At the outset, this Chapter will show that officials from the United States resolve the most important insular matters not solely undemocratically but especially taking U.S. interests into account. It will affirm that they may have thus contributed to the territorial socio-economic ails, which have, in turn, fueled the current debt debacle. From this perspective, the United States should strive to democratize the dependency. It may advance such democratization outside rather than inside the Union in light of Congressional or on-site opposition to the latter option.

The cogitation will contemplate and ultimately reject the contention that the ex-isting arrangement violates individual civil rights or that Puerto Rico must become a state in order to vindicate them. It will stress that no such violation transpires since the treatment of Puerto Ricans does not differ from that of their fellow U.S. citizens. Specifically, anyone bearing the citizenship of the United States can exercise all the guaranties in question if she resides on the mainland (or Hawaii) yet not on the island (or any other territory, or abroad).

The discussion will then establish that the extant regime encroaches not upon the islanders’ personal entitlements but instead upon their collective self-determination. Ergo, vindication may consist in permitting the island to rule itself just as much as in admitting it into the federation. From this standpoint, the U.S. political establish-ment could simply amend the 1950 statute presently in force and pursue more suc-cessfully the same goal: namely, granting the dependency “self-governance” as an “as-sociated free state.” Within this wide framework, the association could flexibly develop over time toward either more or less cooperation between the parties.

Chapter 6 explores the possibility of composing higher-order macro-institutions, starting with micro-norms/rules and institutes and their mutual compatibility and balancing. A necessary precondition for power-sharing is monopolisation of destructive resources and ‘legitimate’ violence over a territorial space: the ‘territorial institution’. In territories in which destructive means have been successfully monopolised and there are no challenges to the ruling function, ‘fundamental norms’ or ‘constitutions’ may develop that delineate the institutional regime. The territory, the constitution and the institutional regime are macro-institutions located at the highest level in the vertical layering of institutions and are complex combinations of single norms/rules and institutes. But, as macro-phenomena, they are characterised by emerging properties that cannot exclusively be reduced to lower-level properties. Different regimes rest on the prominence of some institutes over others. In some cases, the predominant institutes damage the others excessively. In other cases, the institutes balance each other. The chapter suggests that institutional analysis generalisations should concern political institutes, their balancing and combination, and the likely effects. Actors’ preferences and constellations of actors should be kept separate from institutional analysis. Adding them results in generalisations concerning the interaction between political institutions and political structures; that is, in the analysis of ‘political regimes’.

Chapter 15 addresses economic inequality and its impact on democracy in contemporary Latin America. It illustrates the significance of inequality with discussions of Brazil and Chile, and shows that wealth and income are unequally distributed and that certain categories of citizens (rural dwellers, indigenous people, informal workers) are among the poorest Latin Americans. It stresses that it is paradoxical that several decades after Latin America achieved democracy – a political system based on the idea that citizens are political equals – social inequality remains deep and pervasive. Yet it accounts for the difficulty faced by democratic governments in reducing economic inequality through redistributive policies in terms of the structural and instrumental power of economic elites, the control of the media by economic elites, and the actions of politicians and state agents. The chapter also stresses that persistent economic inequality has negative consequences on democracy and shows how recent political developments in Chile – for decades seen as the poster child of political and economic success in the region – are a warning sign against complacency with economic inequality.

The chapter reconstructs Jacob Grimm’s political thought in the 1840s when he emerged as a leader of the new association of Germanists and a prominent delegate in the first German national parliament. Speaking in different venues, Grimm declared his commitment to national unity and claimed it was supported by disciplinary knowledge of language, literature, law, and myth. In particular, he asserted that the linguistic scholar could demarcate national collectives on the basis of verifiable grammatical knowledge and by so doing provide states with a sound, even scientific foundation. The chapter analyzes how Grimm used research findings about the distinctiveness of different Germanic languages to suggest authoritative answers to questions about units of legitimate rule in the post-revolutionary era. Grimm was not a radical and did not wish to subvert monarchy, but he insisted on the coincidence of royal rule with a national homeland, the outlines of which were best traced by the philologist.

This chapter begins by introducing a number of foundational concepts, which serve as the starting point in the field of public international law. Section 1 of this chapter begins with the notion that states are sovereign equals, which must consent to be bound by nternational law. This section also introduces the critical distinction that international law makes between states and “non-state actors.” Section 2 of this chapter discusses the inevitable comparison of public international law with domestic legal systems, and the significant limitations of this analogy as a means for understanding the field of public international law. Section 3 concludes by explaining this book’s overarching structure, as well as the approach of this book to the introduction of public international law.

The law of neutrality introduces a concomitant set of rights and obligations between belligerents and neutrals. The law as it has settled at the turn of the twentieth century has remained the same in relation to its basic principles, and it has easily adapted to the evolution of the law of the sea, globalized trade and arms technology. The intrusiveness of belligerent practice in the form of exclusion zones, navicerts and distance blockade has become part of the law provided that it does not deviate from the humanitarian law of armed conflict. Moreover, the four Geneva Conventions and the First Additional Protocol admit a humanitarian role for neutral States.

Grotius’s theory of property was meant to yield practical results. The principle of the freedom of the seas, for instance, was based on the idea of seizure as a constituent element of property and exclusivity. This focus on practical results enables a secularized reading of his theory of property. However, some essential aspects of his property theory are not entirely comprehensible without taking into account Grotius’s wider theological framework. Therefore, in this article I will focus on Grotius’s idea of consent to the principle of first occupation as the foundation of his property theory, and link it with his theologically loaded conceptions of man’s freedom and equality, or the universal fellowship of humankind.

Chapter six looks at the operational and tactical levels of strategy and brings forward the phenomenon of substitution. Substitution, or the waterbed effect, occurs as a result of counter-measures and means a displacement of violent activities towards other targets, tactics, territory or time frames. Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers and Nicaragua’s Sandinist National Liberation Front are the two vignettes treated here. The Tigers are notable for their military defeat in 2009 and the SNLF for their ultimate military success in overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship at the end of the 1970s.

The Introduction seeks to define cosmography. The first half of the Introduction takes Pindar's 3rd Olympian as a point of entry to illustrate cosmography with a concrete example. Building on that specific discussion and unpacking it, the second half of the Introduction moves on to more general considerations of a methodological and terminological order, so as to delineate the notion more explicitly, and the possibilities of its application, far beyond Pindar. All following chapters expand and build on these general considerations of the Introduction. The first chapter thus aims to explore the challenges and illustrate the significance of studying cosmography through cult and place. Through a complementary focus on the visual media of epiphany in language and art, the second chapter expands the investigation of the first chapter on the cosmography of cult and place. The third chapter aims to further explore the challenges and illustrate the significance of studying cosmography through an archive of genres and chronological periods. The fourth chapter looks more closely at the conflicts of knowledge and authority that punctuate the transformations of cosmography in the Classical period. The distinctive creativity of Hellenistic cosmography, finally, is the main object of the fifth chapter.