After the Second World War, countries across occupied Europe were faced with the challenge of restoring political stability at home and peace abroad. Although extremist sentiment had not disappeared, moderate elites resolved to choke it off at the source by building robust bureaucratic parties that could incorporate the masses. Christian democratic parties on the right and moderate social democratic parties on the left took power all across the continent, ushering in an unprecedent period of stability. Yet with the economic stagnation of the 1970s, this consensus began to unravel, giving rise to the emergence of populist alternatives. This chapter departs from existing explanations for this turnaround. It shows that the populist strategy was always most effective in the patronage-based party systems of southern Europe. In northwest Europe, in contrast, bureaucratic parties have adapted, substituting professionalized service provision for mass membership and participation.

Science can only tell us a part of what we need to know about the risks of climate change. We also need to make judgements about politics, technology, and international security. To tell truth to power, we need to bring these fields of knowledge together.

In the economy as in ecosystems, one tipping point can lead on to another. Creating cascades of change throughout the global economy is perhaps the only imaginable way we could make the transition to zero emissions at the pace required. This should be the focus of climate change diplomacy throughout this decade. If enough of the world joins in, we might just have a chance.

From about 550 to 510 BCE, Etruscan terracotta roofs display many innovations linked to terracotta roofs in Anatolia stratigraphically datable between 585 and 560/550 BCE: decorative motifs including double volutes and scrolls, lotuses, star-flowers, meanders, birds, landscape elements, centaurs, and animal battles; chariot race scenes with dogs and hares running below the horses, and particular horse trappings; painted motifs, without relief; a new polychrome palette of brown, gold, blue, and green; a white background and black outlines; L-shaped simas with an overlapping flange system; and high-relief pedimental sculpture. These features are documented pre-550 BCE at the sites of Larisa on the Hermus; Phocaea and Sardis in Anatolia; and post-550 BCE at Tarquinia, Veii, and Cerveteri (ancient Caere) in Etruria. The correspondences are so close as to indicate that artisans from Anatolia were active in Etruscan terracotta workshops for one generation after 550/540 BCE, recalling Herodotus’ stories of refugees fleeing west from Anatolia when the Persian king Cyrus began advancing into the area around 560 BCE and of Phocaean captives taken to Caere after the Battle of Alalia in 540 BCE.

In the 1950s, University of Pennsylvania archaeologists recovered over fifty pieces of wooden furniture from three royal tumulus burials and the city mound at Gordion, Turkey. Tumuli MM and P (eighth century BCE) contained thirteen tables and three serving stands with characteristic Phrygian features. The style and joinery of the tables tie them to a long trajectory of wooden tables from the ancient Near East. A variety of fine wooden objects was found in two tombs excavated in 1972 at Verucchio in northern Italy (late eighth through early seventh centuries BCE). The finds from tombs 85 and 89 include wood tables, footstools, thrones, boxes, and other organic materials. Three tables from tomb 85 had legs attached to the table top with a version of the collar-and-tenon joinery used for the Gordion tables. Rarely are ancient wooden artifacts recovered in good condition; the finds from Verucchio and Gordion provide a large and important corpus from the early first millennium BCE. This paper examines the similarities (and differences) between Gordion and Verucchio wooden furniture and investigates the possibility of interaction between Near Eastern and Italic woodworking schools in the eighth through the seventh centuries BCE.

South Africa’s long legacy of racism and colonial exploitation continues to echo throughout the post-apartheid era. For centuries, European conquerors marshaled surveillance as a means to control people of color. This began with the requirements for passes to track and control the movements, settlements, and labor of Africans. Over time, surveillance technologies evolved alongside complex shifts in power, culture, and the political economy.

Law enforcement is increasingly reliant on technology to automate encounters with the public, identify persons to be targeted for further scrutiny, and document interpersonal interactions. As a result, public contacts with police are transitioning from traditional interpersonal interactions to interactions that are increasingly technologically mediated. This chapter reflects on that transition and speculates on the ways in which police–community relations, particularly relations with some racial minority communities, may be affected by this transition. A central argument in favor of technologically mediated law enforcement (e.g., automated license plate readers, facial recognition software, body-worn cameras) is that this new style of policing has the ability to ensure equal protection under the law, enhancing police legitimacy, and mending poor community–police relations. Some see the introduction of technology into law enforcement encounters as a solution to resolving mistrust associated with fractured relations between police and the communities that they serve, particularly for some racial minority communities.

The natural philosopher Robert Boyle, mentor of John Locke, took the view that the aim of science was ‘the Empire over the Creatures’. The task of Chapter 6 is to show how Robert Boyle’s new political system for an economics of natural science, primarily involving the utilitarian exploitation of nature and of trade, connected with his contribution to the development of a form of natural law and natural philosophy shorn of moral natural law. That idea drew on classical theological teachings on dominion over creatures (as set out in Genesis 1:26) together with the economic goal of making natural sciences productive – also considering the significant expansion that the British Empire was undergoing at that point in time. Theological principles about an omnipotent and bountiful God were crucial to Boyle’s plans for the achievement of broader management of nature, but as a rule he avoided consideration of anthropological theology and moral natural law in his scientific writings. A close reading of Of the Usefulness of Experimentall Natural Philosophy and of the Aretology helps in articulating these ideas.

Christine D. Worobec explores the volatile world of the peasantry in the decades following the emancipation of 1861. Through Chekhov’s eyes, Worobec considers the cycles of violence and abuse embedded within these communities and the challenges faced in an era of modernization, gauging Chekhov’s response to these problems as a writer deeply troubled by the society that Russian serfdom had produced but wary of sweeping political or ideological solutions.

The influence of serialism owes largely to its aesthetics, to the ideas behind the music. This chapter presents and examines those ideas. The chapter begins with a brief definition of terms and then analyses specific examples of serial aesthetics in detail. The examples introduce central themes that recur across a diversity of sources in the literature on serial music. These themes include narratives of historical progress, the significance of politics, contemporaneous science and technology, paradigms of experimentation, the ideal of organicism, and models for listening. Following the explication of these themes, the chapter concludes by considering the legacy of serialism and its relevance today.

Every day, courts across the country deliver rulings in civil legal disputes that, while perhaps unremarkable to many observers, have profound importance for the litigants themselves: custody disputes, debt collection, and wage garnishment, evictions, and protection orders for victims of domestic violence, to name but a few. Advocates for civil justice reform have long identified the growing number of self-represented litigants in these proceeding as a cause for concern, highlighting the need for broad reform. The number of self-represented litigants hasn’t decreased, but reform has been slow to come. The COVID-19 pandemic has offered a chance to change that. This chapter reviews civil access-to-justice efforts both before, during, and hopefully after the pandemic. Using as raw material a unique survey of state chief justices and also Michigan’s experience both before and during the pandemic to make justice more accessible, this chapter examines barriers to widespread reform in state courts, including the challenge of local political and fiscal control in states with non-unified court systems as well as the broader challenge of promoting change in a profession that is notoriously slow to embrace it. In small ways and large, the pandemic will continue to drive important change in how courts deliver justice.