Global community-infrastructure engagement and accountability norms have emerged out of crises, decentralised shared knowledge generation amongst national and multilateral banking institutions, resulting in legal innovations. This process has accelerated in the context of cross-border infrastructure development projects, which often involve coordination between national and multilateral standards. A learning orientation, accompanied by the creation of shared learning spaces such as the International Financial Institution Meetings, which are hosted by the world’s multilateral development banks on a rotating basis on themes such as information disclosure and stakeholder engagement, have resulted in growing agreement on relevant underlying principles and good practices in community engagement in the context of infrastructure planning.

This chapter discusses systematic reviews as a cornerstone of evidence-based practice. Systematic reviews use explicit, reproducible methods to identify, appraise, and synthesise research evidence, thereby reducing bias compared to narrative reviews. The methodology is outlined step by step, including formulation of a research question, development of a protocol, comprehensive literature searching, study selection, data extraction, quality appraisal, and evidence synthesis. Quantitative synthesis through meta-analysis is explained, including the calculation of pooled estimates and assessment of heterogeneity. The importance of assessing publication bias and sensitivity analyses is highlighted. The chapter also considers qualitative synthesis and mixed-methods reviews, broadening the scope of systematic approaches beyond purely quantitative data. Strengths of systematic reviews include their transparency, reproducibility, and utility in informing guidelines and policy decisions. Limitations include potential bias in the underlying studies, the need for rigorous methods, and the time and expertise required. Practical examples illustrate their impact in shaping clinical practice, public health interventions, and resource allocation. The chapter concludes by underscoring the role of systematic reviews in consolidating knowledge, guiding practice, and identifying gaps for future research. This chapter maps to syllabus section 3.6.6, which requires understanding of systematic reviews, meta-analysis, and reporting standards such as QUORUM and PRISMA.

The concept of sub-system was originally presented by P. Sraffa in a brief non-mathematical appendix to his famous 1960 book. His purpose was that of providing an alternative, if less intuitive, line of approach to evaluate the quantities of labour that directly and indirectly enter the production of each commodity. To this effect, he used the more intuitive method of ‘reduction to dated quantities of labour’. This method works for the case of single products, but it does not work for joint production. Sraffa’s sub-system approach works in all cases. This concept has turned out to be of much wider relevance than Sraffa himself could have imagined. The Author develops, from the concept of sub-system, two symmetrical concept of vertically integrated labour coefficient and vertically integrated unit of productive capacity. The present chapter takes a further step in the direction of a complete generalization of the concept of sub-system and vertically integrated showing that the analytical device of partitioning an economic system into sub-systems (and correspondingly of constructing vertically integrated sectors) can indeed be taken into dynamic analysis, with remarkable implications.

Chapter 10 discusses the significance of qualitative differences among cultural, social, and political contexts, some of which are likely to support, and others undermine, the chances of tempering power. In some cultures, the notion that ruling power should and can be routinely and institutionally tempered, and that law is up to the job, is well embedded. In others it is heresy. And in any societies there are competing cultures, acted upon by internal and external forces. Some forms of society – particularly civil societies – are congenial contexts for tempered power. Other forms – ‘sacks of potatoes’ and polarised communities – are not. Some polities, such as despotisms and dictatorships, spurn tempering. Some forms of democracy support it; in some there is tension between the two. In contemporary elected populisms, tempering of the power of the ruler is undermined systematically and often with the help of law. And everything connects. Law is one domain among others and not always the most important.

Climate change impacts, including farm failure, degraded living conditions, political motives, conservation displacement, and infrastructure displacement, compel migration, largely to cities, but also to rural areas with high migrant–host conflict risk. Policymakers, facing high uncertainty, decide whether to launch state resettlement programs to control migration destinations. Indonesia’s transmigrasi, Malaysia’s FELDA, and Thailand’s Nikhom demonstrate the complexity of major resettlement programs. Yet, policymakers may evade accountability by ignoring migrations.Policymakers may try to reduce migration through local relocation or changing local conditions such as land contouring to reduce flood risk. Urban overcrowding prompts new city development, increasingly under private-sector control, and urban rehabilitation.

In Chapter 5, we explore the implications of our argument for the prospects for conflict resolution in Islamist civil wars. Using new global data on negotiations coupled with existing data on peace agreements, we demonstrate that conflict resolution efforts in the form of peace negotiations are rare in Islamist civil wars, whereas we find no robust support for our expectation that peace accords are less likely in Islamist civil wars. In this chapter, we not only compare Islamist civil wars with other conflicts but also focus on Islamist conflicts to explore whether there are any differences when comparing transnationalized Islamist civil wars with other types of Islamist civil wars. We find support for our claim that those Islamist conflicts that appeal to a transnational global agenda are less open to negotiations and peace agreements. Examples from Thailand, Egypt, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Pakistan validate the distinction between transnationally oriented and domestically focused conflicts and the potential of negotiations and peace agreements in Islamist civil wars.

This chapter considers ‘minority’ and other interpretative concepts, in the historical the context created by the break up of the Union in Ireland Partition was ultimately about one question: religious minorities and their oppression – real or imagined, anticipated or remembered. Far from being introverted and parochial, many of these people displayed an exceptional awareness of contemporary global challenges and opportunities: they were intrinsically transnational in terms of background, instincts, and interests. For both Jews and Protestants, religion encoded centuries of conflict but also of practices of everyday compromise. In its political application, religion provided these groups with their main source of self-awareness and underpinned their distinctive understandings of both Unionism and Irish nationalism, and indeed Zionism, which was itself a radical form of minority politics. Empowered but also limited by partly segregated institutional and social environments, the minority mind encompassed both culture and identity.

Medieval economic theorists developed a theory of the just price – that is, a theory about what the fair or just price for any commodity should be. Nowadays the idea seems odd, since prices are set by markets. But is it that odd? For we still have strong intuitions about the wrongness of exploitation of labour, or the immorality of exchanges undertaken under duress. The central question of this chapter concerns what a plausible theory of business or economic ethics should say about prices and pricing behaviour. What should it tell us about the price of goods and of labour? We argue that the moral leeway approach helps us to strike a balance between the insights of both economics and ethical theory.