This chapter focuses on the dissemination of Marxist theory into progressive thought during the 1930s and its application to theorising about equality. The first section indicates why Marxism achieved such unprecedented prestige in the political debates of this period. The second and third sections of this chapter examine in more detail the materialist critique of social democratic egalitarianism developed by Marxist writers, and the principles of justice they ultimately defended. The final section discusses the partial retreat from this materialist position precipitated by the arrival of the Second World War.

This chapter discusses the approach to mayoral local government in the US, Italy, Japan, Germany and Canada. The Italian mayoral system has shifted the balance of local political power in favour of the mayor over the council. The strong US mayor has very real executive political authority. Japanese elected mayors are responsible for the quality and consistency of the services provided by the authority and for the conduct of all the affairs of the local authority. There are three levels of political authority within the German system. The German elected mayor can be faced with the strongest of all checks on the power of political office. The political power of the Canadian elected mayor rests on a recognition of the legitimacy provided to the office-holder by the public vote. The nature of party political power and dynamics and the role of party politics in the localities influence the mayoral office.

This chapter introduces the Life Loops framework – a dynamic, iterative model for navigating change with clarity and momentum. Structured around five key phases (empathy, ideation, prototyping, learning, and perseverance), the framework helps you move from reflection to action, and from stuckness to progress, one loop at a time. Unlike linear change models, Life Loops mirror real life: messy, emotional, and full of iteration. Grounded in science yet deeply human, the framework incorporates procrastination as a source of insight, builds self-efficacy through small wins, and supports emotional regulation. Whether redesigning your morning routine or reimagining your career, this process transforms hesitation into movement. Paired with powerful metaphors like dancing, mapping, or compass-guided navigation, Life Loops invite you to treat your life as an evolving experiment – playful, purposeful, and personal. The loop doesn’t just help you move forward – it helps you bring more of yourself into the future.

While a great deal has been written on the Mafia in Sicily, there is less literature on the anti-Mafia movement. The first part of this chapter gives a general background to Leoluca Orlando's political programme during the 1990s, the so-called ‘Palermitan renaissance’, when he was mayor of Palermo. Thereafter the chapter focuses on national, regional and local initiatives to fight against the Mafia in public schools, with a particular emphasis on school policy during the 1990s. What were the most important aspects of Orlando's cultural warfare against the Mafia? What were its objectives? Which were the strategies chosen? To what extent may the programme be described as a success or a failure? The chapter starts with a brief outline of the anti-Mafia movement. It continues with a description of civic education in Italy and the school policy in Palermo that sought to break the Mafia's territorial and mental control. It also discusses strong forces against Orlando's urban planning and examines the return of small-scale clientelism as well as increased interest in civic education in Palermo under Orlando.

This chapter provides a bird’s-eye overview of the presence of English and English-related varieties in Jamaica from the capture of the island by the English in 1655 to the modern language situation. It argues that the genesis of Jamaican Creole (JC) must be located in the final decades of the seventeenth century, and that enslaved people from Surinam may have influenced the formation of JC. It discusses the relationship between JC and Maroon ‘Deep Language’ and considers the evidence for the impact of substrate languages. The Jamaican creole continuum can be seen as the continuation of early variation, and the diglossic relationship between Jamaican English (JE) and JC betrays the persistence of standard language attitudes which have their origins in the colonial period. Finally, developments such as the emergence of Rasta Talk and the shift to an American model for the ‘speaky-spokey’ register betray the perception of English among many JC speakers as a language which does not belong to them, despite the fact that it exists in the distinctly Jamaican form which has emerged over nearly four centuries.

Americans of Mexican or Central American heritage have developed a cluster of dialects that follow recognisable patterns of immigrant groups. These dialects exhibit diversity depending on the region of the United States where they are spoken, the relative concentrations of their speakers, the degree of historical discrimination, the presence of African American influence and other factors. They all share a background of Spanish interference features, but they have all undergone a process of winnowing those features and adopting others as they develop. Phonetic influences have been easier to document than morphosyntactic influences.

Global warming policies in Japan and Britain exhibit both similarities and differences. Drawing on G. P. Freeman's contrast between the ‘national style approach’ and the ‘policy sector approach’, this chapter focuses on two strands of the literature. One is (new) institutionalism and the other is the ‘policy determines politics’ school, or what is known as the ‘issue-based approach’. The institutional approach looks at different characters of national institutions and predicts policy differences; the issue-based approach looks at the constraints on rational actors arising from the attributes of a policy issue and implies cross-national policy similarities. The discussion of institutionalism is linked with the literature on corporatism, here understood as describing a form of institution that can be contrasted with non-corporatism, or pluralism. In this study, Japan is seen as having important institutional characteristics of corporatism in terms of analysing environmental policy, and Britain those of pluralism. The chapter also looks at four aspects of policy: the speed of policy change, policy content, the degree of policy integration, and policy stringency.

Although identity politics tends to concentrate on novelty, it has developed in an ongoing series of reactions to both past and present. Gay politics did not develop in isolation and then force itself on the Left's agenda. It was forged in the counter-cultural milieu between radical and reformist politics. Despite points of unity, like Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, overall we can trace a development along a broad continuum, with a consolidation of the themes that divide the Left from gay activism. This is a partial explanation of the state of protest and politics today, when the traditional institutions of both reform and revolt appear to offer no attraction and personal politics can be misread as political apathy. This concluding chapter looks at the emergence of more recent political activism, such as The Unity Coalition — RESPECT, and the ways in which New Labour has negotiated the politics of sexuality. It evaluates the ‘apathy’ that has been read into falling electoral participation, challenging the popular idea that young people are more interested in reality television than in politics.

This chapter focuses on Leigh's feature film, Naked, which remains his bleakest and angriest work, as well as his most controversial. It also marked his breakthrough to international recognition, and a shift in his career whereby each of his subsequent films were different, in style or subject matter or both. This chapter emphasizes that in any event anyone who thought they had Leigh safely compartmentalized as a shrewd commentator on lower-middle-class suburban repressions and preoccupations would have been particularly taken aback by Naked. Naked's themes arise credibly from the characters' lives and attitudes, which are treated with a complexity and ambiguity consistent with Leigh's other work and with the ways in which one reacts to people in life outside the movies. It was the kind of film that leaves one feeling drained as much on its leading actor's behalf as by the verbal battering he is given. For its admirers, though, it was exhilarating as well as exhausting.

This chapter shows what political responsibility refers to and why political responsibility is desirable in all systems of governance, including the EU. The two main ways in which political responsibility is understood—that is, as a set of qualities (or virtues) and as a feature or an organising principle of a system of governance are examined and the relationship that binds them is explored. It is shown that these are only two different aspects of the same phenomenon: political responsibility is a principle that calls for certain requirements to be met in an ongoing practice of governance and these requirements are placed upon both political agents and political institutions. In other words, political responsibility is a principle of legitimate governance that refers both to how political agents should act and to how political institutions should be set up. Political responsibility is a desirable feature for every practice of governance because it enables the achievement of predictability, order and stability. Before discussing political responsibility as a requirement upon agency as well as upon institutions of governance, the chapter first provides an account of the relationship between institutions and agency.

This book analyses the part that the international economy has played in the success and failures of democracies since the beginning of the inter-war years. It stands back from the literature on globalisation and American empire, and situates its analysis historically, both in terms of the practical development of the international economy over time and in an earlier language of political analysis, reason of state, which stressed the importance of the external world to the endurance of state authority and power. Then, the book explains how representative democracies have fared since the political problems emerged during the inter-war years through the attempt at Bretton Woods to foreclose them and the return of such capital movements over the past thirty years. It addresses a relatively large set of democracies in different periods of time in different parts of the world, and finally provides an overview of the chapters included.