The victory of Cameron’s Conservatives in 2010 ushered in the idea of a new Conservative Party, repairing both image and electoral prospects. However, this chapter will examine to what extent that change occurred, and how much the Conservatives were united or divided by the same older questions of policy and ideology – particularly on Europe and the economy. The chapter will also analyse the development of the party’s structures, power and personnel, and contemplate what effects any change may have had.

This chapter examines Harriet Martineau’s approach to gender politics through her understanding of ‘manliness’ as explored in a selection of her Illustrations of Political Economy (1832−4). It was a concept essential to her configuration of male leadership fit for the testing times of the early 1830s, and highly topical. Published when the pressures experienced by men of all classes were being highlighted in periodicals and novels, the tales address the differences between ‘personality’ and ‘character’ in crises faced by fathers and husbands, magistrates and petty criminals, trades union activists, landowners, and slave-owners, at home and in the colonies, as they debate the injustices of their living and working conditions. This chapter argues that Martineau’s interventions in contemporary debates about masculinity shift the focus to a new kind of conscientious working man whose values are tested in cross-class dialogues in public places. It explores the ways in which the Illustrations show how men collaborate and compete within their communities, and the ambiguous gender messages arising from patterns of reward and punishment that seem to devalue otherwise positive characteristics.

Lawyers are the leaders who defend society’s light. Like artists, lawyers must “dream the culture forward.” The responsibility to understand and improve lawyers’ brain health and mental strength extends to our communities because of the privilege, power, and prestige we enjoy. The neuro-intelligent lawyer and legal organization can enlighten government, business, media, education, and philanthropic entities. Like Seth Godin’s insight in The Song of Significance that work is not working for many employees, society isn’t working for many people. Social structures that feature fear, scarcity, exclusion, steep hierarchy, and extreme competition are dehumanizing. And humans are suffering. Maverick lawyer leaders must first dream, and then act, to move the culture forward. They must make neuro-intelligence available to all people, so they can experience the full range of their identities and capabilities. We cannot afford to exclude and lose humans and the light they could bring to the world. These lawyer leaders must educate us about the toxicity of extreme competition and cultures built on fear, scarcity, and chronic stress. These Mavericks can lead the social moonshot movement to further heal and humanize society.

Lawyer leaders can transform cultures that feature chronic stress, overwork, and lawyer impairment into neuro-intelligent cultures that make cognitive well-being a priority, reaping benefit at both the individual and institutional levels. Neuro-intelligent cultures promote brain health and mental strength, and they develop environments rich with cognitive power. Neuroscience and psychology research reveals what a culture of concern and respect can mean to individual lawyers. It also supports moving away from grind culture and toward a healthier and more productive neuro-intelligent culture. The American and International Bar Associations have called for action that improves the well-being of individual lawyers. They have also challenged legal organizations to make the legal profession more sustainable. Transformation of the lawyering culture will involve detoxing from overwork, minimizing burnout, leveraging the energy of both introvert and extrovert lawyers, cultivating neurosignature diversity, facilitating psychological safety, reducing hierarchy, limiting competition, and embracing the Maverick lawyer leader professional identity.

The Maẓhar al-ʿajāʾib reveals a remarkable world of female religiosity that went beyond mere “spirituality” and shows that Aghā-yi Buzurg exerted communal leadership, competed for spiritual superiority, negotiated with the Shibanid royal court, handled the community’s finances, and dealt with her enemies. In addition to her direct interaction with the Shibanid court and the Bukharan and Khurasani public and religious authorities, Aghā-yi Buzurg’s wide network of male and female allies active in various regions of Mawarannahr tells us that her community operated not on the margins of society but rather in the middle of major, ongoing social and religious events in early sixteenth-century Central Asia.

Mathematical models based on evolutionary and ecological principles can help explain and predict variation in political organization and inequality across societies. This chapter introduces five major themes in human behavioral ecology that contribute to this goal. First, vertical power relationships between dominants and subordinates arise when resources are economically defensible and environmental or social circumscription limits outside options. Second, inequality increases when resources are durable and can be accumulated and inherited between generations within lineages. Third, egalitarian leveling can limit dominance behavior and inequality when there is a high degree of social interdependence, contributions to cooperation can be voluntarily given or withdrawn, or leveling coalitions facilitate collective bargaining. Fourth, organizational hierarchies are favored when they provide net benefits to group members compared to more egalitarian alternatives; inequality within these hierarchies is limited by the ability to replace aggrandizing leaders or move between groups. Finally, large-scale territorial hierarchies such as states and empires arise under conditions of escalating competition between groups over concentrated and defensible resources, such as high-quality agricultural land. The ecological parameters highlighted by these models define a multidimensional space of possibilities for human political organization and inequality.

The main goal of this chapter is to examine the role of cultural carriers (means through which culture is propagated) and other mechanisms that serve to sustain continuity of behavior across revolutions. These mechanisms result in deep-level similarity in behavior before and after regime change. Revolutions bring enormous varieties of surface changes, such as the titles of leaders, the names of places, clothing, and all varieties of speech. But these surface-level changes can hide deeper continuities, such as continuity in style of leader–follower relations. Most obviously, an anti-dictator revolution results in regime change, but a new dictator with a new title comes to power and the dictatorship continues with a new face – as happened after revolutions in France, Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, and a number of other important cases (the American Revolution is excluded, because it is interpreted as rebellion against a foreign power). The power of cultural carriers arises from them being woven into the fabric of everyday life, seemingly beyond politics.

This chapter offers a historical power analysis from the Saxons to the end of Pitt the Younger’s premiership. In the liminal premiership, the ‘key’ minister/advisor behind the monarch, or Oliver Cromwell during the republic, had serious power, but cannot be considered a prime minister as their power was wholly dependent on the monarch, and the complex machinations of court politics. The important innovation is how the role of ‘lead’ minister developed, with the monarch’s agreement, into the more independent ‘prime’ minister. We contend that only with Robert Walpole’s accession to the office did the power of prime minister become apparent, the primary reason being the monarch’s (George I) reliance on Walpole to control Parliament for spending and the protection of the monarch’s power. However, it was only with Pitt the Younger’s premiership, which truly established more formal parts of the office – particularly the Treasury, the state/economy and the Cabinet – that we see the beginnings of the modern office we know today.

Status hierarchy likely exists in all human societies, whether pronounced or more subtle, and even in more egalitarian societies where resources are widely shared and overt status-seeking is actively policed. This chapter reviews models of the evolution of status hierarchy, including models from behavioral ecology as well as from evolutionary psychology and cultural evolution. A central concern of these disparate models is the adaptive problem of why any individual should adopt a subordinate status if higher status tends to increase fitness. Solutions to this problem involve the benefits to individuals from avoiding costs of repeated competition over resources or from deferring to prestigious others. Hierarchy can facilitate coordination and collective action that, in humans, enables both the massive scale of our societies and unparalleled levels of exploitation. These explanations are summarized in detail while addressing related questions, including: Do women and men differ in status-seeking? What contributes to variation in status hierarchy across species and across human societies? The goals of this chapter are to highlight consilience and provoke new directions within the evolutionary literature on status hierarchy.

Teaching calls on educators to engage in responsive interactions and decision-making as they navigate complex and ambiguous contexts, examine deeply held beliefs and values, and integrate personal and professional knowledge. Such an undertaking requires personal integrity and continuing reflective practice. This chapter considers how mindfulness might become an integral part of reflective practice. Mindfulness can help us attend to the present moment, to the personal, emotional and interactive dimensions of our teaching, learning and leadership, and to the implications of actions for the longer term. Mindfulness can support our ability to connect with and respond to children and make a positive difference to their learning, health, and wellbeing. This chapter offers everyday resources and specific practices to support the development of mindfulness through self-study and self-reflection. Incorporating these into daily practice will assist authenticity, intentionality and agency, and facilitate meaning, wellbeing and purpose.

This chapter show how throughout millennia, philanthropy has served as a catalyst for change and as a vehicle for community transformation. While COVID-19 has forced philanthropists worldwide to take immediate action and mobilise billions of dollars to save lives, African philanthropy and the culture of ‘giving’ are not new phenomena but are ingrained in the fabric of African societies. Before the arrival of colonialism, aid agencies and development partners, grassroots philanthropists and associations mobilised resources to address development issues. Within this context, the chapter focuses on the role of multi-sector partnerships in Africa and how they arose out of the crisis of the pandemic to drive the efficiency of vital collaborations between the African Union (AU), local governments, and the private sector. It shows how these partnerships helped the continent curb the pandemic and prevented the massive spread of infections. This chapter highlights the uniqueness and significance of these partnerships at the local and continental levels and identifies some of the core values underpinning them. The chapter also explores the importance and the impact of the AU’s strategic leadership and multi-sectoral partnerships in advancing the continent’s health and economic agenda while deconstructing some of the inherent challenges that were faced when trying to scale these alliances in Africa.