This chapter describes how relationship scientists conduct research to answer questions about relationships. It explains all aspects of the research process, including how hypotheses are derived from theory, which study designs (e.g., experiments, cross-sectional studies, experience sampling) best suit specific research questions, how scientists can manipulate variables or measure variables with self-report, implicit, observational, or physiological measures, and what scientists consider when recruiting a sample to participate in their studies. This chapter also discusses how researchers approach questions about boundary conditions (when general trends do not apply) and mechanisms (the processes underlying their findings) and describes best practices for conducting ethical and reproducible research. Finally, this chapter includes a guide for how to read and evaluate empirical research articles.

Integration into the democratic system may induce the moderation of radical parties. This chapter assesses the extent of mainstreaming of populist radical right parties that follows their entry into local power. It does so through analysis of their discourse before and after attaining the leadership of the local government and considers four dimensions of mainstreaming. First, programmatic expansion and the relative salience of issues outside of their ideological core. Second, de-radicalization, in terms of the positioning towards and framing of the issue of immigration. Third, a softening of anti-establishment discourse and behaviour, considering both conflicts with other political actors and institutional reforms. And fourth, the self-presentation as normal and responsible, as opposed to a prior reputation for extremism and/or incompetence. To analyse changes across these dimensions, it draws from a range of data sources: council meetings, Facebook posts and newspaper articles. The chapter reveals cross-national differences in the extent of mainstreaming and suggests that institutional and party-strategic differences are crucial determinants of the extent and form of such change.

As the climate emergency worsens, the wealthiest will suffer from it the least. This is despite the disproportionate contribution of the uber rich in the Minority World – most of whom live obscenely in their opulence – to the continuing climate crisis. In contrast, poorpeople – most of them living in the Majority World – will be hit hardest and most severely by the effects of rapid global heating.

This chapter features a book from the era which marks the culmination of the Ottoman intellectual efforts to reinstate traditional categories of knowledge from an imperial perspective. Ahlak-i Alai [The morals of Ali] of Kınalızade Ali Çelebi showcases the maturation of moral thinking that overlaps the central themes of Shakespearean virtue ethics. Written by a contemporary of Shakespeare and became the representative account of moral thinking in social and political domains of the Ottomans, the book is of interest to the readers of Shakespeare as it accommodates more parallels with the moral world of Englishmen than indicated in Shakespeare’s ‘turning Turk’ in Othello. Ahlak-i Alai follows in form and content the Aristotelian virtue ethics and deals with a broad spectrum of questions from the source of morality and the possibility of an individual’s moral education to the highest good and the moral order in society. It is suggested in the chapter that the common moral ground of Ottomans and Shakespeare is shaped mainly by the Aristotelian virtue ethics whose objective is to operate in moderation what is thought to be the powers of the self.

The Introduction sets the framework for the analysis and introduces the central research question of The Politics of Religious Party Change: when and why do religious parties become less anti-system? This chapter explains the significance of the question, discussing the rising prominence of religious parties globally and the need to better understand the dynamics of change in these parties. Likewise, the Introduction details the methodology used in this book and the six empirical cases: The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Tunisian Ennahdha, Turkish AKP, German Center Party, Italian PPI, and Belgian Catholic Party.

This chapter reviews the existing literature on religious party change. The scholarly literature offers three major explanations for the divergence we observe in Catholic and Islamist parties’ trajectories and for why religious parties change, or moderate: religious, political, and institutional explanations. Despite major contributions to our understanding of religious parties, the literatures on Catholic and Islamist parties grew virtually independent of each other, focusing on entirely different sets of questions or factors that explain change in these parties. Building on the existing literature, this chapter lays out the theory developed in this book to explain religious party change. First, an overview of the political economic approach to the study of religion is presented; next, the chapter outlines the effect of institutions on political behavior, and in particular how religious institutions affect political behavior and religious parties. Finally, the major actors in the theory are analyzed before concluding with a comparative assessment of how Islamist and Catholic parties fit into the theory.

The Politics of Religious Party Change addresses the timely question of ideological change and secularization of religious political parties and asks, when and why do religious parties become less anti-system? In a comparative analysis, this book traces the striking similarities in the historical origins of Islamist and Catholic parties in the Middle East and Western Europe, chronicles their conflicts with existing religious authorities, and analyzes the subsequently divergent trajectories of Islamist and Catholic parties. Religious parties are embedded in distinct religious institutional structures that shape their actions as they chart their paths in electoral politics. Counterintuitively, the book finds that centralized and hierarchical religious authority structures – such as the Vatican – incentivize religious parties to move in a more pro-system, secular, and democratic direction. By contrast, less centralized religious authority structures such as in Sunni Islam create a more permissive environment for religious parties to operate as anti-system parties hostile to democracy and secularism.

As the century progressed, there was an increasing emphasis on more moderate forms of discourse and behaviour that rejected the divisive social and religious attitudes of the previous century. Supporters of the primacy of the Established Church now needed other weapons, beyond legal recourse and vituperative argument, to challenge the position of Dissent. As all parties tried to work out their shifting roles in the wake of legislative change, religious prejudice began to find its expression in new forms. Chapter 3 argues that politeness, in particular, became a mode of behaviour through which tacit religious exclusion could be reframed in new, more socially acceptable, ways. Focusing particularly on how the idea of politeness interacted with the accusation of Dissenting hypocrisy, it highlights how this discourse did not wholeheartedly reject the religious divisions of the previous century, but rather re-configured them for a new era of supposed moderation.

Working memory (WM) training explores whether and how repeated practice on working memory tasks might generalize to a variety of outcome measures. Although this field of research is part of the growing literature in cognitive sciences, it has spawned contentious debates. The controversies are largely driven by inconsistent findings and commercial interests, and as a result, numerous meta-analyses and systematic reviews have focused on the validity of WM training. Similarly, there is an inconsistency in the conclusions drawn by these meta-analyses; while there seems to be an agreement about the generalization to proximal cognitive measures; there is a discrepancy in the interpretation of any translational outcomes (e.g., behavioral, clinical, and academic). In this chapter, we review the collection of meta-analyses with a particular focus on children diagnosed with ADHD and other developmental disabilities, and recommend that the field should focus on improving our understanding of the mechanistic and effectiveness properties of WM training, which might result in the development of valuable alternative and/or supplemental approaches, when traditional interventions might fall short, especially for individuals typically underrepresented and underserved.

This chapter is basically a review of a collection of poems mirroring the Yoruba cultural ethos, drawn from Etches on Fresh Waters, Scoundrels of Deferral, A Mouth Sweeter than Salt, and Counting the Tiger’s Teeth. Believing the core of a nation to be its people, the poetry collections seek to present a narration of the nation through poems about the cultural practices, values, and beliefs of the people. Clearly, the chapter depicts poetry as a creative mode of expression, performing a “dialectic function of narrating a group’s culture,” and as a means of “documenting” and “teaching” culture. The chapter launches into the cultural significance of poetry and how poetry reflects the past and present cultural realities of the Yoruba people especially. The cultural ethos include salutations to the revered, celebration of ethnic identity, sermons on moderation, unrestrained freedom, and hospitality, amongst others, while some were used to show women’s sociocultural position.

Chapter 2 explicates Augustine’s critique of political pride, as tending to foment “lust for domination” (libido dominandi), in books I–V of The City of God. In this opening segment, Augustine depicts pride as unnatural for human beings and unjust, thereby paving the way for a greater appreciation of the naturalness and justice of moderation and humility in political life.

This chapter explores the relationship between democracy and Christianity through the lens of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. As Tocqueville noted, unlike the European nations of his own day where the forces of democracy and proponents of religion were at odds, the United States in the 1830s is characterized by a harmony between religion and democracy. Tocqueville sees a number of ways in which these two forces may be mutually supportive. First and most importantly, Tocqueville regards Christianity and its affirmation of the equality of all human beings as an important source for democracy. He also finds American religion to be supportive of democratic government in the sense that it counters democratic tendencies toward cultural mediocrity, the tyranny of the majority, the pathologies of individualism, and secular materialism. Not only is Christianity necessary for the formation of democratic governments, in Tocqueville’s view, but their long-term flourishing requires a certain moderation on the part of religious believers. While it might seem that Christianity is the only religion capable of preserving democracy, a closer reading of Democracy in America would suggest otherwise.