As the Framers anticipated, factions remain a powerful force in American politics. The founding generation disagreed about much, but there was a broad consensus that factions, the inevitable companions of democracy, lead to democratic excess and the abuse of power. Ironically, the factor most responsible for the continued influence of factions and particularly for the dominant influence of majority faction has been the steady democratization of the American constitutional system. The Framers would not be surprised. The best prospects of constraining the negative influences of faction are restoration of the balance between state and national powers and acceptance of the need for constraints on simple majority-rules democracy.

After the shallow stabilities of the mid 1920s, marked by Locarno and modest economic recovery, the Great Depression returned Europe to crisis. The Versailles order crumbled, from Stresemann’s western conciliation to national minority protections. Then, presaged by his predecessors’ burial of reparations and plans for rearmament, Hitler’s aggressively distinctive program unfolded: accelerated German restoration; economic autarky; racially defined Lebensraum in the east; heedless antisemitism. In response, Britain and France wavered. French policy oscillated among cynicism, fatalism, and confusion. Prioritizing imperial security, Britain decisively rearmed, aiming to counter Japan and Italy, while containing Hitler in western Europe. By 1937, under new Prime Minister Chamberlain, that approach solidified into “appeasement”: satisfying Hitler in eastern Europe would reduce Britain’s European obligations; free its ability to protect the Empire; create time to rearm. With the naivety of imperial arrogance, Chamberlain expected Hitler to be lastingly bought off. During the intensifying brinkmanship of 1937––1938, culminating in the Munich Conference, he followed that course to its end.

The 1930s saw two vast economic events: a unique crisis of global capitalism (Great Depression or Slump); and unparalleled transformation of an entire large-scale society toward socialism (Soviet industrialization). Via pervasive societal effects, enlarged state capacities, programmatic ideas, and popular readiness, each reset the future. The USSR transitioned from a rural to an urban-industrial society, borne by heavy industry; central state planning; coercive population politics; and a collectivist ethos. Elsewhere, governments adhered strictly to austerity and tariffs. Recovery was slow and uneven, driven by industrial restructuring, as historic heavy industry gave way to new electro-technical, chemical, and consumer-based industries, especially the automotive sector. There were two exceptions: Scandinavian Sweden, based in social democracy and Keynesian-like economic steering; and Germany, with a brutally centralist military Keynesianism, massively focused on rearmament. By destroying organized labor, coercively regulating labor markets, and coordinating an exceptionally concentrated German capitalism, Nazism dragooned society into recovery and war-preparedness.

While Sancho discussed slavery in his letters decades before British opposition to that institution coalesced and became institutionally codified, he undeniably took a firmly anti-slavery and anti-racist stance in his manuscript correspondence. He used his familiar letters to critique and oppose slavery as a practice and an institution as well as to reject and undermine the validity of emerging concepts of “race” in an effort to oppose their effects in the world. Three core strategies emerge: first, satirizing and critiquing the metaphorical mapping of moral character onto skin color in the service of white supremacy; second, reappropriating and resignifying animal metaphors and racial tropes to undermine their efficacy in subjugating humans and non-humans alike within a slaving society; and third, recovering self-determination and agency for Black subjects by asserting ownership over his own body through the manual labor of writing.

In Central Asia and the Middle East, no less than eastern Europe, thwarted imperialist drives disrupted older patterns of rule. Germany’s imagined landward imperium of 1917–1918 was matched in 1918–1919 by Britain’s in the Middle East and Central Asia. The resulting turmoil spawned logics of imperial consolidation, anti-colonial hope, and regional state formation shaping later decolonization. If the Versailles precepts of self-determination ended at colonial frontiers, Bolshevik appeals vigorously crossed them, deepening the crisis of colonial order. British, French, and Dutch imperial thinkers responded with “indirect rule,” constitutional tinkering, and colonial development, expressed as “Commonwealth,” “Greater France,” and Dutch “ethical policy.” Boosted by the Comintern, anti-colonial nationalisms built self-confidence and organization.Négritude, a Francophone literary and philosophical movement, became the clearest generalizing departure, matched by Pan-Africanism in Britain’s imperial sphere. By “bringing empire home,” migrations from colonies to the western-European metropole joined the “colonial effect” in binding Europe and its colonies ever more intricately together.

Ignatius Sancho described his Letters as the product of an “African sensibility.” This chapter explores what he meant by this, locating the term “sensibility,” and its cognate “sentiment,” in the context of Scottish Enlightenment science of man (David Hume, Lord Kames, Adam Smith). Through close reading, it examines how Sancho, as a sentimental epistolary writer, used his sensibility to affirm his humanity, reinforce friendships, and make political observation. Sancho’s sentimental epistolary practice, shaped by his correspondence with Laurence Sterne in 1766, was notable for his use of the dash to punctuate his writing. The chapter argues that although both writers use the dash for rhetorical effect, Sancho’s “dashing style” is distinct from Sterne’s punctuational practice. The chapter argues also that Sancho’s mode of sensibility was important in his assessment as a sentimental man of letters in the debate on African arts and letters in the 1770s and early 1780s.

This chapter explores the extent to which the European Union's (EU) migration dialogue with African countries has impacted on its relations with the continent. It argues about the constraints EU faces in conducting migration dialogue and coherently implementing migration-related initiatives despite the rapid development of the external dimension of the EU's migration policy and its focus on Africa. The chapter describes the major developments in EU-Africa migration dialogue and reviews Africa's views on migration. African governments generally agree with the need to coordinate migration agendas and have been willing to engage in dialogue with the EU, provided this considers the concerns of both origin and destination countries. It analyses the EU's capacities and constraints in formulating an effective and coherent approach to cooperation with migrant-sending countries.

This chapter explores the relationship between migration dynamics, policies and the establishment of oil-based, rentier social contracts in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Spanning from the 1930s to the present day, the text examines the pivotal role of migration policies in defining the distribution of hydrocarbon rent benefits among Gulf citizens. Notably, it explores how migration policies have created a unique demographic makeup in Gulf populations, marked by a significant dominance of foreign citizens yet with limited socio-political claims.

Fluctuating oil prices influenced the evolution of social contracts and prompted a ‘demographic engineering’ of migrant numbers and diversification by origin. While unemployment emerged among nationals and put Gulf states at risk of political destabilisation after the Arab uprisings, the looming contraction of oil rent compelled the GCC countries to diversify their economies and boost employment for Gulf nationals.

Examining the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and economic downturn, the chapter suggests a deepening of the rift within foreign resident populations. As Gulf regimes must sustain high economic growth rates to create jobs for nationals, they compete to attract and retain increasing numbers of ‘high value-added’ expatriates, through promoting economic inclusion, eroding the kafala and granting limited social rights. Recent social protection measures, however, incurred limited improvements for low-wage ‘detainable and deportable’ workers. The chapter unveils migration policies as a product of ideologies, reflecting conceptions about country, nation, history, origin, people, citizenship and welfare.

Many in the founding generation believed that a virtuous citizenry would protect against abuses of power in a democracy. But their experience during the period of the Articles of Confederation revealed the limits of republican virtue as a check on abuses of power and underscored the challenge of limiting the opportunities for minority and majority factions to impose their will on their fellow citizens.

The founding generation condemned political parties as the archetypal manifestation of political factions. Yet they quickly sorted themselves into the Federalist and Jeffersonian Republican parties. As the Framers anticipated, the nation has experienced growing partisanship and a winner-takes-all, majority rules, understanding of the political process. A result has been what might be called a soft tyranny of the ruling majority faction.