In this concluding chapter I briefly revisit the interpretive framework set out in Chapter 1 within which my reading of the Charmides is situated, summarising what I take to be its merits. It is argued, based on the formal separation of Plato as author from his characters (especially Socrates), that the Charmides can be read as a Platonic defence of the written text as a medium for critical reflection on the reader’s part.

The Introduction sets out how the number of forcibly displaced persons in the world is the highest ever recorded. Violence associated with armed conflict has become the main cause of forced displacement in the twenty-first century and most refugees are fleeing armed conflicts. Most asylum seekers in the European Union (EU) originate from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. However, there are many misconceptions whether persons fleeing armed conflicts are refugees as defined by the Refugee Convention. This book is thus an enquiry into the continued relevance of the Refugee Convention and examines the extent to which asylum appellate authorities in the EU take into account the changing nature of contemporary armed conflicts. The book also explores how the Refugee Convention may be interpreted in a manner that better responds to the changed nature of contemporary armed conflicts from a gender perspective, thus reconceptualising the concept of the refugee. The Introduction sets out the conceptual notions adopted in the book, such as the importance of distinguishing between violence and armed conflicts, the research methodology and sampling of 320 asylum appeal decisions from Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. Finally, it sets out the structure of the book.

This chapter sets out a framework for interpreting the Charmides. It introduces two methodological principles, the ’principle of agnosticism’ and the ’principle of separation’, and defends their use as a tool for reading the dialogue. It then proceeds to analyse the structure of the work into ’horizontal’ and ’vertical’ elements and to explain how these map onto the way the Charmides is written and onto the two methodological principles. This framework is then utilised to address and resolve in outline a puzzle about the dialogue’s structure, namely the apparent lack of fit between its richly dramatic opening section with Charmides and the dense and technical discussion with Critias that follows.

Chapter 1 presents the purpose of the book – i.e. describing how a text-based description of three world languages can be developed. The Systemic Functional Linguistic theory informing these descpriptons is introduced, including modellng of context and discourse semantics, and the basic theoretical parameters of metafunciton, rank and stratification.The nature argumentation in relation to grammar description is outlined.

The greatest progress so far in decarbonising the global economy has been made by governments that ignored the advice of economists. Investing in new technologies turns out to be a more effective way of changing things than taxing the incumbents. We need to stop being surprised by this and start replicating those successes.

This chapter introduces the appliable linguistics theory, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), informing this grammar of Korean. The three basic theoretical dimensions of SFL are outlined – stratification (levels of language), rank (constituency) and metafunction (kinds of meaning). The approach to the distinctive relation of system to structure in SFL is then explained, including the formalisation of paradigmatic relations in system networks. The chapter closes with an outline of the book as a whole.

This chapter offers an analysis of the first book of the History, paying particular attention to the distinctive structure of Book 1. Thucydides’ plan of narrating the war chronologically, by summers and winters, is announced only at the start of Book 2; the structure of Book 1 is much more complex. The chapter starts by exploring ancient critics’ reactions to Book 1’s unusual form, and then it goes on to analyse each of the disruptions to chronological sequence in the book and the reasons for them. It compares these chronological disruptions to other sorts of disjunction (e.g. in style and mode of historical writing) in Book 1. Finally, it raises the question of whether similar disruptions and disjunctions might be found elsewhere in the work.

This chapter examines statements in Thucydides’ work that predict or foreshadow the future (prolepses), placing them in the context of a wider study of the narratological structure of the History as a whole. It analyses predictions made by the narrator himself (including 1.22.4’s famous claim about the future utility of the work), as well as the (often unreliable) claims that characters in the History make about the future course of events. The combined effect of these prolepses is a notable instability in the ‘unreal future’ that the text predicts. Thucydides’ work offers us no clear conclusion about the ultimate significance of the war that he has described: the work as a whole is not a teleological narrative.

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.

Transforming our food systems will require changing our innovation systems, in which organisations on agricultural research and innovation can play a crucial role. Key success factors for change can be organised into three dimensions: designing and managing transformative innovations, culture and structures of innovation organisations, and their engagement with the wider innovation ecosystem. Failures are crucial elements of innovation processes. Rapidly testing, sharing, building on, and learning from successful, and failed, innovations are key. This connects to the paradigm ‘Open Innovation 2.0’, which is widely applied in the private sector but not yet applied and evaluated for research and innovation organisations in the public sector or tertiary education. Four key principles emerge, namely big-picture action-oriented thinking, entrepreneurial organisational culture, close attention to partnerships and contexts, and diverse investment portfolios, with different levels of risk. These also imply—and require—the upstream transformation of funding and incentive systems.

[8.1] The law of statutory interpretation directs us to ascertain the ‘purpose’ of an Act when construing a provision of that Act. This is one of the few general principles of statutory interpretation law that is the subject of a legislative mandate, though the common law has developed an equivalent principle. The mandate is that we must have regard to the purpose of an Act and choose the construction that promotes or best achieves that purpose. This does not warrant neglect of the statutory text or context, but instead requires the interpreter to have regard to the purpose in the context of the broader analysis of text and context required by the rules of statutory interpretation. Sometimes the purpose will be critical to the task of attributing meaning and sometimes it will be of little value. The value that purpose can provide to the task may depend on the degree of specificity with which it can be expressed. Many Acts embody multiple purposes or the purpose of the Act may be general. For these reasons, the purpose of the provision being construed can be more helpful for the interpretative task than the purpose of the Act as a whole.

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.

This chapter explores how the EU (European Union) managed the multiple crises that it confronted during the decade from 2010 to 2020, the extent to which these crises provoked its disintegration or closer integration and – primarily – how far the EU’s crisis management policies were structurally determined or shaped by agency. It argues that the decisions made by the EU in the Eurozone and coronavirus crises – decisions that forged closer political integration – were largely structurally determined, whereas those that culminated in political disintegration either involved a combination of structural and agency-related causes, as with the refugee crisis, or, as with the Brexit crisis, were the result of a sequence of decisions that were taken by political actors who possessed agency and that therefore could well have been different.

Belief is often formalized using tools of probability theory. However, probability theory often focuses on simple examples – like coin flips or basic parametric distributions – and these do not describe much about actual human thinking. I highlight some basic examples of the complexity and richness of human mental representations and review some work which attempts to marry plausible types of representations with probabilistic models of belief, one of the most exciting current directions in psychology and machine learning.

Chapter 8 lays out a menu of well-travelled theoretical frameworks. This includes (a) motivational frameworks (interests, norms, psychology), (b) structural frameworks (material factors, human capital/demography, institutions), and (c) interactive frameworks (adaptation, coordination, diffusion, networks, path dependence).

Constitutional law’s twofold logic of inquiry into authorization and prohibition provides the basic structure for constitutional law reasoning. It also supplies the method by which constitutional lawyers break down into discrete, manageable questions the complex set of facts and legal claims that a difficult constitutional problem presents. Finally, as Chapter 2 discussed, this logic rests on several presuppositions that further shape the analysis of any constitutional problem. We can now begin to consider how to solve a problem once we have identified the questions of constitutional law it raises. The answer to a constitutional question that is at all perplexing, or controversial among competent lawyers, can seldom if ever be identified by simply pointing to the constitutional text. Questions that can be answered in that fashion (do Wyoming and California really elect the same number of senators?) do not give rise to serious constitutional law debate, however puzzling they may be from other perspectives.