In Chapter 4, we continue our explanation of tradeoffs between expenditure categories by focusing on how domestic and international contextual factors can constrain or facilitate government budgetary behavior. For the domestic contexts, we consider election timing, unemployment, and economic growth. In the international realm, we focus on globalization and conflict involvement. For each of these contextual factors, we develop a set of expectations about the spending tradeoffs between policy areas if left and right governments remain ideologically consistent to their preferences versus if context overwhelms those ideological concerns. Our results and conclusions are mixed across the domestic contexts. We find almost no tradeoffs and none that are consistent with either type of expectations for election timing. For an increasing unemployment, we find a mixture of ideological and strategic tradeoff decisions, while, for positive economic growth, we find substantial evidence that governments take advantage of the circumstances to go beyond their ideological priorities. Results for international contexts are also mixed with government spending allocations lacking ideological differences in the face of increased globalization. But, for increased conflict, right and left governments reallocate expenditures in similar ways – highlighting how contexts can overwhelm governments.

In Chapter 3, we focus on explaining the tradeoffs between expenditure categories in government budgets. Rather than explain total expenditures or expenditures in specific policy areas, we argue that the competition for expenditures is in the spending allocations. Governments of varying ideological stances prefer increasing or decreasing spending for different policy areas, but we argue that their ability to do this is hindered by their government status. Governments with a majority of the seats in the lower house of parliament are better able to push through their preferred changes to spending budgets. Using a compositional methodological approach on data for 33 developed democracies across 35 years (1975–2010), we find that government ideology does influence budgetary allocations for majority governments, with left and right governments altering budgets in different, but expected, ways. For minority governments, our results suggest they too are strategic in making relative budgetary changes, but it is less about ideology and more about appeasing the necessary political parties in order to stay in power. This focus on budgetary compositions highlights the political competition for resources between policy areas that previous work has overlooked.

In Chapter 7, we conclude by placing both our theoretical and methodological contributions within the wider world of government decision-making. Our theory begins with the core assumption that government ideology drives the budgetary priorities of governments. With a blank slate, these ideological preferences would steer governments in shaping budgets. While this is a useful place to start theoretical debate about political budgeting, an important part of our argument is about how contextual factors influence whether governments can achieve their ideological priorities. Throughout the book, we find many instances in which context overwhelms ideology to drive government budgets. In developing our theoretical ideas about the interplay between ideology and contexts, we emphasize the importance of recognizing the interlinked nature of the different parts of political budgets. We take advantage of recent advances in dynamic compositional models and panel vector autoregressive (pVAR) models when testing our ideas. To make the results from these complex models accessible, we rely heavily on graphical presentations of our findings. Together, our theory of budgets and the methods we use to test it are all intended to bring studies closer to the messy but fascinating real world of political budgeting.

In Chapter 2, we begin with a discussion of the vast literature on political budgeting. We identify three main types of approaches in the extant literature – studies focusing on single budgetary categories, studies of budgetary changes, and studies of aggregate budgetary components. While each of these approaches has provided helpful insights into the relationships between politics and budgeting, they have ignored or greatly simplified the complex tradeoffs and interworkings of budgetary components. Our theoretical argument of political budgeting engages with both the compositional tradeoffs that occur across expenditure categories and the simultaneous interplay between expenditures, revenues, budgetary volatility, and deficit components of budgets. We argue that government ideology and the priorities of core supporters of governments drive their general budgetary priorities; however, domestic and international contexts can make it easier or harder for governments to implement these priorities. Focusing on the contexts of government power, electoral timing, economic conditions, globalization, and conflict affect governments’ budgetary abilities, we put forth a theoretical argument that governments may be unable to fulfil their ideological preferences when external contexts constrain their behavior.

The Ferrar Sills in the McMurdo Dry Valleys are remarkable in exhibiting a vertical variation in bulk composition from ultramafic in the lowermost, Basement, sill to evolved compositions in the uppermost, Mt. Fleming, sill at the top, overlapping with the compositions of the lavas and volcaniclastics. The system apparently developed from the top down, becoming increasingly capped by overlying materials and the solidification of earlier magma, forcing succeeding magmas to form deeper and more massive sills. And as the system became more mature and the country rock became heated, the later magma came carrying a massive slurry or sludge of large crystals, primocrysts, that furnish as tracers a clear indication how the Basement Sill was filled and how it evolved.

The selection of the arbitral tribunal is likely the most critical step in the arbitral process. Arbitrators adjudicate substantive and procedural issues, and the quality of the arbitrators will be outcome determinative of the parties’ dispute and, ultimately, the enforceability of the arbitral award. This chapter provides guidance on best practices regarding the appointment of arbitrators in international commercial and investor-State arbitration. It discusses the parameters of the parties’ flexibility and autonomy in choosing the configuration of their tribunal and the identity of their arbitrators, as well as the various factors that parties should consider in vetting potential arbitrator candidates. This chapter also addresses strategic considerations, procedures, and practical concerns of arbitrator challenges, including the potential implications of successful challenges.

After formally adopting their competition laws, India and Pakistan were faced with the task of implementing them. However, although both countries established their national competition authorities, the CCI and the CCP, almost immediately after adopting their respective legislations, the enforcement of these legislations has not been without complications. This chapter compares the structures, mandates, and compositions of these authorities and their decision-making strategies, and provides a comparative overview of implementation of competition laws in the two countries by reference indicators derived from the orders issued by the CCI and CCP in respect of anti-competitive agreements and abuse of dominance. The chapter also links the performance of the CCI and CCP and their interactions with their countries’ pre-existing legal systems to the mechanisms and institutions employed by the countries in the adoption stage and the compatibility and legitimacy generated through them.

This chapter introduces a cutting-edge study on the composition of the bodies under analysis to assess how this may influence their adjudication. An empirical quantitative study on the judges’ and commissioners’ background is combined with an analysis of their ‘judicial behaviour’ through their separate opinions. This demonstrates that judicial convergence could be partly due to the personal identity and background of those individuals called to interpret the law and adjudicate the cases. In particular, this chapter shows signs of a possible ‘Europeanisation’ of the African and Inter-American judges, which could encourage the African and Inter-American Court to converge with the European case-law. The chapter also discusses the role played by the secretariats in influencing the adjudication of human rights regional and international bodies. Drawing on interviews with members of the registries of the three regional courts, it concluded that specific agendas, priorities and internal organisations may encourage judicial convergence.

Within a system, multiple patterns of rule combination may interact in complex ways. I present a detailed analysis of Swahili verb inflection in which simple rules, composite rules and aggregated rules all enter into intricate competition, yielding an extravaganza of deviations from canonical morphotactic criteria. At the center of this discussion are three characteristics of Swahili conjugation: (i) the polyfunctionality of verbal concords (in virtue of which the same rule is used to express the noun class of a verb’s subject, that of its pronominal object, or that of a relativized argument), (ii) the expression of negation (by means of three complementary rules), and (iii) the marking of relative verb forms (whose relativized-argument affix participates in an extensive pattern of affix counterposition). The rule-combining approach to morphotactics allows the interacting details of these subsystems to be resolved into two very general types exhibiting an unexpected degree of economy.

I discuss the general implications of the rule-combining approach to morphotactics developed in the course of the foregoing chapters. I summarize the numerous superficially problematic phenomena that the rule-combining approach resolves and I relate these phenomena to the variety of ways in which rule combinations may deviate from the canonical characteristics of a language’s morphotactics. Finally, I synopsize the set of formal definitions on which the rule-combining approach is based.

Besides affording a way of modeling deviations from canonical morphotactics, rule composition makes it possible to see apparently recalcitrant morphotactic patterns as conforming to canonical criteria if these are assumed to cover composite rules as well as simple rules. I examine an apparent deviation from the integral stem criterion in Sanskrit and apparent deviations from the rule opposition criterion in Latin, Limbu, and Sanskrit. Each of these phenomena can be reconciled with the canonical criterion from which it apparently deviates if this criterion is assumed to cover composite rules as well as simple rules. All of these are cases in which deviation from the minimal rule criterion facilitates conformity to other canonical morphotactic criteria.

I discuss my assumptions about individual morphological rules, and then explain the ways in which rules combine. Rule composition, the default mode of rule combination, models many canonical patterns, but also models certain deviations from the canonical morphotactic criteria. Holistic rule combination, a second mode of combination, accounts for deviations from the compositional content criterion, in which a rule combination realizes more than the sum of the content that those rules realize individually. Rule aggregation, a third mode of combination, accounts for deviations from the stem operand criterion, in which a rule operates not on a stem, but on the affix introduced by the rule with which it combines. Counterpotentiation, a fourth mode of combination, accounts for deviations from the intermediate well-formedness criterion, in which the result of applying one rule is ill-formed unless its application is followed by that of another particular rule. I outline the elaboration of these ideas in the ensuing chapters.

This chapter handles the most extensive anatomical text to survive from antiquity, Galen’s Anatomical Procedures. It queries the innovations of the text and Galen’s motives in writing it. After introducing the unique character of the treatise and addressing the question of its illustration, the chapter approaches the text from three angles. First, it examines its composition, explaining Galen’s authorial process and the motivations for his rewrite of the original version. Next, it broaches its purpose, arguing that Galen intends it to stand alone as an instructional guide, thus subverting the contemporary educational norms of in-person instruction. Third, the chapter turns to the consideration of the audience of the text, both as Galen explicitly envisions it and as his implicit expectations reveal it; this includes discussion of the motivations, educational background, technical skills, and financial position Galen imagines for his readers. Finally, the chapter ends with a conclusion of the argument of the book as a whole.

What do we mean when we say that something is real? What ought we to mean? I offer the following definition, in the interest of making an operational notion of reality: an entity is real to the extent that there are operationally coherent activities that can be performed by relying significantly on its existence and its properties. Reality (in the sense of real-ness) conceived in this way is a matter of degrees, and it is domain-dependent. Real entities (or, realities) are mind-framed, and crafting better realities is an achievement of conceptual engineering. When we take ontology in the context of practices, ontological pluralism no longer appears absurd: there are different sets of realities operative in different systems of practice. I illustrate these points with a range of examples drawn from the history of the physical sciences. The traditional picture of physical objects constituted as mereological sums of immutable building-blocks is unwarranted and creates undue hindrance to practice-based ontology.

This chapter considers the work of a series of twentieth-century Welsh composers, including Daniel Jones, Grace Williams, William Mathias, Alun Hoddinott, Karl Jenkins and Rhian Samuel. It draws on their compositions and their writings about music to interrogate the question of whether musical qualities or characteristics that might be identified as distinctively Welsh can be discerned in their output. It explores the influence of Welsh landscapes, history and concepts, such as the notion of hiraeth (longing), on the ways in which they have drawn on or sought to reflect their homeland in their compositions. It reveals that while many of these composers were uneasy about identifying a distinctively Welsh school of composition, some level of engagement with their nationality or sense of Welshness was a common trait, albeit manifested in different ways. Several common themes emerge, including the importance of a sense of place and ideas about the past.