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 challenges the dominance of GDP as the primary benchmark of social progress and offers a rigorous framework for rethinking economic success in high-income economies. Drawing on the evolution of welfare measurement-from GDP to MEW, NNW, and the Genuine Progress Indicator-the book critically examines the limits of growth-centered policy and its implications for wellbeing. Moving beyond conventional market-failure analysis, the author introduces a novel system and factor approach that addresses observed failures of modern economies alongside pressing global challenges such as climate change, pandemics, and geopolitical conflict. By integrating welfare-enhancing policies with explicit consideration of welfare-deductive risks, the book provides a balanced and policy-relevant vision of societal development. This volume will be of interest to scholars and graduate students in economics, public policy, and social welfare, as well as policymakers seeking practical pathways toward a welfare-oriented mature society.

Explore how the pillars of the rule of law-from the courts of ancient Athens to the Constitution of the United States-were built

In The Just and the Good, William Magnuson takes readers on a sweeping tour of the history of the law in Western civilization. He explains how foundational institutions like courts, codes, and constitutions magically transform the worlds they govern. And he argues that if we want to understand the foundations of freedom, justice, and democracy, we need to begin by looking at the history of the law.

In each chapter, Magnuson explores how the pillars of the rule of law were built. How did the courts of ancient Athens create the world's first democracy? Why did the barons of medieval England insist that King John sign the Magna Carta? What was so revolutionary about the American Constitution? And why did it take so long to abolish slavery? Magnuson shows that the answers to these questions are not always as simple as they seem. Good laws require ingenuity, problem-solving, and compromise.

A landmark work, The Just and the Good teaches us where our ideas of justice came from and why they are worth saving.

This handbook assesses and discusses the topic of international security, paying attention both to great powers, and smaller actors. In addition to traditional security topics, it also covers topics on international law, international organisations, globalisation, and transnational challenges.

Consisting of 62 chapters, the handbook is divided into four parts: (1) Complexity of International Security; (2) Material Geographies and Contemporary Conflicts, which examines the tangible dimensions of security, including territorial disputes, resource distribution, and ongoing conflicts; (3) Immaterial or Diffuse Geographies, focusing on energy, data, cyberspace, digital technologies, and artificial intelligence; and (4) International Security Perspectives on Governance and International Law.

As such, the handbook brings together multiple aspects of international security, combining theories and case studies. While continuing to track the development of the new and diverse security concepts, it also considers the latest relevant international events or other important topics, such as energy security, maritime security, decarbonisation of global economy, armed conflict, populism, Ukraine War, Artificial Intelligence, Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS), Arctic, and Feminist Movements.

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.

Hybrid threats and hybrid warfare create complex challenges for the security and stability of the Gulf States. This book is the first comprehensive attempt to align Western and Arab Gulf concepts of these phenomena, closing a significant gap in academic and policy discourse. By clarifying terminology and frameworks, it paves the way for more effective cooperation in countering hybrid threats.

Organised into five thematic sections - conceptual foundations, threat landscapes, cybersecurity, case studies, and strategies for resilience - the book combines theoretical analysis with practical insights. The case studies range from Kuwait and Saudi-U.S. relations to Taiwan and post-Soviet states, offering a variety of comparative perspectives.

Written by scholars and practitioners from eleven countries, the book takes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding and mitigating hybrid threats. It will appeal to academics, policymakers, and security professionals seeking to strengthen resilience and regional collaboration within the Gulf Cooperation Council.

This book takes the reader on a philosophical journey into the core of modern finance, bringing to light the ideas, values, and contradictions that shape Wall Street and, through it, the global economy. It shows how markets have moved beyond their original role as instruments of exchange to become autonomous systems of power and meaning-systems that do not merely mirror economic and social realities, but actively participate in producing them.

Bringing together philosophy, economics, and history, A Philosophical Walk Down Wall Street explores how financial markets generate knowledge, how mathematical models come to possess authority, and why crises continue to recur in spite of increasing technological sophistication. Through rich case studies, ranging from the 2008 financial crisis to algorithmic trading, the book argues that concepts such as efficiency, risk, and value are not simply neutral analytical tools, but embody substantive philosophical claims about the nature of the world.

Timely lessons for today's health and climate crises rooted in the origins of a government's provision for the common good

The question of whether a government should take care of its people-preparing and investing in public health, welfare, and resilience policies-is arguably more important today than ever, as the world faces unprecedented climate and health crises.

Commonwealth's exploration of the Venetian Republic, one of the oldest and most enduring republics in history, establishes for the first time that Venice and its constituent republics developed welfare policies not in response to the Plague, as is commonly thought, but two centuries earlier. Alexander More reveals that the lawmakers of Venice took advantage of its historic economic revival not to profit personally but to provide free medical care for their people. The Republic also inspected and guaranteed the quality and availability of food, water, and medicine, even when sudden climatic changes caused harvests to fail and supply chains to shift.

Through original archival research in multiple languages, More shows that the welfare state of the Venetian Republic, from which our modern system is derived, took shape through deliberate efforts to work toward the common good. Readers interested in the history of medicine and public health, food security, welfare, climate science, and law will benefit from new insights into the origin and nature of commonwealth in society.

European Union policy on rural development and EU research programmes aim to help rural areas of the EU meet the wide range of economic, environmental and social challenges of the 21st Century. However, the challenges facing rural areas of Europe, and their people, remain significant and highly affected by the crises of our current era. This contributed volume comprises 12 research studies, exploring the intersection of research, policy and innovation strategy across the diverse rural regions of the Europe Union.

Conducted in different countries, these studies point to the challenges that lie at the heart of strategic planning in public policy. The book ultimately supports an EU vision for future rural development, digitalisation, sustainability planning and innovation strategy. It is not only a source of data on the problems faced by local communities in different European countries, but offers suggestions for practical use of bottom-up and multiactor perspective for policy-making, business development and community engagement at local, regional and national level. It will be of great interest to scholars and students of rural development, innovation strategy, the agricultural sector and EU policy.

This book is a comprehensive exploration of the transformative relationship between technological advancement and human experience in the aviation sector. As a continuation of the first volume, this book examines how digitalization, Industry 4.0 technologies, metaverse applications, gamification, and sustainability-oriented innovations are reshaping the structure, processes, and culture of modern aviation.

The chapters collectively present interdisciplinary insights that bridge theoretical frameworks and practical implementations. By highlighting the integration of digital tools with experiential and social innovation, the book demonstrates how technological progress in aviation increasingly centers on human needs, emotional engagement, and sustainable development. This volume serves as a valuable reference for scholars, researchers, and industry professionals who seek to understand the evolving dynamics of aviation innovation. It emphasizes that the future of aviation depends not only on technological breakthroughs, but also on the creation of meaningful, inclusive, and sustainable experiences for all stakeholders in the global air transport ecosystem.

What explains the varying ideological profiles of social democratic parties in contemporary Western Europe? And why have some still accepted austerity after the Great Recession? This book argues that the answer lies primarily in structural conditions: the context-specific configurations of external constraints - economic globalisation, regional economic integration in the Eurozone, and sovereign debt - that shape the political room available to social democrats when defining their electoral programmes. Drawing on empirical evidence from 20 Western European countries between 1990 and 2019, and combining cross-national quantitative analysis with in-depth qualitative evidence on party rhetoric, the book develops and rigorously probes a configurational structural explanation for ideological differences within the social democratic party family. The findings carry urgent implications: where external constraints are most pressing, genuine ideological renewal may be structurally precluded. A must-read for scholars and practitioners concerned with the future of centre-left politics and the state of representative democracy.

This open-access guide offers a practical, step-by-step introduction to partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) using R and the SEMinR package. PLS-SEM is widely used for analyzing complex relationships between observed and latent variables, valued for its flexibility, predictive capabilities, and ability to handle complex models.

Now in its second edition, the book incorporates the latest research, enhanced model evaluation routines, and updated guidance on methodological choices and result interpretation. Each chapter combines a concise overview of key concepts, metrics, and rules of thumb with a detailed case study to support hands-on learning.

Designed for researchers and practitioners alike, this guide provides the essential tools and insights needed to apply PLS-SEM effectively using SEMinR.

This interdisciplinary edited volume offers a timely and authoritative exploration of how inclusive finance can serve as a transformative lever in India's journey toward becoming a developed nation by 2047. drive equitable growth in India and beyond. It brings together eleven contributions from leading academics, policymakers, and practitioners, offering conceptual, empirical, and policy-oriented insights. The book expands conventional debates by foregrounding marginalized groups-such as persons with disabilities, women, smallholder farmers, the elderly, and informal workers-as central to financial inclusion. It combines global and national perspectives with grassroots evidence, examining topics including India's G20-driven digital finance diplomacy, digital public infrastructure (Aadhaar, UPI, PMJDY, DBT), financial innovation for financial inclusion and socioeconomic development, financial literacy for trust-building, retirement planning, disability-inclusive finance, post-pandemic gender gaps in digital finance, the role of FinTech in shaping access to informal credit, industrialization and digital financial inclusion for growth, crop insurance, and the role of microfinance in financial inclusion and economic development.

Organized into three thematic sections, the volume situates India's experience in the global discourse, examines national frameworks and life-stage needs, and highlights sectoral and regional pathways through surveys, econometric analysis, and case-based studies. A unique contribution is the pioneering of some important policy-oriented concepts, such as Disability Financial Inclusion Index, National Disability Financial Inclusion Strategy and National Financial Literacy Integration Mission. This timely resource will benefit scholars, students, regulators, practitioners, and international organizations by providing evidence-based recommendations and globally relevant strategies for advancing equity, empowerment, and sustainable financial inclusion. leading economists, policymakers, and field researchers to provide a comprehensive, evidence-based examination of financial inclusion across four thematic pillars: global frameworks and national strategies; life-cycle and demographic inclusion; community-driven models; and cross-country/regional insights. Emphasising on inclusion at the margins, rural women, persons with disabilities, informal workers, the elderly, and small farmers, this volume expands the boundaries of financial inclusion to address equity, participation, and trust.

Drawing from a rich mix of empirical methods econometric modeling, structuralist macro frameworks, and grassroots-level fieldwork, it covers a wide range of underexplored topics: post-pandemic gender gaps in digital finance, the role of FinTech in informal credit, financial literacy for trust-building, SHG vs. MFI empowerment models, and India's leadership on Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and the G20 Financial Inclusion agenda. It also pioneers new tools like a proposed Disability Financial Inclusion Index.

It is beneficial for scholars and students in economics, development studies, public policy, and finance, the book also serves as a practical guide for policymakers, regulators, development practitioners, and international agencies. Its policy recommendations are rooted in local realities from regions like the Sundarbans and Jalgaon, while offering globally relevant insights through SAARC-level and cross-country comparisons.

In this pathbreaking work, Linette Eunjoo Park tackles a core crisis in modern thought: how to critique antiblack violence without inadvertently preserving the violence itself. Arguing that previous radical theories ? from critiques of racial capitalism to discourses of abolition ? have failed to capture the unique, foundational violence of antiblackness, Park develops a framework that challenges the very limits of what critical thought can achieve against the staggering evidence of antiblackness.

The book moves beyond conventional historical or legal analyses to examine how antiblack violence ? specifically through the concept of the "self-lynching" ? is produced and enforced by the very legal and symbolic systems designed to abolish it. Focusing on contemporary arrests made under the "felony lynching" penal code in California, the book unearths a genealogy that authorizes these charges. Through an innovative analysis of case studies ? including the historical elision of anti-lynching activist Delilah Beasley, Melvin Edwards's sculptures, Torkwase Dyson's paintings, and the judicial spectacle of Clarence Thomas's hearing ??Beyond Abolition reveals the ultimate failure of racial representation to contain or critique antiblackness. By tarrying with these aesthetic and juridical fragments, the book exposes a structural and psychical "lynching" of blackness that persists even, and especially, within our most celebrated critical frameworks. It proposes a methodological shift: the urgent need to move past the imagination of a "real abolition" and toward the confrontation with the un-settable, violent foundation of the modern world.

The President and the Bomb: The Making of American Nuclear Policy, 1939 -1974, at once an original and compelling reconsideration of the role of human agency in international affairs, fills an important gap in the relationship between nuclear weapons policy and presidential decision-making, particularly when examined beyond the context of individual chief executives. On this score alone, Siracusa and Spiller's study makes a significant contribution to the existing literature. The outcome is a tour de force of high-level historical analysis translated into a comprehensive survey of changing presidential nuclear thinking over the first four critical decades of the bomb.

Against the backdrop of media representations of Africa through persistent and pervasive images of emaciated, starving Africans and the critical need to marshall food aid in response, Hungry Subjects places Africa's food anxiety within a broader historical context and expands ongoing food scholarship beyond its current confines in the social sciences. Njeri Githire weaves together coming-of-age texts across the African and African diasporic literary landscape in English, French, and Portuguese expression to ask how African writers incorporate food into their storylines to transmit cultural information, question norms, and propose alternatives. Eating is an intimately personal yet inherently social experience codified by public rituals and commerce, invariably linked to a larger tapestry of historical, cultural, economic, and political dynamics. Delving into the political dynamics of food as a tool of power and control alongside subversive potentialities, Hungry Subjects appraises the narrative and political thrust of (not-)eating and exposes the ways in which postcolonial manifestations of colonial-era power relations are symbolized in food's many functions and meanings.

How do federal judges in the lower courts and justices in state supreme courts decide highly political and polarizing redistricting disputes? This study develops a complex view of judicial behavior in redistricting. When the law is clear, lower court judges don't show any partisan favoritism in their rulings. When the law is ambiguous, judges tend to favor their party in cases, especially when their party is the victim of partisan line drawing by the state. McKenzie shows that polarization has increased over time in opinions about redistricting by federal judges, but federal judges who were independents prior to coming to the bench tend to be immune to partisanship. No state supreme court system appears immune to at least some partisan behavior. Judges, Law and Partisanship details important implications for how we view courts in partisan political disputes and what reforms to the process are possible.