This chapter recounts the life, times, works and influence of Richard Pipes, a major historian of the Soviet experience. It shows how his life as a refugee from Nazi-occupied Europe, and his trauma at surviving the Holocaust, structured his later scholarship as a historian of Russia. It examines the development of his oeuvre, his life as a scholar, policy adviser and pundit, and his influence on the field of studying nation and empire under Stalin and under the Soviet regime more generally.

Chapter 3 examines the influence of Personalism on the development of the Strategic Hamlet Campaign, which served, during the First Republic, as one of the primary instruments in the struggle against the insurgency. Contrary to conventional account of the latter, the program was not simply a totalitarian technique of mass repression. Rather, it was devised as a radical program of “social revolution” (cách mạng xã hội), aimed at transforming the entire economic and political structure of South Vietnamese society. This social revolution, moreover, was not only directed against the insurgency, but also against capitalism and liberal democracy, as Western institutions that the leaders of the First Republic regarded as a legacy of colonialism. In light of the anti-capitalist character of the early South Vietnamese state, the chapter contends that the war, in this early phase, was not simply a conflict between communism and democracy, but as a contest between two different forms of anti-colonial communism.

Psychoanalytic criticism is a form of literary criticism which uses some of the techniques of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of literature. This chapter begins by discussing Sigmund Freud's major ideas related to psychoanalysis. It then explains how Freudian interpretation works. A STOP and THINK section in the chapter helps readers understand the logic of Freudian interpretation. Freud's misreading is seen in the case study usually known simply as 'Dora'. The chapter concentrates on a dream which she related to Freud in the course of the treatment. It lists some activities of Freudian psychoanalytic critics and Lacanian critics, and provides examples of Freudian psychoanalytic criticism and Lacanian criticism. Comparing the Freudian and Lacanian examples will make it immediately apparent that there is an immense gulf between these two approaches, even though they both stem from the same original body of Freudian theory.

From the very beginning of his mandate, Macron has been more than a traditional French foreign policy president; he is representative of a global Macron brand, admired elsewhere, a model of youthful, reformist and intentional political leadership. Macron symbolises renewal on the international scene, as well as domestically, being the most prominent of a new generation of world leaders including Canada’s Justin Trudeau. The generational effect has spilled over from domestic to foreign policy, inspiring the young president to enter into a world dialogue with other young people. Finally, Macron also stands apart from his predecessors insofar as celebrity politics has spilled over into the international sphere, with Brigitte Macron a key part of the presidential toolkit. Are domestic styles and remedies transferable to the European and international scene? The first year of Macron’s presidency was rather inconclusive in this respect.

After reflecting on the screen and television image of Diana Dors towards the end of her career, this chapter goes on to contend that her dramatic abilities were visible from the outset of her film career. In addition to a discussion of the limitations of the Rank Organisation and the British film industry when confronted by such an individual talent, there is a further examination of attitudes towards female sexuality during the 1950s. Yield to the Night is evaluated as a key film in both Dors’s career and prurient societal attitudes towards those film stars who apparently revelled in their publicity. The latter section of the chapter describes how Diana Dors created some memorable performances amid some of the worst efforts of exploitation in the film industry.

Macron’s political leadership appeared as a successful political construction after his first year in office, one more successful than that of most of his predecessors. There were three main reasons for this. First, in terms of individual attributes, there appeared to be a better fit between Macron and the office of the French presidency than was the case for his two immediate predecessors. Second, during his first year in office, Emmanuel Macron invested the presidency – an established but rather tired political office – with renewed energy and strengthened its central position amongst institutions. Third, during the first year in office, the combination of a dynamic leadership and a strengthened office enhanced the position of President Macron in terms of the macro-level: hence the ability to conceive of European, international and global economic pressures not simply as external constraints, but also as a set of domestic opportunities. The first year in office offered a relatively rare period of leadership coherence. By the end of this period, however, there were some signs of diminishing leadership returns and unresolved tensions.

In the early years of the tenth century several Anglo-Saxon royal women, all daughters of King Edward the Elder of Wessex (899-924) and sisters (or half-sisters) of his son King Athelstan (924-39), were despatched across the Channel as brides for Frankish and Saxon rulers and aristocrats. This chapter addresses the fate of some of these women through an analysis of their political identities. In particular, it is concerned with the ways by which they sought to exercise power in kingdoms where they were outsiders. By directing attention to the outsider status of Athelstan's sisters, the chapter maps out some of the contours of queens' power in tenth-century Francia, identifying differences between them as well as similarities. It explores what it meant for Eadgifu that so many of her sisters were married to the continental big hitters of the day.

Chapters 1 and 2 set out the main message of the book: policy-makers should experiment to find out the most effective way of encouraging better citizen behaviour. This chapter discusses nudge and think in some depth. Reviewing the associated literature, it explores the assumptions underlying the two strategies, and asks what nudge and think can bring to the challenge of stimulating citizen behaviour. It also engages with normative questions about whether the state or other public agencies should nudge citizens or encourage them to think.

This chapter describes the events on polling day, and the statistics relating to voter turnout and to the number of yes votes. The results are examined and an assessment of how the people’s decision was finally implemented into law follows.

In her response to Rainer Forst’s lead essay, Melissa S. Williams interrogates Forst’s account of morality through an empirical and historical analysis of the actions by which human agents establish moral and just relations between themselves. She challenges the idea that all moral practices of reciprocal respect can be reduced to practices of justification. ‘Prefigurative’ practices such as those employed by Gandhi and various Indigenous movements entail a turning away from a politics of justification and critique addressed to the dominating agent, and a turning towards those whose solidarity one seeks in constructing and enacting an alternative ethical form of life based on relationships of egalitarian reciprocity. Such approaches begin from the understanding that practices of reason, and especially social practices of reason-giving and reason-demanding, and of recognising others as rational subjects, are never innocent of power relations. Forst may respond that his theory acknowledges the role of power in constituting the subjects who are capable of recognising one another as equal agents of justification, but this leaves unanswered the question of what agents are doing when they interrupt discursive practices of justification by substituting non-discursive performances of egalitarian respect within cooperative relationship.