This chapter distinguishes solidarity as a legal concept (LS) from solidarity as a social practice (SP). It matters for our understanding of the law to reflect on how, when and why law is able to interact with solidaristic practices. Section 1.1 explores the distinction. Section 1.2 stresses the ubiquity of solidarity in the law, from the traditional private law understanding of obligatio in solidum, to solidarity as a cohesive social force, to solidarity as a source of state duties. Section 1.3 shows that, despite its omnipresence, solidarity is an underinvestigated legal concept. Section 1.4 offers a typology of interactions between SP and the law, to show the many ways in which legal scholars may relate to SP. I list several types of interaction, and object to one. I argue that law cannot command us to act solidaristically since solidarity presupposes an intimate form of identification with others. But law may disrupt solidarities, sometimes in morally justified ways; it may compensate for the failing solidarity, recognizing and integrating it; and it may foster solidarity by its status-generative function, albeit merely in an indirect and not often controllable way.

The emergence of British punk in the mid-1970s led to a reimagining of the fanzine, home-made magazines self-published and self-distributed to fellow ‘fans’ within a particular cultural milieu. Where fanzines had previously been carefully collated and geared towards disseminating information, punk’s fanzines were produced speedily and irreverently. In line with the cultural critique inherent to punk, fanzines such as Sniffin’ Glue and London’s Outrage began to develop literary and visual discourses locating ‘the new wave’ within a wider socio-cultural and political context. Expositions on punk’s meaning and the media-generated moral panic that ensued following the Sex Pistols’ infamously foul-mouthed television appearance in December 1976 soon led to formative political analyses on everything from racism and commodification to anarchy and gender relations. By the early 1980s, anarchist punkzines engaged with a variety of political causes (e.g. CND) and recognisably feminist and socialist analyses found space between record and gig reviews. This chapter examines a selection of punk-related fanzines to argue that the medium provided space for young people (overwhelmingly teenagers) to test and cultivate political ideas and, in the process, develop a distinct genre of writing informed by punk’s impulse to simultaneously destroy and create.

This chapter expands our understanding of how continuous policy growth affects public agencies’ ability to implement policies. It introduces the concept of policy triage, wherein organizations must choose which tasks to prioritize and which to neglect when facing resource constraints and expanding policy portfolios. Triage reflects a trade-off that intrinsically undermines overall implementation effectiveness: Agencies systematically channel attention to some policy areas at the cost of others. The chapter develops a theoretical framework accounting for variation of triage levels across implementers. Three factors are central: whether politicians can shift blame for inadequate implementation (reducing their incentives to fund administrative capacity), the ability of implementers to mobilize additional resources, and the extent to which these organizations strive to compensate internally through a strong organizational culture and policy ownership. By highlighting both, top-down and bottom-up influences on policy implementation, this chapter emphasizes that an agency’s level of policy triage is determined by the configuration of these factors. The framework thus provides a robust lens for analyzing varied implementation outcomes among agencies operating under ever-expanding policy stocks.

Chapter 2 takes up Goethe’s distinction between a higher and a lower layer of world literature (discussed in the previous chapter) and argues that in complementing the transnational distribution of cultural mediocrity through markets, Goethe envisioned a more elevated sphere organized along a decidedly non-market form of exchange, that is, gifting. I examine Goethe’s correspondence with his translator Thomas Carlyle as a circuitry of world-literary gifting marked by the to-and-fro movement of tangible (books, journals, manuscripts, jewelry, drawings, interior decoration, etc.) and intangible gifts (tribute, reward, cooperation, guidance). Their nexus, I argue, was emblematic of the transition from the ethos of generous sharing in the republic of letters to world literature as a forum interconnecting outstanding representatives of various national literatures. Contributing to the material diffusion of texts and channelling symbolic economies of prestige, their acts of gift-giving prefigured Carlyle’s conception of hero-worship, and the “significant geography” circumscribed by the movement of gifts between Weimar and Scotland morphed into an imperialistic vision of a Teutonic (British-German) world literature.

Within higher education, there is a general trend that students in science-related fields (e.g. engineering, energy, biological sciences, chemistry, etc.) focus on the necessary skills of their field but do not engage in training in business strategies and processes. As a result, scientists may struggle entering into, and progressing through, management positions. This chapter focuses on the business aspects of entrepreneurship that energy engineers should develop. Technical concepts of product management, marketing, financial models, and business structures are included with interpersonal skills of leadership, teamwork, creativity, and of introspection. Inclusion of these concepts will enhance scientists’ training and provide a supporting structure to help them lead in industry settings.

This chapter examines the vocational odyssey of the second-generation humanist Giovanni Conversini, as he attempts to match his father’s lofty social status in his pursuit of a literary and teaching career. It focuses on his autobiographical account of his numerous occupations and two marriages (Rationarium vite); his attempt to gain an appointment with his uncle, a cardinal in the Papal Court (Dialogue Between Giovanni and a Letter); his experience in the Paduan court (De primo eius introitus ad aulam); and his major theoretical statement on life choice (Dragmalogia de eligibili vite genere).

This chapter examines the legal and policy regime that governs the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA) and the underlying constraints. The AfCFTA, regarded as the largest trade arrangement after the World Trade Organization (WTO) in terms of the number of participating countries, seeks to utilise economic integration to promote pan-African development as a pathway to prosperity. With a commitment to eliminate tariffs and non-tariff barriers (NTBs) in intra-African trade, the AfCFTA is governed by general and specific objectives as well as principles aimed at making the agreement a transformative instrument of African prosperity. While the AfCFTA is a consequence of normative beliefs and common identity of the state parties, there are fears that NTBs and prevalent weak institutions could frustrate the expected outcome. This further buttresses our contention that normative interests should be mutually constitutive with the institutions established to manage the underlying implementation for prosperity to be realised. Although development and, ultimately, prosperity are well constructed under the AfCFTA agenda, there must be complementarity between the AfCFTA regime and the implementing institutions. This chapter proffers the way forward to navigate these dynamics.

Democratic governments continually expand their policy portfolios to address various challenges, a process known as policy accumulation. While doing so can ensure more comprehensive governance, it also puts the administrative agencies tasked with implementing new and existing policies at risk of overload. Without matching resources or capacities, these agencies may be forced to engage in policy triage, whereby they must prioritize certain tasks and delay or neglect others. Policy triage lowers overall implementation effectiveness, as attention devoted to one area can draw resources away from another. Yet, existing research on policy growth has largely focused on the causes and patterns of expanding policy stocks, while implementation studies traditionally analyze individual policies rather than the organizational challenges arising from larger policy bundles. By shifting the analytical lens to how organizations handle their entire policy portfolios, this chapter zooms in on organizational trade-off decisions that shape the success or failure of public policies.