought-rooted in Hobbes and other canonical thinkers-that shielded sovereigns from legal scrutiny. Yet Nuremberg's bid to frame aggression as the cornerstone of a new order of international criminal law largely failed, giving way to a system now centrally concerned with crimes against humanity and genocide-while leaving unresolved the legality and effectiveness of using force to stop the worst violations of human rights.

Providing rare historical perspective on the dilemmas facing international courts, The Criminal State is a sweeping, provocative history of the struggle to bring perpetrators of state violence to justice.

This brief addresses the contested relationship between an individual's right of access to his or her personal data under data protection law and the protection of a whistleblower's identity. Both rights turn out to be cornerstones in their relevant fields. Balancing said rights can be a challenging endeavour, in particular for corporations in practice as an improper balancing could lead to severe sanctions.

The right of access has become the most basic of all rights that an individual has under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). An individual must be given proper access to his or her personal data in order to enable him or her to exercise control over that data and decide upon claiming further rights such as the right of rectification or the right of erasure. It is not surprising that the right of access has turned out to be contentious and it continues to be at the core of numerous European Court of Justice (ECJ) decisions.

The protection of whistleblowers has by now evolved into an equally important right. Whereas snitches had been frowned upon in several cultures for a long time, the crucial role of whistleblowers has been acknowledged by now under human rights law as well as prominently by the European Whistleblower Protection Directive. Probably the most essential right for the functioning of the whistleblower mechanism is the proper handling of the whistleblower's identity. The confidentiality of the whistleblower's identity is the foundation for the whole reporting system, as otherwise retaliation against the whistleblower is likely to follow.

However, there may be instances where the individual's right of access and the whistleblower's right to his or her protection collide. Balancing these rights can become extremely challenging for an employer when faced with following up on a whistleblower's allegations while the accused perpetrator claims access to all information on him or her and particularly the whistleblower's name. This brief describes the development of both rights and offers solutions as well as practical advice to the employer's quandary when it tries to comply with both data protection law and whistleblower protection.

How to understand a long-standing puzzle in political philosophy: the relationship between justice and legitimacy

Can laws be unjust and yet remain, in some sense, morally legitimate? In this book, Jonathan Quong considers central issues in political philosophy through the lens of this single question. He explores and evaluates recent influential work on this topic and then proposes a novel approach of his own. The puzzle at the heart of his account is the phenomenon of legitimate injustice-laws and policies that are substantively unjust yet may be legitimately imposed by government officials. How can such laws be legitimate if, as some have argued, justice is the first virtue of social institutions?

Quong analyzes the work of those who deny that injustice committed by states can be legitimate simply by virtue of its democratic or procedural pedigree; the Kantian account of legitimate institutions and justice; instrumental approaches to political legitimacy; and the recent wave of work in democratic theory focused on its egalitarian character. Arguing that these analyses do not offer an adequate solution to the puzzle and that there are compelling reasons to revise or reject them, Quong lays out his view and explains the implications for more general theories of political morality. He argues that we can explain legitimate injustice by appeal to distributive justice. If political disagreement is inevitable, then unjust legislation is largely unavoidable; it constitutes a burden that must be distributed according to just principles. Quong's novel and illuminating framework offers a unique introduction to crucial questions in political philosophy.