The BRI, formally known as the One Belt, One Road Initiative, is a global development initiative initiated by the Chinese government arousing significant academic and policy interest. Since 2005, China has completed close to USD2.3 trillion in foreign projects since with 41% (USD966 billion) financing infrastructure projects and an even larger amount (USD1.4 trillion) towards investment in foreign assets – port facilities, mining and energy assets, and acquisitions of foreign firms. This chapter reviews the role of the BRI in infrastructure development including its contributions and challenges in advancing sustainable development alongside efforts at engagement with local communities. A number of approaches to addressing BRI disputes have emerged at the pre- and post-dispute stage. These include both formal and informal dispute mitigation and resolution mechanisms. Conversations with project coordinators highlight the importance of neutrality and relationship preservation. Systems are emerging to increase community access to grievance mechanisms including China’s mediation and consultation mechanism for the mining industry.

This chapter addresses diagnostic studies, which evaluate the performance of clinical tests and tools used to detect disease. The concepts of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value are explained in detail, highlighting how these metrics guide clinicians in interpreting test results. The role of prevalence in influencing predictive values is emphasised, underlining the need to consider population context when applying diagnostic tools. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves are introduced as a method to assess test performance across varying thresholds, enabling identification of optimal cut-off points. The chapter also explores likelihood ratios, which integrate sensitivity and specificity into a single measure to support diagnostic decision-making. Strengths of diagnostic studies include their direct clinical relevance and utility in evaluating new technologies or biomarkers. Limitations include potential spectrum bias, verification bias, and challenges in defining an appropriate gold standard. Examples from infectious disease testing and mental health screening illustrate the practical implications of study design and interpretation. The chapter concludes by positioning diagnostic research as critical for improving clinical decision-making, resource allocation, and patient outcomes. This chapter maps to syllabus sections 3.2.5–3.2.8, which cover diagnostic accuracy measures including sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, likelihood ratios, and ROC curves.

This chapter deals with the English religious lexicon at the end of the fourteenth/beginning of the fifteenth century. This period saw the appearance of religious reformers – condemned by many as heretics – who are known as Lollards, a ‘movement’ associated with the fourteenth-century academic theologian John Wyclif that has been called a ‘premature reformation’. A special ‘Lollard language’ was identified – albeit somewhat vaguely – at the time, and an attempt is made here to establish the details of this distinctive lexicon, comparing the usage of selected Lollard sermons with other more orthodox works in the same genre by the Augustinian canon John Mirk. The ‘reformist’ usages thus distinguished are then compared with those found in other works from the period, notably Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Parson’s Tale and the C-text of William Langland’s Piers Plowman.

The 2019 national elections in Uruguay marked a significant renewal and resurgence of the right-wing political camp. On one hand, the mainstream right returned to power after fifteen years of left-wing governments. On the other, the far right emerged as the fourth political force in a country long dominated by traditional parties. Strongly connected to the Armed Forces, the Uruguayan far right adopted a nationalist and traditionalist discourse centered on restoring order and recovering a glorified past, with appeals to conservative values and penal punitivism. In the most stable country in a markedly unstable region, what context enabled the far right’s emergence in Uruguay? What ideas does it favor? How does it pressure democracy? Chapter 7 analyzes the rise of the far right through the ideas presented by its party and leadership: Cabildo Abierto and Guido Manini Ríos. It also considers the limitations of this political project, given the far right’s decline in subsequent elections. This suggests that its initial appeal may have been more reactive than durable, ultimately constrained by the institutional and political culture of Uruguayan democracy. Nevertheless, the Uruguayan case reveals that, despite setbacks, space remains for far-right forces to influence public debate within the country’s democratic framework.

The final chapter brings together the themes of the book, exemplified through two case studies located diachronically: the development of the lexeme spirit , and the theological writings of the seventeenth-century poet and thinker Lucy Hutchinson. The chapter concludes with some observations on how the insights presented in this book can be aligned with a wider reimagining of the philological enterprise along pragmatic lines, taking on board interdisciplinary perspectives.

This chapter examines the human rights framing for the governance of information from the 1990s to the early 2010s and argues that, overall, it did not fundamentally unsettle two basic logics of neoliberalism, namely, securitization and marketization. In commonplace positive narratives about technology, human rights were presented by policymakers and international technocrats as one benefit of new information and telecommunication technologies (ICTs), to justify the market-driven technological change. By contrast, negative narratives about technology focused on the social harms of new ICTs and invoked human rights to normatively ground technological development. However, human rights struggles in this period suffered from two processes of dilution – firstly, the proceduralization of human rights obligations of the state during the War on Terror years and, secondly, the narrowing down of a broad social programme into focusing only on classic civil and political rights in civil society campaigns – and were therefore unable to fundamentally reshape the governance of information towards more equitable distribution of power and wealth.

This chapter argues that ideas – not just capital or labor – are central to economic transformation. Innovation does not arise spontaneously; it requires deliberate institutional support, including investments in education, basic research, and infrastructure. The chapter explores how countries cultivate innovation ecosystems that enable risk-taking and creativity. It highlights the role of the state in shaping markets, fostering entrepreneurship, and guiding long-term strategic investment. A society’s capacity to generate, diffuse, and apply knowledge is a key determinant of its developmental trajectory.

This chapter presents conclusions and relevant recommendations. Project data, survey findings and comparative case studies suggested that the introduction of heightened pre-project community consultation and grievance mechanisms within global multilateral development banks in the mid 2010–2020s have corresponded with a drop in the percentage of grievances per project from 15.4% in 2019 to 7.1% in 2021. Survey findings of fifty-five practitioners engaged in infrastructure-related dispute prevention in the Asia Pacific region likewise found that prior community consultation was considered the most effective approach to preventing infrastructure disputes. Overall, most disputes arose because of lack of adequate consultation with members of the community. Similarly, the twelve community–investor dispute case studies showed that in circumstances of increasingly heightened standards for pre-project community consultation compared with ad-hoc discretionary consultation practices, the number of stalled/cancelled and litigated case declined by 33%, the percentages of cases referred to local courts declined by 16%, and the number of cases pursuing party agreement through mediation or negotiation increased by 50%. These findings support the development of increasingly robust community consultative engagement channels, particularly for multilateral and national banks that have not yet implemented such policies. Such engagement channels, far from aggregating complaints, conversely correlate with a reduction in the overall proportion of project disputes.

This chapter addresses the central issue of causation in epidemiology, distinguishing it from mere association. It introduces frameworks for causal inference, including the Bradford Hill criteria, which provide guidance on evaluating strength, consistency, temporality, biological gradient, plausibility, and coherence of observed associations. The counterfactual model and modern causal inference techniques, such as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), are presented as tools to conceptualise and test causal relationships. The role of confounding, bias, and chance in distorting associations is critically examined, with emphasis on strategies to control for these factors in study design and analysis. The chapter highlights how causality is rarely established by a single study, but rather through the accumulation of evidence across multiple designs, populations, and contexts. Examples from classic epidemiological research, such as the link between smoking and lung cancer, are used to illustrate how causal arguments are built over time. By integrating historical perspectives with contemporary approaches, the chapter equips readers with both conceptual and practical tools for critically appraising evidence. This chapter maps to syllabus section 3.2.10, which requires knowledge of causation, bias, confounding, and the use of criteria such as Bradford Hill’s for causal inference.

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.