Chapter 3 provides the key historical antecedents for Chapters 4-7, focusing on changes in the domains of kinship, religion, and law. It examines the decline of traditional authority in medieval Europe, specifically the weakening of inherited monarchical and aristocratic rule, and of the Church and associated belief in supernatural beings. At the same time, the power of state-based law was consolidating and expanding, developing new ideas of ‘legal persons’, as ‘fictions of law’, that would become crucial to the creation of new corporate actors and the domestication of competition. This shift combined with intensifying trans-Atlantic competition among European empires, and novel experiments in republican and democratic government in America and France, created a new context for the development of law and competition.

Randomization solves the problem of confounding bias; it addresses systematic error, which is the most important source of error, not chance. It equalizes all potential confounding factors, known and unknown, in all groups so that they equally influence the results, and thus can be ignored. Only then can the results of randomized treatment be interpreted at face value and causal inferences made. Sample size and other factors are relevant, though, and small randomized clinical trials (RCTs) can be misleading. Examples are given.

Chastity signifies sexual purity and restraint, either through virginity or through fidelity in marriage. While Augustine and Aquinas define chastity as a virtue for both men and women, Shakespeare depicts chastity almost exclusively as a female virtue, repeatedly using the term in connection with feminized representations of nature, the virgin goddess Diana, and young women (married and unmarried). Although Shakespeare’s plays include male characters who fixate on the chastity of female characters, chastity is a virtue of self-government that must, by definition, be under the control of women themselves. For Shakespeare’s female characters, chastity functions as a means of expressing bodily autonomy and rejecting attempts at patriarchal control, concepts that are still relevant for young women today. Shakespeare’s chaste heroines now lend their names and stories to projects designed to promote social justice and advocacy for young women. The cultural authority of Shakespeare’s plays can help provide a historical and ethical reference for a virtue that centers on control over one’s own body. In the context of current global debates about women’s rights and sexual assault, Shakespeare’s plays demonstrate that chastity is not only a relevant virtue — it is crucial to understanding the importance of women’s autonomy.

This chapter argues that Samuel Beckett’s plays function as a kind of fulcrum in a theatrical history of staging and thematising surveillance, extending from Dion Boucicault’s The Octoroon (1859) through Augusta Gregory’s Spreading the News (1904), to Enda Walsh’s Arlington (2016) and David Lloyd’s The Press (2009) and The Pact (2021). Surveillance agencies rely heavily on technology to gather information, but depend on human beings to store, order, and interpret it, and dramatic narratives exploit inconsistencies and injustices arising from slippages between data and its application. Boucicault, Gregory, Walsh, and Lloyd are counterpointed to Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Catastrophe, and What Where, which theatricalise the structuring influence of monitoring and scrutiny on the texture of Irish social experience, personal and public. Once classified in an archive or record, or interpreted in policy and implemented in practice, ‘intelligence’ plays out less as a function of rigorous analysis than ideological determination.

Transforming global food systems to meet sustainability and justice outcomes under climate change requires engaging with complex multi-level governance while appreciating specific local contexts. As such, climate change and food security are ‘messy’ policy issues; policies need to be effectively shaped and fit for purpose across different scales, geographic areas, and sectors. Policy implementation necessitates coordination across multiple perspectives towards a common goal, and an anticipatory governance approach can enable this. Working against the status quo is not easy but can be achieved through truly engaged and inclusive stakeholder processes. Redistribution of power entails employing a gendered, socially inclusive lens in the development of food system transformation policies. Establishing an enabling policy environment for transforming food systems requires diverse approaches and multiple perspectives. The appropriate facilitation and coordination of multi-stakeholder engagements is key to clear communication between participants and to support learning.

Discusses the selection of Armstrongs and Vickers for this study, and the availability of rich archival sources. Provides an overview of the relationship between the British state and armament firms over 1855 to 1955. Records a gradual shift from the government and firms being independent of each other to becoming interdependent. Discusses Katherine Epstein’s assertion in Torpedo that there has been a British Military Industrial Complex since the 19th Century. Considers works from David Edgerton and Edward Packard making a similar case for the inter-war period. Considers the contemporary critiques of the armaments trade, which focused on the independence of armament firm “merchants of death,” rather than identifying collusive relationships with the British state. The chapter then lays out a framework for assessing the independence and power of Armstrongs and Vickers in their relationship with the British Government. Establishes six propositions about the firms’ power and independence that are tested through the book.

Bolaño may justifiably be considered among the least religious writers in the Spanish language, although not necessarily an antireligious one. Simultaneously, his areligious stance made it possible, even necesssary, for him to write works in which links between religion, literature, and Latin American culture are exposed and subjected to scathing critique. His narrative foregoes the use of religion as an artifice, as a “partial magic” to sacralize both the novel and the nation and endow them with a transcendent aura. However, Bolaño’s “romantic anarchism,” with its cynicism about politics and society in general, is counterbalanced by ethics. Bolaño’s reflections on religion and politics explore the worldly aspect of religion and the role of belief and credulity in politics, but also reflect on the dual religiopolitical aspect of literature itself, which is made particularly visible in and by the profession of literary criticism. In our postmodern age, Bolaño suggests, even as art and religion merge in their discourses, there is a further merger of both art and religion with politics. Contemporary art (including literature, of course) is for Bolaño a potentially perverse fusion of religion’s invocation of belief, politics’s thirst for power, and art’s own inherent powers of deceit and manipulation.

The tenure of Donald Trump as US president has been characterized by a double movement. One, centripetal, is toward an extreme personalization of the office of the presidency; the other, centrifugal, is toward a heightened diffusion through the social media of constant affective agitations emanating from the White House. The hold Trump maintains on his supporters and the negative fascination he exerts on his opponents is often analyzed in traditional terms of identification (and disidentification) with a charismatic leader. This flattens the account onto an interior psychological dimension, obscuring the fact that Trump is as much a corporate brand and a platform-phenomenon as he is a psychological subject. In fact, his subjectivity is symbiotic with, if not utterly dependent upon, the externalization, circulation, and feedback effects of media-borne affective agitations that rebound throughout the social field: more an affective node in a transindividual assemblage than an individual subject as traditionally understood. This chapter examines what concept of the "person" might apply to such an assemblage, and what the term "the personality of power" might mean in the internet age.

The Australian compulsory superannuation system contains nearly $AUD 3 trillion in funds, which is a substantial share of the personal wealth held by Australians. This means decisions made by superannuation trustees are important for everyone in Australia, both as beneficiaries and as participants in the Australian economy. The regulation of trustee decision-making, like the superannuation system as a whole, is founded on the equitable principles of trust law, but with an extensive overlay of legislative and regulatory intervention. Examining the regulation of decision-making in this context provides important insights into foundational trust law principles as well as a major component of wealth management in Australia.

This chapter explores impact assessments (IAs) used for designating Marine Conservation Zones. It starts with an introduction to IAs, leading to a theoretical discussion of cost-benefit analysis as a tool for rationalising regulation. It follows with a critical review of IAs produced by the regional stakeholder groups using umbrella questions derived from the theoretical analysis and then it asks if and how the formal IAs produced by the government for the designation of the three tranches of Marine Conservation Zones constitute an improvement compared to the regional stakeholder groups’ IAs before offering concluding remarks. Throughout the chapter, connections with the concept of commoning are made arguing that IAs for MCZs, by employing economic language in decision-making and focusing on industry costs over benefits, favour the voices of a few over collective ones, highlight interests at the expenses of values and undermine the potential for ethical consideration to play a role in assessment, thereby failing to encourage a shared ethics of care and responsibility towards the marine environment, hence not favouring commoning practices.

Sociologists often construct historical narratives to support their arguments. But how do they utilize history? The most common approach is to draw on facts from the past to develop and test causal hypotheses. Sociologists employ their theoretical knowledge and historical research to determine the power that drives the narrative forward. This is usually a structural variable: class, culture, social identity groups, state institutions, geopolitics, or a combination thereof. However, the continuing diffusion of power in society has strained this method to the limit. One alternative is to substitute scholarly conceptions of power for the way social actors practically understand and exercise power. After all, power is nothing but relational. Historical sociologists can weave together these everyday narratives of power to reveal how rather than why people behave the way they do. This requires cultivating an empathetic sensibility to understand other people’s experiences, and a literary skill to vividly re-enact their situations. The chapter traces the lineage of this method from Clausewitz and Tocqueville to contemporary sociologists, such as Andrew Abbot, Pierre Bourdieu, and Robert Nisbet. It encourages a scholarly disposition that embraces social complexity rather than settle for the simplification of overarching processes and structural factors.

This chapter examines the reign of the notorious musician-emperor Nero. It offers a comprehensive survey of the ancient material relating to Nero’s performances, stressing also his important role behind the scenes as producer, composer and choreographer. Building on the recent ‘performative turn’ in Neronian studies, the chapter argues that Nero used music not to satisfy some narcissistic or tyrannical bent, as has traditionally been maintained, but rather as part of a self-conscious strategy for the negotiation and representation of imperial power. Nero’s music-making responded to, and drew energy from, the cultural interests of both the ordinary Roman people and the young metropolitan elite. In this way, Nero succeeded in creating and disseminating an original musical language, which repackaged elements of Greek culture into a distinctly Roman product optimised for popular consumption.

Chapter 5 dissects power dynamics among actors involved in immigration policy in Morocco before and after the 2013 reform: the monarchy and administration, international, national, and migrant civil society organizations, as well as international organizations, legal actors, and the private sector. I demonstrate that immigration policy liberalization not only emerged out of Morocco’s autocratic political structures – a dynamic I call the illiberal paradox – but also consolidated them. In particular, I show that the monarchy mobilized the expansion of migrants’ rights, as well as its relations with the administration and an expanding civil society to portray the king as a ‘liberal’ monarch. In this process, legal actors and elected politicians have only played a subordinate role. However, these ‘regime effects’ in domestic politics did not absorb resistances and diverging views within the administration, with actors keeping their room for manoeuvre regarding agenda-setting and policy implementation.

Chapter 7 dissects power dynamics among actors involved in immigration policy in Tunisia through the 2011 regime change: democratic state institutions and the administration; CSOs and migrant associations; international organizations, legal actors, and the private sector. I show how democratization affected immigration policy processes in ambiguous ways and explain why the increase in citizens’ political freedoms and civil society activism has not spilled over into more openness towards immigration. After 2011, policy processes became more inclusive, as the role of Tunisia’s parliament and civil society was strengthened. However, democratization also brought inter-actor dynamics to the fore that put a break to immigration reform plans, such as turf wars within the administration or governmental volatility. At the same time, the democratic transition has only partially affected immigration policymaking, as dynamics of international norm adherence and the ambiguous role of employers in Tunisia’s largely informal economy remained relatively unaffected by the regime change. In this context, political elites opted for restrictive policy continuity instead of translating migratory experiences and democratic ideals into liberal immigration reform.

The U.S.–Latin American relationship has never been easy. A combination of wars, invasions, occupations, mutual suspicion (and occasionally open dislike and insults), dictatorships, and/or differences in ideology represents a consistent obstacle to strong national friendships. However, relations have not always been negative. Periodically, Latin American political leaders have worked closely with the U.S. government in a spirit of partnership, and the United States has also periodically offered new initiatives and shown a willingness to establish a positive and friendly relationship. How, then, can we make sense of it all? This book has three intertwined purposes, focusing on theory, political history, and research. It examines four prominent approaches to international relations: realism, dependency theory, autonomy, and liberal institutionalism. However, there is no perfect theory, and the strengths and weaknesses of each are discussed. Students are strongly encouraged to engage different theories of international relations in the light of empirical evidence. Resources are also offered for further study of chapter topics.

For the last 5,000 years humans have been steadily transitioning to state/kingdom power structures. This chapter explains the demographic and political causes of the transition to institutional power, most frequently vested in lineages, and the ways in which institutional religions have supported institutional power in states and kingdoms. Personal and institutional power are inversely related in states and kingdoms, and this chapter explorea some examples of authoritarian and libertarian regimes, as well as the conflict within our own (US) society on these questions. Following on the idea of structural power, it reviews various aspects of institutional coercion (laws, taxes, conscription, slavery), as well as the ways institutions regulate the flow of information to control populations (the execution of William Tyndale, Spanish burning of Mayan texts, Nazi book burning, etc.). It finishes by discussing the expansion of empires and the resistance some populations show to externally imposed institutional authority.

The court assembled around the prince consisted of his family and ministers, but also attracted all those who might need to seek royal authority for their own affairs. Molière was one of the King’s officers and was well acquainted with this milieu, which took form throughout the seventeenth century. During the first decades of his reign in particular, Louis XIV used entertainment to keep the members of his entourage in place by offering them opportunities to meet and experience his power in a pleasant way. The Parisian theatre troupes were regularly invited to appear before the King and Molière displayed a notable talent not only in presenting his own plays but also in combining within a single spectacle – the comedy-ballets, which were the highlights of these usually composite entertainments, and which were particularly well-suited to their context – spoken drama with music, meals, balls, and even fireworks. Devised to suit the individual circumstances, theatre could thereby offer a welcome moment of relaxation, particularly during the carnival period – a true breathing space in this environment where all was constrained according to the power relations in operation.